Trapped tightly between two monolayers of carbon superimposed at a precise angle, electrons interact and can produce superconductivity. This is what UCLouvain s researchers reveal in an article published in Nature. This property allows electric power to circulate without any resistivity, without energy lost, within the nanostructure.
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Shipping traffic can be a major source of tiny plastic particles floating in the sea, especially out in the open ocean. In a paper published in the scientific journal
Environmental Science & Technology, a team of German environmental geochemists based at the University of Oldenburg s Institute of Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment and led by Dr Barbara Scholz-Boettcher for the first time provides an overview of microplastics mass distribution in the North Sea.
The scientists found that most of the plastic particles in water samples taken from the German Bight, an area in the south-eastern corner of the North Sea which encompasses some of the world s busiest shipping lanes, originate from binders used in marine paints. Our hypothesis is that ships leave a kind of skid mark in the water which is of similar significance as a source of microplastics as tyre wear particles from cars are on land, Scholz-Boettcher says.
Credit: Stupp Lab / Northwestern University
Imagine if surgeons could transplant healthy neurons into patients living with neurodegenerative diseases or brain and spinal cord injuries. And imagine if they could grow these neurons in the laboratory from a patient s own cells using a synthetic, highly bioactive material that is suitable for 3D printing.
By discovering a new printable biomaterial that can mimic properties of brain tissue, Northwestern University researchers are now closer to developing a platform capable of treating these conditions using regenerative medicine.
A key ingredient to the discovery is the ability to control the self-assembly processes of molecules within the material, enabling the researchers to modify the structure and functions of the systems from the nanoscale to the scale of visible features. The laboratory of Samuel I. Stupp published a 2018 paper in the journal
Credit: AIP Applied Physics Letters
New storage and information technology requires new higher performance materials. One of these materials is yttrium iron garnet, which has special magnetic properties. Thanks to a new process, it can now be transferred to any material. Developed by physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the method could advance the production of smaller, faster and more energy-efficient components for data storage and information processing. The physicists have published their results in the journal
Applied Physics Letters .
Magnetic materials play a major role in the development of new storage and information technologies. Magnonics is an emerging field of research that studies spin waves in crystalline layers. Spin is a type of intrinsic angular momentum of a particle that generates a magnetic moment. The deflection of the spin can propagate waves in a solid body. In magnonic components, electrons would not have to move to process in