/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Farmers might be able to get help tending and harvesting crops using a new sensing technology from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute (RI). Researchers have invented a tool called SonicBoom that can find crops like apples based on the sound they make. The novel technology, still in the early stages of development, may someday be used by farm robots for tasks like pruning vines or locating ripe apples hidden among the leaves. /news/2025-08-agricultural-sensor-crops-vibrations-alternative.html Biotechnology Agriculture Thu, 14 Aug 2025 16:23:04 EDT news674407382 In the selection of specialty coffees, those that score above 80 points in blind tests are free of physical and sensory defects. Greenish-colored beans are known to give the drink an astringent taste, which is described as harsh, pungent, and dry. These beans are therefore discarded, along with broken, black, burnt, pitted, or undersized beans. /news/2025-08-fermentation-unripe-coffee-beans-high.html Biotechnology Agriculture Wed, 13 Aug 2025 16:45:04 EDT news674322301 Just as overlapping ripples on a pond can amplify or cancel each other out, waves of many kinds—including light, sound and atomic vibrations—can interfere with one another. At the quantum level, this kind of interference powers high-precision sensors and could be harnessed for quantum computing. /news/2025-08-powerful-quantum-paves-phonon-based.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 11 Aug 2025 14:39:04 EDT news674141941 UC Riverside researchers have unveiled a powerful new imaging technique that exposes how cutting-edge materials used in solar panels and light sensors convert light into electricity—offering a path to better, faster, and more efficient devices. /news/2025-07-imaging-method-reveals-generate-electricity.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Optics & Photonics Thu, 31 Jul 2025 06:24:48 EDT news673161883 Could clothing monitor a person's health in real time, because the clothing itself would be a self-powered sensor? A new material created through electrospinning, which is a process that draws out fibers using electricity, brings this possibility one step closer. /news/2025-07-flexible-fiber-material-powered-health.html Condensed Matter Wed, 30 Jul 2025 16:00:19 EDT news673110015 RIKEN physicists have found a magnetic material that converts heat into electricity with high efficiency, making it promising for use in energy-harvesting devices. The work is published in the journal Nature Communications. /news/2025-07-physicists-antiferromagnet-high-electricity-conversion.html Condensed Matter Fri, 25 Jul 2025 07:30:03 EDT news672645173 In every living cell, there are membranes, and in every membrane there are proteins, each of which acts as a chemical gatekeeper. /news/2025-07-mimic-cell-membranes-tune-ion.html Bio & Medicine Mon, 21 Jul 2025 15:40:01 EDT news672330755 The generation of electricity from heat, also known as thermoelectric energy conversion, has proved to be advantageous for various real-world applications. For instance, it proved useful for the generation of energy during space expeditions and military missions in difficult environments, as well as for the recovery of waste heat produced from industrial plants, power stations or even vehicles. /news/2025-07-giant-nonlinear-nernst-effect-trilayer.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Fri, 18 Jul 2025 06:30:01 EDT news671959548 In a new Nature Â鶹ÒùÔºics paper, researchers report the first experimental observation of the transverse Thomson effect, a key thermoelectric phenomenon that has eluded scientists since it was predicted over a century ago. /news/2025-07-scientists-experimental-transverse-thomson-effect.html Condensed Matter Wed, 16 Jul 2025 10:50:09 EDT news671878634 A set of breakthroughs from scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is offering a new understanding of how energy flows through one of nature's most important molecular machines: the photosystem II supercomplex (PSII). /news/2025-07-insights-nature-oxygen-machinery.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 08 Jul 2025 13:25:05 EDT news671199901 New results published in the journal Â鶹ÒùÔºical Review Letters detail how a specially designed metamaterial was able to tip the normally equal balance between thermal absorption and emission, enabling the material to better emit infrared light than absorb it. /news/2025-07-material-emits-infrared-absorbs-violating.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Condensed Matter Thu, 03 Jul 2025 11:20:01 EDT news670759222 In a review just published in Nature Materials, researchers take aim at the oldest principle in electronics: Ohm's law. /news/2025-07-ohm-law-nonlinear-currents-emerge.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 02 Jul 2025 12:09:03 EDT news670676942 As we witness the detrimental effects of climate change, the need for a rapid shift to renewable energy is only becoming more urgent. One of the most efficient forms of renewable energy, solar power, is generated by solar cells, which are the building blocks of solar panels. These electronic devices use semiconductors to convert the energy of light into electricity, a process called the photovoltaic effect. /news/2025-06-artificial-heterostructure-tunable-photovoltaic-effect.html Condensed Matter Optics & Photonics Tue, 24 Jun 2025 16:00:02 EDT news669999536 A research team from Penn State has broken a 165-year-old law of thermal radiation with unprecedented strength, setting the stage for more efficient energy harvesting, heat transfer and infrared sensing. /news/2025-06-rewriting-century-physics-law-thermal.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Optics & Photonics Fri, 20 Jun 2025 11:03:04 EDT news669636181 Researchers at Boise State University have developed a novel, environmentally friendly triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) that is fully printed and capable of harvesting biomechanical and environmental energy while also functioning as a real-time motion sensor. The innovation leverages a composite of Poly (vinyl butyral-co-vinyl alcohol-co-vinyl acetate) (PVBVA) and MXene (Ti3C2Tx) nanosheets, offering a sustainable alternative to conventional TENGs that often rely on fluorinated polymers and complex fabrication. /news/2025-06-mxene-polymer-composite-enables-eco.html Nanomaterials Mon, 16 Jun 2025 17:10:06 EDT news669312601 Researchers at Boise State University have developed a stable, high-performance Ti3C2Tx MXene ink formulation optimized for aerosol jet printing—paving the way for scalable manufacturing of micro-supercapacitors, sensors, and other energy storage and harvesting devices. /news/2025-06-energy-storage-future-mxene-inks.