Tech
A research team led by Northwestern University has designed and synthesized new materials with ultrahigh porosity and surface area for the storage of hydrogen and methane for fuel cell-powered vehicles. These gases are attractive clean energy alternatives to carbon dioxide-producing fossil fuels.
The designer materials, a type of a metal-organic framework (MOF), can store significantly more hydrogen and methane than conventional adsorbent materials at much safer pressures and at much lower costs.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- For more than 40 years, scientists have hypothesized the existence of enzyme clusters, or "metabolons," in facilitating various processes within cells. Using a novel imaging technology combined with mass spectrometry, researchers at Penn State, for the first time, have directly observed functional metabolons involved in generating purines, the most abundant cellular metabolites. The findings could lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies that disrupt the progression of cancer.
Researchers from Aarhus University have discovered the function of a special group of nerve cells which are found in the eye and which sense visual movement. The findings give us a completely new understanding of how conscious sensory impressions occur in the brain. This knowledge is necessary to be able to develop targeted and specific forms of treatment in the future for diseases which impact the nervous system and its sensory apparatus, such as dementia and schizophrenia.
Coal-fired power plants in Korea have been considered as one of the main sources of air pollutants, CO2 and the other precursor materials to ultra fine dusts such as nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide. Therefore, FEPCRC is developing key technologies for eco-friendly coal-fired stackless power generation without emissions in flue gas.
Field Programmable Gate Arrays, FPGAs for short, are flexibly programmable computer chips that are considered very secure components in many applications. In a joint research project, scientists from the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and from Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy have now discovered that a critical vulnerability is hidden in these chips. They called the security bug "Starbleed". Attackers can gain complete control over the chips and their functionalities via the vulnerability.
When used correctly, both alcohol-based hand disinfectants recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) are effective against the novel coronavirus Sars-Cov-2, as confirmed by an international research team headed by Professor Stephanie Pfänder from the Department of Molecular and Medical Virology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB). The journal Emerging Infectious Diseases published the relevant article in its online edition on 13 April 2020.
30 seconds for disinfection
The research team of Prof. ZENG Changgan from Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale of University of Sciences and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), collaborating with Prof. LIU Mengkun from Stony Brook University, applied moiré engineering beyond van der Waals materials for the first time and realized moiré-type electronic modulations in correlated transition metal oxides (CTMOs) at mesoscale. The result was published online on Nature Physics on April 6th.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, aims to send human missions to Mars in the 2030s. But scientists are still trying to learn more about the potential cancer risks for astronauts due to radiation exposure. Cancer risk from galactic cosmic radiation exposure is considered a potential "showstopper" for a manned mission to Mars.
On April 14th, Prof. MA Cheng from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and his colleagues made an important discovery on the mechanism of Li-ion migration in solid electrolytes for batteries. They observed a new type of microscopic feature that can significantly influence ionic transport.
NASA analyzed weakening Tropical Storm Jeruto's rainfall and found one small area of moderate rainfall displaced from the center, because of strong wind shear.
In general, wind shear is a measure of how the speed and direction of winds change with altitude. Outside winds were pushing against the storm and displacing the heaviest rainfall east of the center.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Economic losses due to soybean diseases in the United States from 1996 to 2016 amounted to more than $95 billion, according to a team of researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences who examined the long-term impact of soybean diseases on production in the U.S.
The findings are significant because the U.S. is the world's primary soybean producer and second-largest exporter, noted Paul Esker, assistant professor of epidemiology and crop pathology in the Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- One of the defining features of Covid-19 is the excessive immune response that can occur in severe cases. This burst of immune overreaction, also called a cytokine storm, damages the lungs and can be fatal.
A team of MIT researchers has developed specialized proteins, similar in structure to antibodies, that they believe could soak up these excess cytokines.
The search for coveted high-temperature superconductors is going to get easier with a new 'law within a law' discovered by Skoltech and MIPT researchers and their colleagues, who figured out a link between an element's position in the Periodic Table and its potential to form a high-temperature superconducting hydride. The new paper is published in the journal Current Opinion in Solid State & Materials Science. The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation.
Most Russians would like to have two children: a boy and a girl. The others fall between the two extremes of either wanting no children (at least for now) or planning to have three or more. Having a large family is often associated with affluence. The reasons for having another child are many, from wishing to strengthen the family bond and teach older children to care for younger siblings to hoping that the maternity subsidy may help the family improve their housing situation. A HSE demographer used data from a sample of 15,000 respondents to study reproductive attitudes in Russia.
Half a century ago, cassava was a simple staple crop for some smallholder farmers in Asia eking out a living in harsh landscapes.
The hardy crop that Europeans brought from Latin America many centuries before was a dependable source of nutrition - as long as it was skillfully processed to remove the toxins from bitter types to be turned into food.
While sweet varieties of cassava remain a staple in places like Indonesia, which is the world's third-largest producer, things have changed a lot for Manihot esculenta, the scientific name for yuca, manioc or mandioca.