When liquid meets gas, a unique zone forms. Variable by nature, molecules can cross from one state to another, combining in unique ways to either desirable or unwanted ends. From heat escaping a mug of coffee to increasing molecular concentrations in chemical solutions, gas-liquid interfaces are ubiquitous across nature and engineering. But a lack of tools capable of precisely controlling such gas-liquid interfaces limit their applications — until now. Researchers based at Osaka Prefecture University have developed the first controllable…
This new method from UNC School of Medicine researvchers Klaus Hahn and Tim Elston, has the potential to super-charge the study of human proteins as they interact and change their conformations in fundamentally important ways in human health and disease. Understanding how proteins bend, twist, and shape-shift as they go about their work in cells is enormously important for understanding normal biology and diseases. But a deep understanding of protein dynamics has generally been elusive due to the lack of…
A team of physicists from Germany and Sweden working with first author Jens Christian Grauer from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has examined a special system of colloidal particles that they activated using laser light. The researchers discovered that self-propelling droplets, which they have named ‘droploids’, formed which contain the particles as an internal motor. They describe these droploids in more detail in the latest edition of the journal Nature Communications. According to an age-old saying, the whole is often…
Novel theorem demonstrates convolutional neural networks can always be trained on quantum computers, overcoming threat of ‘barren plateaus’ in optimization problems. Convolutional neural networks running on quantum computers have generated significant buzz for their potential to analyze quantum data better than classical computers can. While a fundamental solvability problem known as “barren plateaus” has limited the application of these neural networks for large data sets, new research overcomes that Achilles heel with a rigorous proof that guarantees scalability. “The way…
Rice engineers develop flexible, self-healing material to protect steel from the elements. An insulator of sulfur and selenium made with flexible devices in mind may have found its true destiny: As an anticorrosive coating for steel. The compound developed by the Rice University lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan proved itself more dielectric (insulating) than most flexible materials and more flexible than most dielectrics, making it a good candidate for components in electronics like bendable cellphones. At the same time, the material…
Astronomers have used a planet-hunting satellite to see a white dwarf abruptly switching on and off for the first time. The researchers led by Durham University, UK, used NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to observe the unique phenomenon. White dwarfs are what most stars become after they have burned off the hydrogen that fuels them. They are approximately the size of the Earth, but have a mass closer to that of the Sun. The white dwarf observed by the…
The central principle of superconductivity is that electrons form pairs. But can they also condense into foursomes? Recent findings have suggested they can, and a physicist at KTH Royal Institute of Technology today published the first experimental evidence of this quadrupling effect and the mechanism by which this state of matter occurs. Reporting today in Nature Physics, Professor Egor Babaev and collaborators presented evidence of fermion quadrupling in a series of experimental measurements on the iron-based material, Ba1−xKxFe2As2. The results…
Swiss and German scientists show that activation of the immune system oscillates throughout the day, with a peak just before the start of the day. Circadian clocks, which regulate most of the physiological processes of living beings over a rhythm of about 24 hours, are one of the most fundamental biological mechanisms. By deciphering the cell migration mechanisms underlying the immune response, scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in Switzerland, and the Ludwigs-Maximilians University (LMU), in Germany, have shown…
Mount Sinai study suggests a new self-learning algorithm may detect blood pumping problems by reading electrocardiograms. A special artificial intelligence (AI)-based computer algorithm created by Mount Sinai researchers was able to learn how to identify subtle changes in electrocardiograms (also known as ECGs or EKGs) to predict whether a patient was experiencing heart failure. “We showed that deep-learning algorithms can recognize blood pumping problems on both sides of the heart from ECG waveform data,” said Benjamin S. Glicksberg, PhD, Assistant…
UCLA-led research could revise a 70-year-old model of how the fundamental building blocks of substances are assembled. Many substances around us, from table salt and sugar to most metals, are arranged into crystals. Because their molecules are laid out in an orderly, repetitive pattern, much is understood about their structure. However, a far greater number of substances — including rubber, glass and most liquids — lack that fundamental order throughout, making it difficult to determine their molecular structure. To date,…
As a robotics engineer, Yasemin Ozkan-Aydin, assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Notre Dame, gets her inspiration from biological systems. The collective behaviors of ants, honeybees and birds to solve problems and overcome obstacles is something researchers have developed in aerial and underwater robotics. Developing small-scale swarm robots with the capability to traverse complex terrain, however, comes with a unique set of challenges. In research published in Science Robotics, Ozkan-Aydin presents how she was able to build multi-legged robots capable of…
Laboratory rats have been shown to have genetic consistency and similar responses to drugs with humans, and thus become ideal animal models for research and testing of new drugs. However, due to individual difference, it is still a challenging task to find a method of unified behavior control and evaluation. Actually, bioinspired robots can take advantage of their programmability and reconfigurability to replace rats, so as to effectively solve these problems. It has been verified that robots can influence or…
A discovery of how to build little blocks out of DNA and get them to stick to lipids has implications for biosensing and mRNA vaccines. Scientists have worked out how to best get DNA to communicate with membranes in our body, paving the way for the creation of ‘mini biological computers’ in droplets that have potential uses in biosensing and mRNA vaccines. UNSW’s Dr Matthew Baker and the University of Sydney’s Dr Shelley Wickham co-led the study, published recently in…
Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have found that the movement of skin stem cells can help your skin regenerate. Although sometimes hard to accept, with aging, many things in our bodies change. One of these is the ability of the skin to regenerate. Old skin is just not as good as young skin at healing wounds. However, the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying this are largely unknown. Now, researchers from Japan have identified a mechanism to explain…
Landshut University of Applied Sciences develops a contactless, fast temperature measuring device for the steel industry that is designed to reduce energy and production costs and improve product quality. Steel is needed to make machines or tools. The steel is machined, formed and pressed at high temperatures. The temperature must also be kept constant and closely monitored during many processing steps. If this is not the case, it can lead to defective components and high costs for reworking. To prevent…
How water surfaces can be used to produce functional materials. The production of high-quality monolayers – i.e. only one molecule high – is highly relevant for optoelectronic components such as organic light-emitting diodes used today in modern cell phones: Both lifetime and energy efficiency can be increased. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, through a collaboration with TU Dresden, have now used lasers to investigate how water surfaces can be used as a template for the regular…
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