By Ian Randall

Diamonds could be your computer’s best friend

Scientists have created a diamond nanowire that emits single photons, Nature Nanotechnology reported this week. Harvard University , the University of Munich and Texas A&M teamed up to use impurities within the crystal to generate light.

Lead researcher, Marko Loncar, said: “The diamond nanowire device acts as a nanoscale antenna that funnels the emission of single photons from the embedded colour center into a microscope lens.”

It is possible that, in the future, this technology might be applicable to the further development of fiber-optics in the fields of communication and computing.

Warming seas are melting Greenland glaciers

The ocean waters that melt ice in fjords significantly affect the stability of the edges of the Greenland ice sheet, Nature Geoscience reported this week. The research also showed that the submarine melting of glaciers can produce ice loss in the same order of magnitude as the breaking-off of icebergs.

“The studies by Straneo and Rignot and their colleagues are vital steps towards an understanding of Greenland’s ice loss into fjords,” commented Paul Holland, of the British Antarctic Survey.

The researchers carried out oceanographic studies of the fjord in which the sea meets the Helheim Glacier – where there is a notable interchange between the waters of the fjord and subtropical waters on the shelf.

Got milk?

Small herds of cows which are tied into stalls produce more milk than their counterparts that are allowed to roam free, it was announced this week. Researchers from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science studied 812 herds of Norwegian Red Cattle in both tie- and free-stalls.

Lead author, Egil Simensen, said: “Free-stall cows in smaller herds produced significantly less milk than those in tie-stalls, but more milk in larger herds.”

The study, printed in the journal Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica, also showed that free-stall cattle are less susceptible to metabolic disease and have higher levels of reproductive success. This study follows a ban on the manufacture of new tie-stalls in Norway in 2004.

US scientists create universal afterbirth

Colliding gold ions, travelling near the speed of light, have created a liquid which is 250,000 times hotter than the Sun, reported Physical Review Letters this week. The material, a flowing mix of the subatomic particles quarks and gluons, was generated at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

Dr. William F. Brinkman, Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, said: “This research offers significant insight into the fundamental structure of matter and the early universe, highlighting the merits of long-term investment in large-scale, basic research programs at our national laboratories.”

A 2.4 mile-circumference Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider was used to create the quark-gluon plasma – the same substance believed to have existed microseconds after the Big Bang, from which all other mater was formed.