317 articles from TUESDAY 26.5.2020

Electrical fields can throw a curveball

Researchers have discovered a phenomenon that could be harnessed to control the movement of tiny particles floating in suspension. This approach, which requires simply applying an external electric field, may ultimately lead to new ways of performing certain industrial or medical processes that require separation of tiny suspended materials.

Designing a flexible material to protect buildings, military personnel

Shake, rattle and roll. Even though they are miles from the epicenter of an earthquake, buildings can collapse due to how an earthquake energy makes the ground shake and rattle. Now, a team of engineers has designed a flexible material that can help buildings withstand multiple waves of energy traveling through a solid material, including the simultaneous forward and backward and side-to-side...

Flow-through electrodes make hydrogen 50 times faster

Electrolysis, passing a current through water to break it into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, could be a handy way to store excess energy from wind or solar power. The hydrogen can be stored and used as fuel later, when the sun is down or the winds are calm.

Urge to merge: Understanding how cells fuse

Scientists have known for a decade that cells that fuse with others to perform their essential functions—such as muscle cells that join together to make fibers—form long projections that invade the territory of their fusion partners. But how the thin and floppy polymers involved in this process propel mechanically stiff protrusions has been unknown.

Warming climate is changing where birds breed: study

Spring is in full swing. Trees are leafing out, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing, and birds are singing. But a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that those birds in your backyard may be changing right along with the climate.

Mathematics can save lives at sea

An international research collaboration has developed a mathematical method that can speed up search and rescue operations at sea. The new algorithm accurately predicts locations to which objects and people floating in water will drift.

Triggered by light, a novel way to switch on an enzyme

In living cells, enzymes drive biochemical metabolic processes. It is this very ability which allows them to be used as catalysts in biotechnology, for example to create chemical products such as pharmaceutics. Researchers have identified an enzyme that, when illuminated with blue light, initiates a reaction that was previously unknown in enzymatics.

Modern problems, primitive solutions: A glimpse into archaic protein synthesis systems

The interaction between 'transfer RNAs' and the enzymes that help them in protein synthesis has always been the key area of interest for understanding the evolution of the genetic code. Now, a team of scientists reports that a subunit of 'alanyl-tRNA synthetase' enzyme of the primitive microorganism Nanoarchaeum equitans can mimic the super-primitive tRNA 'aminoacylation' independent of the...

High-strain exercise linked to very early pregnancy loss

In women with a history of miscarriage, higher levels of physical activity were associated with a greater risk of subclinical, or very early, pregnancy loss, according to new research. Among women with confirmed pregnancy, physical activity and miscarriage risk were unrelated.

Astronomers create cloud atlas for hot, Jupiter-like exoplanets

As astronomers ramp up study of the atmospheres of hot, Jupiter-like planets around other stars, they encounter clouds that obscure study of atmospheric gases. A new computer model looks at the proposals for cloud compositions -- from smog to rubies -- and finds that the most likely, over a large range of temperatures, are silicate clouds: aerosols of silicon and oxygen, like molten quartz or...

Controlling artificial cilia with magnetic fields and light

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Elon University have made artificial cilia, or hair-like structures, that can bend into new shapes in response to a magnetic field, then return to their original shape when exposed to the proper light source.