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.
Engineers have designed a new system that can help cool buildings in crowded metropolitan areas without consuming electricity, an important innovation at a time when cities are working to adapt to climate change. The system consists of a special material — an inexpensive polymer/aluminum film — that’s installed inside a box at the bottom of … Read more
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
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
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
Researchers from North Carolina State University and Elon University have developed a technique that allows them to remotely control the movement of soft robots, lock them into position for as long as needed and later reconfigure the robots into new shapes. The technique relies on light and magnetic fields. “We’re particularly excited about the reconfigurability,” … Read more
A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University has published a paper in Science that details a new technique allowing anyone to 3D bioprint tissue scaffolds out of collagen, the major structural protein in the human body. This first-of-its-kind method brings the field of tissue engineering one step closer to being able to 3D print a full-sized, … Read more
The way barn owl brains use sound to locate prey may be a template for electronic directional navigation devices, according to a team of Penn State engineers who are recreating owl brain circuitry in electronics. “We were already studying this type of circuitry when we stumbled across the Jeffress model of sound localization,” said Saptarshi … Read more
Already the Inca used knots in cords in their ancient writing “Quipu” to encode and store information. The advantage: Unlike ink on a sheet of paper, the information stored in the knots is robust against external destructive influences such as water. Novel quantum computers should also be able to store information robustly in the form … Read more
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, president: Byung-gwon Lee) announced that Dr. Hyunjung Yi of the Post-Silicon Semiconductor Institute and her research team developed a transfer-printing** technology that uses hydrogel* and nano ink to easily create high-performance sensors on flexible substrates of diverse shapes and structures. *Hydrogel: a three-dimensional hydrophilic polymer network that … Read more
A major greenhouse gas, CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels is still mostly released into the atmosphere, adding to the burden of global warming. One way to cut down on it is through a carbon capture: a chemical technique that removes CO2 out of emissions (“postcombustion”), preventing it from entering the atmosphere. The captured CO2 … Read more