… Just add CO2. Mount Erebus, Antarctica’s only active volcano, shows how carbon dioxide allows volcanoes to form persistent lava lakes at the surface. Antarctica has long been a land of mystery and heroic feats made famous by the explorations of James Ross, Roald Amundsen, Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton. A key piece of the puzzle for understanding global continental evolution, Antarctica contains examples that define the spectrum of Earth’s volcanic processes. Now, a joint University of Utah and University…
When coated onto plastic tubing, the catalysts could act on chemicals flowing through, helping to synthesize drugs and other compounds. Chemical reactions that are driven by light offer a powerful tool for chemists who are designing new ways to manufacture pharmaceuticals and other useful compounds. Harnessing this light energy requires photoredox catalysts, which can absorb light and transfer the energy to a chemical reaction. MIT chemists have now designed a new type of photoredox catalyst that could make it easier…
For quantum computers to be useful in practice, errors must be detected and corrected. At the University of Innsbruck, Austria, a team of experimental physicists has now implemented a universal set of computational operations on fault-tolerant quantum bits for the first time, demonstrating how an algorithm can be programmed on a quantum computer so that errors do not spoil the result. In modern computers errors during processing and storage of information have become a rarity due to high-quality fabrication. However,…
Scientists from Hamburg and Munich developed the world’s most powerful dual-comb spectrometer that paves the way for many applications in atmospheric science and biomedical diagnostics, such as early cancer detection. The work has recently been published in Nature Communications. The core part of the system is a special type of laser-gain medium, a thin-disk, and a unique configuration of the mirrors surrounding this medium, a laser resonator (shown in the illustration). “The key of our dual comb laser source lies…
Study shows how meiotic cohesin complexes affect chromosome structure and genomic integrity – and the long-term implications of their effects on the stem cell genome. Chromosomes undergo precise structural changes at a molecular level during the different phases of cell division. These changes occur at a high level of accuracy to prevent genome instability. Genome instability resulting from broken, missing, or rearranged chromosomes has been found to be the root cause of cell death, carcinogenesis, and congenital disorders. Studying genomic…
Jia lab develops next generation system for imaging organoids. Biomedical researchers develop and use organoids as a tool for studying human development and disease. These little lab-grown cultures mimic human organs and provide a sharp view of tissue development, drug interaction, and other biochemical functions, offering an innovative approach to personalized medicine. “Getting detailed 3D images of these miniature models of organs, and getting a good look at how they change under different conditions or stimulation, can tell us a…
An interactive web portal developed by scientists at KAUST offers a platform for cancer researchers to interrogate how RNA splicing in noncoding parts of genes fuels the growth of different types of tumors. The new resource, named SpUR (short for Splicing in Untranslated Regions) and freely available online, details more than 1,000 splicing events found frequently in cancers in noncoding regions of mRNA located just downstream of protein-coding stop signals. The sites and expression levels of these events are catalogued and…
Researchers can now image cells, motions of molecules in 6D. Research from the lab of Matthew Lew at Washington University in St. Louis offers entirely new ways to see the very small. The research — two papers by PhD students at the McKelvey School of Engineering — was published in the journals Optica and Nano Letters. They have developed novel hardware and algorithms that allow them to visualize the building blocks of the biological world beyond three dimensions in a…
A recently developed catalyst for breaking down plastics continues to advance plastic upcycling processes. In 2020, a team of researchers led by Ames Laboratory scientists developed the first processive inorganic catalyst to deconstruct polyolefin plastics into molecules that can be used to create more valuable products. Now, the team has developed and validated a strategy to speed up the transformation without sacrificing desirable products. The catalyst was originally designed by Wenyu Huang, a scientist at Ames Lab. It consists of…
… using a polarization-encoded diffractive network. Implementing large-scale linear transformations or matrix computations plays a pivotal role in modern information processing systems. Digital computer systems need to complete up to billions of matrix operations per second to perform complex computational tasks, such as training and inference for deep neural networks. As a result, the throughput of linear transform computations can directly influence the performance and capacity of the underlying computing systems. These linear transformations are computed using digital processors in…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can track the health of coral reefs by learning the “song of the reef”, new research shows. Coral reefs have a complex soundscape – and even experts have to conduct painstaking analysis to measure reef health based on sound recordings. In the new study, University of Exeter scientists trained a computer algorithm using multiple recordings of healthy and degraded reefs, allowing the machine to learn the difference. The computer then analysed a host of new recordings, and…
International team reports on highly oxidized hydrotrioxides in SCIENCE. An international research team has now succeeded in detecting hydrotrioxides (ROOOH) for the first time under atmospheric conditions. Until now, there was only speculation that these organic compounds with the unusual OOOH group exist. In laboratory experiments, their formation during the oxidation of important hydrocarbons, such as isoprene and alpha-pinene, have been clearly demonstrated. By means of quantum chemical calculations and model calculations, important data on this new class of substances…
How concrete 3D printing saves material and CO2. “As soon as climate compatibility comes into play we have to look at mineral building materials. And this is where the really big CO2 potential savings can be increased.” says Andreas Trummer, expert in concrete 3D printing at TU Graz. Concrete is the most widely used building material in the world. It can be used in many ways, can be produced locally and is very durable. Its environmental performance, on the other…
Light and molecules behave in very special ways in optical cavities. Don’t think this is important to you? It may be soon. A research team from the Norwegian University of Science and Technolgy (NTNU) is studying a topic called optical cavities and how the light trapped in them interacts with atoms, molecules and other particles. The technology could prove valuable for the development of energy-efficient chemical processes or drug synthesis, for example. The work of Professor Henrik Koch and PhD…
Arizona State physicist uses intuition, supercomputers to identify new high-temperature superconductor. The study of superconductivity is littered with disappointments, dead-ends, and serendipitous discoveries, according to Antia Botana, professor of physics at Arizona State University. “As theorists, we generally fail in predicting new superconductors,” she said. However, in 2021, she experienced the highlight of her early career. Working with experimentalist Julia Mundy at Harvard University, she discovered a new superconducting material —a quintuple-layer nickelate. They reported their findings in Nature Materials in September 2021….
Researchers in Delft have succeeded in teleporting quantum information across a rudimentary network. Researchers in Delft have succeeded in teleporting quantum information across a rudimentary network. This first of its kind is an important step towards a future quantum Internet. This breakthrough was made possible by a greatly improved quantum memory and enhanced quality of the quantum links between the three nodes of the network. The researchers, working at QuTech—a collaboration between Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organisation…
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