In the refrigerated grocery store aisle, meat alternatives greatly outnumber plant-based seafoods. But more mock seafood options are needed because of unsustainable fishing and aquaculture practices, which can deplete the supply and harm the environment. Today, researchers present a new approach for creating desirable vegan seafood mimics that taste good, while maintaining the healthful profile of real fish. They 3D-printed an ink made from microalgae protein and mung bean protein, and their proof-of-concept calamari rings can even be air-fried for…
Imagine using insects as a source of chemicals to make plastics that can biodegrade later — with the help of that very same type of bug. That concept is closer to reality than you might expect. Today, researchers will describe their progress to date, including isolation and purification of insect-derived chemicals and their conversion into functional bioplastics. The researchers will present their results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2023 is a hybrid meeting…
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe executed a short maneuver on Aug. 3, 2023, that kept the spacecraft on track to hit the aim point for the mission’s sixth Venus flyby on Monday, Aug. 21, 2023. Operating on preprogrammed commands from mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, Parker fired its small thrusters for 4.5 seconds, enough to adjust its trajectory by 77 miles and speed up – by 1.4 seconds – its closest approach…
Catalysis scheme developed at the University of Bonn is inexpensive, sustainable, and effective A novel catalysis scheme enables chemical reactions that were previously virtually impossible. The method developed at the University of Bonn is also environmentally friendly and does not require rare and precious metals. The researchers recorded the exact course of the catalysis in a kind of high-speed film. They did this using special lasers that can make processes visible that last only fractions of a billionth of a…
MIT engineers developed a new way to create these arrays, by scaffolding quantum rods onto patterned DNA. Flat screen TVs that incorporate quantum dots are now commercially available, but it has been more difficult to create arrays of their elongated cousins, quantum rods, for commercial devices. Quantum rods can control both the polarization and color of light, to generate 3D images for virtual reality devices. Using scaffolds made of folded DNA, MIT engineers have come up with a new way…
For now, cyborgs exist only in fiction, but the concept is becoming more plausible as science progresses. And now, researchers are reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters that they have developed a proof-of-concept technique to “tattoo” living cells and tissues with flexible arrays of gold nanodots and nanowires. With further refinement, this method could eventually be used to integrate smart devices with living tissue for biomedical applications, such as bionics and biosensing. Advances in electronics have enabled manufacturers to make integrated…
…explores uncharted territory in search of new physics. Scientists working on Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment released the world’s most precise measurement yet of the magnetic moment of the muon, bringing particle physics closer to the ultimate showdown between theory and experiment that may uncover new particles or forces. Physicists now have a brand-new measurement of a property of the muon called the anomalous magnetic moment that improves the precision of their previous result by a factor of 2. An international…
Analysis indicates ingested microplastics migrate into whales’ fat and organs. Microscopic plastic particles have been found in the fats and lungs of two-thirds of the marine mammals in a graduate student’s study of ocean microplastics. The presence of polymer particles and fibers in these animals suggests that microplastics can travel out of the digestive tract and lodge in the tissues. The study, slated for the Oct. 15 edition of Environmental Pollution, appeared online this week. Harms that embedded microplastics might…
A new technique developed at Columbia offers a systematic evaluation of twist angle and strain in layered 2D materials. Think you know everything about a material? Try giving it a twist—literally. That’s the main idea of an emerging field in condensed matter physics called “twistronics,” which has researchers drastically changing the properties of 2D materials, like graphene, with subtle changes—as small as going from a 1.1° to 1.2°—in the angle between stacked layers. Twisted layers of graphene, for example, have…
…under threat from climate change. Novel approach to measuring microbe activity in wetted soil leads to better understanding of vulnerability, researchers report. Using a novel method to detect microbial activity in biological soil crusts, or biocrusts, after they are wetted, a Penn State-led research team in a new study uncovered clues that will lead to a better understanding of the role microbes play in forming a living skin over many semi-arid ecosystems around the world. The tiny organisms — and…
Systems in the Universe trend toward disorder, with only applied energy keeping the chaos at bay. The concept is called entropy, and examples can be found everywhere: ice melting, campfire burning, water boiling. Zentropy theory, however, adds another level to the mix. A team led by Zi-Kui Liu, the Dorothy Pate Enright Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State, developed the theory. The “Z” in zentropy stands for the German word Zustandssumm, meaning ‘‘sum over states” of entropy….
Chip manufacturing, gravitational wave detectors and quantum computers could all benefit from better ways to measure a vacuum. A vacuum chamber is never perfectly empty. A small number of atoms or molecules always remain, and measuring the tiny pressures they exert is critical. For instance, semiconductor manufacturers create microchips in vacuum chambers that must be almost entirely devoid of atomic and molecular contaminants, and so they need to monitor the gas pressure in the chamber to ensure that the contaminant…
A study published on August 10, 2023 in the journal Nature Communications has identified a new pathway that human immune deficiency virus (HIV) uses to enter the nucleus of a healthy cell, where it can then replicate and go on to invade other cells. The researchers also identified three proteins that are needed for the virus to carry out the invasion and have in turn synthesized molecules (potential drugs) that can target one of the proteins, potentially leading to new…
Our Very Own Skull… Alzheimer’s, stroke, multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases cause severe damage due to neuroinflammation mediated by immune cells. Managing this inflammation poses a significant medical challenge because the brain is protected by the skull and additional surrounding membranes that make the brain less accessible for treatment approaches. Scientists had previously discovered pathways going from the bone marrow of the skull towards the brain, allowing immune cell movement. Now, new research revealed that cells in the skull’s…
“As a cellular network researcher, you are in some ways a prisoner of your geographic position,” says CISPA researcher Dr. Adrian Dabrowski. Because of the large number of providers and networks, cellular network researchers have so far only been able to carry out tests and measurements in foreign cellular networks at immense expense. Together with Gabriel Gegenhuber from the University of Vienna and other research colleagues, Dabrowski has therefore developed MOBILEATLAS, a kind of infrastructure that allows testing from any…
A classic movie was once promoted with the punchline: ”In space, no one can hear you scream”. Physicists Zhuoran Geng and Ilari Maasilta from the Nanoscience Center at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, have demonstrated, on the contrary, that in certain situations sound can be transmitted strongly across a vacuum region! In a recent publication they show that in some cases a sound wave can jump or “tunnel” fully across a vacuum gap between two solids if the materials in…
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