79645429
submission
JMarshall writes:
A new, elastic silver ink allows stretchy circuits to be drawn using a regular pen. Unlike previous inks, which have been made with silver nanoparticles and are prone to clog pens over time, this ink begins as a silver salt mixed with adhesive rubber. After writing, the ink is brushed with a formaldehyde and sodium hydroxide solution that reduces the silver ions to conductive silver nanoparticles. Researchers strung 14 LED lights together using the ink. The lights stayed lit even through stretching and bending the rubber sheet the circuit was drawn on.
77713009
submission
JMarshall writes:
Wildflowers growing near fields sown with pesticide-treated seeds can be reservoirs of bee-harming neonicotinoid compounds, according to new research. The study suggests bees get most of their exposure to these pesticides from wildflowers, rather than from the crops the pesticides are designed to protect. At the peak of flowering season, 97% of the pollen brought back to beehives tested in the UK came from wildflowers, not the canola crops they were growing alongside.
77525187
submission
JMarshall writes:
Impossible Foods, a Silicon Valley food start-up started by a Stanford professor who quit his job, just raised $108 million to pursue a plant-based burger that truly tastes like meat. This article explains how Impossible Foods and other startups and researchers are tackling the tricky chemical and engineering challenge of making fake meat that tastes real.
76096523
submission
JMarshall writes:
Recordings on old audio tapes won't be worth much in another 20 years, and some are already too degraded to play. A team including members from the Library of Congress report that infrared spectroscopy can noninvasively separate magnetic tapes that can still be played from those that can’t, without risking the tapes by sticking them in a player. Unplayable tapes can sometimes be rescued by heating, which can make them playable for long enough to digitize. This method could help archivists identify which tapes need special handling before they get any worse.
73983507
submission
JMarshall writes:
Researchers have created fibers with structural color properties, no dyes needed. The researchers electrospun fiber mats from a solution of latex nanoparticles, creating fibers made of uniformly packed nanospheres. The resulting mats have structural color properties that depend on the size of the nanoparticles used. By using capillaries as molds, they obtained more uniformly packed spheres with even purer colors. The downside: the fibers so far are too weak to be useful. One solution could be to print the particles like ink on existing fibers.
73762191
submission
JMarshall writes:
Researchers have built a molecular nanocage 8 nm across that represents a step toward quantum computing.
It is difficult to make uniform nanoparticles more than 4 nm across, but new work solves this problem. Researchers made eight-membered metal rings from chromium and nickel that can act like a qubits in quantum computing. More connected rings means greater quantum computing capacity, so the team worked to combine many rings into one molecule. They managed to pull 24 rings together into an 8-nm sphere, secured by palladium ions at the core. The molecule had a surprisingly good phase memory, an indication of the molecule’s quantum computing potential. The researchers say building a molecule with 70-100 rings would allow them to do “some serious stuff” in quantum computing.
73697953
submission
JMarshall writes:
Researchers have made near-perfect reflectors out of a silicon metamaterial. These reflectors could offer a simpler, less expensive way to make high-performance mirrors for lasers or telescopes.
Metamaterials typically use nanoscale patterning to create unusual properties not present in the bulk material. In this new method, researchers used off-the-shelf, nanosized polystyrene beads and allowed them to self-assemble into a monolayer with a hexagonal pattern. Using the monolayer as a photolithographic mask, the researchers etched an array of silicon cylinders, each a few hundred nanometers across, onto a wafer. The cylinders act like tiny resonators for a particular light frequency—analogous to the way a given sound frequency will make a tuning fork hum. The array reflected 99.7 % of incident light at their peak wavelength. These simple metamaterial mirrors might one day replace current high-performance reflectors, which are somewhat costly to make.
