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Liquid crystals undergo a peculiar type of phase change. At a certain temperature, their cigar-shaped molecules go from a disordered jumble to a more orderly arrangement in which they all point more or less in the same direction. ...
Inorganic semiconductors such as silicon are indispensable in modern electronics because they possess tunable electrical conductivity between that of a metal and that of an insulator. The electrical conductivity of a semiconductor ...
Water's lack of color, taste and smell make it seem simple – and on a molecular level, it is. However, when many water molecules come together they form a highly complex network of hydrogen bonds. This network is believed ...
As a single raindrop falls to the ground, it can splash back up in a crown-like sheet, spraying smaller droplets from its rim before sinking back to the surface—all in the blink of an eye.
The scientists of the Lobachevsky University and the Institute of Low Temperatures and Structural Research in Wroclaw (Poland) have conducted unique studies of oscillation properties using optical spectroscopy.
The unusual electronic and magnetic properties of van der Waals (vdW) materials, made up of many 'stacked' 2-D layers, offer potential for future electronics, including spintronics.
Scientists have used a powerful X-ray laser to heat water from room temperature to 100,000 degrees Celsius in less than a 10th of a picosecond (millionth of a millionth of a second). The experimental setup, which can be seen ...
An international research team from Russia, France and Germany has proposed a new method for orienting liquid crystals. It could be used to increase the viewing angle of liquid-crystal displays. The paper was published in ...
Liquid crystals—much like the ones forming these words on computer monitors—could be tuned to fight bacteria or scuttle compromised electronics by reacting to subtle changes in their environment with tiny, measured doses ...
Winter sports such as skiing, speed skating, figure skating, and curling require the slippery surfaces of ice and snow. While the fact that the ice surface is slippery is widely acknowledged, it is far from being completely ...
Great science stems from curiosity and hard work. In this case, it all began with a broken freezer.
A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology has taken a hard look at the challenges facing efforts to carry out the Breakthrough Starshot project. In their Perspective piece published in the journal Nature ...
Yale physicists have uncovered hints of a time crystal—a form of matter that "ticks" when exposed to an electromagnetic pulse—in the last place they expected: a crystal you might find in a child's toy.
Some materials can morph into multiple crystal structures with very different properties. For instance, squeezing a soft form of carbon produces diamond, a harder and more brilliant form of carbon. The Kurt Vonnegut novel ...
Surfaces that repel water can support efficient boiling if all air and vapor is removed from a system first, according to research featured on the cover of the most recent issue of Physical Review Letters.
Researchers have found new methods to measure the internal pressure and surface tension of nano-sized drops of liquid like those involved in cloud formation and airborne pollutants to study how they behave in different environments. ...
In even the most fuel-efficient cars, about 60 percent of the total energy of gasoline is lost through heat in the exhaust pipe and radiator. To combat this, researchers are developing new thermoelectic materials that can ...
Solar cells with efficiencies above 20% and produced at low costs – perovskites make this possible. Now, researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have gained fundamental insight into the function of perovskite ...
The next generation of energy-efficient power electronics, high-frequency communication systems, and solid-state lighting rely on materials known as wide bandgap semiconductors. Circuits based on these materials can operate ...
Linear polyenes are hydrocarbon chains with unusual optical and electrical properties. They have become a paradigm for studying photoisomerization—when molecular structures rearrange from absorbing light—because of their ...
Diamond is well-known as the strongest of all natural materials, and with that strength comes another tightly linked property: brittleness. But now, an international team of researchers from MIT, Hong Kong, Singapore, and ...
Researchers at Aalto University and Cambridge University have made a significant breakthrough in computational science by combining atomic-level modeling and machine learning. For the first time, the method has been used ...
Each year, the effects of corroding materials sap more than $1 trillion from the global economy. As certain alloys are exposed to extreme stress and temperatures, an oxide film begins to form, causing the alloys to break ...
