News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

University of Chicago scientists are part of an international research team that has discovered superconductivity -- the ability to conduct electricity perfectly -- at the highest temperatures ever recorded.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory studying super-cold states of water discovered a pathway to the unexpected formation of dense, crystalline phases of ice thought to exist beyond Earth's limits. Their findings, reported in Nature, challenge accepted theories and could lead to better understanding of ice found on other planets, moons and elsewhere in space.

The group of Prof. Dr. Matthias Karg at the Institute of Physical Chemistry at Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf (HHU) in Germany is creating ultra-thin, highly ordered layers of spherical hydrogel beads that encapsulate gold or silver particles. These structures are of interest for applications in optoelectronics -- light-based information and communication technology -- and nanophotonics. The researchers have recently published findings on a significant step in the direction of 'plasmonic nanolasers' in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

A multidisciplinary team has provided new insight into underlying mechanisms controlling the precise size of cells. The researchers found that 'the adder,' a function that guides cells to grow by a fixed size from birth to division, is controlled by specific proteins that accumulate to a threshold.

Physicists have demonstrated a new way to obtain the essential details of an isolated quantum system through direct observation. The method gives information about the likelihood of finding atoms at specific locations in the system with unprecedented spatial resolution far better than an optical microscope can provide. With this technique, scientists can obtain details on a scale of tens of nanometers -- smaller than the width of a virus.

Machine learning can be used to predict the properties of a group of materials which, according to some, could be as important to the 21st century as plastics were to the 20th.