Bourbon-and-branchwater fans be warned. Scientists at the Advanced
Light Source using an important new tool for probing the molecular
properties of solutions have discovered that alcohol
and water cannot completely mix on the microscopic level.
There has never been a perfect alcohol-water blend, and there
never will be.
Getting the robot
to do it
Electron microscopy in biological studies yields hundreds of
images, each of which must be digitized before it can be analyzed.
Working 15 days full time, a person can load and scan 750 images;
now engineers and biophysicists have devised a
robot scanner that digitizes that many images automatically,
without reloading.
A rapid new detection system has the potential to screen
every cargo container entering a United States seaport for
fissile material. Irradiating a container's contents with a
beam of neutrons and then measuring the emission of high-energy
gamma rays provides a unique identifying signature for plutonium
or highly enriched uranium.
November
26, 2003
