https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. New experimental evidence of a collective behavior of electrons to form "quasiparticles" called "anyons" has been reported by a team of scientists at Purdue University. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-evidence-quantum-world-stranger-thought.html Quantum Physics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 16:08:09 EDT news518454479 By shining white light on a glass slide stippled with millions of tiny titanium dioxide pillars, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their collaborators have reproduced with astonishing fidelity the luminous hues and subtle shadings of "Girl With a Pearl Earring," Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer's masterpiece. The approach has potential applications in improving optical communications and making currency harder to counterfeit. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-nanopillars-precisely-intensity-transmitted.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Fri, 04 Sep 2020 16:01:26 EDT news518454071 Rock-melting forces occurring much deeper in the Earth than previously understood appear to drive tremors along a notorious segment of California's San Andreas Fault, according to new USC research that helps explain how quakes happen. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-deep-underground-quakes-san-andreas.html Earth Sciences Fri, 04 Sep 2020 14:00:03 EDT news518421841 The future economy based on renewable and sustainable energy sources might utilize battery-powered cars, large-scale solar and wind farms, and energy reserves stored in batteries and chemical fuels. Although there are examples of sustainable energy sources in use already, scientific and engineering breakthroughs will determine the timeline for widespread adoption. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-molecules-renewable-energy-future.html Materials Science Fri, 04 Sep 2020 13:23:32 EDT news518444607 In a recent report, Xiaolei Peng and a team of scientists in materials science and engineering at the University of Texas, U.S., and the Tsinghua University, China, developed opto-thermoelectric microswimmers bioinspired by the motion behaviors of Escherichia coli (E. coli). They engineered the microswimmers using dielectric gold Janus particles driven by a self-sustained electric field arising from the optothermal response of the particles. When they illuminated the constructs with a laser beam, the Janus particles showed an optically generated temperature gradient along the particle surfaces, forming an opto-thermoelectrical field to propel themselves along. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-opto-thermoelectric-microswimmers.html General Physics Optics & Photonics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 13:10:01 EDT news518442238 Electric current is everywhere, from powering homes to controlling the plasma that fuels fusion reactions to possibly giving rise to vast cosmic magnetic fields. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found that electrical currents can form in ways not known before. The novel findings could give researchers greater ability to bring the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars to Earth. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-unexpected-electrical-current-stabilize-fusion.html Plasma Physics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 12:43:48 EDT news518442223 Materials scientists at Duke University have uncovered an atomic mechanism that makes certain thermoelectric materials incredibly efficient near high-temperature phase transitions. The information will help fill critical knowledge gaps in the computational modeling of such materials, potentially allowing researchers to discover new and better options for technologies that rely on transforming heat into electricity. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-floppy-atomic-dynamics-electricity.html General Physics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 12:43:06 EDT news518442181 Although immune responses are generated by a complex, hierarchical arrangement of immune system organs, tissues, and components, the unit of the cell has a particularly large effect on disease progression and host survival. These cell-level defense mechanisms, known as cell-autonomous immunity, are among the most important determinants of human survival, and are millions to billions of years old, inherited from our prokaryotic and single-celled ancestors. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-cell-autonomous-immunity-pathogen-mediated-evolution-humans.html Evolution Cell & Microbiology Fri, 04 Sep 2020 12:42:52 EDT news518442168 If you have any children in your life, imagine for a moment that they don't look anything like their parents, they don't eat anything humans normally eat, and they're active only while adults sleep. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-big-tadpoles-frogs-complicated.html Plants & Animals Fri, 04 Sep 2020 11:21:15 EDT news518437268 Quantum bits, or qubits, can hold quantum information much longer now thanks to efforts by an international research team. The researchers have increased the retention time, or coherence time, to 10 milliseconds—10,000 times longer than the previous record—by combining the orbital motion and spinning inside an atom. Such a boost in information retention has major implications for information technology developments since the longer coherence time makes spin-orbit qubits the ideal candidate for building large quantum computers. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-technology-quantum-bits-longer-previous.html Quantum Physics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 11:09:34 EDT news518436571 Researchers have discovered how a protein in plant roots controls the uptake of minerals and water, a finding which could improve the tolerance of agricultural crops to climate change and reduce the need for chemical fertilizers. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-protein-discovery-fertilizer.html Plants & Animals Biotechnology Fri, 04 Sep 2020 11:09:05 EDT news518436542 A collaboration of researchers based in Kumamoto University, Japan have discovered microdiamonds in the Nishisonogi metamorphic rock formation in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. Microdiamonds in metamorphic rocks are important minerals because they form in continental collision zones and show that the crust has penetrated deeper than 120 km below the surface. This is the second area in the world, after the Italian Alps, that shows microdiamonds can form in metamorphic rock through subduction of oceanic plates. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-japan-geologic-history-discovery-metamorphic.html Earth Sciences Fri, 04 Sep 2020 11:06:01 EDT news518436357 An international team of researchers has learned more about the global silicon cycle by studying ancient soil samples in Australia. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of soil of different ages and what they learned about it. Joanna Carey with Babson College, has published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the connection between the carbon and silicon cycle and the work done by the team in this new effort. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-insights-global-silicon.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 04 Sep 2020 10:10:07 EDT news518430625 A new application of the CRISPR/Cas molecular scissors promises major progress in crop cultivation. At Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), researchers from the team of molecular biologist Holger Puchta have succeeded in modifying the sequence of genes on a chromosome using CRISPR/Cas. For the first time worldwide, they took a known chromosome modification in the thale cress model plant and demonstrated how inversions of the gene sequence can be undone and inheritance can thus be controlled specifically. The results are published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-inheritance-specifically.html Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 04 Sep 2020 10:10:07 EDT news518430719 Researchers from the Paul-Drude-Institut in Berlin, the Helmholtz-Zentrum in Dresden and the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg have demonstrated the use of elastic vibrations to manipulate the spin states of optically active color centers in SiC at room temperature. They show a non-trivial dependence of the acoustically induced spin transitions on the spin quantization direction, which can lead to chiral spin-acoustic resonances. These findings are important for applications in future quantum-electronic devices and have recently been published in Physical Review Letters. