Science

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Designing climate-friendly concrete, from the nanoscale up: New understanding of concrete’s properties could increase lifetime of the building material, decrease emissions

An MIT-led team has defined the nanoscale forces that control how particles pack together during the formation of cement “paste,” the material that holds together concrete and causes that ubiquitous construction material to be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. By controlling those forces, the researchers will now be able to modify the microstructure of the hardened cement paste, reducing pores and other sources of weakness to make concrete stronger, stiffer, more fracture-resistant, and longer-lasting. Results from the researchers’ simulations explain experimental measurements that have confused observers for decades, and they may guide the way to other improvements, such as adding polymers to fill the pores and recycling waste concrete into a binder material, reducing the need to make new cement.

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The left and center diagrams show the structure of cement hydrate as determined by the researchers’ model, which calculates the positions of particles based on particle-to-particle forces. Each simulation box is about 600 nanometers wide. The packing fraction (the fraction of the box occupied by particles) is assumed to be 0.35 in the left diagram and 0.52 in the center one. Open pores, indicated by the white areas, are more prevalent at the lower packing fraction. The right-hand diagram is a sketch of cement hydrate published by T.C. Powers in 1958.

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A 'smart dress' for oil-degrading bacteria

Bionanotechnology research is targeted on functional structures synergistically combining macromolecules, cells, or multicellular assemblies with a wide range of nanomaterials. Providing micrometer-sized cells with tiny nanodevices expands the uses of the cultured microorganisms and requires nanoassembly on individual live cells.

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(a,b) Targeted movement of magnetic cells was facilitated by external magnetic field (in liquid media); (c) sedimentation of magnetically concentrated cells; (d) targeted movement and growth of magnetic cells on solid surface (inset shows a higher-magnification view of cells arranged on the surface).

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New remote-controlled microrobots for medical operations

For the past few years, scientists around the world have been studying ways to use miniature robots to better treat a variety of diseases. The robots are designed to enter the human body, where they can deliver drugs at specific locations or perform precise operations like clearing clogged-up arteries. By replacing invasive, often complicated surgery, they could optimize medicine.

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Scientists at EPFL and ETHZ have developed a new method for building microrobots that could be used in the body to deliver drugs and perform other medical operations.

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NASA's Hubble Looks to the Final Frontier

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NASA's Hubble Telescope Makes First Atmospheric Study of Earth-Sized Exoplanets

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Physicists collide ultracold atoms to observe key quantum principle

Physicists from New Zealand's University of Otago have used steerable 'optical tweezers' to split minute clouds of ultracold atoms and slowly smash them together to directly observe a key theoretical principle of quantum mechanics.

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University of Otago physicist Niels Kjærgaard and his team have used extremely precisely controlled laser beams to confine, accelerate and gently collide ultracold atomic clouds of fermionic potassium.
This allowed them to directly observe a key principle of quantum theory, the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
This principle predicts a forbidden zone along a meridian of the spherical halo of scattered particles, which the Otago experiments indeed unveiled.
The dark band in the graphic shows a rule derived from the principle in action. This rule is that indistinguishable fermions cannot scatter out at 90 degrees to the collision axis.

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Veggie juice that illuminates the gut: The medical imaging drink, developed to diagnose and treat gastrointestinal illnesses, is made of concentrated chlorophyll, the pigment that makes spinach green

The pigment that gives spinach and other plants their verdant color may improve doctors' ability to examine the human gastrointestinal tract. Veggie juice that illuminates the gut: The medical imaging drink, developed to diagnose and treat gastrointestinal illnesses, is made of concentrated chlorophyll, the pigment that makes spinach green

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A new University at Buffalo-led study suggests that chlorophyll-based nanoparticles are an effective imaging agent for the gut.

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Germs add ripples to make 'groovy' graphene: New nanomaterial conducts differently at right angles

Graphene, a two-dimensional wonder-material composed of a single layer of carbon atoms linked in a hexagonal chicken-wire pattern, has attracted intense interest for its phenomenal ability to conduct electricity. Now University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have used rod-shaped bacteria - precisely aligned in an electric field, then vacuum-shrunk under a graphene sheet - to introduce nanoscale ripples in the material, causing it to conduct electrons differently in perpendicular directions.

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Atomic force microscopy image of a graphene sheet draped over a Bacillus bacterium (left). The bacterium is about 1 micron or 1/25,000 of an inch wide. After applying vacuum and heat treatment, regular wrinkles form in the graphene (right, at twice the magnification).

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Astronomers find evidence for 'direct collapse' black hole

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An image based on a supercomputer simulation of the cosmological environment where primordial gas undergoes the direct collapse to a black hole. The gas flows along filaments of dark matter that form a cosmic web connecting structures in the early universe. The first galaxies formed at the intersection of these dark matter filaments.

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University of Illinois researchers demonstrate tunable wetting and adhesion of graphene

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated doping-induced tunable wetting and adhesion of graphene, revealing new and unique opportunities for advanced coating materials and transducers.

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Doping-induced tunable wetting of graphene.