McGill University researchers gain new insight into the workings perovskites that could lead to more efficient and cheaper solar cells. Researchers at McGill University have gained new insight into the workings of perovskites, a semiconductor material that shows great promise for making high-efficiency, low-cost solar cells and a range of other optical and electronic devices. Perovskites have drawn attention over the past decade because of their ability to act as semiconductors even when there are defects in the material’s crystal…
With brilliant colors and picturesque shapes, many crystals are wonders of nature. Some crystals are also wonders of science, with transformative applications in electronics and optics. Understanding how best to grow such crystals is key to further advances. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, along with three universities, have revealed new insights into the mechanism behind how gallium nitride crystals grow at the atomic scale. Gallium nitride crystals are already in wide use in light-emitting…
What is happening deep beneath the surface of ice planets? Is there liquid water, and if so, how does it interact with the planetary rocky “seafloor”? New experiments show that on water-ice planets between the size of our Earth and up to six times this size, water selectively leaches magnesium from typical rock minerals. The conditions with pressures of hundred thousand atmospheres and temperatures above one thousand degrees Celsius were recreated in a lab and mimicked planets similar, but smaller…
… is released by UK university spin-out company. A digital tool that will make it cheaper, safer and faster to develop new medicines is being rolled out by scientists from the University of Bath in the UK. A cutting-edge digital tool that will make it cheaper, safer and faster for pharmaceutical companies to predict protein stability – a vital step in the development of new medicines – is being rolled out by scientists from the UK’s University of Bath through…
An international team led by Empa and ETH Zurich researchers is playing with shape-engineered nanoscale building blocks that are up to 100-times larger than atoms and ions. And although these nano “Lego bricks” interact with each other with forces vastly different and much weaker than those holding atoms and ions together, they form crystals all by themselves, the structures of which resemble the ones of natural minerals. These new mega-crystals or superlattices that are depicted on the cover of the…
Life expectancy of tapeworm-infected worker ants is significantly higher than that of their uninfected nest-mates and resembles that of ant queens. Ant workers that are infected with a tapeworm live much longer than their uninfected nest-mates. Parasitic infections are usually harmful to their hosts, but there are some exceptions. According to the results of a multi-year scientific study, ants of the species Temnothorax nylanderi show exceptionally high survival rates when infected with a tapeworm. “The lifespan of the infected ants…
Everyone has gotten an electric shock when touching a door handle. That’s because when two different substances touch, an electrostatic charge can occur that dissipates with a small flash. This frictional electricity can be used, for example, to separate particles in exhaust gases, but it can also unintentionally trigger explosions, for example when flammable liquids or powders are being handled. However, what exactly happens during contact electrification is so far only rudimentarily understood. A team led by experimental physicist Prof….
A new rapid coronavirus test developed by KAUST scientists can deliver highly accurate results in less than 15 minutes. The diagnostic, which brings together electrochemical biosensors with engineered protein constructs, allows clinicians to quickly detect bits of the virus with a precision previously only possible with slower genetic techniques. The entire set-up can work at the point of patient care on unprocessed blood or saliva samples; no laborious sample preparation or centralized diagnostic laboratory is required. “The combination of state-of-the-art…
Discovered by Victor Hess in 1912, cosmic rays, relativisitic particles that shower Earth, contribute a signicant part of the energy density in the universe and carries unambiguous informations on various astrophysical processes . Yet until now, origin of cosmic rays is still a mystery. A key problem in understanding the origin of cosmic rays is the searching for the acceleration site up to or even beyond Ultra-high energy (UHE). Such extreme accelerators are dubbed as PeVatrons. However, composed of subatomic…
Advanced microscope technology and cutting-edge geological science are giving new perspectives to an old medical mystery: How do kidney stones form, why are some people more susceptible to them and can they be prevented? In a new paper published in the journal Nature Reviews Urology, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Mayo Clinic and other collaborators described the geological nature of kidney stones, outlined the arc of their formation, established a new classification scheme and suggested possible clinical interventions….
A new class of membranes promises highly interesting applications in material separation, whether in biotechnology or water purification. The theoretical understanding of these polymer membranes is, however, still incomplete. Two researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon and the University of Göttingen now present a study, published in the renowned science journal Chemical Reviews, that identifies these gaps in knowledge and shows promising approaches toward solving them. Whether in desalination, water purification or CO2 separation, membranes play a central role in technology. The…
An international research team – with a key contribution by the MPSD and led by DESY researcher Francesca Calegari – has demonstrated that ultrashort laser pulses can be used to protect one of the DNA building blocks against destruction induced by vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation. The research group unveiled that a second laser flash in the infrared spectrum, timed shortly (only a few millionths of billions of a second) after the first VUV flash, prevented the adenine molecule from disintegrating,…
Medical diagnostics algorithm identifies pneumonia in paediatric x-ray images. AI algorithms can support medical personnel in diagnosing illnesses. However, to train these algorithms, a precious good warranting careful protection must be accessed: medical data. A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has developed a technology that ensures that patients’ personal data are protected in the training of algorithms. It is now being used for the first time in an algorithm that identifies pneumonia in paediatric x-ray…
… of induced sputum and BAL in multi-center clinical trials. In a clinical proof-of-concept study, Fraunhofer ITEM researchers were able to demonstrate that chip cytometry can also be used to analyze bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid or induced sputum. This method enables quantitative and even multiple repeated analyses also of the small amounts of morphologically heterogeneous cell populations that are typical of these biological samples. Analysis of the cellular composition of BAL fluid and induced sputum plays an important role in…
– jellyfish chips, sea cucumber soup and green caviar. The world’s population is growing rapidly, and fertile land, freshwater and fertilizer are becoming scarce. At the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), scientists are therefore investigating the extent to which the sea holds food resources that have hardly been used to date, and how these can be sustainably exploited. The world’s population is growing rapidly, with around 10 billion people expected to live on the planet in 2050. At…
Songbird Uses Musical Techniques Like Those of Humans. The North American mockingbird is famous for its ability to imitate the song of other birds. But it doesn’t just mimic its kindred species, it actually composes its own songs based on other birds’ melodies. An interdisciplinary research team has now worked out how exactly the mockingbird constructs its imitations. The scientists determined that the birds follow similar musical rules as those found in human music, from Beethoven to Kendrick Lamar. The…
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