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.
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 … Read more
Supercapacitors, a type of electrical device that stores and releases energy, need a layer of electrolyte — an electrically conductive material that can be solid, liquid, or somewhere in between. Now, researchers at MIT and several other institutions have developed a novel class of liquids that may open up new possibilities for improving the efficiency … Read more
Materials science and engineering researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have demonstrated that the rules of metal-bending aren’t so hard and fast after all. They described their findings Aug. 9 in the journal Nature Communications. Their surprising discovery not only upends previous notions about how metals deform, but could help guide the creation of stronger, more … Read more
The cost of energy storage will be critical in determining how much renewable energy can contribute to the decarbonization of electricity. But how far must energy storage costs fall? In a study published August 7 in the journal Joule, MIT researchers answer this question. They quantify cost targets for storage technologies to enable solar and wind … Read more
The researchers measured the thickness of the gold to be 0.47 nanometres – that is one million times thinner than a human finger nail. The material is regarded as 2D because it comprises just two layers of atoms sitting on top of one another. All atoms are surface atoms – there are no ‘bulk’ atoms … Read more
How do “people power” movements succeed while mobilizing modest proportions of the population? The answer might be inspired by physics, Erica Chenoweth and Margherita Belgioioso write in a new report for Nature Human Behaviour, “The Physics of Dissent and the Effects of Movement Momentum.” They argue that, while participation size is a crucial determinant of the … Read more
Along with flying and invisibility, high on the list of every child’s aspirational superpowers is the ability to see through or around walls or other visual obstacles. That capability is now a big step closer to reality as scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Universidad de Zaragoza in Spain, drawing on the lessons … 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
When you pop a tray of water into the freezer, you get ice cubes. Now, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Toronto have achieved a similar transition using clouds of ultracold atoms. In a study that will appear August 2 in the journal Science Advances, the team discovered that it could … Read more
Researchers report a new imaging system that cancels the chromatic optical aberrations present in a specific person’s eye, allowing for a more accurate assessment of vision and eye health. By taking pictures of the eye’s smallest light-sensing cells with multiple wavelengths, the system also provides the first objective measurement of longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LCA), which … Read more