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Researchers at ARCNL have found a way to detect nanostructures buried under many layers of opaque material, using very high frequency sound waves induced by light. Their findings are promising in view of applications in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, such as wafer alignment. The researchers also revealed interesting new phenomena in photo-acoustics that have not been investigated before.

Employees seek challenging experiences in their job in order to develop their skills. It is no surprise then, that many people are looking for challenge. According to the results of a new study, led by organisational psychologist Roy Sijbom, challenging job experiences can be meaningfully distinguished into challenges that are more publicly visible and those that are more private in nature.

Eight UvA researchers have had their proposals for out-of-the-box research ideas awarded funding from the Dutch Research Agenda's Idea Generator programme. The researchers will each receive 50,000 euros to further develop their ideas. The awards Giovanni Colavizza (Media Studies): Improving the accessibility of textual historical collections via transfer learning Digitised heritage collections are becoming abundant thanks to years of efforts from heritage institutions all over the world.

Easily produced, nature-like nanostructures of cobalt phosphide are highly effective catalysts for the electrolysis of water, according to research performed by chemist Ning Yan and his team at the University of Amsterdam's Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences together with co-workers from the School of Physics and Technology at Wuhan University, China.

A new study shows that humans can infer specific information when genetically closely related species verbally express emotions. In an experiment including over 3000 human listeners judging 155 vocalizations of 66 chimpanzees, the participants were able to accurately infer behavioural contexts like threat, play, and food.

Last year, more than one hundred people died during the general elections in Nigeria. When and why do we see such violence? How can we understand why politicians sometimes engage in violence themselves, while in other cases gangs and thugs beat up or threaten voters? And how do we explain why some parts of a country experience lots of election violence while others are peaceful? UvA political scientist Ursula Daxecker received an ERC grant to study these questions.

Researchers from Amsterdam UMC, the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) - partners in the forensic research institution the Co van Ledden Hulsebosch Center - have developed a method that allows for a more accurate determination of the time of death at a crime scene. Existing methods can only give a window of several hours; the new method reduces this to less than an hour.

Using laser light techniques, UvA physicists and medical researchers have found that small cough droplets, potentially containing virus particles, can float in the air in a room for many minutes, especially when the room is poorly ventilated. Good ventilation in public spaces (e.g. public transport, nursing homes) is therefore crucial to slow down the spread of the coronavirus.

Active motion of worms may help develop new polymer physics 26 May 2020 By performing experiments on Tubifex worms bought at the local pet shop, researchers at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have discovered that the wiggling motion of living worms gives rise to surprising physics. The way the worms spontaneously organise themselves into a blob turns out to be different from the aggregation of randomly moving particles that is well-known to physicists.

For a long time the car appeared to be the dominant force in urban streets but, increasingly, we are seeing experiments which aim to design streets as places for people. Especially now that our use of public spaces is changing so significantly. UvA researcher Luca Bertolini has investigated the impacts of 'street experiments' and draws lessons for urban policy.

An international team of researchers, led by astronomers from the University of Amsterdam, has directly demonstrated the presence of iron in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time. The researchers discovered emission lines of uncharged iron atoms in the light spectrum of KELT-9b. The observation was complicated as the exoplanet is outshone by its bright host star.

A team of physicists from the universities of Stanford and Amsterdam, led by UvA-physicist Jorik van de Groep, have constructed a new type of lens, with a thickness of only a single layer of atoms, that can be turned on and off at will. Such tuneable optical elements have promising applications, for example in augmented and virtual reality.

The coronavirus crisis confronts us with questions concerning common interest and self-interest. Do people and countries think of themselves or others? Research shows that while people are willing to set aside their own interests, most do so to help their own group. The Netherlands has prioritised the common interest in complying with the coronavirus measures.

In a paper just published in the journal Joule, scientists from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and TNO Energy Transition present an analysis of learning curves in energy technology and conclude that a focus on smaller unit size could facilitate faster cost reduction. According to Bob van der Zwaan, professor of Sustainable Energy Technology at the UvA's Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS), this is particularly relevant for devices and processes capable of generating solar fuels, such as hydrogen, that may become essential elements of future energy systems.

Distress initially affecting a small part of the economy can potentially spread to the entire system, as seen in the global financial crisis and most likely reconfirmed during the ongoing corona virus crisis. April 2020 Researchers from the Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam have developed data-driven methods that can be used to estimate contagion effects, and incorporated these in computational models for pricing and risk management.

How can we best protect the Earth's biodiversity and ecosystems? Long-term ecosystem restoration strategies should be looking more closely at the complexity of ecosystems, including species interactions and evolution, says an international group of scientists, including UvA soil ecologist Elly Morriën, in the renowned scientific journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

In a paper that appeared in the journal Physical Review Letters this week, astrophysicists from the University of Amsterdam propose a new way of potentially detecting dark matter. Astrophysicists Thomas Edwards, Marco Chianese and Bradley Kavanagh, from the groups of Samaya Nissanke and Christoph Weniger at the GRAPPA center of excellence, have studied the gravitational waves produced by the merger of a neutron star and a black hole.

The intelligent lockdown is certainly necessary, but is also causing serious damage to society on almost every conceivable level. That's why it's essential to resume 'normal life' as quickly as possible. So it's a quest for the ideal exit strategy. The new crowdsourcing website Strategies versus Corona invites network researchers, programmers, data scientists, psychologists and economists to come up with exit strategies and also to directly calculate the consequences.

We all want children to be able to function well in social groups, and various social skills training programmes are available for children for whom this is a challenge. Studies have already proven these training programmes to be effective in general, and UvA scientists have now discovered what specific elements determine the success of such training programmes.

A multidisciplinary team coordinated by biologist Stanley Brul of the University of Amsterdam's Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences has improved a technique to study live cells in time with the help of fluorescence and rescan confocal microscopy. The technique can be applied to existing microscopy set-ups, making it an easy and cheap solution when higher resolution is needed.