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Researchers at ETH Zurich have now collaborated with an Israeli scientist to develop a means of storing extensive information in almost any object. “With this method, we can integrate 3D-printing instructions into an object, so that after decades or even centuries, it will be possible to obtain those instructions directly from the object itself,” explains Robert Grass, Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences. The way of storing this information is the same as for living things: in DNA molecules....

Error correction is a well-developed subject in traditional computers. To transmit and receive data over messy airwaves, every cellphone requires checks and adjustments. Quantum computers have immense potential to tackle complicated problems that conventional computers cannot, but this capacity is dependent on harnessing the incredibly fleeting behavior of subatomic particles. These computing behaviors are so ephemeral that even inspecting them for flaws might cause the whole system to collapse. An interdisciplinary team led by Jeff Thompson, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton University, and collaborators Yue Wu and Shruti Puri at Yale University and Shimon Kolkowitz at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, demonstrated in a theoretical paper published in Nature Communications that they could dramatically improve a quantum computer’s tolerance for faults and reduce the amount of redundant information needed to isolate and fix errors....

Research on the green molecule by the scientists has revealed that it absorbs ultraviolet light and then disperses it in a ‘flamenco-style’ dance, making it ideal for use as a UV filter in sunscreens. The team of scientists report today, Friday, October 18, 2019, in the journal Nature Communications that, as well as being plant-inspired, this molecule is also among a small number of suitable substances that are effective in absorbing light in the Ultraviolet A (UVA) region of wavelengths....

Nicknamed “Lazarus superconductivity” after the biblical figure who rose from the dead, the phenomenon occurs when a superconducting state arises, breaks down, then re-emerges in a material due to a change in a specific parameter—in this case, the application of a very strong magnetic field. The researchers published their results today, October 7, 2019, in the journal Nature Physics. Once dismissed by physicists for its apparent lack of interesting physical properties, uranium ditelluride is having its own Lazarus moment....

New research into metal-rich asteroids reveals information about the origins and compositions of these rare bodies that could one day be mined. Metal-rich near-Earth asteroids, or NEAs, are rare, but their presence provides the intriguing possibility that iron, nickel, and cobalt could someday be mined for use on Earth or in Space. New research, published in the Planetary Science Journal, investigated two metal-rich asteroids in our own cosmic backyard to learn more about their origins, compositions and relationships with meteorites found on Earth....

Materials scientists who work with nano-sized components have developed ways of working with their vanishingly small materials. But what if you could get your components to assemble themselves into different structures without actually handling them at all? Verner Håkonsen works with cubes so tiny that nearly 5 billion of them could fit on a pinhead. He cooks up the cubes in the NTNU NanoLab, in a weird-looking glass flask with three necks on the top using a mixture of chemicals and special soap....

People infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are known to shed it in their stool, even if they aren’t experiencing any symptoms. With that in mind, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers have been screening wastewater from campus buildings for signs of the virus since the summer of 2020, thinking the information could help prevent outbreaks. Now they have data to back it up: Screening for SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, the team showed they can detect even a single infected, asymptomatic person living or working in a large building....

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, despite accounting for only about one percent of skin cancers overall. Rates of melanoma have been rising for 30 years, and the American Cancer Society estimates there were more than 87,000 new cases in the United States in 2017. Even with recent advances in immunotherapy, the majority of patients with metastatic forms of melanoma will die from their disease. “In melanoma and many other types of cancer, women have a better prognosis than men, and women with a history of pregnancy seem to have a better prognosis than those women that have never been pregnant,” said the study’s senior author Todd W....

There are no other coastlines on Earth quite like the one along Dubai. Just two decades ago, there was not much of note along the city’s coast, aside from the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. Today that coastline is the site of some of the largest and most recognizable land reclamation projects in the world. A pair of palm-shaped islands enclosed by circular storm barriers (Palm Jumeirah and Palm Jebel Ali) and an archipelago designed to look like a map of Earth’s continents stand out in this photograph, which was taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station on April 6, 2022....

Opening pickle jars or carrying groceries are tasks that most people take for granted, however, handgrip strength is a useful screening tool for a variety of medical issues. Low handgrip strength may be a sign of underlying health problems, and this is true not only for older people; handgrip strength has been associated with health problems as early as young adulthood. Low handgrip strength may be a symptom of conditions linked to heart and lung issues, according to a large number of studies....

