news 2022

Scientists at EPFL have overcome the scaling challenges of quantum optomechanical systems and realized the first superconducting circuit optomechanical graphene lattice. The precise control of micro-mechanical oscillators is fundamental to many contemporary technologies, from sensing and timing to radiofrequency filters in smartphones.

Scientific journals are likely to accept papers that provide new findings compared with studies reporting conventional results, which is contrary to long-standing concerns about publication biases. Using peer-reviewed data from 49 journals in the life and physical sciences, a new University of Michigan study found that evaluators are not biased against novelty, as scholars have suggested for decades.

Using this approach, researchers can map how light spreads in opaque environments. Using a specialized MRI sensor, MIT researchers have shown that they can detect light deep within tissues such as the brain. Imaging light in deep tissues is extremely difficult because as light travels into tissue, much of it is either absorbed or scattered.

Many surfaces get slippery when wet. Some surfaces have the opposite behaviour: they get less slippery. UvA researchers have now shed light on why this is the case. Hydrogen bonds between the surface and the water turn out to play an important role. The research, carried out by PhD candidate Liang Peng in collaboration with five physicists and chemists from UvA, ARCNL and the German Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, was published in Physical Review Letters this week.

A newly developed rapid test needs only a few seconds to reliably detect pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2. It is based on specially designed magnetic nanoparticles. The current rapid tests for diagnosing infectious diseases are speedy, but not really fast. For example, antigen self-tests, PCR tests or ELISA tests for coronavirus take 15 minutes to several hours before a reliable result is available.

Researchers at the University of Twente have developed a revolutionary programmable integrated microwave photonic filter with a record-breaking dynamic range. This represents a major breakthrough in the integration of functionality and performance in radio frequency photonic signal processors. David Marpaung, one of the authors of the study says: "Our work breaks the conventional and fragmented approach of integration, functionality and performance that currently prevents the adoption of these photonic systems in real applications.

A soap bubble attracts the attention of young and old. Who has never wondered the recipe of these fascinating bubbles or how to get the biggest one - In collaboration with artists, who have a great empirical knowledge of the recipes that work in their acts, a team from the Laboratory of Solid State Physics (CNRS/University of Paris-Saclay) has identified the main ingredients ensuring to get the best bubbles.

In new research published in Nature Communications , University of Sussex scientists demonstrate how a highly conductive paint coating that they have developed mimics the network spread of a virus through a process called 'explosive percolation' - a mathematical process which can also be applied to population growth, financial systems and computer networks, but which has not been seen before in materials systems.

The University of Valencia develops a tool to improve research on molecular nanomagnets A team from the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol) of the University of Valencia has developed an open interactive platform that brings together and makes available to science around 20,000 data relating to the chemical design of molecular nanomagnets of special interest in the field of magnetic memories.

The Donnan electric potential arises from an imbalance of charges at the interface of a charged membrane and a liquid, and for more than a century it has stubbornly eluded direct measurement. Many researchers have even written off such a measurement as impossible. But that era, at last, has ended. With a tool that's conventionally used to probe the chemical composition of materials, scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ÜBerkeley Lab) recently led the first direct measurement of the Donnan potential.

A new study involving UCL has uncovered how magnetic waves are transmitted past a standing shock wave, known as the bow shock, that forms ahead of Earth as a result of the solar wind hitting our magnetic bubble (magnetosphere). Shock waves occur in air when a plane travels faster than the speed of sound and also occur in plasma (a fourth state of matter that makes up 99% of the visible Universe) in space.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laborator

New findings lay the foundation for the search for dark matter How are galaxies born, and what holds them together? Astronomers assume that dark matter plays an essential role. However, as yet it has not been possible to prove directly that dark matter exists. A research team including Technical University of Munich (TUM) scientists has now measured for the first time the survival rate of antihelium nuclei from the depths of the galaxy - a necessary prerequisite for the indirect search for Dark Matter.

Media reports suggest that the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has achieved fusion ignition, with the energy produced by a fusion experiment exceeding the amount of energy in the laser light used to compress the fuel capsule. This finding is expected to be officially announced tomorrow, Dec.

LIFU's advantage comes from the large amount of information contained in each observation. Using small displacements of the pointer, the WEAVE spectrograph has produced, in two hours, spectra for 31,500 regions in and around these galaxies. The total light intensity of each of the fibres is used to form the image of the galaxies shown in the centre.

WEAVE has carried out its first-light observations on Stephan's Quintet, a group of five galaxies, some of which are undergoing collision. They provide a demonstration of its exceptional capabilities and hold out the promise of major discoveries. WEAVE, a new spectrograph on the William Herschel Telescope (Canary Islands, Spain), has successfully carried out first-light observations of a group of five galaxies called Stephan's Quintet, thus demonstrating its unprecedented capabilities and providing the astronomical community with the promise of many new discoveries.

Two seemingly different areas of physics are related in subtle ways: Quantum theory and thermodynamics. How chaos theory mediates between them has now been studied at TU Wien. A single particle has no temperature. It has a certain energy or a certain speed - but it is not possible to translate that into a temperature.

In future it will be possible to incorporate data from deep space telescopes into the underlying atomic models with a high degree of reliability Very hot gas, as found in the sun's corona or in close proximity to black holes, emits very intense x-rays. It reveals the locally prevailing physical conditions, such as temperature and density.

New findings confirm that JWST has surpassed the Hubble telescope in its ability to observe the early Universe So many questions about galaxies have been waiting for the transformative opportunity of Webb, and we are thrilled to be able to play a part in revealing this story Sandro Tacchella An international team of astronomers, including scientists at the Universities of Cambridge, Hertfordshire and Oxford, has reported the discovery of the earliest galaxies ever confirmed in our Universe.

Scientists simulate a whole family of universes with curvature in ultracold quantum gases According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, space and time are inseparable. In our universe - which is hardly measurably curved - the structure of this spacetime is predetermined. Scientists at Heidelberg University have now succeeded in realizing an effective spacetime in a laboratory experiment that can be manipulated.