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90 articles from PhysOrg

Designing flexible and stretchable single crystal electronic systems

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in collaboration with a Purdue team have discovered that certain crystals are more flexible and stretchable compared to current materials used for electronic applications. These new materials could therefore be used for making sensors and in robotics.

Atomically thin magnets for next generation spin and quantum electronics

As our smartphones, laptops, and computers get smaller and faster, so do the transistors inside them that control the flow of electricity and store information. But traditional transistors can only shrink so much. Now, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have developed a new atomically thin magnetic semiconductor that will allow the development of new transistors that work in a...

Dynamics of gut bacteria follow ecological laws

The seemingly chaotic bacterial soup of the gut microbiome is more organized than it first appears and follows some of the same ecological laws that apply to birds, fish, tropical rainforests, and even complex economic and financial markets, according to a new paper in Nature Microbiology by researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

How a mint became catmint

Catmint, also known as catnip, is well-known for its intoxicating effect on cats. The chemical responsible for the cats' strange behavior is nepetalactone, a volatile iridoid produced by catmint. An international team of researchers has now found through genome analysis that the ability to produce iridoids had already been lost in ancestors of catmint in the course of evolution. Hence,...

Microscopic feather features reveal fossil birds' colors and explain why cassowaries shine

Cassowaries are big flightless birds with blue heads and dinosaur-looking feet; they look like emus that time forgot, and they're objectively terrifying. They're also, along with their ostrich and kiwi cousins, part of the bird family that split off from chickens, ducks, and songbirds 100 million years ago. In songbirds and their relatives, scientists have found that the physical make-up of...

Virus protein discovery reveals new plant-animal class of cell division disruptors

Viruses are ubiquitous pathogens that can cause severe infectious diseases in both humans and agricultural crops. As most viruses have simple genomes and encode only a few proteins, they must usurp host cell resources for propagation. Understanding what host processes are disrupted and which viral proteins are involved greatly facilitate the design of therapeutic measures for controlling viral...

Chemistry job seekers face tough outlook during pandemic

Even though it's been over a decade, the 2008 recession and its effects still loom over the chemistry enterprise. And now with the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down labs and universities across the world, chemistry students and professionals are again facing hiring freezes, reduced pay and other career obstacles. Chemical & Engineering News spoke with chemists about how they're navigating the...

The discovery of Comet SWAN by solar-watcher SOHO

Currently crossing the skies above Earth, Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) has the potential to become a more prominent naked eye object by late May or early June. Yet it wasn't discovered by someone looking up at the night sky. Instead, the person was looking at a computer screen.

Bacterial injection system with a light-controlled molecular switch

When bacteria such as Salmonella or Yersinia cause fever, diarrhoea or abdominal pain, tiny 'injection needles' are at work: their type 3 secretion system, or T3SS for short, shoots bacterial virulence proteins directly into the eukaryotic host cells. Researchers have thought of using bacterial injection devices to introduce proteins into eukaryotic cells. A Max Planck research team has now...

CRISPR plants: new non-GMO method to edit plants

An NC State researcher has developed a new way to get CRISPR/Cas9 into plant cells without inserting foreign DNA. This allows for precise genetic deletions or replacements, without inserting foreign DNA. Therefore, the end product is not a genetically modified organism, or GMO.

Grounded aircraft could make weather forecasts less reliable

Thanks to travel restrictions and plummeting customer demand, the number of flights in the first week of April 2020 was down 61% compared with the same period in 2019. The pandemic has emptied the skies of aircraft, but it's not just the airline industry that's reeling from the sudden change.

Unique polymer-based fabrication process for low-cost, higher yield reprogrammable photonic integrated circuits

The future looks bright for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) as they look destined for use in quantum computing and deep learning technologies. As PICs carry light signals rather than electrical signals, accurate control of their refractive properties is essential. Traditional techniques for programming photonic devices rely on exposure to light and heat. However, this leads to high power...

How did the old masters make their ultramarine?

Researchers at the Rijksmuseum, the University of Amsterdam, VU Amsterdam and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) have developed a method that reveals how the costly pigment ultramarine was prepared from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. Thanks to X-ray examinations of paint samples, they can now look back more than four hundred years to determine whether the blue stones were...

'Building' sustainability for buildings

The Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development was pleased to host John Mandyck, the CEO of Urban Green Council as part of the Spring 2020 Speaker Series. With a mission to transform buildings for a more sustainable future in New York City and around the world, the Urban Green Council researches and educates on policy solutions to enhance the sustainability of buildings.