Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Scientists from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Vanderbilt University, City University of New York, University of Nebraska, and University of Iowa have just published new results on asymmetric light-matter waves in the reknowned magazine Nature ("Hyperbolic shear polaritons in low-symmetry crystals")....
Utilizing carbon dots in electrochemical processes and energy storage
Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Thanks to their unusual optical properties, carbon particles with diameters on the order of a few nanometers – so-called carbon dots – show great promise for a wide range of technological applications, as diverse as energy conversion and bio-imaging. Moreover, carbon dots (CDs) have several...
Fingertip sensitivity for robots (w/video)
Feb 24, 2022 (Nanowerk News) In a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence ("A soft thumb-sized vision-based sensor with accurate all-round force perception"), a team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) introduce a robust soft haptic sensor named “Insight” that uses computer vision and a...
Targeting gene therapy directly into the lungs with lipid-based nanoparticles
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Tufts researchers are building a reputation for precision targeting in drug delivery. Their tools: tiny lipid-based nanoparticles (LNPs) fine-tuned to latch on to specific tissues, organs, even cell types within the body. Their latest creation: LNPs that carry genetic instructions directly into the lungs. Even...
Mysterious source of fast radio bursts
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long bursts of radiation recorded on radio waves. They are extremely powerful - for example, during one of the brightest flashes lasting five milliseconds, as much energy is radiated as our Sun generates in a month. The scale of...
Physicists observe an exotic multiferroic state in an atomically thin material
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) MIT physicists have discovered an exotic “multiferroic” state in a material that is as thin as a single layer of atoms. Their observation is the first to confirm that multiferroic properties can exist in a perfectly two-dimensional material. The findings, published in Nature ("Experimental realization...
Water filtration membranes morph like cells (w/video)
Feb 23, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Morphogenesis is nature’s way of building diverse structures and functions out of a fixed set of components. While nature is rich with examples of morphogenesis – cell differentiation, embryonic development and cytoskeleton formation, for example – research into the phenomenon in synthetic materials is scant....
Astronomers identify real-life Tatooine using new method
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...