Accomplished early career physicist is first recipient of fellowship that honors pioneering PPPL physicist Robert Ellis Jr.
An early career physicist with a strong background in plasma physics has been named to a new postdoctoral fellowship named for Robert Ellis Jr., a pioneering physicist at PPPL, that is aimed at diversifying the plasma physics field.
Solving materials problems with a quantum computer
Scientists at Argonne and the University of Chicago have developed a method paving the way to using quantum computers to simulate realistic molecules and complex materials. They tested the method on a quantum simulator and IBM quantum computer.
Metal-Breathing Bacteria Could Transform Electronics, Biosensors, and More
When the Shewanella oneidensis bacterium "breathes" in certain metal and sulfur compounds anaerobically, the way an aerobic organism would process oxygen, it produces materials that could be used to enhance electronics, electrochemical energy storage, and drug-delivery devices. The ability of this bacterium to produce molybdenum disulfide -- a material that is able to transfer electrons easily, like graphene -- is the focus of research published in Biointerphases by a team of engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Black Phosphorus Future in 3D Analysis, Molecular Fingerprinting
Many compact systems using mid-infrared technology continue to face compatibility issues when integrating with conventional electronics. Black phosphorus has garnered attention for overcoming these challenges thanks to a wide variety of uses in photonic circuits. Research published in Applied Physics Reviews highlights the material's potential for emerging devices ranging from medical imaging to environment monitoring, assessing progress in different components of the chips, from light detection to laser emission.
EuPhO 2020: Triple gold and more medals for Russian students
Russian high schoolers earn gold, silver, bronze medals at European Physics Olympiad
New study reveals how day- and night-biting mosquitoes respond differently to colors of light and time of day
In a new study, researchers found that night- versus day-biting species of mosquitoes are behaviorally attracted and repelled by different colors of light at different times of day. Mosquitoes are among major disease vectors impacting humans and animals around the world and the findings have important implications for using light to control them.
Redesigning lithium-ion battery anodes for better performance
In a new study, a team led by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory has made discoveries concerning a potential new, higher-capacity anode material, which would allow lithium-ion batteries to have a higher overall energy capacity.
International Year of Sound Events Explore Acoustics from Sounds of the Sacred to Oceanography
The Acoustical Society of America continues to host virtual events in August as part of the International Year of Sound. The ASA Student Council will host Virtual Student Summer Talks for science students to present their research on topics ranging from acoustical oceanography to speech communication and David Carreon Bradley will discuss how sounds in religious spaces are essential to the worship experience. All events are open to the public, and admission is free.
Tiny titanium wields great power to shape crystals
Researchers from MIPT and their colleagues from Ural Federal University have combined optical and acoustic approaches and found that incorporating titanium atoms into barium hexaferrite leads to an unexpected substructure forming in the crystal lattice. The resulting material is promising for ultrafast computer memory applications. The findings were published in Scientific Reports.
ArgoNeuT sheds light on electron neutrino interactions
The ArgoNeuT collaboration has published new measurements of the neutrino interaction channel critical for future experiments that seek to understand the difference between matter and antimatter in the world of neutrinos. Their paper presents new strategies for identifying electron neutrinos in liquid-argon neutrino detectors like ArgoNeuT.
Scientists Team Up to Create Spongy Droplets that Mimic Cellular Organelles
Taking a bottom-up approach to synthetic biology, UC San Diego chemists and physicists show that lipid sponge droplets can be programmed to internally concentrate specific proteins, host and accelerate biochemical transformations and control enzymatic reactions.
Electrons obey social distancing in 'strange' metals
A Cornell University-led collaboration has used state-of-the-art computational tools to model the chaotic behavior of Planckian, or "strange," metals. This behavior has long intrigued physicists, but they have not been able to simulate it down to the lowest possible temperature until now.
Doctoral graduate Yuan Shi wins 2020 Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award
Profile of Yuan Shi, graduate of the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics based at PPPL and winner of this year's Outstanding Thesis Award presented by the American Physical Society.
Tulane scientists partner with U.S. Army on machine learning study
The project could pave the way for small, mobile quantum networks and possibly lead to unbreakable, secure communication systems, quantum computers and enhanced radar.
Developing Detectors for Scientific Research and Medicine
Cynthia Keppel has been named a DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellow. Based at DOE's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, she is one of three DOE National Laboratory scientist fellows who will receive $1 million to devote to developing better detectors for science and medicine.
Pioneering Materials Scientist James De Yoreo Receives Distinguished Scientist Fellow Award
Pioneering materials scientist James De Yoreo receives Distinguished Scientist Fellow award. The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science bestows one of its highest honors on PNNL materials scientist.
COVID-19 shutdown led to increased solar power output
As the Covid-19 shutdowns and stay-at-home orders brought much of the world's travel and commerce to a standstill, people around the world started noticing clearer skies as a result of lower levels of air pollution.
Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Announce 2020 Laureates
NEW YORK, July 22, 2020 - The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences announced today a molecular biophysicist, an organic chemist and an astrophysicist as the Laureates of the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Each will receive $250,000, the largest unrestricted scientific prize offered to America's most-promising, young faculty-level scientific researchers.
While birds chirp, plasma shouldn't: New insight could advance development of fusion energy
Scientists at PPPL have furthered understanding of a barrier that can prevent doughnut-shaped fusion facilities known as tokamaks from operating at high efficiency by causing vital heat to be lost from them.
Postdoc Pushes Backward Physics to Fore
Wenliang "Bill" Li won the 2020 JSA Postdoctoral Prize to run experiments that will examine proton structure from a lesser-studied perspective. A postdoctoral researcher at William & Mary, Li is studying proton structure just like many people who conduct their nuclear physics research at Jefferson Lab. But he's studying a new aspect of it: the backward perspective.
Lithium Ion Battery Waste Used in Biodiesel Production from Discarded Vegetable Oil
Brazilian researchers demonstrated a new chemical approach for producing biodiesel from domestic cooking oil waste by using hydroxide lithium mixed with either sodium hydroxides or potassium hydroxides as catalysts. Their work, published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, could enable future studies related to the use of lithium from waste lithium ion batteries. The work marks one of the first times lithium has been used for such purposes.
Photon-Based Processing Units Enable More Complex Machine Learning
Machine learning performed by neural networks is a popular approach to developing artificial intelligence, as researchers aim to replicate brain functionalities for a variety of applications. A paper in the journal Applied Physics Reviews proposes a new approach to perform computations required by a neural network, using light instead of electricity. In this approach, a photonic tensor core performs multiplications of matrices in parallel, improving speed and efficiency of current deep learning paradigms.
Can Social Unrest, Riot Dynamics Be Modeled?
Episodes of social unrest rippled throughout Chile in 2019. Researchers specializing in economics, mathematics and physics in Chile and the U.K. banded together to explore the surprising social dynamics people were experiencing. In the journal Chaos, the team reports that social media is changing the rules of the game, and previously applied epidemic-like models, on their own, may no longer be enough to explain current rioting dynamics.
New Model Connects Respiratory Droplet Physics with Spread of Covid-19
Engineers have incorporated a new understanding of the impact of environmental factors on droplet spread into a mathematical model that can be used to predict the early spread of respiratory viruses including COVID-19, and the role of respiratory droplets in that spread.