EurekAlert January 8, 2020 Researchers in Switzerland have developed a material via a hydrogel precursor dried into an aerogel. Annealing of the polystyrene matrix under vacuum gives rise to a homogeneous template. The final apparent density and porosity of the material depend directly on the volumetric concentration of the starting solution used for hydrogel formation. After annealing, a homogeneous microstructure is obtained in which the shining gold single crystal platelets are evenly embedded in a polystyrene matrix. The material has a glass transition temperature of ≈105 °C, the Young’s modulus of the material with a density of 1.7 g cm−3 […]
Tag Archives: S&T Switzerland
A momentous view on the birth of photoelectrons
Phys.org December 5, 2019 The creation of photoelectrons through ionisation is one of the most fundamental processes in the interaction between light and matter and in some cases, it is the transfer of linear momentum from photons to electrons which is not well understood. By a time-resolved measurement of linear momentum transfer along the laser pulse propagation direction researchers in Switzerland have shown that the linear momentum transfer to the photoelectron depends on the ionization time within the laser cycle using the attoclock technique. The research opened a new exciting route to explore the very fundamental nature of light-matter interactions…read […]
A new equation may have finally solved Einstein’s ‘biggest blunder’
Space.com September 6, 2019 Researchers in Switzerland have introduced a new way of evaluating Albert Einstein’s equations of gravity to find a value for the cosmological constant that closely matches its observed value by adding an additional equation on top of Einstein’s field equations. In their modification of general relativity, the gravitational constant remains the same within our observable universe but may vary in a multiverse scenario where there may be patches of the universe invisible to us that have different values for the fundamental constants. Using this they found the universe is made up of about 74% dark energy. […]
1 in 5 Cities Is About to Have a Climate Unknown to Any Place on Earth
Science Alert July 11, 2019 Researchers in Switzerland analyzed city pairs for 520 major cities of the world and tested if their climate in 2050. They found that even under an optimistic climate scenario 77% of future cities are very likely to experience a climate that is closer to that of another existing city than to its own current climate. As a general trend, they found that all the cities tend to shift towards the sub-tropics, with cities from the Northern hemisphere shifting to warmer conditions, on average ~1000 km south and cities from the tropics shifting to drier conditions…read […]
Researchers crack an enduring physics enigma
Science Daily May 28, 2019 The equations used to describe the large variety of phenomena occurring in fluid flows are well known. But when turbulence comes into play, the solutions to the equations become non-linear, complex and chaotic. This makes it impossible, for example, to predict weather over an extended time horizon. Yet turbulence has a surprising tendency to move from chaos to a highly structured pattern of turbulent and laminar bands. Until now, researchers didn’t have powerful enough mathematical tools to verify this. Researchers in Switzerland combined dynamical systems theory, with existing theories on pattern formation in fluids and […]
Producing electricity at estuaries using light and osmosis
Eurekalert May 23, 2019 Researchers in Switzerland are working on a method to capture an energy source that’s constantly available at river estuaries: osmotic power, also known as blue energy. Blue energy relies on the chemical potential difference between solutions of high and low ionic concentrations, potentially providing an independent energy source at estuaries around the world. Single nanopores in molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2)-based membranes have shown record-high power outputs in alkaline conditions. By increasing the surface charge of MoS 2 membranes by light, we can double the osmotic power generated by a single nanopore at a neutral pH. The […]
Scientists Have Found a Way to Prevent Water From Ever Becoming Ice
Science Alert April 12, 2019 There are around 20 different molecular varieties of water– some so esoteric and rare, they may only exist inside computer simulations, or buried within distant planets. The physical confinement of water at the nanoscale can play a major role in controlling its properties. Confinement in the nanometre range can inhibit the arrangement of water molecules into an ice structure, and thereby prevent crystallisation at subzero temperature and create a state of amorphous water. Researchers in Switzerland synthesised a new class of fat molecules that form into a soft biological material called a lipidic mesophase, an […]
Data transfer by controlled noise
Phys.org March 1, 2019 Researchers in Switzerland used double-slit experiment to show that correlations indicate how well one can predict, for instance, the oscillatory phase of one light wave if one knows the phase of the other wave. Even if both phases are noisy they can still do so in a more or less synchronized fashion. They have demonstrated that correlations exist between pairs of light waves, which means that the number of those correlations does not increase linearly with the number of light waves, but roughly quadratically. In principle, therefore, it should be possible to transmit six bits of […]
How does the brain learn by talking to itself?
Medical Express January 2, 2019 Researchers in Switzerland previously showed that synaptic learning mechanisms in the brain’s cortex are dependent on feedback from deeper brain regions. They have now deciphered how this feedback gates synaptic strengthening by switching particular inhibitory neurons on and off. They have identified which neurons are involved in this mechanism in mouse. They will test their results in “real life” to check whether the inhibiting neurons will behave as predicted when a mouse needs to learn new sensory information or when it discovers new aspects in its tactile environment. The findings might be relevant for unsupervised […]
New Foldable Drone Flies Through Narrow Holes in Rescue Missions
Science Daily December 12, 2018 Researchers in Switzerland propose a novel, simpler, yet effective morphing design for quadrotors consisting of a frame with four independently rotating arms that fold around the main frame. To guarantee stable flight at all times, they exploit an optimal control strategy that adapts on the fly to the drone morphology. Using a fully autonomous quadrotor relying solely on onboard visual-inertial sensors and compute, they demonstrated the versatility of the proposed adaptive morphology in different tasks, such as negotiation of narrow gaps, close inspection of vertical surfaces, and object grasping and transportation…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE