“Phase transitions” are a central phenomenon in physical sciences. Despite being technical-sounding, they are actually something we all experience in everyday life: ice melting into liquid water, or hot water evaporating as steam. Solid, liquid, and gas are three well known “phases” and, when one turns into another, that is a phase transition. Rare-earth nickelate oxides, also called nickelates, have attracted a lot of interest from researchers because they display an electronic phase transition, which may be exploited in future…
Until now, hexagonal boron nitride was considered the insulator of choice for miniaturized transistors — new investigations by TU Wien (Vienna) show: This may not be the way to go. For decades, there has been a trend in microelectronics towards ever smaller and more compact transistors. 2D materials such as graphene are seen as a beacon of hope here: they are the thinnest material layers that can possibly exist, consisting of only one or a few atomic layers. Nevertheless, they…
Study identifies the key genes in the brain involved in encoding memories. UT Southwestern scientists have identified key genes involved in brain waves that are pivotal for encoding memories. The findings, published online this week in Nature Neuroscience, could eventually be used to develop novel therapies for people with memory loss disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Making a memory involves groups of brain cells firing cooperatively at various frequencies, a phenomenon known as neural oscillations….
Proteins choreograph the infinitesimal dance of living cells and functional biomaterials. An interdisciplinary research team at Lehigh University has unraveled how functional biomaterials rely upon an interfacial protein layer to transmit signals to living cells concerning their adhesion, proliferation and overall development. According to an article published today in Scientific Reports, the nanoscale features and properties of an underlying substrate do not impact the biological response of cells directly. However, these properties indirectly influence cell behavior through their control over…
… new Skoltech research helps model future optoelect Researchers at Skoltech and their colleagues proposed a photonic device from two optical resonators with liquid crystals inside them to study optical properties of this system that can be useful for future generations of optoelectronic and spinoptronic devices. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review B. The simplest kind of optical resonator consists of two mirrors directly opposite each other, “squeezing” light between them. When you stand inside a mirror…
Astronomers have discovered evidence for an extraordinarily long jet of particles coming from a supermassive black hole in the early universe, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. If confirmed, it would be the most distant supermassive black hole with a jet detected in X-rays. Coming from a galaxy about 12.7 billion light-years from Earth, the jet may help explain how the biggest black holes formed at a very early time in the universe’s history. The source of the jet is a…
Smoke from local wildfires can affect the health of Colorado residents, in addition to smoke from fires in forests as far away as California and the Pacific Northwest. Researchers at Colorado State University, curious about the health effects from smoke from large wildfires across the Western United States, analyzed six years of hospitalization data and death records for the cities along the Front Range, which reaches deep into central Colorado from southern Wyoming. They found that wildfire smoke was associated…
A new study carried out by a team of laser physicists, molecular biologists and physicians based at LMU Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics has confirmed the temporal stability of the molecular composition of blood in a population of healthy individuals. The data provide a basis for a new method of monitoring the constituents of blood and detecting alterations that reveal changes in a person’s state of health. The molecular composition of the blood provides information regarding…
… how developing zebrafish keep RNA levels in check Mature egg cells and early embryos do not generate their own RNA molecules – instead, they rely on stored maternal RNAs to synthesise their proteins. As the embryo develops, some of these RNAs become superfluous and need to be degraded. Researchers at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) pinpointed Ski7 as a regulator of normal RNA levels in early zebrafish embryos. Their findings were published in the journal “PLOS Genetics”….
High-resolution model reveals new insights With the help of highly resolved realistic model simulations physicists at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research (IOW) have succeeded in depicting the so-called submesoscale dynamics in the Eastern Gotland Basin – deepest of the large basins of the central Baltic Sea. Thus, the researchers gained the opportunity to investigate these highly dynamic phenomena, which – although being known for decades through satellite images – are up to now only scarcely studied and poorly…
Recent advances in technology have opened many possibilities for using wearable and implantable sensors to monitor various indicators of patient health. Wearable pressure sensors are designed to respond to very small changes in bodily pressure, so that physical functions such as pulse rate, blood pressure, breathing rates and even subtle changes in vocal cord vibrations can be monitored in real time with a high degree of sensitivity. Such responses occur when a substance in the sensor “gates,” or allows selected…
Light microscopes have revolutionized our understanding of the microcosmos, but their resolution is limited to about 100 nanometers. To see how molecules bond, break, or change their structure, we need at least 1000 times better resolution. Laser induced electron diffraction (LIED) is a technique which allows to pinpoint the individual atoms inside a single molecule, and to see where each atom moves when the molecule undergoes a reaction. This technique proved to be an amazing tool for the imaging molecules,…
Colorado State University researchers provide the most detailed accounting to date of the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. It’s no secret that the United States’ $13 billion cannabis industry is big business. Less obvious to many is the environmental toll this booming business is taking, in the form of greenhouse gas emissions from commercial, mostly indoor production. A new study by Colorado State University researchers provides the most detailed accounting to date of the industry’s carbon footprint, a sum around which…
The demonstration of electroluminescence at terahertz frequencies from a silicon-germanium device marks a key step towards the long-sought goal of a silicon-based laser. When it comes to microelectronics, there is one chemical element like no other: silicon, the workhorse of the transistor technology that drives our information society. The countless electronic devices we use in everyday life are a testament to how today very high volumes of silicon-based components can be produced at very low cost. It seems natural, then,…
Magnetometry exploiting color center defects in diamond probes and magneto-optic imaging found to complement each other / Progress towards the creation of more effective data storage systems Obtaining a precise understanding of magnetic structures is one of the main objectives of solid-state physics. Significant research is currently being undertaken in this field, the aim being to develop future data processing applications that use tiny magnetic structures as information carriers. Physicists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute…
Bacteria have a dining plan when degrading algal blooms Each spring in the North Sea, tiny algae grow in large numbers and release loads of sugar into the water – a feast for bacteria. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and the University of Greifswald have now investigated the order of the bacterial menu: first the easy-to-digest yummy pieces, then the chewy stuff. This insight was only possible by investigating special bacterial proteins that could be key…
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