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Increasing temperature or nutrients in an ecosystem can destabilize food webs, but when temperature and nutrients increase together it can be difficult to predict the combined effects. This study examined a laboratory microbial food web consisting of bacterial prey and protist predators. It found that temperature and nutrients can alter the dynamics of microbial communities by changing how species’ abundances and average body sizes relate to each other.

Scientists created a nanoscale pattern of holes on a thin film of metal oxide known as titania to control the material’s electronic properties. The thin film noticeably improved the flow of electrons and inhibited the flow of ions in the material, increasing the material’s electrical conductivity. This will aid in next-generation microelectronics applications and quantum information processing.

Neutrinos are involved in a process named beta decay that involves a neutron converting into a proton emitting an electron and an antineutrino. There may also be an ultra-rare kind of beta decay that emits two electrons but no neutrinos, called neutrinoless-double beta decay (NLDBD). Researchers are using the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) to search for these rare NLDBD processes using different nuclei. Scientists have reported new tests using Tellurim-128 to look for NLDBD.

A novel system uses the discovery that the actinide berkelium, when oxidized, does not form negatively charged ions in solutions of high nitric acid, as other actinides do. This means an anion exchange column can separate berkelium by absorbing other actinides with negatively charged ions. The new method is much faster than the previously used approach, and is easier, cleaner, and yields purer product.

Protein-protein interactions are essential for life. Researchers used DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 to develop a deep learning approach for predicting and modeling multi-protein interactions. The AF2Complex approach generates much more accurate structural models than previous methods for modeling a protein complex. As a proof of concept, the researchers used AF2Complex to virtually screen key proteins in E. coli, discovering unexpected protein-protein interactions.

To understand quark-gluon plasma, theorists compare a sophisticated model to a large amount of experimental data. One of the parameters in this model is the size of the nucleons inside the two colliding lead nuclei. Low-energy experiments find a nucleon size of around 0.5 femtometers, while heavy ion experimental data have found a much larger nucleon size, of about 1 femtometers. A new analysis of heavy ion experimental data includes the experimentally measured reaction rate of lead-lead collisions to arrive at a nucleon size of 0.6 femtometers.

A multi-institutional team of nuclear science researchers has published the results of the first experiment at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. The experiment involved colliding a beam of stable calcium-48 nuclei traveling at about 60 percent of the speed of light into a beryllium target to produce isotopes near the “drip line,” the spot where neutrons can no longer bind to a nucleus but instead drip off.

Aerosols particles in the atmosphere are an important factor in the Earth’s climate, but researchers lack information on these aerosols’ molecular composition, especially for aerosols during the day and night above agricultural fields. In this research, scientists examined secondary organic aerosols over agricultural fields in the Southern Great Plains in Oklahoma. They found that the aerosols’ composition and structure differ from day to night and that some aerosols are ultimately from urban sources.