/ 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. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD), in collaboration with international partners, have developed momentum-resolved Floquet optical selection rules. They show how these symmetry-based rules determine the spectral weight distributions of photon-dressed sidebands in time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (TrARPES) experiments across different pump-probe configurations. This fundamental work has now been published in Science Advances. /news/2025-08-symmetry-based-floquet-optical-sidebands.html Condensed Matter Optics & Photonics Thu, 21 Aug 2025 16:12:03 EDT news675011521 We rarely think about how liquids flow—why honey is thick, water is thin or how molten plastic moves through machines. But for scientists and engineers, understanding and predicting the viscosity of materials, especially polymers, is essential. /news/2025-06-atomistic-route-viscosity-glass-transition.html Condensed Matter Soft Matter Tue, 24 Jun 2025 10:20:03 EDT news669979001 Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have theoretically demonstrated that photons trapped inside an optical cavity carry detailed information about a material placed within it. By measuring the properties of the photons leaking out of the cavity, researchers can probe how an optical cavity modifies the properties of the embedded materials. /news/2025-06-vacuum-fluctuations-optical-cavities-reveal.html Condensed Matter Optics & Photonics Mon, 23 Jun 2025 09:05:04 EDT news669888301 Gao Peng's research group at the International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Peking University, has developed a breakthrough method for visualizing interfacial phonon transport with sub-nanometer resolution. Leveraging fast electron inelastic scattering in electron microscopy, the team directly measured temperature fields and thermal resistance across interfaces, unveiling the microscopic mechanism of phonon-mediated heat transport at the nanoscale. /news/2025-06-phonon-materials-visualized-atomic.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 20 Jun 2025 10:46:49 EDT news669635206 Using the now-decommissioned Summit supercomputer, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran the largest and most accurate molecular dynamics simulations yet of the interface between water and air during a chemical reaction. The simulations have uncovered how water controls such chemical reactions by dynamically coupling with the molecules involved in the process. /news/2025-06-supercomputer-simulations-chemical-reaction-air.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Wed, 18 Jun 2025 12:00:46 EDT news669466843 Quantum materials exhibit remarkable emergent properties when they are excited by external sources. Functional applications of these properties rely heavily on their tunability in real time. However, these excited states decay rapidly once the excitation is removed, limiting their practical applications. /news/2025-06-quantum-state-lifetimes-laser-triggered.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 05 Jun 2025 13:08:01 EDT news668347675 The human body is a veritable cellular highway with up to 37 trillion cells traveling about and carrying out all essential life functions, from taking in nutrients and converting them to energy, to repairing a skinned knee. In large part, cells get their marching orders from electric fields influencing their functions. /news/2025-06-conventional-theories-cells-electrical-fields.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 04 Jun 2025 13:09:03 EDT news668261341 Materials with self-adaptive mechanical responses have long been sought after in material science. Using computer simulations, researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Hyderabad, now show how such adaptive behavior can emerge in active glasses, which are widely used as models for biological tissues. /news/2025-05-uncover-mechanism-enabling-glasses-brittleness.html Soft Matter Mon, 19 May 2025 10:34:13 EDT news666869646 The melting of crystals is the process by which an increase in temperature induces the disruption of the ordered crystalline lattice, leading to the disordered structure and highly fluctuating dynamic behavior of liquids. At the glass transition, where an amorphous solid (a glass) turns into a liquid, there is no obvious change in structure, and only the dynamics of the atoms change, going from strongly localized dynamics in space (in the glass state) to the highly fluctuating (diffusive) dynamics in the liquid. /news/2025-04-crystal-glass-transition-obey-physical.html Condensed Matter Soft Matter Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:10:01 EDT news662731528 UCLA doctoral student Yilin Wong noticed that some tiny dots had appeared on one of her samples, which had been accidentally left out overnight. The layered sample consisted of a germanium wafer topped with evaporated metal films in contact with a drop of water. On a whim, she looked at the dots under a microscope and couldn't believe her eyes. Beautiful spiral patterns had been etched into the germanium surface by a chemical reaction. /news/2025-03-serendipitous-discovery-reveals-stress-chemistry.html Materials Science Thu, 13 Mar 2025 15:19:37 EDT news661097972 Scientists have achieved the first real-time visualization of how excited-state aromaticity emerges within just hundreds of femtoseconds and then triggers a molecule to change from bent to planar structure in a few picoseconds. /news/2025-03-real-tracking-reveals-aromaticity-driven.