Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Astronomers have used a new technique to confirm a real-life Tatooine, the fictional planet with two suns that was home to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. The planet, Kepler-16b, is about 245 light years from Earth, is a gas giant, and is roughly the size...
Colossal black holes locked in dance at heart of galaxy (w/video)
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Locked in an epic cosmic waltz 9 billion light years away, two supermassive black holes appear to be orbiting around each other every two years. The two giant bodies each have masses that are hundreds of millions of times larger than that of our sun,...
Better crops without genetic modification
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) in Japan have developed a way to improve crop quality without needing to create special genetically modified plants. Rather that changing plant genomes, the new technique relies on a spray that introduces bioactive molecules into...
Upcycling plastic waste into more valuable materials could make recycling pay for itself
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A new and simple method for upcycling plastic waste at room temperature has been developed by a team of researchers at the Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT) at the University of Bath. The researchers hope the new process will help recycling become more...
Astronomers map mysterious element in space
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A research team led by Lund University in Sweden has provided an important clue to the origin of the element Ytterbium in the Milky Way, by showing that the element largely originates from supernova explosions. The groundbreaking research also provides new opportunities for studying the...
Clean driving technology enables cleaner rocket fuel
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A chemical used in electric vehicle batteries could also give us carbon-free fuel for space flight, according to new UC Riverside research. In addition to emission reductions, this chemical also has several advantages over other types of rocket fuels: higher energy, lower costs, and no...
Organic compounds on Ceres
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The third-largest crater on the dwarf planet Ceres was geologically active at least once many millions of years after its formation. In a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications ("Brine residues and organics in the Urvara basin on Ceres"), researchers from the Max...
Sensor of novel material an alternative for blood glucose measurement
Feb 22, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Anyone suffering from diabetes cannot live without them - the test strips for measuring blood glucose levels. They contain enzymes that react with glucose in the blood. "Once used, the conventional enzyme based photometric or electrochemical measurement no longer work and the test strip is...
Researchers reproduce artificially the learning and forgetting functions of the brain with magnetic systems
Feb 22, 2022 (Nanowerk News) With the advent of Big Data, current computational architectures are proving to be insufficient. Difficulties in decreasing transistors’ size, large power consumption and limited operating speeds make neuromorphic computing a promising alternative. Neuromorphic computing, a new brain-inspired computation paradigm, reproduce the activity of biological synapses...
Perfecting the EV battery recycling process
Feb 22, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Recycling of electric car batteries can be easier, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly, according to a new scientific article from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, which outlines an optimised recycling process. The research, published in the journal Waste Management ("Recovery of critical metals from EV...