* Astronomy

  AT SMALLEST SCALE, LIQUID CRYSTAL BEHAVIOUR PORTENDS NEW MATERIALS

Liquid crystals, the state of matter that makes possible the flat screen technology now commonly used in televisions and computers, may have some new technological tricks in store.
Writing today (May 3, 2012) in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers led by University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering Juan J. de Pablo reports the results of a computational study that shows liquid crystals, manipulated at the smallest scale, can unexpectedly induce the molecules they interact with to self-organise in ways that could lead to entirely new classes of materials with new properties.
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