News by Subject Technology & Engineering

By introducing nanoparticles into ordinary cement, Northwestern University researchers have formed a smarter, more durable and highly functional cement.

Scientists have used a compound made from a starch derivative and baking soda to help convert mechanical to electrical energy. The approach, developed by scientists at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Technology (DGIST), with colleagues in Korea and India, is cost-effective and biocompatible, and can help charge low-energy electronics like calculators and watches. The details were published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

To tackle the challenge of global warming, scientists have been looking into green and sustainable methods of breaking down carbon dioxide in emissions and in the atmosphere. Now, a group of researchers from Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan, have developed a novel, easy to synthesize composite compound that enables the efficient use of solar energy to reduce carbon dioxide, taking us one step closer to achieving a green economy.

Professor Konstantin Arutyunov of the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM HSE), together with Chinese researchers, has developed a graphene-based mechanical resonator, in which coherent emission of sound energy quanta, or phonons, has been induced. Such devices, called phonon lasers, have wide potential for application in information processing, as well as classical and quantum sensing of materials. The study is published in the journal Optics Express.

Researchers have established an approach to identify the orientation of molecules and chemical bonds in crystalline organic-inorganic hybrid thin films deposited on substrates using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and polarized infrared light with a 3D-printed attenuated total reflectance (ATR) unit. This inexpensive method with laboratory-grade equipment quickly reaches the crystal-structure model of even extremely thin films of less than 10 nm.

The surface of a material often has properties that are very different from the properties within the material. An international research team from the University of Göttingen, the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Göttingen and the National Research Council Canada has now succeeded in investigating the surfaces of transparent crystals using powerful irradiation from lasers. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Osaka University researchers create an intelligent nanopore system sensitive enough to detect single SARS-CoV-2 virus particles. By training a machine-learning algorithm, the platform was able to identify between various coronaviruses in just five minutes. This work may lead to fast and accurate point-of-care testing for COVID and other communicable diseases.

A recent study by Nagoya University researchers revealed that microRNAs in urine could be a promising biomarker to diagnose brain tumors. Their findings have indicated that regular urine tests could help early detection and treatment of brain tumors, possibly leading to improved patient survival.