Physicists may have created the smallest drops of liquid ever made in the lab. That possibility has been raised by the results of a recent experiment conducted by physicist Julia Velkovska and her colleagues at the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider located at the European Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland.

Engineers combine layers of flexible materials into pressure sensors to create a wearable heart monitor thinner than a dollar bill. The skin-like device could one day provide doctors with a safer way to check the condition of a patient's heart.

There is an urgent need to find new antibiotics as bacteria are constantly evolving and steadily becoming resistant to the current arsenal used by doctors around the world. A key question is whether it is possible to create better anti-infective agents using design principles rather than by trial and error. Antimicrobial peptides are short protein fragments that have been suggested as such future alternatives to current antibiotics. They identify bacteria and disrupt their membrane structure, thus ultimately killing the bacteria.

Investigating the friction behavior of nanosystems, scientists have discovered a previously unknown type of friction that sheds new light on some previously unexplainable phenomena.

Researchers have reported that synthetic silicate nanoplatelets (also known as layered clay) can induce stem cells to become bone cells without the need of additional bone-inducing factors. Synthetic silicates are made up of simple or complex salts of silicic acids, and have been used extensively for various commercial and industrial applications, such as food additives, glass and ceramic filler materials, and anti-caking agents.

Amid concerns over the potential health effects of existing flame retardants for home furniture, fabrics and other material, scientists are reporting development of an “exceptionally” effective new retardant that appears safer and more environmentally friendly.

Harnessing the unique features of the quantum world promises a dramatic speed-up in information processing as compared to the fastest classical machines. Scientists from the University of Vienna have succeeded in prototyping a new and highly resource efficient model of a quantum computer – the boson sampling computer.

Leading nanoscientists created beautiful, tiled patterns with flat nanocrystals, but they were left with a mystery: Why did some sets of crystals arrange themselves in an alternating, herringbone style? To find out, they turned to experts in computer simulation at the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A new joint innovation could pave the way for redefining the ampere in terms of fundamental constants of physics. The world's first graphene single-electron pump (SEP) provides the speed of electron flow needed to create a new standard for electrical current based on electron charge.

Researchers have managed to give graphene magnetic properties. The breakthrough opens the door to the development of graphene-based spintronic devices, that is, devices based on the spin or rotation of the electron, and could transform the electronics industry.