Phys.org July 14, 2022 Researchers in Japan believe that it may be possible to predict tsunamis faster by tracking the atmospheric disturbances caused by the airwaves they create and the errors in the positional information supplied by GPS satellites. Examining the errors following eruption they found that it caused waves of air pressure to spread as far as Australia and Japan. These waves oscillated the lower part of the ionosphere and generated an electric field that was then transmitted at high speed to the upper ionosphere. They detected the electron changes much earlier than the air pressure waves that caused […]
Supramolecular adhesive with usable temperature range of 400 degrees Celsius
Phys.org July 18, 2022 An international team of researchers in (China, Germany) has synthesized a new type of temperature-resistant crown-ether-protein (CEP) adhesive by harnessing synergistic host–guest molecular interactions between engineered crown ether and protein building blocks. The resulting adhesive demonstrated ultrahigh shearing adhesion strength of ≈22 MPa over a wide temperature range from −196 to 200 °C, superior to other established supramolecular or polymeric adhesives. The temperature-induced phase transition and internal bound water stabilized the system and led to superb adhesion under extreme conditions. The work offers a promising molecular engineering strategy to fabricate robust supramolecular adhesives for applications under extreme […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of July 15, 2022
01. Atomically-smooth gold crystals help to compress light for nanophotonic applications 02. Customized magneto-optical trap allows for cooling indium atoms to near absolute zero 03. Development of new biomaterial with super strength inspired by limpets 04. Longer lasting sodium-ion batteries on the horizon 05. Physicists discover a “family” of robust, superconducting graphene structures 06. A proof of odd-parity superconductivity 07. Researchers achieve record entanglement of quantum memories 08. Researchers create VX neurotoxin detector 09. Researchers find the missing photonic link to enable an all-silicon quantum internet 10. A robot learns to imagine itself And others… Biodefense Headlines – 12 July […]
Atomically-smooth gold crystals help to compress light for nanophotonic applications
Phys.org July 13, 2022 An international team of researchers (South Korea, Denmark, Switzerland, Japan, USA – University of Minnesota) used a highly sensitive scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM) to directly measure the optical fields of the hyperbolic image phonon-polaritons (HIP) propagating in a 63 nm-thick slab of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) on a monocrystalline gold substrate, showing the mid-infrared light waves in dielectric crystal compressed by a hundred times. They showed that the phonon-polaritons in van der Waals crystals can be significantly more compressed without sacrificing their lifetime. Practically zero surface scattering and extremely small ohmic loss in gold at […]
Biodefense Headlines – 12 July 2022
Global Biodefense July 12,022 This week’s selections include reforming international legal frameworks for outbreak reporting; LRN monkeypox testing in the US; ISIS chemical weapons ambitions; and Chikungunya VLP vaccine development….read more.
Customized magneto-optical trap allows for cooling indium atoms to near absolute zero
Phys.org July 13, 2022 Cooling some atomic gases confers unique and sometimes useful properties to the atoms. The use of magneto optical traps (MOTs) for cooling works on only a small number of atomic groups on the periodic table. Rather than a ground state transition, researchers in Singapore used a transition from a more long-lived metastable state in their MOT. This required modifying it to work with just indium atoms. Once the reconfiguration was completed, the researchers created a cloud made up of more than 500 million indium-115 atoms in their MOT and cooled the atoms to approximately 1 mK […]
Development of new biomaterial with super strength inspired by limpets
Phys.org July 7, 2022 The small aquatic snail-like mollusks use a tongue bristling with tiny, microscopic teeth to scrape food off rocks and into their mouths. These teeth contain a hard yet flexible composite, which in 2015 was found to be the strongest known biologically occurring material, far stronger than spider silk and comparable to man-made substances, including carbon fiber and Kevlar. An international team of researchers (UK, Poland USA – industry, Switzerland) has replicated the limpet tooth developmental processes ex vivo, where isolated limpet tissue and cells in culture generated new biomimetic structures. Transcriptomic analysis of each developmental stage […]
Longer lasting sodium-ion batteries on the horizon
Science Daily July 13, 2022 The severe instability of the solid–electrolyte interphase (SEI) formed during repeated cycling in sodium ion batteries (NIBs) hinders their development. In particular, the SEI dissolution in NIBs with a high-voltage cathode is more severe than in the case of Li-ion batteries (LIBs) and leads to continuous side reactions, electrolyte depletion and irreversible capacity loss, making NIBs less stable than LIBs. A team of researchers in the US (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Washington) developed a rational electrolyte design to suppress the SEI dissolution and enhance NIB performance. Their electrolyte lowered the solvation ability for […]
Physicists discover a “family” of robust, superconducting graphene structures
MIT News July 8, 2022 Despite multitudes of correlated phases observed in moiré systems, robust superconductivity appears the least common, found only in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) and more recently in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene. An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, Japan) has reported experimental realization of superconducting magic-angle twisted four-layer and five-layer graphene, hence establishing alternating twist magic-angle multilayer graphene as a robust family of moiré superconductors. This finding suggests that the flat bands shared by the members play a central role in the superconductivity. Their measurements in parallel magnetic fields reveal a clear distinction between […]
A proof of odd-parity superconductivity
Phys.org July 12, 2022 Odd-parity superconductivity is rare in nature; only a few materials support this state, and in none of them has the expected angle dependence been observed. CeRh2As2 was recently found to exhibit two superconducting states: A low-field state changes into a high-field state at 4 T when a magnetic field is applied along one axis. Through a comprehensive study of the angle dependence of the upper critical fields using magnetic ac susceptibility, specific heat, and torque on single crystals of CeRh2As2 an international team of researchers (Germany, New Zealand, France, USA – University of Wisconsin) has shown […]