Phys.org March 29, 2022 Researchers in Germany have developed shape-stabilized phase change material which can absorb large amounts of heat by changing its physical state from solid to liquid. The stored heat is then re-released when the material hardens. They describe the steps involved in creating the structure of the material and how the different chemicals influence each other. Large panels of the material could be integrated into walls. These would then absorb heat during the sunny hours of the day and release it again later when the temperature goes down. Under the right conditions it could store up to […]
New Kind of Ultraviolet Light Safely Kills Airborne Pathogens Indoors, Scientists Say
Science Alert March 28, 2022 One potential solution for controlling airborne pathogens is Krypton Chloride (KrCl) excimer lamps (often referred to as Far-UVC), which can efficiently inactivate pathogens, such as coronaviruses and influenza, in air. Research has demonstrated that Krypton Chloride (KrCl) lamps do not induce acute reactions in the skin or eyes, nor delayed effects such as skin cancer. An international team of researchers has shown that Far-UVC deployed in a room-sized chamber effectively inactivates aerosolized Staphylococcus aureus. At a room ventilation rate of 3 air-changes-per-hour (ACH), with 5 filtered-sources the steady-state pathogen load was reduced by 98.4% providing […]
Printing circuits on rare nanomagnets puts a new spin on computing
Phys.org March 28, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland) combined theoretical and experimental work to fabricate and observe the artificial spin glass as a proof-of-principle. Hopfield neural network mathematically models associative memory to guide the disorder of the artificial spin systems. They performed temperature-dependent imaging of thermally driven moment fluctuations within these networks and observed characteristic features of a two-dimensional Ising spin glass. They observed clear signatures of the hard-to-observe rugged spin glass free energy in the form of sub-aging, out-of-equilibrium autocorrelations and a transition from stable […]
Rescued Victorian rainfall data smashes former records
Science Daily March 25, 2022 An international team of researchers (UK, Ireland) led the rainfall Rescue Project to digitize 5.2 million rainfall observations, recorded by hand on paper sheets now stored in the Met Office archives. The UK National Meteorological Archive recently scanned more than 66,000 paper sheets containing 5.28 million hand-written monthly rainfall observations taken across the UK and Ireland between 1677 and 1960. Only a small fraction of these observations was previously digitally available for climate scientists to analyze. More than 16,000 volunteer citizen scientists completed the transcription of these sheets of observations during early 2020 using the […]
Researchers discover source of super-fast electron rain
Phys.org March 30, 2022 The classical quasi-linear theory of electron precipitation through moderately fast diffusive interactions with plasma waves predicts that precipitating electron fluxes cannot exceed fluxes of electrons trapped in the radiation belt, setting an apparent upper limit for electron precipitation. From low-altitude satellite observations, an international team of researchers (USA – UCLA, France, Japan) has shown that ~100 keV electron precipitation rates often exceed this apparent upper limit. They demonstrated that such superfast precipitation is caused by nonlinear electron interactions with intense plasma waves, which have not been previously incorporated in radiation belt models. The high occurrence rate of […]
Study shows how superconductivity can be switched on and off in superconductors
Phys.org March 30, 2022 Recent experiments have suggested that superconductivity in metallic nanowires can be suppressed by the application of modest gate voltages. The source of this gate action has been debated and either attributed to an electric-field effect or to small leakage currents. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Italy, USA – IBM, NY) has shown that the suppression of superconductivity in titanium nitride nanowires on silicon substrates does not depend on the presence or absence of an electric field at the nanowire but requires a current of high-energy electrons. The suppression is most efficient when electrons are injected […]
Team achieves 30-fold enhancement of thermoelectric performance in polycrystalline tin selenide
Phys.org March 28, 2022 Tin selenide (SnSe) is known to exhibit a record high energy conversion (ZT) in its single crystal form. However, the performance deteriorates in practical polycrystals because of a low electronic conductivity (σ) and a high thermal conductivity (κ). Researchers in Japan enhanced the ZT of polycrystalline SnSe by demonstrating a high σ and a low κ simultaneously by introducing tellurium (Te) ion into the structure of SnSe. The large-size Te ion in Sn(Se1−xTex) forms weak Sn-Te bonds, leading to the high-density formation of hole-donating Sn vacancies and the reduced phonon frequency and enhanced phonon scattering. This […]
Universal flu vaccine candidate
Science Daily March 30, 2022 The highly conserved 24–amino acid ectodomain of M2 protein (M2e) is a leading candidate for a universal flu vaccine. However, its poor immunogenicity has been a major roadblock in its clinical development. An international team of researchers (Singapore, Australia) successfully leveraged a novel vaccine platform to deliver M2e to immune cells. This allowed them to prove that a single shot immunization containing M2e was able to trigger long-lasting immune responses that could protect effectively against multiple strains of the flu. They demonstrated that this approach significantly enhanced protective immune responses in the context of pre-existing […]
Water as a ‘glue’ for elasticity enhanced, wet attachment of biomimetic structures
Phys.org March 29, 2022 Octopus, clingfish, and larva use soft cups to attach to surfaces under water. Using a novel micro cup, fabricated by two-photon lithography, coupled with in situ pressure sensor and observation cameras, an international team of researchers (Germany, USA – University of Illinois) has detailed the nature of its attachment/detachment under water. It involves elasticity-enhanced hydrodynamics generating “self-sealing” and high suction at the cup-substrate interface, converting water into “glue.” Detachment is mediated by seal breaking. They identified three distinct mechanisms of breaking including elastic buckling of the cup rim. A mathematical model described the interplay between the […]
When a band falls flat: Searching for flatness in materials
Science Daily March 30, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – Princeton University, France, Germany, China, Spain) has developed a catalog of the naturally occurring three-dimensional stoichiometric materials with flat bands around the Fermi level. They considered 55,206 materials from the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database which provides their structural parameters, space group, band structure, density of states and topological characterization and combined several direct signatures and properties of band flatness with a high-throughput analysis of all crystal structures. From this set they created the Materials Flatband Database website https://www.topologicalquantumchemistry.fr/flatbands/ , with its own search engine for future theoretical and […]