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In neutrino-less double-beta decay search, physicists excel

Physicists Andrea Pocar and Krishna Kumar, part of an international research team, recently reported results of an experiment conducted at the Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO), located in a salt mine one-half mile under Carlsbad, New Mexico, part of a decades-long search for evidence of the elusive neutrino-less double-beta decay of Xenon-136.
 
Pocar, Kumar and the team of 60 scientists using an instrument called the EXO-200 detector, succeeded in setting a new lower limit for the half-life of this ephemeral nuclear decay. Though no one has yet seen it, important progress was made.
 
Pocar

Computer scientists say better systems needed for medical device cybersecurity

Medical devices save countless lives, and increasingly functions such as data storage and wireless communication allow for individualized patient care and other advances. But after their recent study, an interdisciplinary team of medical researchers and computer scientists warn that federal regulators need to improve how they track security and privacy problems in medical devices. 
 
Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and the Computer Science Department analyzed reports from decades of U.S.

Computer Science doctoral student receives 2012 Google Fellowship

Charles Curtsinger, a doctoral candidate in Computer Science, recently received a prestigious 2012 Google Fellowship in Software Performance, one of only 14 Google PhD Student Fellowships awarded in the United States and Canada this year. With the two-year award, Curtsinger will receive funding for tuition, fees and a yearly stipend, plus access to a Google research mentor.

"Being a Google fellow is an honor and a long-term benefit for me,” says Curtsinger. “The connection with top researchers, innovative people and the experience will be great for my whole career.”

 
Curtsinger’s advisor,

Microbiology researchers unravel secrets of parasites' replication

A group of diseases that kill millions of people each year can’t be touched by antibiotics, and some treatment is so harsh the patient can’t survive it. They’re caused by parasites, and for decades researchers have searched for a “magic bullet” to kill them without harming the patient. Now, a team of Microbiology Department researchers has made an advance that could one day lead to a new weapon for fighting parasitic diseases such as African sleeping sickness, chagas disease and leishmaniasis.
 
In the cover article of the current issue of Eukaryotic Cell, parasitologist Michele Klingbeil,

Physicists' work is critical to Higgs boson search

Physicists Benjamin Brau, Carlo Dallapiccola and Stephane Willocq were instrumental in this week’s preliminary observation of a new particle, possibly the long-sought Higgs boson, announced by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) particle physics laboratory.

 
The Standard Model of particle physics can correctly explain the elementary particles and forces of nature after more than four decades of experiments.

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