By observing events at the scale of single atoms, Cornell researchers have found evidence that the mechanism in high-temperature superconductors may be much more like that in low-temperature superconductors than was previously thought. “This came as a huge shock,” said J.C. Séamus Davis, Cornell professor of physics, who with colleagues reports the findings in the 3 August issue of Nature.

Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity with virtually no resistance. The new research may shed light on how superconductivity works in modified copper oxides known as cuprates, which superconduct at the relatively “high” temperature of liquid nitrogen.

Engineers at Purdue University have developed a technique to grow individual carbon nanotubes vertically on top of a silicon wafer, a step toward making advanced electronics, wireless devices and sensors using nanotubes by stacking circuits and components in layers. The technique might help develop a method for creating “vertically oriented” nanoelectronic devices, the electronic equivalent of a skyscraper, said Timothy S. Fisher, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the work with Timothy D. Sands, the Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering.

In a first-of-its-kind achievement, scientists at the University of Iowa, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Princeton University have directly imaged the magnetic interactions between two magnetic atoms less than 1 nm apart and embedded in a semiconductor chip.

In laboratory tests, one very low dose of a drug was enough to show an effect on notoriously tenacious artery-clogging plaques. What kind of drug is that potent? It’s not so much the drug itself as how it was delivered. Fumagillin—a drug that can inhibit the growth of new blood vessels that feed atherosclerotic plaques—was sent directly to the base of plaques by microscopically small spheres called nanoparticles developed by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, USA.