SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
While watching the production of porous membranes used for DNA sorting and sequencing, University of Illinois researchers wondered how tiny steplike defects formed during fabrication could be used to improve molecule transport. They found that the defects – formed by overlapping layers of membrane – make a big difference in how molecules move along a … Read more
The Dutch-Japanese made DESHIMA instrument has passed its first practical tests when measuring the distances and ages of distant galaxies. The core of the instrument is a chip the size of two euro coins that measures 49 shades of far infrared light. The developers of the spectrometer publish the results of their first measurement campaign … Read more
Despite their broad technological relevance, our microscopic understanding of glassy materials is surprisingly poor. While the transition from a viscous liquid to a glassy state hardly affects the underlying structure, the viscosity and relaxation time drastically increases and even diverges. Therefore, any evidence of an entanglement between structural and dynamical properties is an important step … Read more
A team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena has come a great deal closer to unlocking the secrets of organic compounds dissolved in soil water. The new study, published in Nature Geoscience, shows that the dissolved molecules just are not stable degradation products. Instead, they include compounds that are … Read more
Pollutants coming out of cars’ exhausts are harmful to the environment and public health. With the goal of overall curbing car emissions, the US Department of Energy (DOE) issued a challenge to scientists worldwide: catalytically converting 90% of all critical pollutants (hydrocarbons, CO, NOx etc.) in car exhaust into less harmful substances at 150ºC. However, … Read more
Half of New Zealand’s birds have gone extinct since humans arrived on the islands. Many more are threatened. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on August 5 estimate that it would take approximately 50 million years to recover the number of bird species lost since humans first colonized New Zealand. “The conservation decisions we make … Read more
An international multi-institute collaboration, led by Professor Chao-Yang Lu and Jian-Wei Pan from the University of Science and Technology of China, has demonstrated a semiconductor-based source of single photons that for the first simultaneously fulfills all the demanding requirements of quantum computing. This is a fundamental key step for optical quantum computing, which promises a … Read more
A new study led by the University of Siegen (Germany) finds an acceleration in sea-level rise starting in the 1960s that can be linked to changes in Southern Hemispheric westerly winds. The study, published on August, 5th in the journal Nature Climate Change, examined a global set of coastal tide gauge records in combination with … Read more
Larisa DeSantis, a Vanderbilt University paleontologist, grew up visiting the one-of-a-kind fossil site in Los Angeles, which contains fossils of predators that tried to eat horses, bison and camels stuck in the tar over the past 50,000 years and themselves became trapped, offering the best opportunity to understand Ice Age animals facing climate change. The … Read more
Technology to measure the flow of subatomic particles known as antineutrinos from nuclear reactors could allow continuous remote monitoring designed to detect fueling changes that might indicate the diversion of nuclear materials. The monitoring could be done from outside the reactor vessel, and the technology may be sensitive enough to detect substitution of a single … Read more