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 12 Mar 2025 13:06:03 EDT news661003561 A research group has developed SPACIER, an advanced polymer material design tool that integrates machine learning with molecular simulations. As a proof of concept, the group successfully synthesized new optical polymers that exceed the empirical limits of refractive index and Abbe number. The research was published in npj Computational Materials on 28 January 2025. /news/2025-02-automated-polymer-tool-machine-molecular.html Polymers Analytical Chemistry Wed, 05 Feb 2025 11:16:06 EST news657976561 Currently employed computational methods to simulate materials and their mechanical behavior are based on molecular dynamics (MD) with atomistic force-fields. These methods provide an excellent description of the thermodynamically stable phases of materials with arbitrary chemical and microstructural complexity. /news/2024-12-scientists-hardest-problems-atomic-scale.html Polymers Analytical Chemistry Mon, 09 Dec 2024 10:17:08 EST news652961823 In fields ranging from immunology and ecology to economics and thermodynamics, multi-scale complex systems are ubiquitous. They are also notoriously difficult to model. Conventional approaches take either a bottom-up or top-down approach. But in disturbed systems, such as a post-fire forest ecosystem or a society in a pandemic, these unidirectional models can't capture the interactions between the small-scale behaviors and the system-level properties. SFI External Professor John Harte (UC Berkeley) and his collaborators have worked to resolve this challenge by building a hybrid method that links bottom-up behaviors and top-down causation in a single theory. /news/2024-12-hybrid-links-micro-macro-scales.html Mathematics Fri, 06 Dec 2024 16:04:32 EST news652723461 Researchers from Singapore and China have used a superconducting quantum processor to study the phenomenon of quantum transport in unprecedented detail. /news/2024-12-superconducting-qubit-simulation-quantum.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 05 Dec 2024 11:10:09 EST news652619401 If you've ever watched a large flock of birds on the wing, moving across the sky like a cloud with various shapes and directional changes appearing from seeming chaos, or the maneuvers of an ant colony forming bridges and rafts to escape floods, you've been observing what scientists call self-organization. /news/2024-10-theory-physics-principle-rattling.html Mathematics Wed, 23 Oct 2024 13:14:03 EDT news648908042 In June, X-rays began to shine again at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Advanced Photon Source (APS), a facility where intense, directed X-ray light beams are used to inspect everything from materials for better solar cells and batteries to antibodies for fighting viruses. The return of light after a yearlong shutdown is one more momentous step in an upgrade that will create unparalleled research opportunities. /news/2024-10-advanced-photon-source-nears-scientists.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 02 Oct 2024 16:10:17 EDT news647104205 An altogether new convective instability has been predicted and experimentally discovered, 140 years after Lord Rayleigh. Convective instabilities are of fundamental importance for both our everyday life as well as for ecology and climate in atmospheric and oceanic science. /news/2024-09-discovery-convective-instability-complex-fluids.html Soft Matter Fri, 06 Sep 2024 08:57:17 EDT news644831831 Researchers at Kanazawa University have published an article in eLife deciphering the actin structure-dependent preferential cooperative binding of cofilin. /news/2024-08-flexibility-helical-actin-filaments-proteins.