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IMAGE: Protocells containing bubble-like compartments formed spontaneously on a mineral-like and encapsulated fluorescent dye. This could have been what happened 3.8 billion years ago when cells first began to form.. view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Karolina Spustova.
New research by the University of Oslo provides evidence that the protocells that formed around 3.8 billion years ago, before bacteria and single-celled organisms, could have had specialized bubble-like compartments that formed spontaneously, encapsulated small molecules, and formed daughter protocells.
ROCKVILLE, MD - Scientists have long speculated about the features that our long-ago single-celled ancestors might have had, and the order in which those features came about. Bubble-like compartments are a hallmark of the superkingdom to which we, and many other species including yeast, belong. But the cells in today s superkingdom have a host of specialized molecules that help make and
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IMAGE: A Tetris-like grid of high-entropy carbides (blue) and borides (red) is expected to produce super-hard materials that can literally stir two pieces of steel together. view more
Credit: Duke University
A nationwide collaboration led by researchers at Duke University s Center for Autonomous Materials Design is working to synthesize inexpensive materials hard enough to literally stir two pieces of steel together with little wear and tear.
Funded by a five-year, $7.5 million grant through the Department of Defense s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) competition, the team will also develop a suite of AI-materials tools capable of the on-demand designing of similar materials with properties tailored to a wide range of applications.
Researchers believe they have closed the case of what killed the dinosaurs, definitively linking their extinction with an asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago by finding a key piece of evidence: asteroid dust inside the impact crater.
Credit: American Chemical Society
Plants and animals can rapidly respond to changes in their environment, such as a Venus flytrap snapping shut when a fly touches it. However, replicating similar actions in soft robots requires complex mechanics and sensors. Now, researchers reporting in
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have printed liquid metal circuits onto a single piece of soft polymer, creating an intelligent material that curls under pressure or mechanical strain. Watch a video of the smart material here.
Ideally, soft robots could mimic intelligent and autonomous behaviors in nature, combining sensing and controlled movement. But the integration of sensors and the moving parts that respond can be clunky or require an external computer. A single-unit design is needed that responds to environmental stimuli, such as mechanical pressure or stretching. Liquid metals could be the solution, and some researchers have already investigated their use in soft robots. These materials
Credit: TU Wien
Heads or tails? If we toss two coins into the air, the result of one coin toss has nothing to do with the result of the other. Coins are independent objects. In the world of quantum physics, things are different: quantum particles can be entangled, in which case they can no longer be regarded as independent individual objects, they can only be described as one joint system.
For years, it has been possible to produce entangled photons - pairs of light particles that move in completely different directions but still belong together. Spectacular results have been achieved, for example in the field of quantum teleportation or quantum cryptography. Now, a new method has been developed at TU Wien (Vienna) to produce entangled atom pairs - and not just atoms which are emitted in all directions, but well-defined beams. This was achieved with the help of ultracold atom clouds in electromagnetic traps.