Tech
Diamond is prized by scientists and jewellers alike, largely for a range of extraordinary properties including exceptional hardness. Now a team of Australian scientists has discovered diamond can be bent and deformed, at the nanoscale at least.
The discovery opens up a range of possibilities for the design and engineering of new nanoscale devices in sensing, defence and energy storage but also shows the challenges that lie ahead for future nanotechnologies, the researchers say.
The first hours of a lithium-ion battery's life largely determine just how well it will perform. In those moments, a set of molecules self-assembles into a structure inside the battery that will affect the battery for years to come.
The power conversion efficiencies of organic solar cells (OSCs) based on blends of electron donor (D) and acceptor (A) semiconducting materials now exceed 16%. However, it is still lower than that of highly efficient inorganic SCs such as GaAs and perovskite. The charge generation efficiency in OSCs nowadays is nearly 100%, thus reducing the energy loss in output voltage is critically important for further enhancing the efficiency of OSCs.
In early September 2019, an Asian hornet (Vespa velutina nigrithorax) was collected alive in Hamburg, Germany, representing the northernmost find of the species so far in Europe and indicating its further spread to the north. The paper by the research group from Hamburg, which also serves to update the occurrence of the dangerous invader, was published in the open access journal Evolutionary Systematics.
For decades, carbon nanotubes held great promise of developments in the field of electronics and more. But one drawback to realizing these innovations has been the difficulty of incorporating additional materials into nanotubes. For the first time, researchers have grown crystals of various materials uniformly onto the surface of carbon nanotubes. They hope these modified structures will exhibit functions useful in electronic, chemical or other applications.
Tsukuba, Japan - If older drivers with cognitive impairment are no longer permitted behind the wheel then accident rates should fall. That seems like common sense, but it seems the logic isn't so simple. Since 2009, when Japan added cognitive tests to its license renewal process for those aged 75+, traffic injuries have actually increased.
Scientists at the University of California San Diego have a much clearer idea thanks to the evolution of an advanced imaging system designed to record ultra-precise brain activities in flies.
Called "Flyception" when it was announced in 2016 as a system that could record freely walking flies, the new "Flyception2" employs a more advanced tracking and recording system that allows flies to move about uninhibited, allowing researchers to study brain activities during intricate behaviors.
The University of Rochester research lab that recently used lasers to create unsinkable metallic structures has now demonstrated how the same technology could be used to create highly efficient solar power generators.
In a paper in Light: Science & Applications, the lab of Chunlei Guo, professor of optics also affiliated with Physics and the Material Sciences Program, describes using powerful femto-second laser pulses to etch metal surfaces with nanoscale structures that selectively absorb light only at the solar wavelengths, but not elsewhere.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A team of Brown University researchers has made substantial progress in an effort to create a new type of molecular data storage system.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- In a new paper published Feb. 4 in JAMA, Mayo Clinic researchers describe the benefits of in-home noninvasive ventilation therapy ? which includes a type referred to as bilevel positive airway pressure, or BiPAP ? for many patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The team identified a number of benefits, including reduced mortality, fewer hospital admissions, lower risk of intubation, improved shortness of breath, and fewer emergency department visits.
Roofs and the downwind sides of buildings in street canyons have the lowest levels of particulate matter during a single-source pollution event, according to Penn State researchers. The findings have implications for improving evacuation plans during a pollution release as well as for informing ventilation system design of urban buildings.
Exposure to the widely used pesticide atrazine leads to heritable changes in the gut microbiome of wasps, finds a study publishing February 4 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. Additionally, the altered microbiome confers atrazine resistance, which is inherited across successive generations not exposed to the pesticide.
Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have made an important discovery that could lead to more effective treatments for people living with multiple sclerosis (MS) and other autoimmune diseases such as psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis. Their work highlights the significant potential of drugs targeting a specific immune molecule (IL-17) implicated in MS.
Scientists from Trinity College Dublin, Species360 and NUI Galway have quantified what drives attendance to zoos by assessing how variations in animal collections affect footfall. Crucially, they link their findings to the contributions made to conservation efforts in situ (in the wild), and find that zoos are making significant, positive impacts on our attempts to conserve biodiversity as our planet enters its sixth mass extinction.
Researchers from the Higher Technical School of Agricultural Engineering at the University of Seville, together with a group of international experts, have just published a scientific article in which they demonstrate that some soil minerals can convert the nitrogen gases NO + NO2 (NOX) into nitrates by means of visible and ultraviolet radiation. This natural process had not previously been described and demonstrates, according to the data obtained, that solar light seems to be the missing piece in the puzzle of the nitrogen cycle in soil.