Table of contents

The study of the properties of hot nuclei and the search for the liquid–gas phase transition in nuclei have been the subjects of many investigations in recent decades. We present a short and limited review of the theoretical and experimental status of the determination of the temperature dependence of some properties of hot nuclei and nuclear matter, currently under extensive investigation.

Because classical Maxwellian electromagnetism has been one of the cornerstones of physics during the past century, experimental tests of its foundations are always of considerable interest. Within that context, one of the most important efforts of this type has historically been the search for a rest mass of the photon. The effects of a nonzero photon rest mass can be incorporated into electromagnetism straightforwardly through the Proca equations, which are the simplest relativistic generalization of Maxwell's equations. Using them, it is possible to consider some far-reaching implications of a massive photon, such as variation of the speed of light, deviations in the behaviour of static electromagnetic fields, longitudinal electromagnetic radiation and even questions of gravitational deflection. All of these have been studied carefully using a number of different approaches over the past several decades. This review attempts to assess the status of our current knowledge and understanding of the photon rest mass, with particular emphasis on a discussion of the various experimental methods that have been used to set upper limits on it. All such tests can be most easily categorized in terms of terrestrial and extra-terrestrial approaches, and the review classifies them as such. Up to now, there has been no conclusive evidence of a finite mass for the photon, with the results instead yielding ever more stringent upper bounds on the size of it, thus confirming the related aspects of Maxwellian electromagnetism with concomitant precision. Of course, failure to find a finite photon mass in any one experiment or class of experiments is not proof that it is identically zero and, even as the experimental limits move more closely towards the fundamental bounds of measurement uncertainty, new conceptual approaches to the task continue to appear. The intrinsic importance of the question and the lure of what might be revealed by attaining the next decimal place are as strong a draw on this question as they are in any other aspect of precise tests of physical laws.

Recent high-spin observations reveal entirely new modes of collective rotational motion and the existence of novel symmetries and spontaneous symmetry breaking phenomena, uncovering hitherto unexploited coupling schemes of intrinsic and collective degrees of freedom. It continues to stimulate the theoretical progress in the field, which clearly turns towards a microscopic description based on self-consistent approaches using either an effective non-relativistic Hamiltonian or an effective relativistic Lagrangian. New coupling schemes call not only for symmetry unrestricted mean-field theories, but also for extensions going beyond the mean-field. The progress in the development of these theoretical methods is discussed in this review.

The Casimir force, which is the attraction of two uncharged material bodies due to modification of the zero-point energy associated with the electromagnetic modes in the space between them, has been measured with per cent-level accuracy in a number of recent experiments. A review of the theory of the Casimir force and its corrections for real materials and finite temperature are presented in this report. Applications of the theory to a number of practical problems are discussed.

DNA may seem an unlikely molecule from which to build nanostructures, but this is not correct. The specificity of interaction that enables DNA to function so successfully as genetic material also enables its use as a smart molecule for construction on the nanoscale. The key to using DNA for this purpose is the design of stable branched molecules, which expand its ability to interact specifically with other nucleic acid molecules. The same interactions used by genetic engineers can be used to make cohesive interactions with other DNA molecules that lead to a variety of new species. Branched DNA molecules are easy to design, and they can assume a variety of structural motifs. These can be used for purposes both of specific construction, such as polyhedra, and for the assembly of topological targets. A variety of two-dimensional periodic arrays with specific patterns have been made. DNA nanomechanical devices have been built with a series of different triggers, small molecules, nucleic acid molecules and proteins. Recently, progress has been made in self-replication of DNA nanoconstructs, and in the scaffolding of other species into DNA arrangements.