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.
The materials the United States and other countries plan to use to store high-level nuclear waste will likely degrade faster than anyone previously knew because of the way those materials interact, new research shows. The findings, published today in the journal Nature Materials, show that corrosion of nuclear waste storage materials accelerates because of changes in … Read more
A team of physicists has discovered an electrical detection method for terahertz electromagnetic waves, which are extremely difficult to detect. The discovery could help miniaturize the detection equipment on microchips and enhance sensitivity. Terahertz is a unit of electromagnetic wave frequency: One gigahertz equals 1 billion hertz; 1 terahertz equals 1,000 gigahertz. The higher the … Read more
Pioneering discoveries about the ‘extraordinarily strange’ visual systems of shrimps – that could improve early detection of cancer – have been recognised with an international prize. University of Queensland researcher Professor Justin Marshall shared the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics with long-term colleague Professor Tom Cronin from University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Optoelectronics focuses on light-emitting or light-detecting devices, and the pair has revealed … Read more
Northwestern University researchers have added a new dimension to the importance of diversity. For the first time, physicists have experimentally demonstrated that certain systems with interacting entities can synchronize only if the entities within the system are different from one another. This finding offers a new twist to the previous understanding of how collective behavior … Read more
Engineers at Duke University have devised a model that can predict the early mechanical behaviors and origins of an earthquake in multiple types of rock. The model provides new insights into unobservable phenomena that take place miles beneath the Earth’s surface under incredible pressures and temperatures, and could help researchers better predict earthquakes — or … Read more
Quantum physics is moving out of the laboratory and into our everyday lives. Despite the big headline results about quantum computers solving problems impossible for classical computers, technical challenges are standing in the way of getting quantum physics into the real world. New research published in Nature Communications from teams at Aalto University and Lund University hopes … Read more
In the quantum realm, under some circumstances and with the right interference patterns, light can pass through opaque media. This feature of light is more than a mathematical trick; optical quantum memory, optical storage and other systems that depend on interactions of just a few photons at a time rely on the process, called electromagnetically … Read more
Debates rage about whether a more center candidate or one that appeals to the party voter base is the most electable. According to a new study from the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) and MIT, in the decades between WWII and 1970 only a center candidate would win, but in the years since, several … Read more
A team of physicists has mapped how electron energies vary from region to region in a particular quantum state with unprecedented clarity. This understanding reveals an underlying mechanism by which electrons influence one another, termed quantum “hybridization,” that had been invisible in previous experiments. The findings, the work of scientists at New York University, the … Read more
Directional antennas convert electrical signals to radio waves and emit them in a particular direction, allowing increased performance and reduced interference. This principle, which is useful in radio wave technology, could also be interesting for miniaturised light sources. After all, almost all Internet-based communication utilises optical light communication. Directional antennas for light could be used … Read more