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India Set to Become Associate Member State of CERN

At an event on Nov. 21, Fabiola Gianotti, CERN's director general, and Sekhar Basu, chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission and secretary of India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), signed an agreement admitting India to CERN as an Associate Member.

Bruker and Oxford Reach Deal for Superconducting Wire Business

The Bruker Corporation has closed a deal with Oxford Instruments for the $17.5 million acquisition of Oxford's Superconducting Wire LLC (OST). In the transaction, Bruker Energy and Supercon Technologies, Inc. (BEST), a Bruker subsidiary, acquired all shares of OST and announced the intent to fold the Carteret NJ based company...

Gecko-Inspired Adhesive Withstands Extreme Temperatures

Researchers have developed a new dry adhesive that bonds in temperatures ranging from -320°F to 1,832°F, a quality that could make the product ideal for space exploration where shade can be frigid and exposure to the sun blazing hot. It features vertically aligned carbon nanotubes with tops bundled into nodes...

LCLS X-ray Laser Reveals Ultrafast Riboswitch in Action

Scientists have used the powerful X-ray laser at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), located at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, to take the first ever snapshots of an ultrafast riboswitch, a gene regulator that can switch individual genes on and off. According to the research team,...

Stanford Study Suggests Battery Power Will Trump Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Stanford researchers say communities would be better off investing in electric vehicles that run on batteries instead of hydrogen fuel cells, in part because a hydrogen infrastructure provides few additional energy benefits for communities beyond clean transportation.

CoEPP and IHEP to Collaborate on Future Experiments

At a ceremony held Nov. 8 in Beijing, representatives from the ARC Center for Particle Physics at the Terascale (CoEPP) and the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish scientific exchange, collaboration and cooperation between the two organizations.

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Joule-Thomson Effect

The Joule-Thomson (JT) effect is a thermodynamic process that occurs when a fluid expands from high pressure to low pressure at constant enthalpy (an isenthalpic process). Such a process can be approximated in the real world by expanding a fluid from high pressure to low pressure across a valve. Under...

Current Leads

One of the challenges of using superconducting magnets is the connection of the magnet to a room temperature power supply. This is accomplished via current leads. The trick is that current leads should ideally have a low heat leak, since they connect room temperature to cryogenic temperature, while at the...

Multilayer Insulation

Multilayer insulation (also referred to as superinsulation) is a key component in the reduction of heat leak to cryogenic systems due to thermal radiation. MLI consists of a series of uncooled reflective surfaces placed in the vacuum space between two surfaces, one warmer than the other. Generally speaking, for ideal...

Latest in Cryo Central

Cryogenic Electronics

Randall Kirschman, consulting physicist, Mountain View, California ExtElect@gmail.com Cryogenic electronics—the operation of electronic devices, circuits, and systems at cryogenic temperatures—has been a valuable technology for decades. Cryogenic electronics (also referred to as low-temperature electronics, or cold electronics) can be based on semiconductive devices, on superconductive devices, or on a combination...

Particle Physics: High Energy Physics

Cryogenics and High-Energy Physics 1. From symmetry magazine: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000627: Cryogenics is the study of how materials behave at temperatures near absolute zero. In high-energy particle accelerators, such frigid temperatures reduce the electrical resistance of wires in superconducting magnets, increasing the magnet strength and allowing faster particle acceleration. The same holds...

HTS Degaussing Systems

From the Spring 2009 issue of Cold Facts (Volume 25, Number 2): Thanks to a joint project by the US Navy and a number of industry partners, high temperature superconducting (HTS) technology is now at the heart of an advanced degaussing system aboard the USS Higgins at the naval station...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

From http://www.superconductors.org: An area where superconductors can perform a life-saving function is in the field of biomagnetism. Doctors need a non-invasive means of determining what’s going on inside the human body. By impinging a strong superconductor-derived magnetic field into the body, hydrogen atoms that exist in the body’s water and...

Latest in Ask the Experts

An Issue of Pressure and Flow Rate in a Supply Tank

Please help solve this problem: A supply tank requires a vaporizer to generate sufficient pressure to pump stored fluid up into a vehicle or tank. The available head is limited as the tank level falls and it is important to minimize the system pressure drop to maintain the desired flow...

Using MLI on VJ Line Joints or Cryo Storage Tanks

When installing Multi Layer Insulation (MLI) blankets on VJ line joints or cryo storage tanks should they be wrapped and tied down tight or loose? These are usually pre-cut to size. Also should they have an access hole at the point of where the molecular sieve is installed to help...

Separated layers of ice over a pipe

I want to know that why there are different layers of ice over a pipe carrying a cryogenic fluid, each layer separated with clear marks / lines? What do these layers signify?

Using nitrogen as a cryogen

Is it possible to achieve -200˚C using nitrogen as a cryogen?

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