STATPHYS 24, the XXIV International Conference (2010)

The STATPHYS Conference series takes place every three years in a different continent to enhance the international relevance and visibility of the leading world event in the broad field of Statistical Physics and all its interdisciplinary developments. Recent meetings have been held in GENOVA (Italy), BANGALORE (India), CANCUN (Mexico) and PARIS (France). STATPHYS 24 will be the first time this event is held in Australia and only the second time in the southern hemisphere. The entire Australian scientific community enthusiastically supports this meeting and warmly welcomes all international participants.

SourceTool Search engine accuses Google of antitrust violations

TradeComet.com, a small New York-based Internet search engine company, has filed suit against Google, accusing the king of Web search of violating antitrust laws. TradeComet, in a statement, said it filed a complaint this week in US District Court in New York asserting "Google violates antitrust laws by eliminating competition and choice." "Google's anticompetitive conduct eliminated TradeComet as a competitor," said the company, which was founded in September 2005.

Nueva estatua de cera de Britney Spears

Tanto es así, que el museo de cera más famoso del mundo, el Madame Tussauds, ha añadido hoy día 16 de Febrero en su sede de Londres, una nueva figura de Britney Spears, imitando el momento inicial de su regreso musical el pasado año 2008, cuando recogía sus flamantes premios VMA por Piece Of Me en Los Ángeles. El parecido es realmente asombroso… aunque el premio que la Britney de cera sostiene no es un Moon Man de los VMA, pero el resto es increíble.

Ashley Judd Calls for End to Mountaintop Mining

Judd was among some 500 people who gathered outside the Kentucky state Capitol on Tuesday for a rally in support of legislation that would essentially end the practice of blasting away mountaintops to unearth coal. The actress who was born in northeastern Kentucky said she visited mountaintop removal sites last September and was unprepared for the destruction she saw. She described "barren moonscapes" and "nothingness" where Appalachian peaks once rose skyward.

Higgs Boson: Race for 'God particle' heats up

The particle, whose existence has been predicted by theoreticians, would help to explain why matter has mass. Finding the Higgs is a major goal of Cern's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). But the US Fermilab says the odds of its Tevatron accelerator detecting the famed particle first are now 50-50 at worst, and up to 96% at best. Both machines hope to see evidence of the Higgs by colliding sub-atomic matter at very high speeds. If it exists, the Higgs should emerge from the debris. The LHC has been out of action since last September when an accident damaged some of the magnets that make up its giant colliding ring. Project leader Lyn Evans conceded the enforced downtime might cost the European lab one of the biggest prizes in physics. Cern and Fermilab officials squared up at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago.

Perseverance Is Paying Off for a Test of Relativity in Space

For 46 years, Francis Everitt, a Stanford University physicist, has promoted the often perilous fortunes of Gravity Probe B, perhaps the most exotic, “Star Trek”-ish experiment ever undertaken in space. Finally, with emergency financial help from a pair of unusual sources, success is at hand. Conceived in the late 1950s, financed by $750 million from NASA and launched into orbit in 2004, the Gravity Probe B spacecraft has sought to prove two tenets of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The first, called the geodetic effect, holds that a large celestial body like Earth will warp time the way a rubber sheet stretches when a bowling ball is placed on it. The second, known as frame-dragging, occurs when the rotation of a large body “twists” nearby space and time; turn the resting bowling ball, and the rubber sheet twists.

Hot or not: The rules of attraction

It is the oldest of questions. "What is love! It is a pretty thing, as sweet unto a shepherd as a king," wrote Robert Greene back in the 16th century. Four hundred years on, the poser is as tricky as ever. Ahead of Valentine's Day, theories still abound as to why two people are attracted to each other. To some, it is a romance-laden "bolt from the blue", a deftly timed arrow from Cupid. To the scientists, it is a mixture of factors: everything from status to age, similarity, and pheromones.

Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard. Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms. He was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System. Very few of these would be capable of supporting life, however. Most are gas giants like our Jupiter; and many orbit so close to their parent stars that any microbes would have to survive roasting temperatures.

Baby-faced boy Alfie Patten is father at 13

Baby-faced Alfie, who is 13 but looks more like eight, became a father four days ago when his girlfriend Chantelle Steadman gave birth to 7lb 3oz Maisie Roxanne. He told how he and Chantelle, 15, decided against an abortion after discovering she was pregnant.

Darwin 2009 commemorations

The year 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (24 November 1859) and the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth (12 February 1809). This page aims to list the associated worldwide events and publications.

Electronic cigarettes: A safe substitute?

