Doubts about the standard model of cosmology are deepening after a new study identified fundamental problems in a recent analysis that defended the conventional view that the universe is currently undergoing accelerated expansion driven by dark energy.
For centuries, scientists have been fascinated by the remarkable coordinated movements of flocking birds, swarming insects and schooling fish. Researchers have studied these natural phenomena to understand the rules of interactions between individuals that can produce complex group-level behavior. A collaboration of physicists and neurobiologists at the University of California San Diego has been studying schools of micro glassfish (Danionella cerebrum) to understand how the interactive mental processes of individual fish produce group-level decisions.
Scientists have been hard at work for more than 20 years to instruct biological systems, such as E. coli cells, to produce proteins they don't naturally produce. Success could mean faster, cheaper, more innovative solutions for medicine, agriculture, materials science, environmental remediation and other industries.
In micro- and nanotechnology, highly precise components with tall, narrow structures (high aspect ratios) made from semiconductor materials like silicon are important. A promising fabrication method is gas-phase metal-assisted chemical etching (MacEtch). In this plasma-free process, a thin metal layer defines the pattern on the silicon substrate. The etching step takes place in a chemical environment, where the reaction occurs only at the interface between the metal and silicon. The metal catalyst gradually sinks into the silicon, directing the etching deeper.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers has developed and demonstrated a step-by-step framework called Socratic Challenger that uses artificial intelligence to help undergraduate students cultivate critical thinking skills. Specifically, the framework uses AI as a collaborator to develop research questions that can be pursued in laboratory or classroom settings.
Bees are the most important pollinators of flowering plants, and approximately 10% of flowering plants are functionally specialized for buzz pollination. Buzz pollination is a mechanism in which pollen can be extracted from flowers only through the application of mechanical vibrations. Many important crops, such as tomatoes, eggplants and blueberries, are buzz-pollinated because they conceal their pollen in so-called poricidal anthers—floral structures with only a minute opening through which pollen can be released only when mechanical vibrations are applied.
Electrically charged raindrops, a naturally occurring phenomenon, can break down surfaces treated with protective coatings, according to new research published in Nature. This previously overlooked corrosion mechanism highlights the need for a new method of preserving metal objects like cars, ships, buildings and cultural heritage sites.
The reappearance of Budapest's "Rock of Starvation" is a visible sign of a drought months in the making. IIASA researchers have traced its progression from missing rainfall and parched soils to exceptionally low flows across the Danube basin.
All the forests in the world pale in comparison to the ocean when it comes to absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The ocean is the world's largest natural carbon sink, absorbing about a quarter of all CO2 emissions every year (and most of the excess heat trapped in Earth's atmosphere from greenhouse gases).
While quantum computing could be the future, it is currently plagued by finicky hardware. To make the technology practical, researchers must demonstrate that it consistently and continuously works and performs at scale. In a new study, published in Physical Review Letters, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Ion Storage Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, created a robust process for entangling trapped-ion qubits. The result means better building blocks for ion-based quantum computers.