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-nanoearthquakes-centers-silicon-carbide.html Nanophysics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 10:10:06 EDT news518430737 Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified a small neutralizing antibody, a so-called nanobody, that has the capacity to block SARS-CoV-2 from entering human cells. The researchers believe this nanobody has the potential to be developed as an antiviral treatment against COVID-19. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-nanobody-covid-infection.html Bio & Medicine Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:50:04 EDT news518429913 The urgency of reducing single-use plastic in global supply chains has been highlighted by a University of Queensland study in collaboration with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-indonesia-coastal-shoulder-impacts-ocean.html Environment Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:50:03 EDT news518429768 In physics, it is essential to be able to show a theoretical assumption in actual, physical experiments. For more than a hundred years, physicists have been aware of the link between the concepts of disorder in a system, and information obtained by measurement. However, a clean experimental assessment of this link in common monitored systems, that is systems which are continuously measured over time, was missing so far. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-quantum-shown-experimentally.html Quantum Physics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:50:03 EDT news518430888 "Eat your vitamins" might be replaced with "ingest your ceramic nano-particles" in the future as space research is giving more weight to the idea that nanoscopic particles could help protect cells from common causes of damage. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-nano-particles-healthy-tissue.html Bio & Medicine Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:50:01 EDT news518430817 Autophagy, from the Greek for "self-eating," is an essential process that isolates and recycles cellular components under conditions of stress or when resources are limited. Cargoes such as misfolded proteins or damaged organelles are captured in a double membrane-bound compartment called the autophagosome and targeted for degradation. A fundamental question concerns precisely how these "garbage bags" form in the cell. Scientists led by Sascha Martens from the Max Perutz Labs, a joint venture of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, have now reconstructed the first steps in the formation of autophagosomes. They show that tiny vesicles loaded with the pro-tein Atg9 act as the seed from which the autophagosome emerges. The study is published in Science. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-reveal-key-formation-recycling.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:31:15 EDT news518430672 A team of researchers from Chile, Hungary, and Spain has created a model to show the factors that can result in heat death in multiple species of fruit flies. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes using established mathematical models to predict heat death under different scenarios and comparing it with heat tolerance data from prior research efforts. Raymond Huey and Michael Kearney with the University of Washington and the University of Melbourne, respectively, have published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the work by the team in this effort. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-death-fruit-flies-due-climate.html Ecology Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:29:24 EDT news518430557 EPFL researchers, working at the boundary between classical and quantum physics, have developed a method for quickly spotting molecules with particularly interesting electron properties. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-molecular-dynamics.html Condensed Matter Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:20:03 EDT news518429472 Low-temperature plasmas offer promise for applications in medicine, water purification, agriculture, pollutant removal, nanomaterial synthesis and more. Yet making these plasmas by conventional methods takes several thousand volts of electricity, says David Go, an aerospace and mechanical engineer at the University of Notre Dame. That limits their use outside high-voltage power settings. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-low-temperature-plasma-device-efficient.html Plasma Physics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:20:01 EDT news518429481 Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Institute of Photonic Sciences have developed a method to generate circularly polarized light from the ultimate symmetrical structure: the sphere. Their approach involves breaking the inherent symmetry of the sphere by electron beam excitation, which allows for precisely controlling the phase and polarization of the emitted light. This method can be used to encode information in the phase and polarization direction of circularly polarized light, enabling novel quantum communication and encryption technologies. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-squaring-circlebreaking-symmetry-sphere-polarization.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:18:26 EDT news518429904 Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have developed a unique method for precisely controlling the deposition of hydrogel, which is made of water-soluble polymers commonly used to support cells in experiments or for therapeutic purposes. Hydrogel mimics the extracellular matrix – the natural environment of cells in the body. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-coaxing-stem-cells-specialized.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:15:42 EDT news518429739 Nature's speed limits aren't posted on road signs, but Rice University physicists have discovered a new way to deduce them that is better—infinitely better, in some cases—than previous methods. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-quantum-limit-bounds.html Quantum Physics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:10:43 EDT news518429440 NASA's InSight mission provides data from the surface of Mars. Its seismometer, equipped with electronics built at ETH Zurich, not only records marsquakes, but unexpectedly reacts to solar eclipses as well. When the Martian moon, Phobos moves directly in front of the sun, the instrument tips slightly to one side. This miniscule effect could aid researchers in determining the planet's interior. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-solar-eclipse-mars-affects-interior.html Space Exploration Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:10:34 EDT news518429430 In atomic nuclei, protons and neutrons share energy and momentum in tight quarters. But exactly how they share the energy that keeps them bound within the nucleus—and even where they are within the nucleus—remain key puzzles for nuclear physicists. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-skin-deep-growth-neutron-stars.html General Physics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 07:47:18 EDT news518424436 The strength of connections, be it human connections within cities, or collaborative networks between cities, has been a key factor in determining how effectively the world's biggest cities have been able to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, according to leading experts. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-people-power-key-covid-pandemic.html Social Sciences Political science Fri, 04 Sep 2020 07:46:05 EDT news518424360 The absolute model age (AMA), or geologic age of Finsen crater on the moon's far side is determined to be about 3.5 billion years (Ga) based on crater counting method, according to a study published in Icarus. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-geologic-age-finsen-crater-side.html Space Exploration Fri, 04 Sep 2020 07:08:23 EDT news518422100