Physical Sciences
Interferometry with antimatter
For nearly a century, physicists have struggled to understand why the universe contains so much more matter than antimatter. In a new experiment, Dr Marco Giammarchi and colleagues at the QUPLAS collaboration have demonstrated a technique which could help in their search for an answer. For the first time, the team have demonstrated interferometry with a single antiparticle – an […]
New, exotic materials: Getting oxygen into yttrium hydrides
The modern world is constantly hungry for new materials with properties optimised for their applications. Designing them is no trivial task and often relies on computational modelling to test whether new material structures are feasible. Dr Aleksandr Pishtshev and Evgenii Strugovshchikov from the University of Tartu, Estonia and Dr Smagul Karazhanov from the Institute for Energy Technology, Norway have been […]
High performing monomers and polymers from plant oils
We often think of fossils fuels as a source of energy, but one of the key uses of fossil fuels is as a starting point for the synthesis of new chemical compounds. These range from plastics to pharmaceutical products. In recent years, there has been a push to move to more sustainable chemical feedstocks. Professor Andriy Voronov at North Dakota […]
Twinkle, twinkle: How astronomers investigate alien planets
The NASA Kepler Space Telescope revolutionised our understanding of the universe. By continuously observing over half a million stars during its four-year mission, Kepler discovered thousands of exoplanets. Many hundreds of these are Earth-like in size and composition, and tens of them reside in the habitable ‘Goldilocks’ zone. Kepler and similar space-based telescopes like TESS discover planets purely by inference, […]
Maths and honeycombs: Searching for the materials of the future
The nanotechnology revolution is fuelled by the versatility of nanomaterials. Changing a nanomaterial’s composition and structure alters its properties, rendering nanomaterials tailor-made for specific applications. Mathematical modelling guides researchers towards predicting desired behaviour prior to experimentation. Titus Masese of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and Godwill Kanyolo of the University of Electro-Communications (UEC), in Japan, […]
Using thermal imaging to prevent and forecast particulate emissions from mine tailings
Fugitive dust emissions from dry mine tailings surfaces is an environmental concern that undermines the mining industry’s social acceptability. Aluminium refining waste material management involves intensive mud farming activities intended to accelerate drying prior to the residue’s permanent storage and site remediation. Throughout this process surface evaporation occurs much faster, requiring continuous and in-situ monitoring of mine tailings’ drying state […]
Modelling sea-island reversal in viscoelastic phase separation
In the 1990s, researchers first discovered that within mixtures of viscoelastic materials, unique transitions known as phase separations can appear when the right conditions are applied. In his research, Mr Yoshihide Kubo, Hiroshima University alumnus, presents the first robust approach for modelling these systems, avoiding unnecessary complexities while producing results which can be easily reproduced in experiments. His work addresses […]
Sensing in a disordered environment
Dr Farzan Beroz has developed a physical theory of sensing that predicts cell behaviour. Cells measure stiffness by pushing and pulling on their surroundings. However, because their tissue surroundings are disordered, it has been unclear what information cells actually learn by probing. Dr Beroz estimated what a cell learns and predicted that some cells change their shape and move around […]
Electron emission patterning: A new path towards smaller devices?
The demand for smaller and more powerful electronic devices is ever growing in many sectors of today’s society. Current technology limits how small devices can be. To develop smaller devices, new materials and manufacturing techniques are needed. Ali Aliev and Ray Baughman of the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute have developed a non-contact dry patterning technique for carbon nanotubes. Their […]
Laser induced damage threshold testing
Today’s latest laser technologies can be used for a diverse array of applications. Currently, however, their use is being hindered by a lack of knowledge about certain power thresholds, above which lasers can damage valuable materials and components. Through their research, Dr Jan Vanda and colleagues at the HiLASE Centre, part of the Institute of Physics at the Czech Academy […]