Science Daily April 6, 2022 The reproducibility and robustness of only a small fraction of published biomedical results has been tested. An international team of researchers (UK, USA – University of Chicago) used a combination of automated text analysis and the ‘robot scientist’ Eve to semi-automate the process of finding papers reporting reproducible results. Out of the more than 12,000 research papers on breast cancer cell biology, after narrowing down to 74 papers of high scientific interest, only 22 papers were found to be reproducible. Two different human teams used Eve and two breast cancer cell lines and attempted to […]
Scientists find ‘knob’ to control magnetic behavior in quantum material
Science Daily April 12, 2022 A key to unlocking new functionalities in quantum materials is the discovery of tunable coupling between spins and other microscopic degrees of freedom. A team of researchers in the US (Pennsylvania State University, University, UC San Diego, Northwestern University SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Stanford University) has found evidence for interlayer magnetophononic coupling in the layered magnetic topological insulator MnBi2Te4. They observed anomalies in phonon scattering intensities across magnetic field-driven phase transitions, despite the absence of discernible static structural changes. This behavior is a consequence of a magnetophononic wave-mixing process that allows for […]
Send in the Blow Flies: Using Insects to Sample Areas for Chemical Warfare Agents
Global Biodefense April 11, 2022 Blow flies sample the environment as they search for water and food sources and can be trapped from kilometers away using baited traps. Under a program sponsored by DARPA a team of researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University investigated blow flies as environmental chemical sample collectors following a chemical warfare attack (CWA). They exposed three species of blow flies to CWA simulants dimethyl methylphosphonate and diethyl phosphoramidate as well as the pesticide dichlorvos, followed by treatment-dependent temperature and humidity conditions to determine the persistence and detectability of these compounds under varying environmental conditions. Flies were sacrificed […]
Tailored single photons: Optical control of photons as the key to new technologies
Nanowerk April 6, 2022 Several different approaches to realize solid-state quantum emitters with high performance have been pursued and different concepts for energy tuning have been established. However, the properties of the emitted photons are always defined by the individual quantum emitter and can therefore not be controlled with full flexibility. An international team of researchers (Germany, USA – University of Arizona) has developed an all-optical nonlinear method to tailor and control the single photon emission. They demonstrated a laser-controlled down-conversion process from an excited state of a semiconductor quantum three-level system. Based on this concept, they realized energy tuning […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of April 8, 2022
01. Converting body heat into electricity: A step closer towards high-performance organic thermoelectrics 02. ‘Freeze-thaw battery’ is adept at preserving its energy 03. Making a ‘sandwich’ out of magnets and topological insulators, potential for lossless electronics 04. Nanomaterials: Light dependent atom clusters for sensing applications 05. Nano particle trapped between mirrors works as a quantum sensor 06. NASA uses moonlight to improve satellite accuracy 07. New quantum dots for quantum networks 08. New study solves mystery of how soft liquid droplets erode hard surfaces 09. Pollen paper that you can print on and ‘unprint’ 10. Quantum ‘shock absorbers’ allow perovskite […]
Converting body heat into electricity: A step closer towards high-performance organic thermoelectrics
Science Daily April 4, 2022 Researchers in Germany investigated the charge and thermoelectric transport in modulation-doped large-area rubrene thin-film crystals with different crystal phases. They showed that modulation doping allows achieving superior doping efficiencies even for high doping densities when conventional bulk doping runs into the reserve regime. Modulation-doped orthorhombic rubrene achieved much improved thermoelectric power factors. Modulation doping technique avoid impurity scattering in the highly ordered undoped narrow bandgap semiconductor allowing both carrier concentration and mobility to be independently maximized. The work paves new ways to achieve flexible thermoelectric devices to directly generate electrical power from heat in an […]
‘Freeze-thaw battery’ is adept at preserving its energy
Science Daily April 5, 2022 Grid-level storage of seasonal excess can be an important asset to renewable electricity. As a proof-of-concept researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory applied the freeze-thaw thermal cycling strategy to Al-Ni molten salt batteries and demonstrated effective capacity recovery over 90% after a period of 1–8 weeks. They explored three activation methods of the nickel cathode in a molten-salt battery: (1) heat treating the cathode granules under H2/N2, (2) incorporating a partially charged NiCl2/Ni cathode, and (3) doping the molten salt electrolyte with sulfur. Sulfur doping, a cost-efficient method suitable for large-scale applications, was not only […]
Making a ‘sandwich’ out of magnets and topological insulators, potential for lossless electronics
Nanowerk April 3, 2022 Inducing magnetic order in topological insulators via proximity to a magnetic material offers a promising pathway towards achieving quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect at higher temperatures for lossless transport applications. An international team of researchers (Australia, Singapore, USA – UC Berkeley) demonstrated the growth of a MnBi2Te4 / Bi2Te3 /MnBi2Te4 heterostructure via molecular beam epitaxy and probed the structure’s electronic structure using angle resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. They observed strong hexagonally warped massive Dirac fermions and a bandgap of 75 ± 15 meV. The 2D MnBi2Te4 ferromagnets induced magnetic order in the ultra-thin topological insulator Bi2Te3 via […]
Nanomaterials: Light dependent atom clusters for sensing applications
Phys.org April 1, 2022 An international team of researchers (Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland) has developed a new environment-sensing device based on the opto-ionic-electronic phenomena of an octahedral molybdenum metal (Mo6) cluster. When the Mo6 cluster is electrochemically deposited on a transparent electrode in an organic solvent containing a trace amount of water, the water permeates the deposited film. During the process, some ligand species that stabilize the frame structure of the Mo6 cluster are substituted with hydroxyl groups, and the negatively charged frame structure of the Mo6 cluster unit is stabilized by hydronium counterions. As a result, the transparent film […]
Nano particle trapped between mirrors works as a quantum sensor
Science Daily April 7, 2022 In an optical resonator light is reflected between mirrors, and it interacts with the levitated nanoparticle. Such interaction can give rise to dynamical instabilities which are often considered undesirable. An international team of researchers (Austria, Switzerland) has shown how they can be used as a resource. They have shown that by properly controlling these instabilities, the resulting unstable dynamics of a mechanical oscillator inside an optical cavity leads to mechanical squeezing. They applied this approach to a silica nanoparticle coupled to a microcavity via coherent scattering. The new protocol is robust in the presence of […]