A restaurant outbreak in China was widely reported as strong evidence of airflow-induced transmission of COVID-19, but it lacked a detailed investigation about exactly how transmission occurred. In Physics of Fluids, researchers at the University of Minnesota report using advanced simulation methods to capture the complex flows that occur when the cold airflow from air conditioners interacts with the hot plume from a dining table and the transport of virus-loading particles within such flows.
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IMAGE: NTU Prof Fan Hong Jin (left) with PhD student Mr Hu Yuzhong, both holding the new piezoelectric crystal which can flex up to 40 times more than conventional ferroelectric crystals. view more
Credit: NTU Singapore
A team of researchers led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has developed a new material, that when electricity is applied to it, can flex and bend forty times more than its competitors, opening the way to better micro machines.
Conversely, when it is bent, it generates electricity very effectively and could be used for better energy harvesting - potentially recharging batteries in gadgets just from everyday movements.
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IMAGE: The solar spectrum is separated by an optical filter, and only part of the spectrum is sent to the PV cells for electricity generation. The rest of the spectrum, which. view more
Credit: by Gan Huang, Kai Wang and Christos N. Markides.
Solar energy is one of the most abundant renewable energy sources, and effective solar technologies have great potential to alleviate the grand challenges of rising global energy demands, while reducing associated emissions. Solar energy is capable of satisfying the electrical and thermal-energy needs of diverse end-users by means of photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal (ST) technologies, respectively. Recently, hybrid photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) concepts have been proposed that synergistically combine the benefits of PV and ST technologies, and are capable of generating both electricity and useful heat simultaneously from the same area and component.
Researchers in South Korea have successfully developed a wearable sensor that can detect illegal drugs in sweat by using nanomaterials technology that amplify the optical signal of narcotics to a flexible, body-worn material.
The technology enables fast and highly sensitive drug detection: the sweat patch is attached to the skin for a certain period of time and then irradiated with light for testing. It only takes one minute without requiring additional process.
Tiny nanoparticles can be furnished with dyes and could be used for new imaging techniques, as chemists and physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) show in a recent study. The researchers have also been the first to fully determine the particles internal structure. Their results were published in the renowned journal