Machine learning algorithms excel at finding complex patterns within big data, so researchers often use them to make predictions. Researchers are pushing this emerging technology beyond finding correlations to help uncover ...
What do paint, dishwasher detergent, ketchup and blood have in common? All are composed of particles suspended in a carrier liquid, flow when stirred or forced, but remain thick or even gel-like at rest.
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The surfaces of materials can have an enormous influence on their function. If the external properties are changed, this also expands the range of possible applications. This is why materials scientists at Friedrich Schiller ...
Blend two or three metals together and you get an alloy that usually looks and acts like a metal, with its atoms arranged in rigid geometric patterns.
If you want to know how to pour the perfect pint or create the ultimate cup of coffee, then you really need a mathematician.
A new way to control how liquids dry on surfaces which could bring benefits to a range of industries, has been discovered by researchers from Northumbria University and The Open University.
Metamaterials researchers at Duke University have demonstrated the design and construction of a thin material that can control the redirection and reflection of sound waves with almost perfect efficiency.
When power generators like windmills and solar panels transfer electricity to homes, businesses and the power grid, they lose almost 10 percent of the generated power. To address this problem, scientists are researching new ...
The term "superfluid quasicrystal" sounds like something a comic-book villain might use to carry out his dastardly plans.
The complex properties of water and ice are not well understood but a team from UCL and the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source have revealed new information about a phase of ice called ice II.
Cornell researchers have become the first to control atomically thin magnets with an electric field, a breakthrough that provides a blueprint for producing exceptionally powerful and efficient data storage in computer chips, ...
Growing crystals just got a little easier thanks to work by an international team from Virginia Tech, Harvard University, and AMOLF, operated by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter Institute AMOLF) in Netherlands.
A new study published in Nature Physics describes how a team of scientists used a laser beam to gain access to long-lived soundwaves in crystalline solids as the basis for a potentially new approach to information processing ...
By learning how water is collected by living organisms, including rice leaves and pitcher plants, scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas created and tested a combination of materials that can do the same thing, but ...
A team of scientists from across the U.S. has found a new way to create molecular interconnections that can give a certain class of materials exciting new properties, including improving their ability to catalyze chemical ...
Friction is created when two surfaces slide one on top of the other. Since this consumes additional energy, this so-called sliding friction is considered an irksome yet inevitable aspect of dynamic processes. However, to ...
Spray coating and inkjet-based electronics manufacture are among the industrial applications in which liquid droplets are applied to a surface. But minuscule air bubbles that get trapped beneath the droplet as it lands can ...
Scientists from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to print 3-D structures composed entirely of liquids. Using a modified 3-D printer, they injected threads ...
Glassy substances are everywhere, yet this state of matter is not completely understood. The basic picture is clear enough—glasses are solids that lack the regular atomic structure of a crystal. How and why they form, however, ...
A Japan-based research team has studied the anomalous behavior of tetrahedral liquids such as water. Via computer simulation, they calculated the phase diagrams of a range of model liquids. Varying a parameter called lambda ...
When a massive astrophysical object, such as a boson star or black hole, rotates, it can cause the surrounding spacetime to rotate along with it due to the effect of frame dragging. In a new paper, physicists have shown that ...
Imagine being able to power your car partly from the heat that its engine gives off. Or what if you could get a portion of your home's electricity from the heat that a power plant emits? Such energy-efficient scenarios may ...
A new experimental discovery, led by researchers at the University of Minnesota, demonstrates that the chemical element ruthenium (Ru) is the fourth single element to have unique magnetic properties at room temperature. The ...
Freeways choked with traffic, supermarkets laden with fertilizer-grown stock from distance fields and virtually everything we touch derived from petroleum-based plastics. It's hard to imagine life beyond our fossil-fueled ...
Scientists in South Africa on Friday launched the world's first optical telescope linked to a radio telescope, combining "eyes and ears" to try to unravel the secrets of the universe.
Iron-rich rocks near ancient lake sites on Mars could hold vital clues that show life once existed there, research suggests.
