news from the lab 2014

How do fireflies produce those mesmerizing light flashes? Using cuttingedge imaging techniques, scientists from Switzerland and Taiwan have unraveled the firefly's intricate light-producing system for the first time. Fireflies used rapid light flashes to communicate. This "bioluminescence" is an intriguing phenomenon that has many potential applications, from drug testing and monitoring water contamination, and even lighting up streets using glow-in-dark trees and plants.

The need for ever faster and more efficient electronic devices is growing rapidly, and thus the demand for new materials with new properties. Oxides, especially ones based on strontium titanate (SrTiO 3 ), play an important role here. Researchers recently discovered that SrTiO 3 , although actually an insulator, can form a metallic layer on its surface, in which electric current can flow.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS ) collaboration has today presented its latest results. These are based on the analysis of 41 billion particles detected with the space-based AMS detector aboard the International Space Station. The results, presented during a seminar at CERN 2 , provide new insights into the nature of the mysterious excess of positrons observed in the flux of cosmic rays.

The manipulation of atoms has reached a new level: Physicists were able to place 20 single atoms on a fully insulated surface at room temperature to form the smallest "Swiss cross", thus taking a big step towards next generation atomic-scale storage devices. Ever since the 1990s, physicists have been able to directly control surface structures by moving and positioning single atoms to certain atomic sites.

The CMS experiment at CERN reports new results on an important property of the Higgs particle, whose discovery was announced by the ATLAS and CMS experiments on 4 July 2012. The CMS result follows preliminary results from both experiments, which both reported strong evidence for the fermionic decay late in 2013.

Data on a hard drive is stored by flipping small magnetic domains. Researchers have now changed the magnetic arrangement in a material much faster than is possible with today's hard drives. The researchers used a new technique where an electric field triggers these changes, in contrast to the magnetic fields commonly used in consumer devices.