Science | WPN World People News

Researchers have tried to synthesize and study new nanostructured absorbing layers made of cheap and available elements with desirable physical properties because indium and gallium are very rare and expensive.

Working with brick-like blocks of gold nanoantennas, the Berkeley researchers fashioned a "skin cloak" barely 80 nanometers in thickness, that was wrapped around a three-dimensional object about the size of a few biological cells and arbitrarily shaped with multiple bumps and dents. The surface of the skin cloak was meta-engineered to reroute reflected light waves so that the object was rendered invisible to optical detection when the cloak is activated.

This research deals with the production of biocompatible electromagnetic superabsorbent nanocomposites, and their application in the removal of pollutants, including lead, cadmium and cobalt, from drinking water. The nanosorbent has been produced through a simple and cost effective method, and it has good performance. After the removal of heavy metals, the produced nanosorbent can be separated from the cycle by using a magnetic field and it can be reused.

NASA’s mission to send astronauts to deep space destinations where no other human has traveled has taken another important step forward with the completion of a critical milestone for the Orion spacecraft currently in production.

Entangled by gravity and destined to merge, two candidate black holes in a distant galaxy appear to be locked in an intricate dance. Researchers using data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have come up with the most compelling confirmation yet for the existence of these merging black holes and have found new details about their odd, cyclical light signal.

A Canadian PhD student has discovered a unique object – two massive stars with magnetic fields in a binary system. Matt Shultz of Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada found the system – Epsilon Lupi – and will publish the new result in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A new University of California/NASA study finds Southern California autumn wildfires driven by Santa Ana winds have been 10 times as costly in the past 20 years as summer wildfires, even though both types of fires have consumed about the same total acreage. Both types of fires are predicted to increase by midcentury, but non-Santa Ana fires are expected to increase more.

The discovery experimentally connects the worlds of classical and quantum mechanics and illuminates the mysterious nature of the Mott transition. It also could shed light on non-equilibrium physics, which is poorly understood but governs most of what occurs in our world. The finding may also represent a step towards more efficient electronics based on the Mott transition.

Rice University researchers have demonstrated an efficient new way to capture the energy from sunlight and convert it into clean, renewable energy by splitting water molecules.

Nanoporous gold contains tiny pores that can filter DNA from other biomolecules. The material can be used to make DNA detection devices for use in diagnostics.