New AI algorithm learns chemical language, accelerates polymer research
Polymers are well-known macromolecules in materials science and engineering communities, but most of us may not be aware of how often we ' re touching, using and interfacing with these materials. Polymers can be engineered to have desired properties … (Source: NSF News)
Source: NSF News - August 29, 2023 Category: Science Authors: NSF Source Type: news
Why Experts Are Skeptical About That Supposed Superconductor Breakthrough
On Saturday July 22, researchers in South Korea published a paper announcing the synthesis of what could be the world’s first ambient-temperature superconductor.
If their findings are genuine, then the implications are huge. But most experts are skeptical. Researchers around the world are trying to replicate and verify the Korean researchers’ findings. The most credible attempts have found that LK-99—the name the Korean researchers gave the material—is not actually superconductive at room temperatures.
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For now, the reliability of the findings...
Source: TIME: Science - August 3, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Will Henshall Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
News at a glance: Ben Franklin ’s anticounterfeiting, science’s English language barrier, and disclosing stigmatized identities to students
INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Drugmaker expands access to TB drug
A man with tuberculosis undergoes an electrocardiogram at an Indian clinic that treats drug-resistant TB.
UNIT PARANJPE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson (J&J) last week agreed to help make a therapy critical to fighting drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) more widely available and affordable. J&J said it would allow competitors to market generic versions of the lifesaving drug, bedaquiline, in 44 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where the company...
Source: ScienceNOW - July 20, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
News at a glance: AI weather forecasting, CRISPR relatives, and green hydrogen
METEOROLOGY
Artificial intelligence forecasts the weather in a flash
A model using artificial intelligence (AI)
forecasts global weather as accurately, and more than 10,000 times faster
, than the best system in use, researchers report this week in
Nature
. The conventional tool, run by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, is computationally intensive, requiring hours of supercomputer calculations to produce a 10-day forecast. The new AI-based model—named Pangu-Weather and developed by Huawei, the Chinese tech giant—improves on previous AI-powered models b...
Source: ScienceNOW - July 6, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
NSF invests $162 million in research centers to accelerate materials science from lab to factory
A $162 million investment from the U.S. National Science Foundation will drive the creation of advanced materials capable of remarkable things — from being tough enough to withstand the heat of a fusion reactor to processing information at the… (Source: NSF News)
Source: NSF News - June 26, 2023 Category: Science Authors: NSF Source Type: news
U.S. military contract could help Black university become research powerhouse
The U.S. Air Force wants scientists at Howard University to figure out how its fighter pilots can team up with robotic co-pilots to defeat enemy combatants.
But aerial superiority isn’t the only goal of Howard’s new Research Institute for Tactical Autonomy (RITA). University officials are also hoping the Air Force’s initial 5-year, $90 million investment in RITA—under a special arrangement that makes additional funding all but certain—will help Howard became the first historically Black institution to ascend to the top ranks of the nation’s research universities.
“This should be a real game change...
Source: ScienceNOW - June 23, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Materials scientists say they can counteract data centre energy consumption
Amber alert? SFI’s research centre Amber urged stakeholders to consider investing further in materials science following recent stats about data centres. Materials science could hold the answers to questions that have been arising about data centres in recent times, say scientists in the field.…#sfi #amber #cso #ireland #irish #tiktok #dublin #meta #netherlands #lorrainebyrne (Source: Reuters: Health)
Source: Reuters: Health - June 16, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
Scientists Just Got A Step Closer to The Sci-Fi Reality of Building Solar Power Stations in Space
On the night of May 22, a group of researchers and students gathered around a computer monitor on the roof of Caltech’s electrical engineering department. The monitors were connected to equipment designed to detect microwave radiation received from a satellite in space. And about 300 miles above them, far over the night’s thick cover of clouds, that satellite was about to pass overhead, equipped as a test bed for technologies they had developed to gather solar energy in space and project it down to Earth.
