Tech
UPTON, NY--Scientists have designed a catalyst composed of very low concentrations of platinum (single atoms and clusters smaller than billionths of a meter) on the surface of titanium dioxide. They demonstrated how this catalyst significantly enhances the rate of breaking a particular carbon-oxygen bond for the conversion of a plant derivative (furfuryl alcohol) into a potential biofuel (2-methylfuran). Their strategy--described in a paper published in Nature Catalysis on Mar.
A new machine-learning algorithm for exploring lightweight, very stiff glass compositions can help design next-gen materials for more efficient vehicles and wind turbines. Glasses can reinforce polymers to generate composite materials that provide similar strengths as metals but with less weight.
Liang Qi, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan, answered questions about his group's new paper in npj Computational Materials.
What is elastic stiffness? Elastic and glass don't seem to be two words that go together.
HOUSTON - (March 26, 2020) - There is no longer a need to guess what ocean temperatures were like in the remote tropical Pacific hundreds of years ago. The ancient coral that lived there know all.
TAMPA, Fla. - The survival rates for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have improved greatly over the past decade thanks to several new targeted treatment options for patients. However, lung cancer still remains the number one cause of cancer-related morality, leading to approximately 154,000 deaths each year in the United States. Many patients do not respond to these new targeted therapies or they may develop drug resistance. Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center are trying to identify alternative strategies to treat this disease.
UPTON, NY--You know how you leave space in a water bottle before you pop it in the freezer--to accommodate the fact that water expands as it freezes? Most metal parts in airplanes face the more common opposite problem. At high altitudes (low temperatures) they shrink. To keep such shrinkage from causing major disasters, engineers make airplanes out of composites or alloys, mixing materials that have opposite expansion properties to balance one another out.
Did coronavirus mutate from a virus already prevalent in humans or animals or did it originate in a laboratory? As scientists grapple with understanding the source of this rapidly spreading virus, the Grunow-Finke assessment tool (GFT) may assist them with determining whether the coronavirus outbreak is of natural or unnatural origins.
When searching through theoretical lists of possible new materials for particular applications, such as batteries or other energy-related devices, there are often millions of potential materials that could be considered, and multiple criteria that need to be met and optimized at once. Now, researchers at MIT have found a way to dramatically streamline the discovery process, using a machine learning system.
Mapping different parts of the brain and determining how they correspond to thoughts, actions, and other neural functions is a central area of inquiry in neuroscience, but while previous studies using fMRI scans and EEG have allowed researchers to rough out brain areas connected with different types of neural activities, they have not allowed for mapping the activity of individual neurons.
WASHINGTON -- For the first time, researchers have fabricated high-performance mid-infrared laser diodes directly on microelectronics-compatible silicon substrates. The new lasers could enable the widespread development of low-cost sensors for real-time, accurate environmental sensing for applications such as air pollution monitoring, food safety analysis, and detecting leaks in pipes.
What The Study Did: Racial and ethnic differences appear to exist in depression severity and care in this observational study of older adults who participated in a randomized clinical trial of cancer and cardiovascular disease prevention.
Authors: Olivia I. Okereke, M.D., S.M., of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.1606)
A study from the University of Surrey has provided a comprehensive guide on which tree species are best for combatting air pollution that originates from our roads - along with suggestions for how to plant these green barriers to get the best results.
Researchers in the cancer nanomedicine community debate whether use of tiny structures, called nanoparticles, can best deliver drug therapy to tumors passively -- allowing the nanoparticles to diffuse into tumors and become held in place, or actively -- adding a targeted anti-cancer molecule to bind to specific cancer cell receptors and, in theory, keep the nanoparticle in the tumor longer.
Kanazawa, Japan - The expansion of the Universe has occupied the minds of astronomers and astrophysicists for decades. Among the cosmological models that have been suggested over the years, Lambda cold dark matter (LCDM) models are the simplest models that can provide elegant explanations of the properties of the Universe, e.g., the accelerated expansion of the late Universe and structural formations. However, the LCDM model suffers from several theoretical difficulties, such as the cosmological constant problem.
The increase in the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere does not compensate the negative effect of greenhouse gas-induced climate change on trees: The more extreme drought and heat become, the less do trees profit from the increased supply with carbon dioxide in terms of carbon metabolism and water use efficiency. This finding was obtained by researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) when studying Aleppo pines. Their study is reported in New Phytologist (DOI: 10.1111/nph.16471).
The single-cell organism known as slime mould (Physarum polycephalum) builds complex web-like filamentary networks in search of food, always finding near-optimal pathways to connect different locations.
In shaping the Universe, gravity builds a vast cobweb-like structure of filaments tying galaxies and clusters of galaxies together along invisible bridges of gas and dark matter hundreds of millions of light-years long. There is an uncanny resemblance between the two networks, one crafted by biological evolution, the other by the primordial force of gravity.