Mar 12, 2022 (Nanowerk News) In a paper published in Sciences Advances ("Single-molecule Taq DNA polymerase dynamics"), researchers in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine revealed new details about a key enzyme that makes DNA sequencing possible. The finding...
Scientists uncover simple strategies for keeping foams on walls
Mar 12, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have uncovered a unique mechanism by which foams on walls drain and slip over time. They showed how a foam can lose liquid via “pinch-off”, like droplets from a faucet, finding that the amount of liquid and the extent of...
Meteorites that helped form earth may have formed in the outer solar system
Mar 12, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Our Solar System is believed to have formed from a cloud of gas and dust, the so-called solar nebula, which began to condense on itself gravitationally ~ 4.6 billion years ago. As this cloud contracted, it began to spin and shaped itself into a disk...
High-voltage aqueous MXene planar micro-supercapacitors
Mar 12, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A research group led by Prof. WU Zhongshuai from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Prof. CHENG Huiming from the Institute of Metal Research of CAS, developed high-voltage aqueous MXene planar micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) with...
Extracting mechanical work from superfast-expanding hydrogels
Mar 12, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Super-absorbent hydrogels can be engineered to absorb significant extents of water, in some cases with a swelling ratio as high as 3000 times their weight in water. These polymer gels find applications that range from diapers to biomedical use to additives that keep the soil...
Self-organization of complex structures: a matter of time
Mar 12, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Macromolecules such as cellular structures or virus capsids can emerge from small building blocks without external control to form complex spatial structures. This self-organization is a central feature of biological systems. But such self-organized processes are also becoming increasingly important for the building of complex...
The second NanoCar Race is off to a good start
Mar 11, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The world’s smallest car race will return to Toulouse (southwestern France) on 24-25 March. Eight international teams will be at the starting line for the competition. Christian Joachim, a CNRS research professor and the event organiser, provides details regarding the issues involved. Event: NanoCar Race...
Chemical engineers use neural networks to discover the properties of metal-organic frameworks, for catalysis and other applications
Mar 11, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Metal-organic frameworks, a class of materials with porous molecular structures, have a variety of possible applications, such as capturing harmful gases and catalyzing chemical reactions. Made of metal atoms linked by organic molecules, they can be configured in hundreds of thousands of different ways. To...
Physicists discover a new method to image ultrafast electron motions in atoms
Mar 11, 2022 (Nanowerk News) An international team led by researchers from the Cluster of Excellence PhoenixD at Leibniz University Hannover (Germany) imaged the fastest and tiniest details of the electron dynamics in atoms using light with wavelengths which were until now considered far too long for this task. “The...
New tool allows unprecedented modeling of magnetic nanoparticles
Mar 11, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new computational tool that allows users to conduct simulations of multi-functional magnetic nanoparticles in unprecedented detail. The advance paves the way for new work aimed at developing magnetic nanoparticles for use in applications from drug delivery...