Latest science news in Physics & Chemistry
Urge to merge: Understanding how cells fuse
Scientists have known for a decade that cells that fuse with others to perform their essential functions—such as muscle cells that join together to make fibers—form long projections that invade...
Flow-through electrodes make hydrogen 50 times faster
Electrolysis, passing a current through water to break it into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, could be a handy way to store excess energy from wind or solar power. The hydrogen...
Understanding ceramic ‘mortar’ of materials may reveal ways to improve them
When most people think of ceramics, they might envision their favorite mug or a flowerpot. But modern technology is full of advanced ceramics, from silicon solar panels to ceramic superconductors...
Controlling artificial cilia with magnetic fields and light
Researchers from North Carolina State University and Elon University have made artificial cilia, or hair-like structures, that can bend into new shapes in response to a magnetic field, then return...
Novel electric impulses relieve the pain
Chronic pain can be reduced by stimulating the vagus nerve in the ear with electrodes. In a microanatomic study, the human ear has now been analyzed on a micrometer scale....
Class in electricity jump-starts a move from Kenya to Cambridge
This is one in a series of profiles showcasing some of Harvard’s stellar graduates. Billy Koech was an electrical engineer before he even knew what one was. As a teenager, he owned...
Increased usability and precision in vascular imaging
Researchers have developed a new X-ray contrast agent. The contrast agent is easier to use and distributes into all blood vessels more reliably, increasing the precision of vascular imaging. This...
Ring lights that make you look great on camera
A stunningly simple solution. (Nadine Shaabana via Unsplash/)Frequent online video meetings are a side-effect of working from home that not everyone loves, and can be downright exhausting. On top of the challenges of...
FX renews 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' for Season 15
FX renewed long-running comedy series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" for Season 15.
Rejuvenated fibroblasts can recover the ability to contract
A recent study has shown that rejuvenated fibroblasts can recover their ability to self-contract. This encouraging discovery holds great potential for applications in regenerative medicine and stem cell engineering.
Chirality-assisted lateral momentum transfer for bidirectional enantioselective separation
Light carrying photon momentum can push and pull microparticles through momentum exchange. This momentum exchange process generates optical forces, which either attracts (conventional optical tweezers), pushes (radiation force) or pulls...
Towards visible-wavelength passively mode-locked lasers in all-fibre format
Mode-locked fibre lasers generating ultrashort pulses with the advantages of robustness, compactness and excellent beam quality are of tremendous interest in applications such as laser material processing, medicine, precision measurement,...
Performing optical logic operations by a diffractive neural network
Optical logical operations have sparked major interest in the past decade since they can enable many applications, particularly those involving high-throughput and on-the-fly data processing such as secured wireless communication...
Two-dimensional MXene as a novel electrode material for next-generation display
Researchers in the US and Korea reported the first efficient flexible light-emitting diodes with a two-dimensional titanium carbide MXene as a flexible and transparent electrode. These MXene-based light-emitting diodes (MX-LED)...
Efficient generation of relativistic near-single-cycle mid-infrared pulses in plasmas
The invention of the chirped pulse amplification technique by Strickland and Mourou in 1985 has boosted the peak power of ultrashort laser pulses to an unprecedented level, which have found...
Saturable plasmonic metasurfaces for laser mode locking
Plasmonic metasurfaces are artificial 2-D sheets of plasmonic unit cells repeated in a subwavelength array, which give rise to unexpected wave properties that do not exist in nature. In the...
A nice day for a quantum walk
Researchers at the Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Biology at Osaka University used trapped ions to demonstrate the spreading of vibrational quanta as part of a quantum random walk....
Development of electrode material improving the efficiency of salinity gradient energy
Dr. Jeong Nam-Jo of the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER), Marine Energy Convergence and Integration Research Team developed synthesis technologies for an electrode material that can directly synthesize molybdenum...
Topological insulators feature lossless conduction at the edges
Atomically thin layers of the semimetal tungsten ditelluride conduct electricity losslessly along narrow, one-dimensional channels at the crystal edges. The material is therefore a second-order topological insulator. By obtaining experimental...
Microbial cyborgs: Bacteria supplying power
Electronic devices are still made of lifeless materials. One day, however, 'microbial cyborgs' might be used in fuel cells, biosensors, or bioreactors. Scientists have created the necessary prerequisite by developing...
Lossless conduction at the edges
Atomically thin layers of the semimetal tungsten ditelluride conduct electricity losslessly along narrow, one-dimensional channels at the crystal edges. The material is therefore a second-order topological insulator. By obtaining experimental...
Breaking down stubborn cellulose in time lapse
Researchers have for the first time ever succeeded in visualizing at the single-molecule level the processes involved in a biological nanomachine, known as the cellulosome, as it degrades crystalline cellulose....
High-security identification that cannot be counterfeited
Researcher have used the principles that underpin the whispering-gallery effect to create an unbeatable anti-counterfeiting system. The researchers' system is a microchip consisting of two-step authentication. Step 1 is the...
Controlling superconductors with light
Scientists have reported a conceptually new method to study the properties of superconductors using optical tools. The new theoretical study shows how to use Terahertz light to peep in the...
Microbial cyborgs: Bacteria supplying power
Electronic devices are still made of lifeless materials. One day, however, "microbial cyborgs" might be used in fuel cells, biosensors, or bioreactors. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have...
Researchers discover physical origin of electronic phase separation phenomena in complex oxides
A Chinese joint team has conducted a study and discovered the physical origin of electronic phase separation phenomena in complex oxides.
Increased usability and precision in vascular imaging
Researchers at the University of Zurich have developed a new X-ray contrast agent. The contrast agent is easier to use and distributes into all blood vessels more reliably, increasing the...
Researchers develop halide double perovskite ferroelectrics
Halide double perovskites have proved to be a promising environmentally friendly optoelectronic and photovoltaic material, exhibiting inherent thermodynamic stability, high defect tolerance and appropriate band gaps. However, no ferroelectric material...