Science Daily September 23, 2022 Silk fibroin protein, a biomaterial, has excellent biocompatibility and low immunogenicity. It is used in stents, catheters, and wound dressings. To further expand its scope and utility a team of researchers in the US (Tufts University, California State University at Fresno) has modulated the hydrophobicity of silk fibroin protein. They found that installing perfluorocarbon chains on the surface of silk fibroin transforms this water-soluble protein into a hydrophobic polymer that can be solvent-cast. A clear relationship emerged between fluorine content of the modified silk and film hydrophobicity. Water contact angles of the most decorated silk […]
Solar geoengineering might work, but local temperatures could keep rising for years
Phys.org September 28, 2022 Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), the theoretical deployment of particles in the stratosphere to enhance reflection of incoming solar radiation, is one of the strategies to slow, pause, or reverse global warming. SAI is likely be for a specific aim, such as affording time to implement mitigation strategies, lessening extremes, or reducing the odds of reaching a biogeophysical tipping point. A team of researchers in the US (Colorado State University, US Naval War College, RI) used an ensemble climate model experiment that simulated the deployment of SAI in the context of an intermediate greenhouse gas trajectory quantifying […]
The Tonga Eruption’s 50 Million Tons of Water Vapor May Warm Earth For Months to Come
Scince Alert September 25, 2022 Recently, researchers calculated that the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apa spewed a staggering 50 million tons of water vapor into the atmosphere, in addition to enormous quantities of ash and volcanic gases. Particles of rock and ash can also temporarily cool the planet by blocking sunlight. Widespread and violent volcanic activity in Earth’s distant past may have contributed to global climate change, triggering mass extinctions millions of years ago. In underwater volcanoes, submarine eruptions can draw large parts of their explosive energy from the interaction of water and hot magma, which propels huge quantities of […]
Tonga is home to 170 islands. A new one just formed from an underwater volcanic eruption
Phys.org September 27, 2022 The Pacific nation of Tonga is made up of 170 islands, but it just welcomed its newest addition—thanks to an underwater volcano. Near the center of the nation’s island formation lies the Home Reef volcano in the South Pacific. On Sept. 10, the volcano began to erupt for the first known time since 2006, oozing lava and ejecting plumes of steam and ash in and above water, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. Just 11 hours after the eruption began, a new island had appeared, and NASA confirmed its formation with satellite images. When the island was […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of September 23, 2022
01. 3D printing drones work like bees to build and repair structures while flying 02. The building blocks for exploring new exotic states of matter 03. Energy storage materials built from nano-sized molecular blocks 04. Hygroscopic polymeric gels: Collecting freshwater and energy from atmospheric moisture 05. The magneto-optic modulator 06. Negative feedback is part of academia (and life). These six strategies can help you cope 07. Researchers propose new technology for aviation materials to allow for adjusting their properties 08. Researchers Say It’ll Be Impossible to Control a Super-Intelligent AI 09. Silicon nanopillars for quantum communication 10. Terahertz light from […]
Scientists engineer mosquitoes that can’t spread malaria
Phys.org September 21, 2022 An international team of researchers (UK, USA – industry) has genetic modification that causes mosquitoes to produce compounds in their guts that stunt the growth of parasites, that are unlikely to reach the mosquitoes’ salivary glands and pass it on before the insects die. The technique reduced the possibility of malaria spread in a lab setting, and if proven safe and effective in real-world settings it could be a powerful new tool to help eliminate malaria. It can be coupled with existing “gene drive” technology to spread the modification and drastically cut malaria transmission. Only around […]
3D printing drones work like bees to build and repair structures while flying
Science Daily September 21, 2022 An international team of researchers (UK, Germany, USA – University of Pennsylvania, Switzerland) introduced aerial additive manufacturing (Aerial-AM) that utilizes a team of aerial robots inspired by natural builders such as wasps. They developed a scalable multi-robot 3D printing and path-planning framework that enabled robot tasks and population size to be adapted to variations in print geometry throughout a building mission. To validate Aerial-AM they developed BuilDrones for depositing materials during flight and ScanDrones for measuring the print quality and integrated a generic real-time model-predictive-control scheme with the Aerial-AM robots. The manufacturing accuracy was five […]
The building blocks for exploring new exotic states of matter
Nanowerk September 17, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – UCLA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Colorado, Northeastern University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Harvard University, Taiwan, India) developed an intrinsic ferromagnetic topological insulator with three nonmagnetic layers of Bi2Te3 between layers of MnBi2Te4, which when combined, created MnBi8Te13. This material design increases the distance between the MnBi2Te4 layers, which successfully eliminated the antiferromagnetic effect, leading to long-range ferromagnetism below 10.5 K with strong coupling between magnetism and charge carriers. They used a combination of synthesis, characterization tools, and theory to confirm the structure and properties of new magnetic […]
Can offering choice to researchers reduce researcher bias?
Phys.org September 21, 2022 The review process is designed to safeguard high standards, help improve promising work and weed out problematic papers, but a well-documented issue is bias in peer review. Whether conscious or otherwise, it compromises fair judgment based on things like gender, name, nationality, affiliation, or career status. To mitigate this researchers at the Michigan School of Information introduced and tested double-anonymous peer review, where the identities of authors as well as reviewers are concealed. The Institute of Physics was the first STM publisher to offer double-anonymous peer review across all their propriety journals on a voluntary basis […]
Elusive atmospheric wave detected during Tonga volcanic eruption
Phys.org September 19, 2022 Using state-of-the-art observational data and computer simulations an international team of researchers (Japan, USA -University of Hawaii) discovered the existence of Pekeris waves—fluctuations in air pressure that were theorized in 1937 but never proven to occur in nature, till after the Tonga eruption. The atmospheric wave pattern close to the eruption was quite complicated, but thousands of miles away the disturbances were led by an isolated wave front traveling horizontally at more than 650 miles per hour as it spread outward. The air pressure perturbations associated with the initial wave front were seen clearly on thousands […]