New carbon nanotube fibre outperforms Kevlar

A new type of continuous carbon fibre, developed a group at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at Cambridge, could be woven into super-strong fabric, with potential uses for body armour for the military and law enforcement.

Made from carbon nanotubes, the researchers say their material is already several times stronger, tougher and stiffer than Kevlar fibres currently used to make protective armour.


See BBC News.

String theory explained in less than 2 minutes

Columbia University physicist Brian Greene recently chose the winner of the String Theory in Two Minutes or Less user-generated video contest. Check out the videos as well as the results of the viewer's choice poll. Some interesting approaches!

See Discover Magazine.

Hitachi perpendicular GMR drive heads to yield terabit drives

Hitachi have developed a new current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto-resistive head (CPP-GMR) which will allow drive makers to develop up to 4 terabyte computer drives by 2011 and/or 1 terabyte notebook drives.

The CPP-GMR heads will be capable of reading media where the tracks are 50 nanometers apart or smaller. Fifty nanometer tracks hit in 2009, and 30 nanometer tracks are expected to hit in 2011.

See news.com.

Climate Change campaign nets Gore the peace prize

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize goes to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".

See NobelPrize.org.

Nano effect wins 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics

In 1988 Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg each independently discovered a totally new physical effect – Giant Magnetoresistance or GMR, which was to revolutionise data storage technology that is used to read data on hard disks. With GMR it has been possible to miniaturize hard disks radically in recent years. Sensitive read-out heads are needed to be able to read data from the increasingly compact hard disks used in laptops, iPods and other ever-smaller devices.

GMR can be considered one of the first real applications of nanotechnology. ''The MP3 and iPod industry would not have existed without this discovery,'' Borje Johansson, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences told The Associated Press. ''You would not have an iPod without this effect.''

The two winners split the 10M SEK prize (€1.1M).

See nobelprize.org.
Also New York Times.

Don't shoot the messenger

Alan Casey brought to my attention this article about science broadcasting written by Robyn Williams called “Don't shoot science messengers, they're an endangered species” - Williams works for ABC in Australia hosting a science show. As a counterbalance to a previous post criticising science journalism, it highlights the resources required and the potential issues in reporting science properly.

See eurekastreet.

UC Berkeley launches YouTube lectures

UC Berkeley announced on Wednesday that it has begun posting entire course lectures on YouTube, the Web's No.1 video-sharing site.

Berkeley officials claimed in a statement that the university is the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. The school said that over 300 hours of videotaped courses will be available.

See UC Berkeley Physics Lectures.

New Lecturer Appointees in Physics

The School welcomes the successful appointment of Jacinta Browne, Justin Donnelly, Aidan Meade and Fran Pedreschi as Lecturers in the School from their previous position as Assistant Lecturers.

Congratulations to all, and very well deserved.