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Ruthenium nanoframes open the doors to better catalysts

The world is run by catalysts. They clean up after cars, help make fertilizers, and could be the key to better hydrogen fuel. Now, a team of chemists, led by Xiaohu Xia from Michigan Technological University, has found a better way to make metal nanoframe catalysts.

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Using a two-part process, chemist Xiaohu Xia and his team found a way to turn ruthenium into a nanoframe, a promising metal catalyst.

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Artificial molecules

Scientists at ETH Zurich and IBM Research Zurich have developed a new technique that enables for the first time the manufacture of complexly structured tiny objects joining together microspheres. The objects have a size of just a few micrometres and are produced in a modular fashion, making it possible to program their design in such a way that each component exhibits different physical properties. After fabrication, it is also very simple to bring the micro-objects into solution. This makes the new technique substantially different from micro 3D printing technology. With most of today's micro 3D printing technologies, objects can only be manufactured if they consist of a single material, have a uniform structure and are attached to a surface during production.

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Artificial molecules are shown. The individual components are marked with different fluorescent dyes (molecule size: 2-7 micrometres; compilation of microscopic images).

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Heat and light get larger at the nanoscale: Columbia-led research team first to demonstrate a strong, non-contact heat transfer channel using light with performances that could lead to high efficiency electricity generation

In a new study recently published in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers from Columbia Engineering, Cornell, and Stanford have demonstrated heat transfer can be made 100 times stronger than has been predicted, simply by bringing two objects extremely close--at nanoscale distances--without touching. Led by Columbia Engineering's Michal Lipson and Stanford Engineering's Shanhui Fan, the team used custom-made ultra-high precision micro-mechanical displacement controllers to achieve heat transfer using light at the largest magnitude reported to date between two parallel objects.

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This is a video of the high-precision micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) used to control the distance between two beams at different temperatures. The video is taken under a high magnification microscope. The whole video frame dimension is comparable to the diameter of a strand of human hair.

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A Planet Is Forming in an Earth-like Orbit around a Young Star

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Trigger for Milky Way's Youngest Supernova Identified

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Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster

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Computer simulation discloses new effect of cavitation: Steam bubbles in fast flowing fluids obviously also result from chemical surface properties; use for reducing wear in pumps and plain bearings

Researchers have discovered a so far unknown formation mechanism of cavitation bubbles by means of a model calculation. They describe how oil-repellent and oil-attracting surfaces influence a passing oil flow. Depending on the viscosity of the oil, a steam bubble forms in the transition area. This so-called cavitation may damage material of e.g. ship propellers or pumps. However, it may also have a positive effect, as it may keep components at a certain distance and, thus, prevent damage.

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A cavitation bubble is formed in the lubricant between the oil-attracting (yellow) and the oil-repellent surface (black). When used as a buffer, it might reduce wear.

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Engineering black gold, as light as the bones of birds

A team of Korean research team, led by Professor Ju-Young Kim (School of Materials Science and Engineering) of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea has recently announced that they have successfully developed a way to fabricate an ultralight, high-dense nanoporous gold (np-Au).

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These are SME images that show the formation of nanoporosity in free corrosion dealloying for gold samples.

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Scientists Part the Clouds on How Droplets Form

Berkeley Lab researchers find new mechanism to explain the birth of cloud droplets, could influence climate models

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Cloud droplets form when the amount of water vapor reaches a threshold value. Larger cloud droplets form when organic molecules (in red) are present on the surface instead of dissolving in the interior, or bulk, of the droplet.

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New open source software for high resolution microscopy: Bielefeld physicists report their new development in Nature Communications

With their special microscopes, experimental physicists can already observe single molecules. However, unlike conventional light microscopes, the raw image data from some ultra-high resolution instruments first have to be processed for an image to appear. For the ultra-high resolution fluorescence microscopy that is also employed in biophysical research at Bielefeld University, members of the Biomolecular Photonics Group have developed a new open source software solution that can process such raw data quickly and efficiently. The Bielefeld physicist Dr. Marcel Müller reports on this new open source software in the latest issue of Nature Communications published on 21 March.

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The images show a liver cell before and after processing the data with the software developed at Bielefeld University.

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