Water is weird — and yet so important. In fact, it is one of the most unusual molecules on Earth. It boils at a temperature it shouldn’t. It expands and floats when it is in the solid-state. Its surface tension is higher than it should be. Now, new research published in the journal Nature has…
Graphene may be among the most exciting scientific discoveries of the last century. While it is strikingly familiar to us — graphene is considered an allotrope of carbon, meaning that it essentially the same substance as graphite but in a different atomic structure — graphene also opened up a new world of possibilities for designing…
The speed of water flow is a limiting factor in many membrane-based industrial processes, including desalination, molecular separation and osmotic power generation. Researchers at The University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute (NGI) have published a study in Nature Communications showing a dramatic decrease in friction when water is passed through nanoscale capillaries made of graphene,…
Scientific studies describing the most basic processes often have the greatest impact in the long run. A new work by Rice University engineers could be one such, and it’s a gas, gas, gas for nanomaterials. Rice materials theorist Boris Yakobson, graduate student Jincheng Lei and alumnus Yu Xie of Rice’s Brown School of Engineering have…
Bay Area scientists have captured the real-time electrical activity of a beating heart, using a sheet of graphene to record an optical image — almost like a video camera — of the faint electric fields generated by the rhythmic firing of the heart’s muscle cells. The graphene camera represents a new type of sensor useful…
Current rates of plastic emissions globally may trigger effects that we will not be able to reverse, argues a new study by researchers from Sweden, Norway and Germany published on July 2nd in Science. According to the authors, plastic pollution is a global threat, and actions to drastically reduce emissions of plastic to the environment…
A study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators hints that people with COVID-19 may experience milder symptoms if certain cells of their immune systems “remember” previous encounters with seasonal coronaviruses — the ones that cause about a quarter of the common colds kids get. These immune cells are better equipped to mobilize quickly against…
Electronic circuits that compute and store information contain millions of tiny switches that control the flow of electric current. A deeper understanding of how these tiny switches work could help researchers push the frontiers of modern computing. Now scientists have made the first snapshots of atoms moving inside one of those switches as it turns…
A new study disputes the prevailing hypothesis on why Mercury has a big core relative to its mantle (the layer between a planet’s core and crust). For decades, scientists argued that hit-and-run collisions with other bodies during the formation of our solar system blew away much of Mercury’s rocky mantle and left the big, dense,…
Equatorial Asia, which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and surrounding areas, experienced devastating biomass burning in 2015 due to the severe drought condition induced by the extreme El Niño and a positive anomaly of the Indian Ocean dipole. This biomass burning emitted a significant amount of carbon, mainly in the form of carbon dioxide…
Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have successfully used graphene — one of the strongest, thinnest known materials — to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in laboratory experiments. The researchers say the discovery could be a breakthrough in coronavirus detection, with potential applications in the fight against COVID-19 and its variants. In experiments, researchers combined…
Scientists have waited months for access to highly accurate protein structure prediction since DeepMind presented remarkable progress in this area at the 2020 Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction, or CASP14, conference. The wait is now over. Researchers at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle have largely…
A collaborative research team, led by the University of Liverpool, has discovered a new inorganic material with the lowest thermal conductivity ever reported. This discovery paves the way for the development of new thermoelectric materials that will be critical for a sustainable society. Reported in the journal Science, this discovery represents a breakthrough in the…
Since the Paris Climate Agreement that took effect in 2016, 121 countries have pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050 as the world tries to reduce its fuel consumption. The Korean government also unveiled its 2050 Carbon Neutral Strategy on December 7, 2020 and declared Carbon Zero, making transition to new and renewable energy a…
Scientists on the hunt for an unconventional kind of superconductor have produced the most compelling evidence to date that they’ve found one. In a pair of papers, researchers at the University of Maryland’s (UMD) Quantum Materials Center (QMC) and colleagues have shown that uranium ditelluride (or UTe2 for short) displays many of the hallmarks of…
