… to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, advancing a recent Science study. Scientists from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Dow have developed a breakthrough process to transform the most widely produced plastic — polyethylene (PE) — into the second-most widely produced plastic, polypropylene (PP), which could reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). “The world needs more and better options for extracting the energy and molecular value from its waste plastics,” said co-lead author Susannah Scott, Distinguished…
Water quality and the circular economy. If we look at all of the business sectors in Germany, industry requires the largest amount of water. This makes access to efficient technology for cleaning and recycling water all the more important for this sector in particular. Ideally, this technology should also allow energy and valuable raw materials to be retrieved so that they can be reused in production. In order to address all of these issues in a practical way, researchers at…
… using grey box models. When you mix together black and white, you get gray — and with it, a new method that should allow complex electronic systems to monitor themselves. Using so-called grey box models, on which researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM are working, it will be possible to detect signs of wear or manipulation in electronic systems at an early stage, before an actual failure occurs. The new process is being initially developed…
Potassium copper fluoride KCuF3 is considered the simplest model material realising the so-called Heisenberg quantum spin chain: The spins interact with their neighbours antiferromagnetically along a single direction (one-dimensional), governed by the laws of quantum physics. “We carried out the measurements on this simple model material at the ISIS spallation neutron source some time ago when I was a postdoc, and we published our results in 2005, 2013 and again in 2021 comparing to new theories each time they became…
Forecasters are predicting a “three-peat La Niña” this year. This will be the third winter in a row that the Pacific Ocean has been in a La Niña cycle, something that’s happened only twice before in records going back to 1950. New research led by the University of Washington offers a possible explanation. The study, recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that climate change is, in the short term, favoring La Niñas. “The Pacific Ocean naturally cycles between El…
Swirling waters replenish nutrients in open ocean, a new study finds, and could mitigate some climate change effects. Subtropical gyres are enormous rotating ocean currents that generate sustained circulations in the Earth’s subtropical regions just to the north and south of the equator. These gyres are slow-moving whirlpools that circulate within massive basins around the world, gathering up nutrients, organisms, and sometimes trash, as the currents rotate from coast to coast. For years, oceanographers have puzzled over conflicting observations within…
Quantum technique accelerates identification of entangled materials. The Science Quantum materials behave in surprising ways because of quantum physics. For example, they can be superconductors, which can allow electricity to flow with no resistance. These materials could lead to completely new technologies. In an advance for quantum materials, scientists tested the ability of techniques called entanglement witnesses to accurately identify pairs of entangled magnetic particles. Entanglement is when one of these particles, or “spins,” mirrors another’s properties and behavior regardless of…
Ionic circuit computes in an aqueous solution. Microprocessors in smartphones, computers, and data centers process information by manipulating electrons through solid semiconductors but our brains have a different system. They rely on the manipulation of ions in liquid to process information. Inspired by the brain, researchers have long been seeking to develop ‘ionics’ in an aqueous solution. While ions in water move slower than electrons in semiconductors, scientists think the diversity of ionic species with different physical and chemical properties…
Physicists answer a decades-old question about interacting quantum particles in a disordered system. Physicists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Maryland, and also at the University of Washington have found an answer to the longstanding physics question: How do interparticle interactions affect dynamical localization? “It’s a really old question inherited from condensed matter physics,” said David Weld, an experimental physicist at UCSB with specialties in ultracold atomic physics and quantum simulation. The question falls into the category of…
Two of NASA’s Great Observatories, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, have captured views of a unique NASA experiment designed to intentionally smash a spacecraft into a small asteroid in the world’s first-ever in-space test for planetary defense. These observations of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact mark the first time that Webb and Hubble simultaneously observed the same celestial target. On Sept. 26, 2022, at 7:14 pm EDT, DART intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, the asteroid…
“I’m a professional pin-in-a-haystack seeker,” geneticist Thijn Brummelkamp responds when asked why he excels at tracking down proteins and genes that other people did not find, despite the fact that some have managed to remain elusive for as long as forty years. His research group at the Netherlands Cancer Institute has once again managed to track down one of these “mystery genes” – the gene that ensures that the final form of the protein actin is created, a main component…
Accurate predictions of regional sea-level change are essential in understanding the impact of climate change on coastal areas. Rising sea levels from melting glaciers and ice sheets pose an increasing threat to coastal communities worldwide. A new analysis of high-resolution satellite observations takes a major step forward in assessing this risk by confirming theoretical predictions and computational models of sea-level changes used to forecast climate-change-driven impacts. “Using sea-surface-height observations from satellites in the way we have independently verifies observations of Arctic and…
Poorly understood compared to bacteria and viruses, the new work opens the door to using tell-tale fungi as a diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic tool. An international team of scientists, co-led by researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, has created the first pan-cancer mycobiome atlas — a survey of 35 types of cancer and their associated fungi. The findings are published September 29, 2022 in the journal Cell. Cancer cells and microbes have a long and…
Extreme nonlinear wave group dynamics in directional wave states. Understanding the unpredictable behaviors of ocean waves can be a matter of survival for seafarers. Deep-water wave groups have been known to be unstable and become rogue, causing unsuspecting boats to tip over. This rogue wave behavior results from modulation instability, which generally occurs only for uni-directional waves. Wave focusing — the amplification of waves — is also expected to weaken when interacting with other wave systems. Now, a team led by Kyoto University…
Researchers have come up with a way to test the efficacy of hundreds of anticancer drug combinations – simultaneously, rapidly, and accurately. Each year, around 10 million lives around the world are cut short by cancer. While the last century of research has seen the number of approved anticancer drugs grow by leaps and bounds, the sheer diversity of disease forms and patient responses often defeats treatment strategies. The next revolution in anti-cancer therapeutics is likely to arrive in the…
What tasks can nanosatellites perform around the moon or even further away from Earth? A new study at the University of Würzburg aims to clarify this. Satellites for communication, navigation or Earth observation do their rounds in near-Earth orbits. But it is becoming apparent that mankind will soon also be using satellites at greater distances from Earth. Nanosatellites about the size of a shoebox are already being used for lunar missions. They act partly autonomously, but also serve to support…
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