Collaborative education for solving climate challenges

The task of gently transporting a microscopic particle from one point to another along a winding path, and then bringing it back using nothing more than a single, compact chip is a challenge we set out to address in our new study, now published in Nature Communications.

They rank among the darkest and coldest places in the solar system: Hundreds of lunar craters, many of them at the moon’s south pole, never receive direct sunlight and lie in permanent shadow. That’s exactly why physicist Jun Ye and his colleagues suggest that these craters are the perfect place to build a critical component for an ultrastable laser.

The production of many products used in everyday life and in industry, such as pharmaceuticals, plastics, and coatings, requires chemical catalysts, often expensive noble metals with limited availability. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are now presenting the first air-stable iron compound, which enables the direct use of iron(I) for catalysis and, unlike previous methods, does not require strong reducing agents. A first test yielded active iron catalysts.

Last week news headlines from outlets across the globe announced that a mundane explanation had been found for haunted houses: infrasound (ie. sounds of a frequency beneath the typical threshold of conscious human hearing, which roughly spans 20Hz to 20KHz). The titles of these articles were convincing: “Study: Infrasound likely a key factor in alleged hauntings” (Ars Technica); “Haunted by Ghosts? New Study Provides a Surprising Explanation” (Gizmodo); “Spooky feelings in old houses may be caused by boiler sounds, study […]

You would think that, in the middle of a war that is having catastrophic effects on the world economy, the US ‘Department of War’ might have better things to do than release UFO files. But you’d be wrong, as on Friday the Pentagon released a whole bunch of UFO files on their very own website (war.gov/ufo, if you don’t mind) for everyone to browse. This first release (there are more to come) is comprised of 119 PDFs, 28 video files, […]

Scientists have uncovered how the interplay between cell shape and mechanical stress influences the orientation of stomata (microscopic pores on the leaf surface) during early plant development.