R. Mark Wilson

Superhydrophobic surfaces reduce drag

Microscopic features on a wall can have an enormous influence on macroscopic flows along it.

Archimedes’s principle gets updated

When a fluid is complex, a venerable buoyancy law breaks down.When a fluid is complex, a venerable buoyancy law breaks down.

Graphene production goes industrial

A method that efficiently produces rectangular films of graphene nearly a meter in diameter may chart a course to commercialization.

Interferometry data challenge prevailing view of wave propagation in the cochlea

Nonlinear amplification of sound in the inner ear generates distortion that leaks out through the eardrum. But how those waves travel backward along the cochlear spiral remains unsettled.

Designer materials render objects nearly invisible to microwaves

Coordinate transformations and curved spaces, the traditional tools of general relativity, are finding applications in optical engineering.

Optical-fiber microcavities reach angstrom-scale precision

Using heat and light to subtly vary the local radius and refractive index of a glass fiber is a simple and surprisingly reproducible way to create and tune a microresonator.

Evidence for Majorana fermions in a nanowire

Electrical conductance measurements reveal what may be massless, chargeless, and spinless quasiparticles of zero energy.

Graphene photodetectors get gain

By spraying quantum dots onto a graphene flake in a circuit, researchers have produced a phototransistor a billion times more sensitive than any prior graphene-based device.

Custom shapes from swell gels

A new lithographic method patterns UV-sensitive, water-absorbing polymers to produce complex, self-folding shapes.

Using the friendship paradox to sample a social network

When applied to random nodes in a network, the statement “Your friends have more friends than you do” has predictive power.