An incredibly light new material that can reduce aircraft engine noise and improve passenger comfort has been developed at the University of Bath. The graphene oxide-polyvinyl alcohol aerogel weighs just 2.1kg per cubic metre, making it the lightest sound insulation ever manufactured. It could be used as insulation within aircraft engines to reduce noise by…
Neuroscientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have demonstrated in new research that dopamine plays a key role in how songbirds learn complex new sounds. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the finding that dopamine drives plasticity in the auditory pallium of zebra finches lays new groundwork for advancing the understanding of the functions of…
A new study shows that it is possible to use mechanical force to deliberately alter chemical reactions and increase chemical selectivity — a grand challenge of the field. The study led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researcher Jeffrey Moore and Stanford University chemist Todd Martinezz demonstrates how external mechanical forces alter atomic motions to manipulate…
Flies have discriminating taste. Like a gourmet perusing a menu, they spend much of their time seeking sweet nutritious calories and avoiding bitter, potentially toxic food. But what happens in their brains when they make these food choices? Yale researchers discovered an interesting way to find out. They tricked them. In a study that could…
An unknown methane-producing process is likely at work in the hidden ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, suggests a new study published in Nature Astronomy by scientists at the University of Arizona and Paris Sciences & Lettres University. Giant water plumes erupting from Enceladus have long fascinated scientists and the public alike,…
Imagine a dust particle in a storm cloud, and you can get an idea of a neutron’s insignificance compared to the magnitude of the molecule it inhabits. But just as a dust mote might affect a cloud’s track, a neutron can influence the energy of its molecule despite being less than one-millionth its size. And…
A team of researchers from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the University of Liège and the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy have developed a microswimmer that appears to defy the laws of fluid dynamics: their model, consisting of two beads that are connected by a linear spring, is propelled by completely symmetrical oscillations. The Scallop theorem…
A team of astronomers has released new observations of nearby galaxies that resemble colourful cosmic fireworks. The images, obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), show different components of the galaxies in distinct colours, allowing astronomers to pinpoint the locations of young stars and the gas they warm up around them.…
Graphene consists of carbon atoms arranged in a chicken-wire like pattern. This one-atom-thick material is famous for its many extraordinary properties, such as extreme strength and remarkable capability to conduct electricity. Since its discovery, researchers have looked for ways to further tailor graphene through controlled manipulation of its atomic structure. However, until now, such modifications…
Diamond may be just a phase carbon goes through when exposed to a flash of heat, but that makes it far easier to obtain. The Rice University lab of chemist James Tour is now able to “evolve” carbon through phases that include valuable nanodiamond by tightly controlling the flash Joule heating process they developed 18…
The laws of quantum physics rule the microcosm. They determine, for example, how easily electrons move through a crystal and thus whether the material is a metal, a semiconductor or an insulator. Quantum physics may lead to exotic properties in certain materials: In so-called topological insulators, only the electrons that can occupy some specific quantum…
When people see a toothbrush, a car, a tree — any individual object — their brain automatically associates it with other things it naturally occurs with, allowing humans to build context for their surroundings and set expectations for the world. By using machine-learning and brain imaging, researchers measured the extent of the “co-occurrence” phenomenon and…
Hold on there, graphene. Seriously, your grip could help make better catalysts. Rice University engineers have assembled what they say may transform chemical catalysis by greatly increasing the number of transition-metal single atoms that can be placed into a carbon carrier. The technique uses graphene quantum dots (GQD), 3-5-nanometer particles of the super-strong 2D carbon…
Measurements of biomechanical properties inside living cells require minimally invasive methods. Optical tweezers are particularly attractive as a tool. It uses the momentum of light to trap and manipulate micro- or nanoscale particles. A team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Cornelia Denz from the University of Münster (Germany) has now developed a simplified method…
A new way of producing coherent light in the ultra-violet spectral region, which points the way to developing brilliant table-top x-ray sources, has been produced in research led at the University of Strathclyde. The scientists have developed a type of ultra-short wavelength coherent light source that does not require laser action to produce coherence. Common…