News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Researchers at Tokyo Tech have revealed that an artificial receptor preferentially binds male steroid hormones from a mixture of male and female hormones in water. Based on their findings, they succeeded in the preparation of a prototype detection system for male hormones at the nanogram level. This achievement could lead to the development of ultrasensitive analytical devices for medical diagnostics and anti-doping testing in sports.

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used carbon nanotube templates to produce nanowires of transition metal monochalcogenide (TMM), which are only 3 atoms wide in diameter. These are 50 times longer than previous attempts and can be studied in isolation, preserving the properties of atomically quasi '1D' objects. The team saw that single wires twist when perturbed, suggesting that isolated nanowires have unique mechanical properties which might be applied to switching in nanoelectronics.

A team of researchers led by Berkeley Lab has observed chirality for the first time in polar skyrmions, in a material with reversible electrical properties -- a combination that could lead to more powerful data storage devices that continue to hold information, even after they've been turned off.

The inside of a fire might be the last place one would explore, but a new University of Central Florida method to do just that could lead to advances in fighting fires, creating cleaner engines and even space travel. Associate professor Subith Vasu and doctoral student Zachary Loparo in UCF's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research, developed the technique. Their findings are reported in a new study in the journal Optics Letters.

Professor Thomas Gervais of Polytechnique Montréal and his students Pierre-Alexandre Goyette and Étienne Boulais, in partnership with the team led by Professor David Juncker of McGill University, have developed a new microfluidic process aimed at automating protein detection by antibodies. This work, the topic of an article in Nature Communications, points to the arrival of new portable instruments to accelerate the screening process and molecule analysis in biological laboratories to accelerate research in cancer biology.