What do watermelons and bacteria have in common? Just like the tasty fruit, microbes can be molded into unusual shapes, a study in Nature Communications has shown. The paper, produced by researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), has modified the structure of bacterial cells from simple rods into elaborate …

Since the 2003 discovery of the single-atom-thick carbon material known as graphene, there has been significant interest in other types of 2-D materials as well. These materials could be stacked together like Lego bricks to form a range of devices with different functions, including operating as semiconductors. In this way, they could be used to …

When walking in a crowded place, humans typically aren’t thinking about how we avoid bumping into one another. We are built to use a gamut of complex skill sets required to execute these types of seemingly simple motions. Now, thanks to researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, …

With temperatures rising and heat-waves disrupting lives around the world, cooling solutions are becoming ever more essential. This is a critical issue especially in developing countries, where summer heat can be extreme and is projected to intensify. But common cooling methods such as air conditioners are expensive, consume significant amounts of energy, require ready access …

Breaking the bonds between oxygen and hydrogen in water could be a key to the creation of hydrogen in a sustainable manner, but finding an economically viable technique for this has proved difficult. Researchers report a new hydrogen-generating catalyst that clears many of the obstacles — abundance, stability in acid conditions and efficiency. In the …

UNSW and RMIT researchers have discovered a revolutionary and cheap way to make filters that can turn water contaminated with heavy metals into safe drinking water in a matter of minutes. Recent UNSW SHARP hire Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh and his former colleagues at RMIT showed that nano-filters made of aluminium oxide could be cheaply produced …

Quantum dots are nanometer-sized boxes that have attracted huge scientific interest for use in nanotechnology because their properties obey quantum mechanics and are requisites to develop advanced electronic and photonic devices. Quantum dots that self-assemble during their formation are particularly attractive as tunable light emitters in nanoelectronic devices and to study quantum physics because of …

When you think of robotics, you likely think of something rigid, heavy, and built for a specific purpose. New “Robotic Skins” technology developed by Yale researchers flips that notion on its head, allowing users to animate the inanimate and turn everyday objects into robots. Developed in the lab of Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, assistant professor of mechanical …

Yale University researchers have demonstrated one of the key steps in building the architecture for modular quantum computers: the “teleportation” of a quantum gate between two qubits, on demand. The findings appear online Sept. 5 in the journal Nature. The key principle behind this new work is quantum teleportation, a unique feature of quantum mechanics …

Reduced entropy in a three-dimensional lattice of super-cooled, laser-trapped atoms could help speed progress toward creating quantum computers. A team of researchers at Penn State can rearrange a randomly distributed array of atoms into neatly organized blocks, thus performing the function of a “Maxwell’s demon” — a thought experiment from the 1870s that challenged the …