I've just "lit up" an e-cigarette, a battery-powered electronic device that I bought for $60 from a UK website. It looks just like a real cigarette - the tip even glows red - and with every drag a few micrograms of nicotine from a disposable cartridge (I got six with my purchase) should reach my lungs. My e-cigarette even produces puffs of "smoke", but it isn't burning, and so it's not banned. I'm not the only one smoking these sticks. In the growing number of public places worldwide where smoking has been banned, a new breed of smoker has appeared puffing on similar gadgets.

A New Puzzle Challenges Math Skills

KenKen shares some properties with sudoku. Each is a pure logic challenge in which numbers are filled in the squares of a grid. Unlike sudoku, though, in which the numbers act solely as symbols (letters or pictures would work as well), KenKen requires arithmetic. The rules are simple: Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit within any row or column, and so the digits within each heavily outlined box (called a cage) go together using the arithmetic operation shown to make the target number indicated.

Of Maxwell, Uma and Omar the Car

IT’S not often that a conversation about the 1960s television spy-spoof sitcom “Get Smart,” starring Don Adams, segues effortlessly into “Kill Bill 2,” the second part of director Quentin Tarantino’s two-volume saga about a female assassin’s vendetta against her former boss. But if the topic happens to be the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, the transition isn’t such a stretch.

Bottom-up Nanoconstruction by the Welding of Individual Metallic Nanoobjects Using Nanoscale Solder

We report that individual metallic nanowires and nanoobjects can be assembled and welded together into complex nanostructures and conductive circuits by a new nanoscale electrical welding technique using nanovolumes of metal solder.

At the weld sites, nanoscale volumes of a chosen metal are deposited using a sacrificial nanowire, which ensures that the nanoobjects to be bonded retain their structural integrity. We demonstrate by welding both similar and dissimilar materials that the use of nanoscale solder is clean, controllable, and reliable and ensures both mechanically strong and electrically conductive contacts. Nanoscale weld resistances of just 20Ω are achieved by using Sn solder. Precise engineering of nanowelds by this technique, including the chemical flexibility of the nanowire solder, and high spatial resolution of the nanowelding method, should result in research applications including fabrication of nanosensors and nanoelectronics constructed from a small number of nanoobjects, and repair of interconnects and failed nanoscale electronics.

A Molecular Linear Motor Consisting of Carbon Nanotubes

We experimentally investigated a “molecular-linear-motor” system consisting of a capsule-like carbon nanotube (CNT) in the interior space of a host CNT. Transmission electron microscopy revealed the capsule traveled back and forth between both ends of the hollow space along the axial direction and rotated simultaneously. The mechanism was well explained with molecular dynamics simulation by considering the driving force supplied from thermal energy. The present system operates around room temperature and this opens up the possibility of designing novel nanodevices such as oscillators and switching memory devices.

Quantum Dot Behavior in Graphene Nanoconstrictions

Graphene nanoribbons display an imperfectly understood transport gap. We measure transport through nanoribbon devices of several lengths. In long (≥250 nm) nanoribbons we observe transport through multiple quantum dots in series, while shorter (≤60 nm) constrictions display behavior characteristic of single and double quantum dots. New measurements indicate that dot size may scale with constriction width. We propose a model where transport occurs through quantum dots that are nucleated by background disorder potential in the presence of a confinement gap.

Himno Universitario UCV

Fue fundado en 1.943 por Antonio Estévez, y declarado "Patrimonio Artístico de la Nación" en 1983. Es pionero de las agrupaciones corales universitarias venezolanas. Es el coro activo mas antiguo del país y desde su creación ha desarrollado una intensa actividad que lo ha llevado a los más apartados rincones de Venezuela y del mundo. Por otra parte cultiva todo género musical: universal, latinoamericano y venezolano. Ha grabado 10 ediciones discográficas y además ha participado en producciones de artistas nacionales, entre los que cuentan Ilan Chester, Serenata Guayanesa y las Voces Risueñas de Carayaca. Sus integrante son estudiantes, y estudiantes de la UCV.

A 'Theory of Everything' Is Just an Illusion

Nobody knows what "time" is, how to define it, so how can people speak of the beginning of the universe, of the beginning of time, and of the end of the universe. Such talk is completely futile, maybe there is no beginning and no end of time, nobody knows.

A new connection between electricity and magnetism

A magnetic domain wall moving along a ferromagnetic wire can generate a voltage across the wire. This electromotive force, which is not the same as Faraday’s law of induction, is part of a growing family of interactions that are being discovered in the field of spintronics.

Javascript: A Set of Animated Examples