New research led by NASA provides a closer look at a nearby star thought to resemble our young Sun. The work allows scientists to better understand what our Sun may have been like when it was young, and how it may have shaped the atmosphere of our planet and the development of life on Earth. Many people dream of meeting with a younger version of themselves to exchange advice, identify the origins of their defining traits, and share hopes for the…

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have linked together, or “entangled,” the mechanical motion and electronic properties of a tiny blue crystal, giving it a quantum edge in measuring electric fields with record sensitivity that may enhance understanding of the universe. The quantum sensor consists of 150 beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms) confined in a magnetic field, so they self-arrange into a flat 2D crystal just 200 millionths of a meter in diameter. Quantum sensors such…

A new way to probe exotic matter aids the study of atomic and particle physics. Physicists have created a new way to observe details about the structure and composition of materials that improves upon previous methods. Conventional spectroscopy changes the frequency of light shining on a sample over time to reveal details about them. The new technique, Rabi-oscillation spectroscopy, does not need to explore a wide frequency range so can operate much more quickly. This method could be used to…

Through the looking glass… In a new study based on the theoretical computation of atomic structures, researchers determine the mechanisms of ion diffusion in phosphate glass. Phosphate glass is a versatile compound that has generated interest for its use in fuel cells and as biomaterials for supplying therapeutic ions. P2O5–the compound that forms the structural network of phosphate glass, is made up of phosphorus, an element that can adopt many different bonding configurations in combination with oxygen. The physicochemical properties…

In their search for distant galaxies, rapidly rotating neutron stars and black holes, radio astronomers are collecting an ever-increasing amount of data. In the future, this flood of data will also be analyzed with the help of artificial intelligence. To this end, eight institutions in North Rhine-Westphalia have joined forces under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) to form the “NRW Cluster for Data-Intensive Radio Astronomy: Big Bang to Big Data”. Three Bonn-based institutions, the…

Rice-led team toggles side- and edge-conduction states in bismuth iodide crystals. A Rice University team and its collaborators have discovered a room-temperature transition between 1D and 2D electrical conduction states in topological crystals of bismuth and iodine. Researchers found they could toggle the material, crystalline chains of bismuth iodide (Bi4I4), between low- and high-order conduction states at a transition temperature around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The research is available online this week in the American Physical Society journal Physical Review X and was conducted by physicists…

In the search for sustainable energy storage, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, present a new concept to fabricate high-performance electrode materials for sodium batteries. It is based on a novel type of graphene to store one of the world’s most common and cheap metal ions – sodium. The results show that the capacity can match today’s lithium-ion batteries. Even though lithium ions work well for energy storage, lithium is an expensive metal with concerns regarding its long-term supply…

Trans-scale scope shows big picture of tiny targets. Researchers at Osaka University use a 120-megapixel camera to simultaneously image over a million cells in a single microscope field of view, a feat which may accelerate the study of population dynamics and rare biological phenomena. Scientists from the Transdimensional Life Imaging Division of the Institute for Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives (OTRI) at Osaka University created an optical imaging system that can capture an unprecedented number of cells in a single…

Heidelberg research group seeks and develops inhibitors against flavi- and coronaviruses. New drugs are intended to help stop viral zoonoses – infections that jump from animals to humans. To study suitable inhibitors, Prof. Dr Christian Klein from the Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology (IPMB) of Heidelberg University is receiving funding in the amount of 450,000 euros from the Volkswagen Foundation. The project is focussed on flavi- and coronaviruses, which cause infectious diseases such as Zika, dengue, West Nile Fever,…

… climate change will impact Antarctic seals differently. A New Zealand-led international study published today in Global Change Biology, reveals how climate change may impact seals in one of the most remote ocean regions in the world, the Weddell Sea. With funding from Pew Charitable Trusts, the University of Canterbury-based team engaged thousands of citizen scientists over a few years to search for Southern Ocean seals– crabeater and Weddell seals – using satellite images. “We found that Weddell and crabeater…