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:51:00 EDT news669307850 Â鶹ÒùÔºicists at Loughborough University have used cutting-edge nanotechnology to create what they believe may be "the world's smallest violin," which is small enough to fit within the width of a human hair. /news/2025-06-physicists-world-smallest-violin-nanotechnology.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Tue, 03 Jun 2025 11:26:29 EDT news668168779 In a world increasingly driven by high-speed communication and low-power electronics, a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) has proposed a fundamentally new way of manipulating light using the geometry of matter itself. /news/2025-05-ballistic-electrons-gen-terahertz-devices.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Thu, 29 May 2025 10:15:03 EDT news667732501 Plants mastered the art of harvesting sunlight billions of years ago, using elegant rings of pigments in their leaves. Now, researchers from Osaka Metropolitan University have taken a major step toward mimicking that leafy architecture with human-made molecules that self-assemble into stacked rings where charge and energy can circulate freely—just like in photosynthesis. /news/2025-05-synthetic-molecular-energy.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Wed, 28 May 2025 09:58:04 EDT news667645082 A research team has discovered how to make a promising energy-harvesting material much more efficient—without relying on rare or expensive elements. The material, called β-Zn4Sb3, is a tellurium-free thermoelectric compound that can convert waste heat into electricity. /news/2025-05-smart-phonon-boosts-efficiency-eco.html Condensed Matter Mon, 26 May 2025 10:17:03 EDT news667473421 Throughout its nearly 100-year manufacturing history, the crack resistance of natural rubber—one of the world's most widely used biomaterials—hasn't improved much. Until now. Materials researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have devised a way to produce natural rubber that retains its key properties of stretchiness and durability while greatly improving its ability to resist cracking, even after repeated cycles of use. /news/2025-05-rubber-material-ten-stronger-resistant.html Polymers Thu, 22 May 2025 13:11:41 EDT news667138295 A serendipitous observation in a Chemical Engineering lab at Penn Engineering has led to a surprising discovery: a new class of nanostructured materials that can pull water from the air, collect it in pores and release it onto surfaces without the need for any external energy. /news/2025-05-accidentally-class-nanostructured-materials-passively.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Wed, 21 May 2025 16:10:06 EDT news667062601 A research team led by Dr. Lim Sang-kyu in DGIST's Department of Energy and Environmental Technology has developed a smart fiber sensor that can detect natural disasters such as landslides in real time. The new fiber is based on piezoelectric technology, which converts pressure into electricity. Its three-dimensional (3D) structure dramatically improves performance, facilitating the implementation of a self-powered sensor system that can operate without an external power source. /news/2025-05-high-piezoelectric-fiber-sensor-real.html Nanomaterials Mon, 19 May 2025 11:50:10 EDT news666874206 They are large rafts that drift thousands of kilometers across the ocean surface, moving with the currents in an otherwise featureless marine environment. Tracked by satellites, the rudimentary floats—which may also be outfitted with long, submerged tails of netting—are used to attract schools of fish that can be scooped up by industrial tuna fishing vessels. /news/2025-05-reveals-alarming-tuna-fishing-devices.html Ecology Thu, 08 May 2025 11:41:04 EDT news665923261 An international team of researchers has discovered a new method to generate electricity using small plastic beads. By placing these beads close together and bringing them into contact, they generate more electricity than usual. This process, known as triboelectrification, is similar to the static electricity produced when rubbing a balloon against hair. /news/2025-03-scientists-smart-generate-energy-tiny.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Tue, 11 Mar 2025 12:25:03 EDT news660914701 Discarded food scraps, stray branches, seashells and many other natural materials are key ingredients in a new system that can pull drinkable water out of thin air developed by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin. /news/2025-02-scraps-biomass-based-hydrogel-thin.html Polymers Materials Science Tue, 25 Feb 2025 15:43:04 EST news659720582 Zaps of static electricity might be a wintertime annoyance, but to certain scientists, they represent an untapped source of energy. Using a device called a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy using triboelectric effect static. Many TENGs contain expensive, specially fabricated materials, but one team has instead used inexpensive store-bought tape, plastic and aluminum metal. The researchers report an improved version of their tape-based TENG in ACS Omega. /news/2025-01-generating-electricity-tacky-tape-version.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Thu, 30 Jan 2025 12:38:43 EST news657463120 A combined team of chemists and nano-scientists at Cornell University has developed a wireless microelectronic device powered by light that can convert a well plate into an array of small electrochemical reactors. /news/2025-01-wireless-electrochemical-synthesis-microelectronics-plate.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Thu, 09 Jan 2025 13:31:44 EST news655651899 Heat management at the nanoscale has long been a cornerstone of advanced technological applications, ranging from high-performance electronics to quantum computing. Addressing this critical challenge, we have been deeply intrigued by the emerging field of thermotronics, which focuses on manipulating heat flux in ways analogous to how electronics control electric energy. Among its most promising advancements are quantum thermal diodes, which enable directional heat control, and quantum thermal transistors, which regulate heat flow with precision. /news/2024-12-advancing-unidirectional-era-quantum-thermal.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 27 Dec 2024 09:32:36 EST news654514302 Researchers at Rice University have made a meaningful advance in the simulation of molecular electron transfer—a fundamental process underpinning countless physical, chemical and biological processes. The study, published in Science Advances, details the use of a trapped-ion quantum simulator to model electron transfer dynamics with unprecedented tunability, unlocking new opportunities for scientific exploration in fields ranging from molecular electronics to photosynthesis. /news/2024-12-significant-quantum-simulation-molecular-electron.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 20 Dec 2024 16:22:03 EST news653934117