news from the lab 2016

Some of the fastest processes in our body run their course in proteins activated by light. The protein rhodopsin sees to it that our eyes can rapidly take in their ever-changing surroundings. Free-electron X-ray lasers such as SwissFEL at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI now make it possible for the first time to catch such processes in flagranti.

Physicists at the University of Basel have succeeded in watching a silver catalyst at work for the first time with the aid of an atomic force microscope. The observations made during an Ullmann reaction have allowed the researchers to calculate the energy turnover and, potentially, to optimize the catalysis.

Chemists at the University of Basel have succeeded in using computer simulations to elucidate transient structures in proteins. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, the researchers set out how computer simulations of details at the atomic level can be used to understand proteins? modes of action. Using computational chemistry, it is possible to characterize the motion of individual atoms of a molecule.

EPFL researchers have developed a system that generates electricity from osmosis with unparalleled efficiency.

For the first time, researchers at the University of Basel have coupled the nuclear spins of distant atoms using just a single electron. Three research groups from the Department of Physics took part in this complex experiment, the results of which have now been published Nanotechnology. In most materials, the nuclear spins of neighboring atoms have only a very weak effect on one another, as the tiny nuclei are located deep within the atoms.

EPFL researchers have produced a tunable, graphene-based device that could significantly increase the speed and efficiency of wireless communication systems. Their system works at very high frequencies, delivering unprecedented results. Wireless come in many forms - such as mobile phones using 4G or 5G connectivity, GPS devices, and computers connected via Bluetooth to portable sensors - and operate in different frequency bands.

27. Nanoga, an EPFL-based startup, has developed a technique for engraving a nanoscopic watermark onto glass or ceramic. Products with this watermark, which is invisible to the naked eye and only shows up under ultraviolet light, are impossible to counterfeit. With Nanoga's new way of combatting counterfeits, each product can be made unique without changing its appearance.

14. An international team of scientists at EPFL and the US have discovered a material that can clear out radioactive waste from nuclear plants more efficiently, cheaply, and safely than current methods. Figure: The crystal structure of SBMOF-1 (green = Ca, yellow = S, red = O, gray = C, white = H). The light blue surface is a visualization of the one-dimensional channel that SBMOF-1 creates for the gas molecules to move through.

An international consortium led by researchers at the University of Basel has developed a method to precisely alter the quantum mechanical states of electrons within an array of quantum boxes. The method can be used to investigate the interactions between various types of atoms and electrons, which is essential for future quantum technologies, as the group reports in the journal Small.

08. Light, wireless probes the size of a large pen have been developed to identify cancer cells and suspicious lymph nodes during surgery.

18. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria. Using state-of-the-art tools, EPFL scientists have described a million-atom "tail" that bacteriophages use to breach bacterial surfaces. The breakthrough has major implications for science and medicine, as bacteriophages are widely used in research.

Physicists at the Swiss Nanoscience Institute and the University of Basel have succeeded in measuring the very weak van der Waals forces between individual atoms for the first time. To do this, they fixed individual noble gas atoms within a molecular network and determined the interactions with a single xenon atom that they had positioned at the tip of an atomic force microscope.

Carbon nanotubes remain attached to materials for years while titanium dioxide and nanozinc are rapidly washed out of cosmetics and accumulate in the ground. Researchers from the National Research Programme 'Opportunities and Risks of Nanomaterials' (NRP 64) have developed a new model to track the flow of the most important nanomaterials in the environment.

Using an ultra fast-scanning atomic force microscope, a team of researchers from the University of Basel has filmed "living" nuclear pore complexes at work for the first time. Nuclear pores are molecular machines that control the traffic entering or exiting the cell nucleus. In their article published , the researchers explain how the passage of unwanted molecules is prevented by rapidly moving molecular "tentacles" inside the pore.

Scientists at the Swiss Nanoscience Institute and the Department of Physics at the University of Basel have developed a new method that has enabled them to image magnetic fields on the nanometer scale at temperatures close to absolute zero for the first time. They used spins in special diamonds as quantum sensors in a new kind of microscope to generate images of magnetic fields in superconductors with unrivalled precision.

15. Scientists at EPFL and ETH Zurich have built a single-atom magnet that is the most stable to-date.

Why are volcanologists interested in vapour bubbles? Because they can accumulate in a magma reservoir underneath a volcano, priming it to explode.

In phase transitions, for instance between water and water vapour, the motional energy competes with the attractive energy between neighbouring molecules.

08. EPFL researchers have found that water molecules are 10,000 times more responsive to ions than previously thought. Water is simple and complex at the same time. A single water molecule (H2O) is made up of only 3 atoms. Yet the collective behavior of water molecules is unique and continues to amaze us.

Media releases, information for representatives of the media Media Relations (E) Astrophysicists at the University of Bern have modelled the evolution of the putative planet in the outer solar system.