Machine learning reveals how black holes grow

Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Machine learning has deduced the rules governing the relationship between the growth of a galaxy and the growth of the supermassive black hole at its center. The tight correlation between the two growth rates found in this research confirms a decades-old theory. Most, if not...

VULCAN forges new science for the future of 3D-printed metal

Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) From carbon fiber to concrete and bamboo, additive manufacturing—the industrial term for 3D-printing—utilizes many different materials and techniques. And now, with a significant need for decarbonization and alternative supply chains for converting raw materials into finished products, 3D-printed metal could make a big impact on...

New robot does ‘the worm’ when temperature changes

Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A new gelatinous robot that crawls, powered by nothing more than temperature change and clever design, brings “a kind of intelligence” to the field of soft robotics. The inchworm-inspired work is detailed in Science Robotics ("Untethered unidirectionally crawling gels driven by asymmetry in contact forces")....

A message that resonates

Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have shown how adding a tiny resonator structure to an ultrafast electron pulse detector reduced the intensity of terahertz radiation required to characterize the pulse duration (ACS Photonics, "Streaking of a Picosecond Electron Pulse with a Weak Terahertz Pulse")....

A shield for 2D materials that adds vibrations to reduce vibration problems

Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Monash University researchers have demonstrated a new, counterintuitive way to protect atomically-thin electronics – adding vibrations, to reduce vibrations (Nano Letters, "Passivating graphene and supressing interfacial phonon scattering with mechanically transferred Ga2O3"). By ‘squeezing’ a thin droplet of liquid gallium, graphene devices are painted with a protective...

Researchers pioneer biocompatible all-water Aquabots

Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Soft robots have phenomenally advanced in recent years. Microscale soft robots designated to navigate difficult paths and perform biological functions in the human body could have profound potential biomedical applications such as surgery, prosthetics, and pain relief. Currently, the intrinsic functionalisation of bio-inspired soft robots is...