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Party Pairs

  Atoms in a gas can seem like partiers at a nanoscopic rave, with particles zipping around, pairing up, and flying off again in a seemingly random fashion. And yet physicists have come up with formulas that predict this behavior, even when the atoms are extremely close together and can tug and pull on each other in complicated ways. The environment within the nucleus of a single atom seems similar, with protons and neutrons also dancing about. But because the nucleus is such a compact space, scientists have struggled to pin down the behavior of these particles, known as nucleons, in an atom’s nucleus. Models that describe the interactions of nucleons that are far apart broken down when the particles pair up and interact at close range. Now an MIT-led team has simulated the behavior of protons and neutrons in several types of atomic nuclei, using some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. The team explored a wide range of nuclear interaction models and found, surprisingly,
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Super-Resolution Imaging

Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed the world’s smallest ultrasound detector. It is based on miniaturized photonic circuits on top of a silicon chip. With a size 100 times smaller than an average human hair, the new detector can visualize features that are much smaller than previously possible, leading to what is known as super-resolution imaging. Since the development of medical ultrasound imaging in the 1950s, the core detection technology of ultrasound waves has primarily focused on using piezoelectric detectors, which convert the pressure from ultrasound waves into electric voltage. The imaging resolution achieved with ultrasound depends on the size of the piezoelectric detector employed. Reducing this size leads to higher resolution and can offer smaller, densely packed one or two-dimensional ultrasound arrays with improved ability to discriminate features in the imaged tissue or material. However, further reducing t
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Virus in the Blood Can Predict Severe COVID-19

  A blood test on hospital admission showing the presence or absence of SARS-CoV-2 can identify patients at a high risk of severe COVID-19. Admitted patients without virus in their blood have a good chance of rapid recovery. This according to researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital in a new study published in the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Blood samples were taken from patients with a confirmed COVID-19 infection within three days of admission to the Department of Infectious Diseases, Danderyd Hospital, Sweden. Patients with measurable levels of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in their blood were seven times more likely to develop critical symptoms and eight times more likely to die within 28 days. “This readily available test allows us to identify patient groups at high or low risk of severe COVID-19, which enables us to better guide the treatment and monitoring of these patients”, says the study’s lead author Karl Hagman, infectious diseases co
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Forget the Flame to Reduce CO2 Emissions

  Just as a living organism continually needs food to maintain itself, an economy consumes energy to do work and keep things going. That consumption comes with the cost of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, though. So, how can we use energy to keep the economy alive without burning out the planet in the process? In a paper in PLOS ONE, University of Utah professor of atmospheric sciences Tim Garrett, with mathematician Matheus Grasselli of McMaster University and economist Stephen Keen of University College London, reports that current world energy consumption is tied to unchangeable past economic production. And the way out of an ever-increasing rate of carbon emissions may not necessarily be ever-increasing energy efficiency–in fact, it may be the opposite. Thermoeconomics This study marks the beginning of the collaboration between Garrett, Grasselli, and Keen. They’re now working to connect the results of this study with a full model for the economy, including a systematic
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Time-Stretch Infrared Spectroscopy

  Spectroscopy is an important tool of observation in many areas of science and industry. Infrared spectroscopy is especially important in the world of chemistry where it is used to analyze and identify different molecules. The current state-of-the-art method can make approximately 1 million observations per second. University of Tokyo researchers have greatly surpassed this figure with a new method about 100 times faster. From climate science to safety systems, manufacture to quality control of foodstuffs, infrared spectroscopy is used in so many academic and industrial fields that it’s a ubiquitous, albeit invisible, part of everyday life. In essence, infrared spectroscopy is a way to identify what molecules are present in a sample of a substance with a high degree of accuracy. The basic idea has been around for decades and has undergone improvements along the way. In general, infrared spectroscopy works by measuring infrared light transmitted or reflected from molecules in a sample
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Entering Nanoscale Platinum Age

                                           Beginning with the Bronze Age, metal alloys have changed civilizations. The latest alloy iteration is nanosized high-entropy alloys or HEA. In the Journal of American Chemical Society, Kyoto University researchers, in cooperation with multiple institutes across Japan, report the first-ever HEA consisting of all six platinum group metals, known as PGM-HEA, and show that it electrochemically catalyzes ethanol oxidation reactions with unprecedented efficiency. HEA is a relatively new structure only first reported in 2004. They provide extraordinary structural and functional properties but are unexplored due to their recent. One factor that instills these unique features is their constituents. Whereas simpler alloys like brass can be made of as few as two metals, HEA must have at least five elements at near equiatomic concentrations. The result is higher entropy and thus attractive yet only theoretically established properties. Chemists, on the ot
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Flat Lens a Thousand Times Thinner Than a Human Hair

The lens can be used to produce high-resolution images with a wide field of view. It can serve as a camera lens in smartphones and can be used in other devices that depend on sensors (high-resolution wide-angle selfie obtained using metalens. A lens that is a thousand times thinner than a human hair has been developed in Brazil by researchers at the University of São Paulo’s São Carlos School of Engineering (EESC-USP). It can serve as a camera lens in smartphones or be used in other devices that depend on sensors.  “In the present technological context, its applications are almost unlimited,” Emiliano Rezende Martins, a professor in EESC-USP’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computing and last author of a published paper on the invention, told Agência FAPESP. The paper is entitled “On Metalenses with Arbitrarily Wide Field of View” and is published in ACS Photonics. The study was supported by FAPESP via a scholarship for a research internship abroad awarded to Augusto Martins,
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