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 28 Aug 2024 14:39:03 EDT news644074741 Cilia are sensory structures extending from the surface of some cells. These hair-like structures are known to contribute to the sensorimotor capabilities of various living organisms, including humans. /news/2024-08-robotic-platform-complex-ciliary-behavior.html Soft Matter Tue, 13 Aug 2024 08:10:01 EDT news642683025 For roughly 70 years, Play-Doh has been entertaining children with its moldable, squishy form. This familiar substance belongs to a broader category known as soft matter, which includes some foods (such as mayonnaise), 3D printer gels, battery electrolytes and latex paint. /news/2024-08-ability-track-nanoscale-soft-pivotal.html Soft Matter Fri, 09 Aug 2024 05:17:27 EDT news642399442 Two-dimensional materials such as graphene promise to form the basis of incredibly small and fast technologies, but this requires a detailed understanding of their electronic properties. New research demonstrates that fast electronic processes can be probed by irradiating the materials with ions first. /news/2024-05-ion-irradiation-2d-material-probing.html Nanomaterials Fri, 17 May 2024 13:10:08 EDT news635170198 Every computing system, biological or synthetic, from cells to brains to laptops, has a cost. This isn't the price, which is easy to discern, but an energy cost connected to the work required to run a program and the heat dissipated in the process. /news/2024-05-thermodynamic-theory.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 13 May 2024 15:19:04 EDT news634832342 A collaborative research team has reported experimental evidence of a transition from ergodic toward ergodic breaking dynamics in driven-dissipative Rydberg atomic gases. The results were published in Science Advances. /news/2024-04-reveal-evidence-transition-ergodic-dynamics.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 01 Apr 2024 11:44:03 EDT news631190641 Skoltech researchers have identified promising ceramic materials for metal coatings that would boost gas turbine efficiency. If further experimental tests prove successful, the coatings will enable power plants to produce more electricity and jet planes to consume less fuel. With the material discovery technique tried and tested, the researchers intend to continue the search and find more candidates with perhaps even better properties. The study is published in Â鶹ÒùÔºical Review Materials. /news/2024-03-ceramics-hotter-gas-turbines-power.html Condensed Matter Wed, 13 Mar 2024 11:25:03 EDT news629547901 Condensed matter systems and photonic technologies are regularly used by researchers to create microscale platforms that can simulate the complex dynamics of many interacting quantum particles in a more accessible setting. Some examples include ultracold atomic ensembles in optical lattices, superconducting arrays, and photonic crystals and waveguides. In 2006 a new platform emerged with the demonstration of macroscopically coherent quantum fluids of exciton-polaritons to explore many-body quantum phenomena through optical techniques. /news/2024-03-optically-quantum-droplets-macroscopic-complexes.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 07 Mar 2024 12:15:03 EST news629036102 Theoretical physicist Farokh Mivehvar has investigated the interaction of two collections of atoms emitting light inside a quantum cavity—an optical device consisting of two high-quality, tiny mirrors facing each other that confine the light within a small area for an extended time. The model and predictions can be implemented and observed in state-of-the-art cavity/waveguide-quantum-electrodynamics experiments and might have applications in the new generation of so-called superradiant lasers. /news/2024-02-physicist-applications-generation-superradiant-lasers.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 19 Feb 2024 09:51:05 EST news627558661 Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have made a significant stride toward understanding a viable process for direct air capture, or DAC, of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This DAC process is in early development with the aim of achieving negative emissions, where the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the envelope of gases surrounding Earth exceeds the amount emitted. /news/2023-12-decode-aqueous-amino-acid-potential.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Fri, 01 Dec 2023 08:03:44 EST news620640221 Active matter systems feature unique behaviors that include collective self-assembly structures and collective migration. However, the efforts to realize collective entities in spaces without wall-adhered support, in order to conduct three-dimensional locomotion without dispersion, are challenging. /news/2023-11-bioinspired-self-assembled-colloidal.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Thu, 23 Nov 2023 11:00:01 EST news619696437 Researchers have explored the evolution of systems of interacting spins, as they transition from random to orderly alignments. Through new simulations, they show that this evolution can be investigated by measuring the changing strength of the system's magnetism. /news/2023-07-ising-magnetization.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Condensed Matter Fri, 28 Jul 2023 13:43:33 EDT news609770610