news 2020

Researchers identify a unique version of a photosynthetic enzyme that has been in use for billions of years A ribbon diagram (L) and molecular surface representation (R) of carbon-fixing form I' rubisco, showing eight molecular subunits without the small subunits. An x-ray diffraction pattern of the enzyme, also generated by the research team, is in the background.

Physicists and chemists at the University of Jena engineer optical fibres with 2D materials Light At the latest since the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for research on graphene in 2010, 2D materials - nanosheets with atomic thickness - have been a hot topic in science. This significant interest is due to their outstanding properties, which have enormous potential for a wide variety of applications.

The Higgs boson reached overnight fame in 2012 when it was finally discovered in a jumble of other particles generated at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The discovery was monumental because the Higgs boson, which had only been theorized about previously, has the special property of endowing other elementary particles with mass.

Aerial shot of the University of Washington's Seattle campus. University of Washington Scientists can have ambitious goals: curing disease, exploring distant worlds, clean-energy revolutions. In physics and materials research, some of these ambitious goals are to make ordinary-sounding objects with extraordinary properties: wires that can transport power without any energy loss, or quantum computers that can perform complex calculations that today's computers cannot achieve.

UC Berkeley's Reinhard Genzel, an emeritus physics professor, talks on the phone Tuesday, October 6, 2020 just after learning he had won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work discovering a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.

Andrea Ghez, UCLA's Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, today was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics. Ghez shares the prize with Roger Penrose, of the University of Oxford, and Reinhard Genzel, of UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, for their discoveries related to black holes in the universe.

EPFL chemical engineers have developed a new way to manufacture zeolitic membranes, state-of-the-art materials used for gas separation in harsh conditions. Zeolites are porous minerals that occur both naturally but also are being synthesized artificially. Because they are stable and durable, zeolites are used for chemical catalysis, purification of gases and liquids, and even in medical applications such as drug delivery and blood-clotting powders, e.g. the QuickClot trauma bandages used in the US military.

Researchers have developed a method to 'squeeze' visible light in order to see inside tiny memory devices. The technique will allow researchers to probe how these devices break down and how their performance can be improved for a range of applications. The team, led by the University of Cambridge, used the technique to investigate the materials used in random access memories, while in operation.

Optical frequency combs can link frequencies in the microwave domain to high-purity laser emissions, yielding unprecedented precision in time-keeping and metrology. Now EPFL scientists and their colleagues have generated variable low-noise microwave signals by building variable microwave gears with two compact optical frequency combs.

Gravitational wave scientists looking for evidence of 'lensing', in which the faintest gravitational wave signals become amplified, are unlikely to make these detections in the near future according to new analysis by scientists at the University of Birmingham. A team in the University's School of Physics and Astronomy and the Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy has analysed currently available gravitational wave data to predict that these elusive signals are likely to remain undetected by the instruments currently operated by the LIGO and Virgo Collaboration.

An international team of scientists from EPFL, the Paul Scherrer Institute and Stockholm University has identified a novel driver of new aerosol particle formation in the Arctic during the summer to fall transition. The authors show that iodic acid is important for forming new particles which subsequently influence the formation of clouds and their radiative effect over the Arctic pack ice.

Near-field scanning microscope image of nanocircuits "written" into a 2D device made of boron nitride and graphene. (Credit: Alex Zettl/Berkeley Lab) A research team led by Alex Zettl , senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and professor of physics at UC Berkeley, has developed a new technique for fabricating tiny circuits from ultrathin materials for next-generation electronics, such as rewritable, low-power memory circuits.

Berkeley Lab scientists gain insight into charge generation induced by light; could enable the design of better solar fuels devices A research team led by Berkeley Lab has gained important new insight into electrons' role in the harvesting of light for solar fuels. (Credit: Surat Sangwato/Shutterstock) In the search for clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels, one promising solution relies on photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells - water-splitting, artificial-photosynthesis devices that turn sunlight and water into solar fuels such as hydrogen.

Discovery of iron-60 and manganese-53 substantiates supernova 2.5 million years ago When the brightness of the star Betelgeuse dropped dramatically a few months ago, some observers suspected an impending supernova - a stellar explosion that could also cause damage on Earth. While Betelgeuse has returned to normal, physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have found evidence of a supernova that exploded near the Earth around 2.5 million years ago.

LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration publishes results showing radioactive background levels for experiment's components, creates library for future rare event searches Brianna Mount, assistant professor of physics at Black Hills State University, at work in the Black Hills State University Underground Campus (BHUC) at Sanford Lab, where components of the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment were tested to learn the background radioactivity of the materials.

They found that gently heating N95 masks in high relative humidity could inactivate SARS-CoV-2 virus trapped within the masks, without degrading the masks' performance. As the COVID-19 pandemic swept around the world early this year, shortages of protective equipment such as N95 masks left healthcare workers little choice but to reuse the masks they had - increasing the risk of infection for both them and their patients.

One of the biggest challenges to the development of medical treatments for cancer is the fact that there is no single kind of cancer. Cancers derive from many kinds of cells and tissues, and each have their own characteristics, behaviors, and susceptibilities to anti-cancer drugs. A treatment that works on colon cancer might have little to no effect on lung cancer, for example.

Using advanced computer simulations, astrophysicists are learning how galaxies evolve their characteristic structure - super-bright centers fading away to dark edges. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Iowa State University and IBM Research have discovered that massive clumps of gas within galaxies scatter some stars from their orbits, eventually creating a smooth, exponential fade in the brightness of many galaxy disks.

Scanning tunneling microscope image of wide-band metallic graphene nanoribbon (GNR). Each cluster of protrusions corresponds to a singly-occupied electron orbital. The formation of a pentagonal ring near each cluster leads to a more than tenfold increase in the conductivity of metallic GNRs. The GNR backbone has a width of 1.6 nanometers.

The EHT team that published the first images of a black hole last year used the knowledge they gained to analyse archive data from the period 2009-2013, and concluded that its shadow has been wobbling across the years. The findings of the team, which includes Sera Markoff from the University of Amsterdam and her PhD candidate Koushik Chatterjee, are now published in The Astrophysical Journal.