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VIDEO: When repeating patterns overlap and are rotated, they create these mesmerizing arrangements called moiré patterns. Here hexagonal grids are rotated in either direction. view more
Credit: CC-0 The University of Tokyo/Rohan Mehra
Material behaviors depend on many things including not just the composition of the material but also the arrangement of its molecular parts. For the first time, researchers have found a way to coax carbon nanotubes into creating moiré patterns. Such structures could be useful in materials research, in particular in the field of superconducting materials.
Professor Hiroyuki Isobe from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo, and his team create nanoscopic material structures, primarily from carbon. Their aim is to explore new ways to create carbon nanostructures and to find useful applications for them. The most recent breakthrough from their lab is a new form of carbon nanotube with a very specific arrangemen
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IMAGE: Scientists from the University of Konstanz and the Free University of Amsterdam, in collaboration with the Bruker BioSpin development team, have succeeded for the first time in the direct spectroscopic. view more
Credit: Malte Drescher Lab - University of Konstanz
The protein α-synuclein is one of the most abundant proteins in the human brain. It is often referred to as the Parkinson protein , as deposition of this protein in brain cells is a hallmark of Parkinson s disease. Despite the high interest of biomedical research in the protein, many questions concerning the function and physiology of α-synuclein in living cells still remain to be answered. For example, it was previously unclear whether and to what extent the protein binds to and interacts with internal cell components such as membranes. As such processes could play a role in the development of the disease, the team led by Konstanz-based physical chemist Professor Malte Drescher used the fur
Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have studied the properties of mixtures of silicone-coated magic sand , a popular kid s toy, and normal sand. Silicone-coated sand particles were found to interact with each other only, and not with other sand particles. The team discovered that adding silicone-coated sand beyond a certain threshold leads to an abrupt change in clustering and rigidity, a simple, useful way to potentially tune the flow of granular materials for industry.
2 transistor in an ESR sample tube. view more
Credit: University of Tsukuba
Tsukuba, Japan and Warsaw, Poland - Scientists from the University of Tsukuba and a scientist from the Institute of High Pressure Physics detected and mapped the electronic spins moving in a working transistor made of molybdenum disulfide. This research may lead to much faster computers that take advantage of the natural magnetism of electrons, as opposed to just their charge.
Spintronics is a new area of condensed matter physics that attempts to use the intrinsic magnetic moment of electrons, called spins, to perform calculations. This would be a major advance over all existing electronics that rely solely on the electron charge. However, it is difficult to detect these spins, and there are many unknowns regarding materials that can support the transport of spin-polarized electrons.
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IMAGE: Mole fraction along the reaction time (s) calculated by the reactor simulation. The inlet gas consisted of CH4, O2, and He (as inert gas). The total pressure was set to. view more
Credit: Atsushi Ishikawa
Japanese researchers have developed a simulation method to theoretically estimate the performance of heterogeneous catalyst by combining first-principles calculation (1) and kinetic calculation techniques. Up to now, simulation studies mainly focused on a single or limited number of reaction pathways, and it was difficult to estimate the efficiency of a catalytic reaction without experimental information.
Atsushi Ishikawa, Senior Researcher, Center for Green Research on Energy and Environmental Materials, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), performed computation of reaction kinetic information from first-principles calculations based on quantum mechanics, and developed methods and programs to carry out kinetic simulations without using exp