University of Warwick convenes researchers to investigate challenges of monitoring objects in Earth orbit in new Centre for Space Domain Awareness Research into sustainable use of space aims to support UK aim to become a responsible spacefaring nation Projects will investigate new methods to track debris in orbit and space weather that threaten spacecraft Established as congestion of near-Earth space through new satellites and mega-constellations is anticipated to expand rapidly in coming years New ways of tackling the threat that…

Physicists design novel quantum material. Smartphones, notebooks and other electronic devices of our everyday life strongly benefit from the ever-increasing miniaturization of semiconductor devices. This development comes however at a price: confining electrons enhances their scattering– cell phones heat up. Topological insulators hold promises for a more efficient and sustainable technology. At odds with conventional semiconductors, the current flows on their boundaries, with scattering becoming prohibited thanks to symmetry reasons. In other words, things stay cool! In 2007 Laurens Molenkamp,…

Assessing potential coronavirus drug targets in organoids. Researchers from the group of Hans Clevers in collaboration with the group of Bart Haagmans (Erasmus MC) established an organoid biobank to search for the genes that are essential for the spreading of a SARS-CoV2 infection. Their study was published in Nature Communications on 17 September and highlights the usefulness of organoids for basic research into coronaviruses, as well as highlighting potential drug targets. Organoids are tiny 3D structures grown from stem cells…

Scientists take a closer look inside the perfect fluid. Berkeley Lab research brings us closer to understanding how our universe began. Scientists have reported new clues to solving a cosmic conundrum: How the quark-gluon plasma – nature’s perfect fluid – evolved into matter. A few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the early universe took on a strange new state: a subatomic soup called the quark-gluon plasma. And just 15 years ago, an international team including researchers from…

If you want to remove a layer of paint from a metal surface, you can use a sandblaster: Countless grains of sand are blasted onto the surface, and what emerges is clean metal. “Sputtering” can be imagined in a very similar way – only much smaller, on an atomic scale. The surface is irradiated with ions, i.e. charged atoms, allowing microscopic impurities to be removed, for example. If you are dealing with perfect surfaces where all the surface atoms are…

Cancer-fighting T cells from patients whose cancers responded to immunotherapy and from those whose tumors did not respond showed marked differences in gene activity that could eventually serve as targets to boost effectiveness. Cancer-fighting immune cells in patients with lung cancer whose tumors do not respond to immunotherapies appear to be running on a different “program” that makes them less effective than immune cells in patients whose cancers respond to these immune treatments, suggests a new study led by researchers…

A team of researchers from Harvard, MIT and the Max Planck Institute Chemical Physics of Solids developed a theory to explain how hydrodynamic electron flow could occur in 3D materials and observed it for the first time using a new imaging technique. Electrons flow through most materials more like a gas than a fluid, meaning they don’t interact much with one another. It was long hypothesized that electrons could flow like a fluid, but only recent advances in materials and…

Insight into the molecular structure of an appetite-regulating cell receptor A protein – measuring just a few nanometers in size – acts as a molecular switch with a crucial role in determining whether we feel hungry or full. By determining of the protein’s 3D structure, researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin were able to visualize the molecular structures of the hormones with which this protein – melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) – interacts. Writing in Cell Research*, the researchers report that…

New telescope will see planetary neighbors’ atmospheres. When the world’s most powerful telescope launches into space this year, scientists will learn whether Earth-sized planets in our ‘solar neighborhood’ have a key prerequisite for life — an atmosphere. These planets orbit an M-dwarf, the smallest and most common type of star in the galaxy. Scientists do not currently know how common it is for Earth-like planets around this type of star to have characteristics that would make them habitable. “As a…

Unusual material could improve the reliability of electronics and other devices. Moving heat around where you want it to go—adding it to houses and hairdryers, removing it from car engines and refrigerators—is one of the great challenges of engineering. All activity generates heat, because energy escapes from everything we do. But too much can wear out batteries and electronic components—like parts in an aging laptop that runs too hot to actually sit on your lap. If you can’t get rid…