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Invisibility cloaking in the optical
DOI: 10.1038/nmat2461
A major step towards the realization of invisibility in the visible region is reported online this week in Nature Materials. The study demonstrates cloaking in the optical region for wavelengths in the near-infrared part of the spectrum and moves us a step closer to invisibility in a region that can been seen by humans.
Although cloaking has been demonstrated recently for the microwave region, the device structure used for these cloaks makes scaling down to the small wavelengths of the visible region challenging. Xiang Zhang and colleagues have now achieved cloaking in the optical region by etching small nanoscale holes into a layer of silicon. The holes follow a complex pattern and are designed to hide an object underneath a small bump — creating a so-called carpet cloak. Compared with previous realizations of cloaking, the present design shows low losses and broadband operation over a wide part of the near-infrared spectrum. This design also has the potential to readily scale towards the visible region.
Author contact:
Xiang Zhang (University of California at Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 510 643 4978; Cell: +1 510 225 8559; E-mail: [email protected]
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PRESS RELEASE FROM Nature Reviews NEUROSCIENCE
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A time to stress
DOI: 10.1038/nrn2639
Exposure to stress affects the brain, but different brain areas are vulnerable at particular times in life, shows a Review article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. This will affect the functioning of these brain areas, leading to disorders such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Many studies have shown that exposure to chronic or severe stress has long-lasting effects on the brain, and consequently on cognition and behaviour, but the precise effects differ between studies and between individuals. Sonia Lupien and colleagues have analyzed data from studies in animals and humans and show that brain areas that are still developing, or that are undergoing age-related decline, at a particular time will be the most sensitive to a stressor occurring at that time. This has led to a model that explains why different disorders emerge in individuals who were exposed to stress at different times in their lives. The model further implies that early interventions could prevent the deleterious effects of stress.
This article is one of six articles that comprise a Focus on Stress in the June issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience (freely available online for the month of June at www.nature.com/nrn/focus/stress).
Author contact:
Sonia Lupien (University of Montréal, Canada)
Tel: +1 514 251 4015; E-mail: [email protected]
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Leonie Welberg (Nature Reviews Neuroscience, London)
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VOL.458 NO.7242 DATED 30 APRIL 2009
Editorial contacts: While the best contacts for stories will always be the authors themselves, in some cases the Nature editor who handled the paper will be available for comment if an author is unobtainable. Editors are contactable via Ruth Francis on +44 20 7843 4562. Feel free to get in touch with Nature's press contacts in London, Washington and Tokyo (as listed at the end of this release) with any general editorial inquiry.
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Climate change: Warming unlikely to remain below 2°C without tight limits on CO2 emissions (pp 1163-1166; 1158-1162; N&V)
The rise in global temperature is unlikely to remain below the politically defined threshold of dangerous climate change, if carbon-hungry global development continues at its current pace. A duo of papers in this week’s Nature makes this prediction, based on new simulations of the climate response to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Policy makers have adopted a goal of keeping the global rise in mean surface temperatures to no more than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. Although there is no guarantee that warming of less than this can be deemed ‘safe’, this mutually agreed figure is used as a guide to the scale of the problem.
Myles Allen and colleagues simulate the mean global warming that would result from a given cumulative carbon emission. Accounting for uncertainties in the carbon cycle, their findings reveal that a trillion tonnes of carbon emissions (about 3.7 trillion tonnes of CO2, roughly half of which has already been emitted) produces a ‘most likely’ warming of 2 °C. In a related Commentary in Nature Reports Climate Change, the authors discuss the significance of their findings and argue that targets to limit global warming will be ineffectual unless placed in the context of a cumulative carbon budget.
Malte Meinshausen and colleagues take a slightly different tack by modelling the probability of global temperature rises across a range of GHG emissions scenarios. In considering carbon emissions along with the balance of warming and cooling by non-CO2 climate drivers, they find that total emissions from 2000 to 2050 of about 1,400 gigatonnes of CO2 yields a 50% probability of exceeding 2 °C warming by the end of the twenty-first century. Given that emissions for the last seven years were almost 250 gigatonnes, ‘business as usual’ emissions will probably meet or exceed this 50% probability.
In the Opinion section, Stephen Schneider speculates on what a warmed-up world might look like. Martin Parry and colleagues say that more emphasis needs to be placed on policies of adaptation and recovery. And Robert Costanza gives his verdict on Nicholas Stern’s blueprint for a safer planet.
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Malte Meinshausen (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany)
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Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, New York, NY, USA) N&V author
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Stephen Schneider (Stanford University, CA, USA) Author Essay
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Martin Parry (Imperial College London, UK) Author Commentary
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