Glacial retreat in cold, high-altitude ecosystems exposes environments that are extremely sensitive to phosphorus input, new University of Colorado Boulder-led research shows. The finding upends previous ecological assumptions, ...
Alex Betts, Craig MacLean and Kayla King from the Department of Zoology, shed light on their recent research published in Science, which addressed the impact that parasite communities have on evolutionary change and diversity.
Researchers from the University of Virginia have established new guidelines for scientists mapping out the body molecule by molecule to help us better understand how our cells use metals such as iron and magnesium to maintain ...
Finding a new particle is always a nice surprise, but measuring its characteristics is another story and just as important. Less than a year after announcing the discovery of the particle going by the snappy name of Ξcc++ (Xicc++), ...
Certain types of bacteria and viruses are readily ejected into the atmosphere when waves break while other taxa are less likely to be transported by sea spray into the air, researchers reported May 22.
Researchers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have discovered why bioelectrodes containing the photosynthesis protein complex photosystem I are not stable in the long term. Such electrodes could be useful for converting light ...
Every cell in our bodies is shaped by its outer coating, or biomembrane. This incredible, naturally created nanostructure wraps the cell in a supportive and protective blanket, allowing the cell to carry out its normal function ...
A small team of researchers from the U.S. and Tunisia has found evidence that suggests a huge asteroid that struck the Earth approximately 66 million years ago caused the planet to warm up for approximately 100,000 years. ...
A federal court jury on Thursday ordered Samsung to pay Apple $533 million for copying iPhone design features in a patent case dating back seven years.
A new NASA-led study shows that climate change is likely to intensify extreme weather events known as atmospheric rivers across most of the globe by the end of this century, while slightly reducing their number.
The presence of microbial life in Earth's stratosphere is not only opening up a new arena in which to study extremophiles, but is increasing the range of possible environments in which we may find life on other planets. This ...
Beta-amyloid peptides, protein fragments that form naturally in the brain and clump into plaques in Alzheimer's disease patients, are thought to be responsible for neuron death, but it hasn't been clear how the substances ...
Iridescence is a form of structural colour which uses regular repeating nanostructures to reflect light at slightly different angles, causing a colour-change effect.
The 12 m radio telescope APEX in Chile has been outfitted with special equipment including broad bandwidth recorders and a stable hydrogen maser clock for performing joint interferometric observations with other telescopes ...
EPFL has developed tiny fibers made of elastomer that can incorporate materials like electrodes and nanocomposite polymers. The fibers can detect even the slightest pressure and strain, and can withstand deformation of close ...
Researchers have discovered mountain ranges and three huge, deep subglacial valleys from data collected during the first modern aerogeophysical survey of the South Pole region.
Chinese scientists have turned copper–iodine cluster molecules into aggregated, highly luminescent nanostructures for use in light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The solid-state assemblies made of complexes of the copper–iodine ...
Humans aren't the only earth-bound organisms that need to take their vitamins. Thiamine – commonly known as vitamin B1 – is vital to the survival of most every living thing on earth. But the average bacterium or plant ...
A mountain range with a total length of 65,000 kilometers runs through all the oceans. It marks the boundaries of tectonic plates. Through the gap between the plates, material from the Earth's interior emerges, forming new ...
They roam Morocco's southern desert, braving the searing heat to scour the undulating sands for bounty fallen from the sky.
All plants require an adequate supply of inorganic nutrients, such as fixed nitrogen (usually in the form of ammonia or nitrate), for growth. A special group of flowering plants thus depends on close symbiotic relationships ...
The European Union's new data protection laws came into effect on Friday, with Brussels saying the changes will protect consumers from being like "people naked in an aquarium".
A small team of physicists that includes Jessie Shelton of the University of Illinois and David Curtin of the University of Toronto has written a paper and presented it at this year's American Physical Society meeting outlining ...
The sky sometimes has its limits, according to new research from two University of Chicago atmospheric scientists.
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