Jilin University
An ultra-thin glass screen that can smoothly go from transparent to displaying words could one day be used to make e-readers and billboards.
The screen is a type of electrochromic display, which turn opaque when an electrical current is applied to them. This technology has already been used in smart glass windows, which can control the amount of solar light passing through them, but many existing electrochromic displays are unable to produce a wide range of colours and often have a low contrast ratio – the measure of clarity, brightness and resolution.
Advertisement
Now Yu-Mo Zhang and his colleagues at Jilin University in Changchun, China, have produced an electrochromic e-reader prototype that can seamlessly transition between being transparent and displaying words with high quality and colour intensity.
A genetic analysis of prehistoric remains found in a mass grave in Croatia reveals the victims were men, women and children with few family links, suggesting an indiscriminate massacre
VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP via Getty Images
The tropics could become uninhabitable if we don’t limit global warming to less than 1.5°C, the target set in the Paris Agreement on climate change. Above this, the equatorial region, which is home to around 43 per cent of the world’s population, could see air temperatures increase beyond the limit that the human body can withstand.
Yi Zhang at Princeton University in New Jersey and her colleagues used data from 22 climate models to determine how rising air temperatures in the tropics will affect wet bulb temperatures – a measure of both heat and humidity made with a thermometer covered by a wet cloth.
Daniel Day/Getty Images
Egg whites are one of the most versatile foods because they can foam, gel and also act as emulsifiers. Very little is known about how the proteins inside egg whites bind together to achieve these properties – but X-ray analysis has now given us a better idea.
Nafisa Begam at the University of Tübingen in Germany and her colleagues have used a technique called X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy to understand how proteins form into networks when an egg white is cooked.
“The egg …