Cooling speeds up electrons in bacterial nanowires

May 11, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The ground beneath our feet and under the ocean floor is an electrically-charged grid, the product of bacteria “exhaling” excess electrons through tiny nanowires in an environment lacking oxygen. Yale University researchers have been studying ways to enhance this natural electrical conductivity within nanowires 1/100,000th...

Astronomers observe explosion on a white dwarf

May 11, 2022 (Nanowerk News) When stars like our Sun use up all their fuel, they shrink to form white dwarfs. Sometimes such dead stars flare back to life in a super hot explosion and produce a fireball of X-ray radiation. A research team led by Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has...

Researchers design microgrid for future lunar base

May 11, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Sandia National Laboratories is well-known for designing reliable and resilient microgrids for military bases and vital city services. Now, Sandia researchers are working with NASA to design one for the moon. This is not the first time Sandia has partnered with NASA to power equipment...

Banana spots can help tackle food waste

May 11, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Banana peels hold the key to reducing tonnes of food waste. A new study released in Physical Biology ("Front-like expansion and arrest of programmed cell death in brown banana spots") reveals how the browning of this household staple can be explained and modelled. A team...

The world’s smallest gear wheel

May 11, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Ever smaller and more intricate – without miniaturization, we wouldn’t have the components today that are required for high-performance laptops, compact smartphones or high-resolution endoscopes. Research is now being carried out in the nanoscale on switches, rotors or motors that comprise of only a few...

Combining 3D printing and self-assembly to fabricate the world’s lightest material

May 10, 2022 (Nanowerk Spotlight) In nature, wood, shells, and other structural materials are lightweight, strong, and tough. These multiscale structures enable a series of outstanding performances using a limited number of constituent materials with ordinary properties. While natural creatures are able to fabricate these complex structures through bio-controlled assembly,...

Self-driving microscopes discover shortcuts to new materials

May 10, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are teaching microscopes to drive discoveries with an intuitive algorithm, developed at the lab’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, that could guide breakthroughs in new materials for energy technologies, sensing and computing. “There are so...