Micrometeoroid strikes are an unavoidable aspect of operating any spacecraft, which routinely sustain many impacts over the course of long and productive science missions in space. Between May 23 and 25, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope sustained an impact to one of its primary mirror segments. After initial assessments, the team found the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements despite a marginally detectable effect in the data. Thorough analysis and measurements are ongoing. Impacts…
Insilico Medicine to launch a fully automated AI-driven robotics lab later this year. Insilico Medicine’s end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery platform, Pharma.AI, draws its strength from the quality and quantity of its data. As Insilico scientific advisory board member and Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry Dr. Michael Levitt has said, Insilico’s platform capitalizes on the ability of artificial intelligence to take vast amounts of data from many different components and find patterns and make predictions that can point the way to…
Mitoribosomes are nano particles essential for the synthesis and maintenance of bioenergetic proteins that produce more than 90% of our energy to support a human life. Eight years ago, the term Resolution Revolution was coined in relation to the first structure determination of the mitoribosome. Its intricate structure consists of over 80 different components, and more recent structural studies have further deepened our understanding of the mitoribosome structure, function and antibiotic binding. However, we still lack information on the assembly of the mitoribosomal…
University of Queensland scientists have cracked a problem that’s frustrated chemists and physicists for years, potentially leading to a new age of powerful, efficient, and environmentally friendly technologies. Using quantum mechanics, Professor Ben Powell from UQ’s School of Mathematics and Physics has discovered a ‘recipe’ which allows molecular switches to work at room temperature. “Switches are materials that can shift between two or more states, such as on and off or 0 and 1, and are the basis of all digital technologies,” Professor Powell…
Clouds of ultralight particles can form around rotating black holes. A team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam and Harvard University now show that these clouds would leave a characteristic imprint on the gravitational waves emitted by binary black holes. Black holes are generally thought to swallow all forms of matter and energy surrounding them. It has long been known, however, that they can also shed some of their mass through a process called superradiance. While this phenomenon is known…
Invented by UChicago scientists, a new kind of solar cell could spur useful technology. Holes help make sponges and English muffins useful (and, in the case of the latter, delicious). Without holes, they wouldn’t be flexible enough to bend into small crevices, or to sop up the perfect amount of jam and butter. In a new study, University of Chicago scientists find that holes can also improve technology, including medical devices. Published in Nature Materials, the paper describes an entirely…
Faults once thought to be “creeping” yet stable may be at risk for big ruptures. By simulating earthquakes in a lab, Caltech engineers have provided strong experimental support for a form of earthquake propagation now thought responsible for the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that devastated the coast of Japan in 2011. Along some fault lines, which are the boundaries of tectonic plates, a fine-grained gravel is formed as the plates grind against one another. The influence of this gravel on earthquakes has…
You heard it here first, and then again. If you could immerse yourself in a quantum fluid, you would hear every event twice, because they support two sound waves with different speeds. The researchers in their experiment have realized this remarkable property for the first time in a three-dimensional quantum gas, instead of a quantum liquid. They achieved this result through cooling a gas of potassium atoms trapped by laser beams in ultrahigh vacuum to less than a millionth of…
Understanding platinum degradation could reduce waste and lower cost of a promising green technology, hydrogen fuel cells. The Science Fuel cells generate electricity from hydrogen, a “clean” fuel that produces only water when burned. Platinum is a key catalyst in this process. However, platinum degrades unevenly in fuel cells, resulting in still-usable platinum being discarded when “worn out” fuel cells are replaced. To improve fuel cell durability and reduce waste, this research studied the causes of uneven platinum degradation. These causes include…
New photonic devices may have applications in lidar, optical computing and more. Electro-optic modulators, which control aspects of light in response to electrical signals, are essential for everything from sensing to metrology and telecommunications. Today, most research into these modulators is focused on applications that take place on chips or within fiber optic systems. But what about optical applications outside the wire and off the chip, like distance sensing in vehicles? Current technologies to modulate light in free space are…
Scripps Research scientists find evidence that the immune protein CSF1 may contribute to feelings of anxiety during alcohol withdrawal. The anxiety that occurs during withdrawal from excessive alcohol use, and contributes to relapse, may be driven in part by the release of an immune protein in the brain, according to a new study from scientists at Scripps Research. The discovery, reported online June 6, 2022, in Molecular Psychiatry, illuminates the molecular details of the brain’s response to alcohol withdrawal, and…
Astronomers have developed a new code to simulate the formation of a cluster of baby stars. Comparison with the well-known real case of the Orion Nebula shows that its off-center bubble of ionized gas was caused by a massive star that was pushed out of the newborn cluster but is now falling back in. Groups of stars often form together in clouds of cold hydrogen gas. The brightest and most massive stars ionize the surrounding gas, making it too hot…
Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have produced a porous and stable material in which the cavities can be used to store various substances. The material can be used both in the pharmaceutical industry and for filtration at the molecular level. Porous materials are very interesting to scientists since they can interact with guest particles, such as ions, atoms, and molecules, in the cavities of the material. Inorganic porous materials like zeolites are already being used in detergents, where they…
As far as data security is concerned, there is an even greater danger than remote cyberattacks: namely tampering with hardware that can be used to read out information – such as credit card data from a card reader. Researchers in Bochum have developed a new method to detect such manipulations. They monitor the systems with radio waves that react to the slightest changes in the ambient conditions. Unlike conventional methods, they can thus protect entire systems, not just individual components…
Operation of mass manufacturable photonic sensors at the quantum limit could have applications such as greenhouse gas and cancer detection. Sensors are a constant feature of our everyday lives. Although they often go unperceived, sensors provide critical information essential to modern healthcare, security, and environmental monitoring. Modern cars alone contain over 100 sensors and this number will only increase. Quantum sensing is poised to revolutionise today’s sensors, significantly boosting the performance they can achieve. More precise, faster, and reliable measurements…
… than existing plastic-based materials. One day soon, buildings could become more energy-efficient—and environmentally sustainable—with insulating material developed from wood by researchers in Sweden. The newly-developed material offers as good or even better thermal performance than ordinary plastic-based insulation materials, according to researchers reporting recently in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.Yuanyuan Li, an assistant professor at Wallenberg Wood Science Center, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, says that the new insulating material is an aerogel integrated wood which is…
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