Dec 07, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Brain tumours, brain haemorrhages and neurological and psychological conditions are often hard to treat with medication. And even when effective drugs are available, these tend to have severe side effects because they circulate throughout the brain and not just the area they are meant to...
Graphical encoding of stiffness patterns in metamaterials enables reprogrammable and adaptive soft machines
Dec 07, 2023 (Nanowerk News) In the quest to develop robots and interactive machines that are safe, adaptable, and intelligent like organisms in nature, researchers have increasingly focused attention on soft and deformable systems constructed using elastic polymers and gels rather than hard material. These "soft machines" are constructed from...
Engineers develop a way to determine how the surfaces of materials behave
Dec 07, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Designing new compounds or alloys whose surfaces can be used as catalysts in chemical reactions can be a complex process relying heavily on the intuition of experienced chemists. A team of researchers at MIT has devised a new approach using machine learning that removes the...
Understanding the formation of minute droplets in microfluidic devices
Dec 07, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The detailed physics behind droplet generation in microfluidic post-array devices has been clarified by scientists at Tokyo Tech. Through various experiments performed under different operational conditions, they gained important insights into how these small devices can be used to produce uniform emulsions, with potential applications...
Bioinspired flexible artificial retina marks major milestone toward sensory-enhancing wearables
Dec 07, 2023 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Attempts to engineer artificial retinas with the visual capabilities of the human eye have faced enduring challenges. Though promising in theory, replicated the elaborate structure and energy efficiency of natural vision has not proven straightforward in practice. Past efforts along these lines have fallen short...
Bowtie resonators that build themselves bridge the gap between nanoscopic and macroscopic
Dec 06, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A central goal in quantum optics and photonics is to increase the strength of the interaction between light and matter to produce, e.g., better photodetectors or quantum light sources. The best way to do that is to use optical resonators that store light for a...
A novel microscope operates on the quantum state of single electrons
Dec 07, 2023 (Nanowerk News) We, and everything around us consists of molecules. The molecules are so tiny that even a speck of dust contains countless of them. The more fascinating it is that nowadays it is routinely possible to precisely image such molecules with a microscope called atomic force...
Stellar winds regulate growth of galaxies
Dec 07, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Galactic winds enable the exchange of matter between galaxies and their surroundings. In this way, they limit the growth of galaxies, that is, their star formation rate. Although this had already been observed in the local universe, an international research team led by a CNRS...
Huge benefits of merging hydropower and desalination
Dec 07, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Cornell University engineers have refined a concept for desalinating ocean water for large, drought-stricken coastal populations, while cultivating green energy in the process. By pumping seawater to a mountaintop reservoir and then employing gravity to send the salty water down to a co-located hydropower plant...