There is a largely untapped energy source along the world’s coastlines: the difference in salinity between seawater and freshwater. A new nanodevice can harness this difference to generate power. A team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has reported a design for a nanofluidic device capable of converting ionic flow into usable electric power in the journal Nano Energy. The team believes that their device could be used to extract power from the natural ionic flows at seawater-freshwater…
For realizing carbon neutrality, the demand for the development of direct methanol/formic acid-fuel cell technology has been increasing. In this technology, methanol or formic acid is used as an e-fuel for generating electricity. The fuel cells generate electricity via proton transfer; however, conventional proton-exchange membranes suffer from the “crossover phenomenon,” where the fuel molecules are also transferred between anodes and cathodes. Thereafter, the fuel molecules are unnecessarily oxidized and the electrodes are deactivated. In this study, the researchers developed a…
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help plant scientists collect and analyze unprecedented volumes of data, which would not be possible using conventional methods. Researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH) have now used big data, machine learning and field observations in the university’s experimental garden to show how plants respond to changes in the environment. Climate change is making it increasingly important to know how plants can survive and thrive in a changing environment. Conventional experiments in the lab have shown…
The Chinese Academy of Sciences Earth System Model (CAS-ESM2.0), a sophisticated Earth modeling tool, has achieved a major breakthrough in fully coupled atmospheric CO2 simulation, as revealed in the latest report published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on Sept. 22. The study was conducted by researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Normal University and Stony Brook University. Their findings highlight CAS-ESM2.0’s exceptional capability in two-way coupling of terrestrial and marine carbon cycles, along with atmospheric CO2,…
Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of a handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially harbor conditions suitable for life. Previous research has shown that beneath its water-ice crust lies a salty ocean of liquid water with a rocky seafloor. However, planetary scientists had not confirmed if that ocean contained the chemicals needed for life, particularly carbon. Astronomers using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface…
Glass, despite its apparent transparency and rigidity, is a complex and intriguing material. When a liquid is cooled to form a glass, its dynamics slows down significantly, resulting in its unique properties. This process, known as “glass transition”, has puzzled scientists for decades. But one of its intriguing aspects is the emergence of “dynamical heterogeneities,” where the dynamics become increasingly correlated and intermittent as the liquid cools down and approaches the glass transition temperature. In a new study, researchers propose…
Macrophages are little cells vital to the immune system and could possibly inform cell-based therapies for a variety of medical conditions. However, realizing the full potential of macrophage therapies relies on being able to see what these cellular allies are doing inside our bodies, and a team of Penn State researchers may have developed a way to watch them do their thing. In a study published in the journal Small, the Penn State researchers report a novel ultrasound imaging technique to…
A single brain is unfathomably complex. So brain researchers, whether they’re looking at datasets built from 300,000 neurons in 81 mice or from MRIs of 1,200 young adults, are now dealing with so much information that they must also come up with new methods to comprehend it. Developing new analysis tools has become as important as using them to understand brain health and development. A team including researchers at the University of Washington recently used new software to compare MRIs from 300 babies…
A new study, modeling the potential of solar-powered vehicles in the urban context in 100 cities across the world, shows that solar energy provides a range between 11 and 29 km per day, reducing charging needs by half. Despite the rapid adoption of electric vehicles, the transport sector is still responsible for around a third of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions worldwide. Therefore, to achieve decarbonization targets, it is required to significantly decrease the emissions associated with mobility. Integrating photovoltaic…
A group of researchers have made a significant breakthrough which could revolutionize next-generation electronics by enabling non-volatility, large-scale integration, low power consumption, high speed, and high reliability in spintronic devices. Details of their findings were published in the journal Physical Review B on August 25, 2023. Spintronic devices, represented by magnetic random access memory (MRAM), utilize the magnetization direction of ferromagnetic materials for information storage and rely on spin current, a flow of spin angular momentum, for reading and writing data. Conventional…
A researcher from Japan evaluates the shear viscosities of popular water models widely used in biomolecular research. Water is one of the most abundant substances on Earth and partakes in countless biological, chemical, and ecological processes. Thus, understanding its behavior and properties is essential in a wide variety of scientific and applied fields. To do so, researchers have developed various water models to reproduce the behavior of bulk water in molecular simulations. While these simulations can provide valuable insights into…
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Some tumors are extremely small and hide deep within lung tissue, making it difficult for surgeons to reach them. To address this challenge, UNC –Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University researchers have been working on an extremely bendy but sturdy robot capable of traversing lung tissue. Their research has reached a new milestone. In a new paper, published in Science Robotics, Ron Alterovitz, PhD, in the UNC Department…
Ultra-low radiation cables reduce background noise for neutrino and dark matter detectors. Imagine trying to tune a radio to a single station but instead encountering static noise and interfering signals from your own equipment. That is the challenge facing research teams searching for evidence of extremely rare events that could help understand the origin and nature of matter in the universe. It turns out that when you are trying to tune into some of the universe’s weakest signals, it helps…
Researchers identify the first enzymatic step in the biosynthesis of these plant steroids important in the medical treatment of heart disease. Plants produce an impressive array of metabolites, including many medically valuable steroids. Well-known examples of this class of substances obtained from plants are cardenolides. As early as 1785, the British physician William Withering (1741-1799) published a book on the red foxglove and its use in medicine (An account of the foxglove, and some of its medical uses: with practical…
– charting the sizes and abundance of our body’s cells reveals mathematical order underlying life. An international team of scientists has created the first comprehensive index of human cells, mapping the sizes and abundance of all cell types across the entire body. This groundbreaking study, published in PNAS, reveals surprising mathematical patterns underlying cell size and number, challenging our fundamental understanding of cell growth and proliferation. Led by Dr. Ian Hatton of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the…
Visualizing electron flow motivates new devices inspired by airplane wings. A study showing how electrons flow around sharp bends, such as those found in integrated circuits, has the potential to improve how these circuits, commonly used in electronic and optoelectronic devices, are designed. It has been known theoretically for about 80 years that when electrons travel around bends, they tend to heat up because their flow lines get squished locally. Until now, however, no one had measured the heat, for…
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