Phys.org July 19, 2021 Researchers in the UK used data from Earth observations and climate model simulations to develop a statistical learning analysis of how clouds respond to changes in the environment. They showed that global cloud feedback is dominated by the sensitivity of clouds to surface temperature and tropospheric stability. Considering changes in just these two factors, they were able to constrain global cloud feedback to 0.43 ± 0.35 W⋅m−2⋅K−1 (90% confidence), implying a robustly amplifying effect of clouds on global warming and only a 0.5% chance of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity below 2 K. The “cloud feedback” is the […]
Tag Archives: S&T UK
Novel coronavirus discovered in British bats
Science Daily July 19, 2021 Researchers in the UK have identified and sequenced a novel sarbecovirus (RhGB01) from a British horseshoe bat at the western extreme of the rhinolophid range. Their results extend both the geographic and species ranges of sarbecoviruses and suggest their presence throughout the horseshoe bat distribution. Within the spike protein receptor binding domain, but excluding the receptor binding motif, RhGB01 has a 77% (SARS-CoV-2) and 81% (SARS-CoV) amino acid homology. While apparently lacking hACE2 binding ability, and hence unlikely to be zoonotic without mutation, RhGB01 presents opportunity for SARS-CoV-2 and other sarbecovirus homologous recombination. Their findings […]
Meringue-like material could make aircraft as quiet as a hairdryer
Pys.org June 18, 2021 Researchers in the UK have developed an ultralight graphene oxide (GO)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) aerogel (GPA) with hierarchical and tunable porosity embedded in a honeycomb scaffold. The aerogels have an enhanced ability to dissipate sound energy, with an extremely low density of 2.10 kg m−3. They experimentally evaluated and optimised the effects of composition and thickness on sound absorption, and sound transmission losses. Then employed a semi-analytical approach to evaluate the effect of different processing times on acoustic properties and assessed the relationships between the acoustic and non-acoustic properties of the materials. Over the 400–2500 Hz range, […]
Scientists develop the ‘evotype’ to unlock power of evolution for better engineering biology
Phys.org June 8, 2021 Researchers in the UK have developed the concept of the evotype to help biological engineers both harness, design, and capture the evolutionary potential of a biosystem. The evotype can be broken into three key parts: Variation, Function, and Selection, with each of these offering a tuning knob for bioengineers to control the possible paths available to evolution. Many of the tools already available to bioengineers fitted nicely into their framework when considered from an evolutionary perspective. Their concept of the evotype not only provides a means for developing biotechnologies that can harness evolution in new ways, […]
Scientists unravel noise-assisted signal amplification in systems with memory
Phys.org May 27, 2021 Signals can be amplified by an optimum amount of noise, but stochastic resonance (SR) is a fragile phenomenon. To investigate the role of memory for this phenomenon an international team of researchers (the Netherlands, UK) used an oil-filled microcavity which, driven by a continuous wave laser, has memory in its nonlinear optical response. Modulating the cavity length while adding noise to the driving laser, they observed a peak in the transmitted signal-to-noise ratio as a function of the noise variance. Through simulations, they reproduced their observations and extrapolated that the SR bandwidth could be approximately 3000 […]
Folding 2D materials gives them new properties useful for quantum communications
Nanowerk May 24, 2021 The use of 2D materials for nonlinear optics are limited by intrinsically small light-matter interaction length and (typically) flat-lying geometries. Researchers in the UK arranged 2D sheets of tungsten (WS2) in a new way to create a 3D arrangement they called a nanomesh. Its unique characteristics are the result of the specific synthesis process they developed. Only light with energy larger than the energy gap can interact with the material in a useful way. If new energy levels are introduced inside this energy gap, the doubling of frequency of the light that passes through the material […]
Agents that target viral RNA could be the basis for next generation anti-viral drugs
EurekAlert May 10, 2021 The technique proposed by a team of researchers in the UK uses cylindrically shaped molecules which can block the function of a particular section at one end of the RNA strand called untranslated RNA that are essential for regulating the replication of the virus. They contain junction points and bulges which are normally recognised by proteins or other pieces of RNA. The cylindrical molecules are attracted to these holes. Once they slide into them, the RNA closes around them, forming a precise fit, which consequently will interfere with the virus’s ability to replicate. According to the […]
‘Bat-sense’ tech generates images from sound
Phys.org April 30, 2021 Full 3D information based on echo-location requires some form of scanning of the scene to provide the spatial location of the echo origin-points. Without this spatial information, imaging objects in 3D is a challenging task as the inverse retrieval problem is strongly ill-posed. Researchers in the UK showed that the temporal information encoded in the return echoes that are reflected multiple times within a scene is sufficient to faithfully render an image in 3D. Numerical modelling and an information theoretic perspective proved the concept and provided insight into the role of the multipath information. They experimentally […]
Inspired by nature, the research to develop a new load-bearing material
Phys.org April 22, 2021 Researchers in the UK developed a method to fabricate interconnected macro-porous elastomers based on sintering poly(methyl methacrylate) beads. The porous elastomer imparted structural support and resilience to its composite with an infused-grafted hydrogel. The composite exhibited a load-bearing behavior that was 14–19 times greater than that of pristine hydrogel and approximately 3 times greater than that of the porous elastomer. The equilibrium elastic modulus of the composite was close to the values reported for the modulus of cartilage tested with similar experimental parameters defined in this study. The composite immediately recovers its load-bearing properties with the […]
First steps towards revolutionary ULTRARAM™ memory chips
Science Daily March 29, 2021 Researchers in the UK have implemented ULTRARAM which is a III-V compound semiconductor memory concept that exploits quantum resonant tunneling to achieve nonvolatility at extremely low switching energy per unit area. They exploited resonant tunneling that allows a barrier to switch from opaque to transparent by applying a small voltage. ULTRARAM™, is a working implementation of the so-called ‘universal memory’, with all the advantages of DRAM and flash, with none of the drawbacks. They integrated ULTRARAM™ devices into small (4-bit) arrays which allowed them to experimentally verify the memory architecture that would form the basis […]