University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have conducted the most sensitive search to date for gravitational-strength forces between masses separated by only twice the diameter of a human hair, but they have observed no new forces.

The results rule out a substantial portion of parameter space for new forces with a range between one-tenth and one-hundredth of a millimeter, where theoretical physicists using string theory have proposed that “moduli forces” might be detected, according to

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a better-performing, less costly method of disinfecting water used in food processing.

Like current technologies, the new Advanced Disinfection Technology System relies on ultraviolet (UV) radiation to eliminate molds, viruses and bacteria. But the new system handles water more efficiently and thus improves the overall effectiveness of the disinfection process, researchers reported.

“We’re creating a mixing pattern to e

Densely packed granular particles that inch past each other under tension interact in ways more complex and surprising than previously believed, two Duke University physicists have discovered.

Their observations, described in the Thursday, February 27, 2003, issue of the research journal Nature, could provide new insight into such geophysical processes as the behavior of a slowly moving glacier or an active earthquake fault, said Robert Behringer, a Duke physics professor who is one of the

Today in Brussels European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin presented the status of the international negotiations relating to the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) research project on nuclear fusion energy.

A significant step has been achieved with the entry into negotiations of the People’s Republic of China and the comeback of the United States of America. Participants to the negotiations will have to identify the ITER site from among the four current c

Darwin in his time wondered about the existence of ants – how can natural selection as a process based on individual reproductive success give rise to sterile individuals such as ant workers? The solution comes from kin selection theory, which holds that an individual’s reproductive success can also be measured in the number of collateral kin produced. This is how the ants have solved the problem. In an ant colony with only one queen all the workers are her offspring and will in practice help to

The relatively powerful earthquake that hit eastern France last Saturday confirms the findings of the postgraduate research currently being conducted by Gideon Lopes Cardozo at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg and the Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences at the VU Amsterdam. Lopes Cardozo is investigating the causes of earthquakes in the southern part of the Rhine Graben. His research is sponsored by the European Union and has shown that the movements in the earth’s crust in the area around t