After years of tackling numerous design and manufacturing challenges, MIT researchers have built a modern microprocessor from carbon nanotube transistors, which are widely seen as a faster, greener alternative to their traditional silicon counterparts. The microprocessor, described today in the journal Nature, can be built using traditional silicon-chip fabrication processes, representing a major step toward making carbon nanotube microprocessors more practical. Silicon transistors — critical microprocessor components that switch between 1 and 0 bits to carry out computations — have carried the computer industry for decades....

Launched in 1997, the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission remains iconic and has contributed an enormous amount to our understanding of Saturn and its moon Titan since its arrival at the ringed planet in late 2004. The mission comprised an orbiter, Cassini, which went on to orbit Saturn for over 13 years after becoming the first spacecraft to do so, and a small atmospheric probe, ESA’s Huygens lander, which headed down to explore the physical properties and atmosphere of Titan on 14 January 2005....

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a new technology enabling battery reuse: a type of power electronics equipment that can manage a variety of EV batteries as an energy storage system for an electric utility. The mix of batteries can be controlled to release a predetermined amount of electricity to the grid. “We have each battery pack discharging at a different rate, while ensuring that the target energy output stays the same,” said ORNL’s Michael Starke....

A new design of algae-powered fuel cells that is five times more efficient than existing plant and algal models, as well as being potentially more cost-effective to produce and practical to use, has been developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge. As the global population increases, so too does energy demand. The threat of climate change means that there is an urgent need to find cleaner, renewable alternatives to fossil fuels that do not contribute extensive amounts of greenhouse gases with potentially devastating consequences on our ecosystem....

Optimized to study the cold gas and dust of systems like HD 169142, ALMA’s sharp eyes have revealed the structure of many infant solar systems with similar cavities and gaps. A variety of theories have been proposed to explain them — such as turbulence caused by magnetorotational instability, or the fusing of dust grains — but the most plausible explanation is that these pronounced gaps were carved out by giant protoplanets....

The research team led by Jeong-Eun Lee (Kyung Hee University, Korea) used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to detect complex organic molecules including methanol (CH3OH), acetone (CH3COCH3), acetaldehyde (CH3CHO), methyl formate (CH3OCHO), and acetonitrile (CH3CN). This is the first time that acetone was unambiguously detected in a planet-forming region or protoplanetary disk. Various molecules are frozen in ice around micrometer-sized dust particles in protoplanetary disks. V883 Ori’s sudden flare-up is heating the disk and sublimating the ice, which releases the molecules into gas....

Almost all galaxies hold concealed monstrous black holes in their centers. Researchers have known for a long time that the more massive the galaxy is, the more massive the central black hole is. This sounds reasonable at first, but host galaxies are 10 billion times bigger than the central black holes; it should be difficult for two objects of such vastly different scales to directly affect each other. So how could such a relation develop?...

A team of researchers from the University of Leicester utilized Diamond Light Source’s Nanoprobe beamline I14, to perform a chemical analysis of a fragment of the Ryugu asteroid using X-ray Absorption Near Edge Spectroscopy (XANES). The detailed composition of the asteroid was studied by mapping out the chemical states of the elements within the asteroid material. Additionally, an electron microscope at Diamond’s electron Physical Science Imaging Centre (ePSIC) was used to examine the asteroid grains....

In an event that marked the end of the Permian period, more than 96 percent of the planet’s marine species and 70 percent of its terrestrial life suddenly went extinct. It was the largest extinction in Earth’s history. Now Florida State University researchers have found that the extinction coincided with a sudden spike and subsequent drop in the ocean’s oxygen content. Their findings were published in Nature Geoscience. “There’s previous work that’s been done that shows the environment becoming less oxygenated leading into the extinction event, but it has been hypothesized as a gradual change,” said lead author and FSU graduate research assistant Sean Newby....

Munday, who recently joined UC Davis from the University of Maryland, is developing prototypes of these nighttime solar cells that can generate small amounts of power. The researchers hope to improve the power output and efficiency of the devices. Munday said that the process is similar to the way a normal solar cell works, but in reverse. An object that is hot compared to its surroundings will radiate heat as infrared light....