A team of scientists has made the strongest silver ever—42 percent stronger than the previous world record. It's part of a discovery of a new mechanism at the nanoscale that can create metals much stronger than any ever made before—while not losing electrical conductivity.
Single atom catalysts are highly desirable, but difficult to stabilize. Argonne scientists are part of a team that is using repeated high temperature shockwaves to synthesize high-stability and high-efficiency single atom catalysts.
Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize technology, medicine, and science by providing faster and more efficient processors, sensors, and communication devices.
By using sound waves, scientists have begun to explore fundamental stress behaviors in a crystalline material that could form the basis for quantum information technologies.
Technical sessions at this year’s conference centered around four thematic areas: Autonomous Systems, Nanophotonics and Plasmonics, Virtual Reality and Augmented Vision, as well as Quantum Technologies.
Combining new classes of nanomembrane electrodes with flexible electronics and a deep learning algorithm could help disabled people wirelessly control an electric wheelchair, interact with a computer or operate a small robotic vehicle without donning a bulky hair-electrode cap or contending with wires.
Reversing baldness could someday be as easy as wearing a hat, thanks to a noninvasive, low-cost hair-growth-stimulating technology developed by engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The sciences and the arts are often seen as polar opposites. But a conversation between a scientist, artists, and composers held at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY, on the evening of Sept. 6, 2019 showed how these fields can be combined to create beautiful visuals and sounds based on real scientific data. The conversation was the second installment of PubSci at the Parrish, a spin-off of PubSci—the science café and conversation series of Brookhaven National Lab.
Proteins keep our organs functioning, egulate our cells and are the targets for medications that treat a number of diseases, including cancers and neurological diseases. Proteins need to move in order to function. But, because the technology they used to watch proteins doesn't allow it, scientists still know very little about such motions at speeds slower than a nanosecond.
Sandia National Laboratories researchers developed tiny, gold antennas to help cameras and sensors that “see” heat deliver clearer pictures of thermal infrared radiation for everything from stars and galaxies to people, buildings and items requiring security. The new nanoantenna-enabled detector can boost the signal of a thermal infrared camera by up to three times and improve image quality by reducing dark current, a major component of image noise, by 10 to 100 times.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new platinum-based catalytic system that is far more durable than traditional commercial systems and has a potentially longer lifespan. The new system could, over the long term, reduce the cost of producing fuel cells.
The NSF has awarded the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego and its partners a three-year, $5.9 million grant to host the EarthCube Office as part of the ongoing NSF-funded EarthCube program aimed at transforming geoscience research.
ORNL story tips: ORNL’s project for VA bridges computing prowess, VA health data to speed up suicide risk screenings for U.S. veterans; ORNL reveals ionic liquid additive lubricates better than additives in commercial gear oil; researchers use neutron scattering to probe colorful new material that could improve sensors, vivid displays; unique 3D printing approach adds more strength, toughness in certain materials.
Many industrial buildings rely on ultrasound instruments that continually monitor the structural integrity of their systems without damaging or altering their features. One new technique draws on laser technology and candle soot to generate effective ultrasonic waves for nondestructive testing and evaluation.
UPTON, NY - A team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory designed, created, and successfully tested a new algorithm to make smarter scientific measurement decisions.
A team of Texas Tech University researchers working in advanced textiles has found a new way to remove toxic dye pollutants from wastewater, and their approach is safer, cheaper and easier than traditional methods.
In new research outlined in a recent issue of Science, scientists tethered smaller particles in colloidal crystals to larger ones using DNA, allowing them to determine how the smaller particles filled in the regions surrounding the larger ones.
As a researcher at ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE Nanoscience User Facility, Nina Balke explores avenues for fine-tuning materials’ physical properties to solve energy challenges and expands fundamental research opportunities for CNMS users.
UC San Diego researchers have discovered the root cause of why lithium metal batteries fail, challenging a long-held belief in the field. The study presents new ways to boost battery performance and brings research a step closer to incorporating lithium anodes into rechargeable batteries.
A team of researchers led by the University of South Australia has discovered a way to find and beat superbugs, providing a critical breakthrough against many deadly infectious diseases.
Missouri S&T researchers are demonstrating a new concept to reconstruct holographic images by using a single two-dimensional material monolayer with the thickness of less than one nanometer. Their work could lead to the creation of smart watches with holographic displays, printed security cryptograms on bank notes and credit cards, and new possibilities for data storage.
Tiny silica bottles filled with medicine and a special temperature-sensitive material could be used for drug delivery to kill malignant cells only in certain parts of the body, according to a study published recently by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Nanotechnology developed at Rutgers University–New Brunswick could boost research on stem cell transplantation, which may help people with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, other neurodegenerative diseases, and central nervous system injuries.