The researchers weren’t expecting much. They had already accomplished their primary objective back i...
Source: TIME: Science - June 1, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Alejandro de la Garza Tags: Uncategorized climate change energy healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
News at a glance: U.S. rules on carbon emissions, better vehicle batteries, and a Mars moon ’s close-up
PLANETARY SCIENCE
Mars’s moon may be its kin
Researchers have long believed that Mars’s two moons, Deimos and Phobos, are captured asteroids. But the first close-up images of Deimos, taken by the United Arab Emirates’s $200 million Hope spacecraft, suggest the 12-kilometer-wide body instead formed from the same material as Mars, researchers revealed this week at the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union. The imagery, taken during a 10 March flyby, indicates that Deimos’s surface is covered by volcanic basalts like those on Mars, with no signs of the carbon-rich rock more often foun...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 27, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
AI-driven robots start hunting for novel materials without help from humans
SAN FRANCISCO—
Imagine a cookbook with 150,000 tempting dishes—but few recipes for making them. That’s the challenge facing an effort at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) known as the Materials Project. It has used computers to predict some 150,000 new materials that could improve devices such as battery electrodes and catalysts. But the database’s users around the globe have managed to make just a fraction of these for testing, leaving thousands untried. “Synthesis has become the bottleneck,” says Gerbrand Ceder, a materials scientist at LBNL.
Now, Ceder and his colleagues have marrie...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 20, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
To scientists ’ relief, key research reactor to restart 2 years after accident
More than 2 years after an accident that caused a small and fleeting release of radiation, a research reactor that serves as a key source of neutrons for studying materials should soon be back online. On 9 March, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) authorized officials at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to restart the 54-year-old reactor in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which prior to the accident supported nearly half of all neutron-scattering research in the United States. The tiny reactor will come on slowly over the next few months, NIST officials say.
“It’s fantastic news,” say...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 15, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Splitting seawater could provide an endless source of green hydrogen
Few climate solutions come without downsides. “Green” hydrogen, made by using renewable energy to split water molecules, could power heavy vehicles and decarbonize industries such as steelmaking without spewing a whiff of carbon dioxide. But because the water-splitting machines, or electrolyzers, are designed to work with pure water, scaling up green hydrogen could exacerbate global freshwater shortages. Now, several research teams are reporting advances in producing hydrogen directly from seawater, which could become an inexhaustible source of green hydrogen.
“This is the direction for the future,” says Zhif...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 15, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Investments in High Energy Density Science Could Help Address Significant National Needs, Says New Report
The U.S. should renew its investments in high energy density science facilities and workforce capacity and improve collaboration, in order to achieve advances in areas such as fusion power and materials science and help address significant national needs. (Source: News from the National Academies)
Source: News from the National Academies - February 23, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Hidden hydrogen: Earth may hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel
IN THE SHADE
of a mango tree, Mamadou Ngulo Konaré recounted the legendary event of his childhood. In 1987, well diggers had come to his village of Bourakébougou, Mali, to drill for water, but had given up on one dry borehole at a depth of 108 meters. “Meanwhile, wind was coming out of the hole,” Konaré told Denis Brière, a petrophysicist and vice president at Chapman Petroleum Engineering, in 2012. When one driller peered into the hole while smoking a cigarette, the wind exploded in his face.
“He didn’t die, but he was burned,” Konaré continued. “And now we had a huge fire. The color of the ...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 16, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Materials science and bacteria are key to remediation, experts say
<img width="100" src="https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/sites/niehs-factor/files/styles/large/public/2022/5/community-impact/materials-science/thumb936948.jpg?itok=L6NsgkYl" /><br /><p>At NIEHS Superfund Research Program event, hundreds learned about grantees' novel strategies to remove contaminants from the environment.</p>
(read more) (Source: Environmental Factor - NIEHS Newsletter)
Source: Environmental Factor - NIEHS Newsletter - February 3, 2023 Category: Environmental Health Source Type: news
