SciFi Insight

IMAGE: Rice University chemical and biomolecular engineer Haotian Wang has been selected as a 2021 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. view more  Credit: Rice University HOUSTON – (Feb. 17, 2021) – Chemical and biomolecular engineer Haotian Wang of Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering has been selected as a 2021 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. Wang

IMAGE: Researchers used advanced microscopy techniques to watch mesocrystals form in real-time. view more  Credit: (Composite image by Mike Perkins | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) When materials reach extremely small size scales, strange things begin to happen. One of those phenomena is the formation of mesocrystals. Despite being composed of separate individual crystals, mesocrystals come together to

IMAGE: Nanostructures (yellowish-green images; scale bar, 5 μm) were patterned onto dried corn syrup films, producing edible, rainbow-colored holograms (scale bar, 2 mm). view more  Credit: Adapted from ACS Nano 2021, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c02438 Holograms are everywhere, from driver’s licenses to credit cards to product packaging. And now, edible holograms could someday enhance foods. Researchers reporting in

The new method works without extremely high temperatures, is therefore more energy-efficient and has a significantly higher recovery rate (approx. 96 per cent of the starting material) than established processes. These findings will be published on 17 February 2021 in the scientific journal Nature. Mechanical recycling vs. chemical recycling “The direct re-utilization of plastics is

Research teams from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and the University of Copenhagen have therefore developed an approach that can predict the optimal composition and confirm its accuracy with high-throughput experiments. They report in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition of 28. December 2020. Much less expensive elements than previous catalysts Many electrochemical reactions go through several

Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines to prevent COVID-19 have made headlines around the world recently, but scientists have also been working on mRNA vaccines to treat or prevent other diseases, including some forms of cancer. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters have developed a hydrogel that, when injected into mice with melanoma, slowly released RNA

IMAGE: The latest generation of hollow-core Nested Antiresonant Nodeless Fibres, which have been pioneered in Southampton. view more  Credit: University of Southampton Researchers from the University of Southampton and Université Laval, Canada, have successfully measured for the first time back-reflection in cutting-edge hollow-core fibres that is around 10,000 times lower than conventional optical fibres. This discovery,

IMAGE: Schematic illustration of photosynthetic bacteria-based cancer optotheranostics. view more  Credit: Eijiro Miyako from JAIST. Cancer is one of the most thought-provoking healthcare problems throughout the world. The development of therapeutic agents with highly selective anti-cancer activities is increasingly attractive due to the lack of tumor selectivity of conventional treatments. Scientists at Japan Advanced Institute of

In our ongoing struggle to reduce the usage of fossil fuel, technology to directly convert the world’s waste heat into electricity stands out as very promising. Thermoelectric materials, which carry out this energy conversion process, have, thus, recently become the focus of intense research worldwide. Of the various potential candidates applicable at a broad range

IMAGE: His inventions in the field of spintronics have revolutionised computer technology. For this, Stuart Parkin will be honoured with the King Faisal Prize for Science 2021. view more  Credit: Marco Warmuth, TGZ Halle GmbH Parkin’s inventions in the field of spintronics have revolutionised computer technology, making it possible to increase the data density on hard

“Thin films are solid state substances that can be only several atomic layers thick. Usually, their properties are considerably different from the properties of the original substances on the macroscale. The areas of their application keep expanding and include nanoelectronics, optoelectronics, spintronics, electro-, and photocatalysis, as well as such important fields of economics as space

Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues have demonstrated that nanoengineered biodegradable microcapsules can guide the development of hippocampal neurons in an in vitro experiment. The microcapsules deliver nerve growth factor, a peptide necessary for neuron growth. The paper describing this work was published in the journal Pharmaceutics. Many neurodegenerative conditions that can lead to severe

The ‘sloshing’ of a quantum fluid comprised of light and matter reveals superfluid properties. An Australian-led team of physicists have successfully created sloshing quantum liquids in a ‘bucket’ formed by containment lasers. “These quantum fluids are expected to be as wavy as the oceans, but catching clear pictures of the waves is an experimental challenge,”

IMAGE: Artistic illustration of the graphene-based electro-absorption modulator. view more  Credit: ©ICFO/D. Alcaraz Over the past years, global data traffic has experienced a boom, with over 12.5 billion connected devices all over the world. The current world-wide deployment of the 5G telecommunications standard is triggering the need for smaller devices with enhanced performances, such as higher

IMAGE: Lead author FLEET PhD student Marina Castelli (Monash) examines samples in scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) view more  Credit: FLEET Could long-distance interactions between individual molecules forge a new way to compute? Interactions between individual molecules on a metal surface extend for surprisingly large distances – up to several nanometers. A new study, just published, of

IMAGE: Since 2002, a research team, led by Professor Osamu Kitagawa of Shibaura Institute of Technology, has developed chiral Pd-catalyzed enantioselective syntheses for N-C axially chiral compounds. view more  Credit: Rodolfo Clix from Pexels Atropisomers are a class of stereoisomers (chemical compounds that differ in spatial arrangement of atoms) arising from restricted rotation around a single