Nature February 16, 2022 In January 2023, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will begin requiring most of the 300,000 researchers and 2,500 institutions it funds annually to include a data-management plan in their grant applications — and to eventually make their data publicly available. Under the new policy, which will go into effect on 25 January, all NIH grant applications for projects that collect scientific data must include a ‘data management and sharing’ (DMS) plan that contains details about the software or tools needed to analyse the data, when and where the raw data will be published and […]
Strong, stretchy, self-healing polymers rapidly recover from damage
Phys.org February 28, 2022 Previously researchers in Japan synthesized multiblock copolymers that exhibited excellent elasticity and self-healing by using the two-component copolymerization of non-polar ethylene and polar methoxyaryl-substituted propylenes. Now they have developed a three-component ‘terpolymer’ of ethylene and two different methoxyaryl-functionalized propylenes using a scandium catalyst. The long, soft sections form a highly flexible matrix, within which are hard and crystalline sections that rapidly re-aggregate after the material is cut, thereby self-healing any damage within five minutes to recover 99% of its toughness and 97% of its tensile strength. The material could be stretched to almost 14 times its […]
Surprising semiconductor properties revealed with innovative new method
Phys.org March 1, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – PNNL, UT Arlington) tested germanium in combination with a specialized thin crystalline film of lanthanum-strontium-zirconium-titanium-oxide (LSZTO) using hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy which can penetrate the material and generate information at the atomic level. They found that the oxygen atoms near the interface donate electrons to the LSZTO film, creating holes in the germanium within a few atomic layers of the interface. These specialized holes resulted in behavior that totally eclipsed the semiconducting properties of both n- and p-type germanium in the different samples they prepared. According to the researchers […]
Using two different elements creates new possibilities in hybrid atomic quantum computers
Nanowerk March 2, 2022 Researchers at the University of Chicago have introduced a dual-element atom array with individual control of single rubidium and cesium atoms. They were placed in arrays with up to 512 trapping sites and observed negligible crosstalk between the two elements. Furthermore, by continuously reloading one atomic element while maintaining an array of the other, they demonstrated a new continuous operation mode for atom arrays without any off-time. According to the researchers the results enable avenues for auxiliary-qubit-assisted quantum protocols such as quantum nondemolition measurements and quantum error correction, as well as continuously operating quantum processors and […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of February 25, 2022
01. A new platform for customizable quantum devices 02. Evidence for exotic magnetic phase of matter 03. New material offers remarkable combo of toughness and stretchiness 04. Physicists harness electrons to make ‘synthetic dimensions’ 05. Scientists greatly expand the frequencies generated by a miniature optical ruler 06. Mechanical metamaterials: Toughness and design criteria 07. Microparticles show ability to turn in reverse, paving the way for microfluidic devices 08. Self-healing materials for robotics made from ‘jelly’ and salt 09. Wallet-sized device focuses terahertz energy to generate high-resolution images 10. World’s smallest battery can power dust-sized computer And others… How Pathogens Learn […]
Evidence for exotic magnetic phase of matter
Science Daily February 22, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – Brookhaven National Laboratory, University of Tennessee, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Switzerland, Japan, China) started their investigation of strontium iridium oxide (Sr3Ir2O7) starting at high temperature and gradually cooled the material. With cooling, the energy gap gradually narrowed. At 285 Kelvin electrons started jumping between the magnetic layers of the material but immediately formed bound pairs with the holes they’d left behind, simultaneously triggering the antiferromagnetic alignment of adjacent electron spins. They showed that their model comprehensively explains the experimental results. Understanding the connections between electrons’ […]
How Pathogens Learn To Be Pathogens: Partnerships Between Microbes Lead to Human Disease
SciTech Daily February 21, 2022 Microbes compete for resources and must also hide from or fight predators. Using the fungus Rhizopus, which grows in the soil and on spoiled food, an international team of researchers (UK, USA – UCLA) showed how it fights back against this predator by partnering with a bacteria called Ralstonia in a two-way partnership. By living inside Rhizopus, Ralstonia hides from the predator. In return, Ralstonia makes a toxin that Rhizopus can use to neutralize the predator, preventing it from feeding on the pair. By learning to fight off predators in the soil, Rhizopus has also […]
How to look thousands of kilometers deep into the Earth
Phys.org February 21, 2022 To understand how Earth has cooled and produced a solid mantle and crust, we need to know the physical properties of molten rocks at extreme pressure. An international team of researchers (Germany, UK) used the brightness of reflection from a multicolor laser to measure the refractive index of SiO2 glass and the path length of the laser inside the sample at pressures of up to 110 gigapascals, pressures similar to that at the depth of more than 2000 km in the Earth. These measurements yielded the refractive index of SiO2 glass and provided key information to […]
Mechanical metamaterials: Toughness and design criteria
Phys.org February 21, 2022 Rapid progress in additive manufacturing methods has created a new class of ultralight mechanical metamaterials with extreme functional properties. Their application is ultimately limited by their tolerance to damage and defects, but an understanding of this sensitivity has remained elusive. An international team of researchers (UK, USA – Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University, UCLA, industry) used metamaterial specimens consisting of millions of unit cells, to show that not only is the stress intensity factor, as used in conventional elastic fracture mechanics, insufficient to characterize fracture, but also that conventional fracture testing protocols are inadequate. With […]
Microparticles show ability to turn in reverse, paving the way for microfluidic devices
Nanowerk February 23, 2022 Self-organized vortex of rotating microparticles in a fluid will reverse direction when an electric stimulus is interrupted and then reapplied with the same orientation. A team of researchers in the US (Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University) investigated how these collective self-assembled states can be controlled and manipulated, and what would happen when they stopped and then restarted the field fueling the motion of the particles. They found that the particles’ relative positions created a kind of distributed collective memory that caused them to begin to rotate in the opposite direction. They found that this phenomenon was […]