In order to understand advanced materials like graphene nanostructures and optimize them for devices in nano-, opto- and quantum-technology it is crucial to understand how phonons – the vibration of atoms in solids – influence the materials’ properties. Researchers from the University of Vienna, the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, the company JEOL and La Sapienza University in Rome have developed a method capable to measure all phonons existing in a nanostructured material. This is a breakthrough in the analysis of nanoscale functional materials and devices. With this pilot experiment using graphene nanostructures these researchers have shown the uniqueness of their approach, which will be published in the latest issue of Nature.
UC San Diego engineers have developed the thinnest optical device in the world—a waveguide that is three layers of atoms thin. The work is a proof of concept for scaling down optical devices to sizes that are orders of magnitude smaller than today’s devices. It could lead to the development of higher density, higher capacity photonic chips.
Scientists have tested an experimental system that uses a near-infrared laser to actively heat two gold nanorod antennae to different temperatures. The nanorods are electromagnetically and thermally coupled, yet the team measured reversible temperature differences of up to 20 degrees Celsius.
Macrophages are white blood cells that accumulate in tumors, and aid cancer progression. Now scientists have identified a surface protein found only on the macrophages residing in tumors, exposing a target for precise tumor treatments.
ORNL story tips: Training next-generation sensors to “see,” interpret live data; 3D printing tungsten could protect fusion reactor components; detailed study estimated how much more, or less, energy U.S. residents might consume by 2050 based on seasonal weather shifts; astrophysicists used ORNL supercomputer to create highest-ever-resolution galactic wind simulations; new solar-thermal desalination method improves energy efficiency.
The properties of high-temperature superconductors can be tailored by the introduction of artificial defects. An international research team around physicist Wolfgang Lang at the University of Vienna has succeeded in producing the world's densest complex nano arrays for anchoring flux quanta, the fluxons.
Working with mouse and human tissue, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report new evidence that a protein pumped out of some — but not all — populations of “helper” cells in the brain, called astrocytes, plays a specific role in directing the formation of connections among neurons needed for learning and forming new memories.
A research team lead by Osaka University demonstrated how information encoded in the circular polarization of a laser beam can be translated into the spin state of an electron in a quantum dot, each being a quantum bit and a quantum computer candidate.
You can’t see nanoparticles, but many of the products we use contain these atomic-scale units of various chemical elements. Are these miniscule bits of human industry safe when they are shed into the environment? Rebecca Klaper is working to identify which are toxic and design them to be safer in the first place.
Scientists at Berkeley Lab have 3D-printed a magnetic device out of liquids. Their findings could lead to printable liquid magnetic devices for a variety of applications such as artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots.
Researchers at Berkeley Lab have developed a graphene device that switches from a superconducting material that conducts electricity without losing any energy, to an insulator that resists the flow of electric current – all with a simple flip of a switch.
This research is a fundamental discovery of how to engineer proteins onto non-biological surfaces. Artificial proteins engineered from scratch have been assembled into nanorod arrays, designer filaments and honeycomb lattices on the surface of mica, demonstrating control over the way proteins interact with surfaces to form complex structures previously seen only in natural protein systems. The study provides a foundation for understanding how protein-crystal interactions can be systematically programmed and sets the stage for designing novel protein-inorganic hybrid materials.
Argonne National Laboratory played a critical role in the discovery of a DNA-like twisted crystal structure created with a germanium sulfide nanowire, also known as a “van der Waals material.” Researchers can tailor these nanowires in many different ways — twist periods from two to twenty micrometers, lengths up to hundreds of micrometers, and radial dimensions from several hundred nanometers to about ten micrometers. By this means, they can adjust the electrical and optical properties to optimize performance for different applications.
University of Utah mechanical engineering associate professor Mathieu Francoeur has discovered a way to produce more electricity from heat than thought possible by creating a silicon chip, also known as a “device,” that converts more thermal radiation into electricity. This could lead to devices such as laptop computers and cellphones with much longer battery life and solar panels that are much more efficient at converting radiant heat to energy.
A breakthrough imaging technique developed by Cornell University researchers shows promise in decontaminating water by yielding surprising and important information about catalyst particles that can’t be obtained any other way.
The males of one species of butterfly are more attracted to females that are active, not necessarily what they look like, according to a recent research conducted at Augustana University.The paper, “Behaviour before beauty: Signal weighting during mate selection in the butterfly Papilio polytes,” found that males of the species noticed the activity levels of potential female mates, not their markings.
When the first full-length movie made with the advanced, three-color process of Technicolor premiered in 1935, The New York Times declared "it produced in the spectator all the excitement of standing upon a peak ... and glimpsing a strange, beautiful and unexpected new world."