EurekAlert! News by Subject: Chemistry & Physics - News by Subject: Chemistry & Physics

Chemistry & Physics

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 21-Jun-2025 02:10 ET (21-Jun-2025 06:10 GMT/UTC)

New insights into the perception of coffee taste - genetic predisposition plays a role

Leibniz-Institut für Lebensmittel-Systembiologie an der TU München
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Why does coffee taste more bitter to some people than it does to others? Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich have now come closer to answering this question. They have identified a new group of bitter compounds in roasted Arabica coffee and have investigated how they influence its bitter taste. In addition, they demonstrated for the first time that individual genetic predisposition also plays a role in determining how bitter these roasting substances taste.

Journal: Food Chemistry

Small and yet so powerful

Max-Planck-Institut fur Kernphysik
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers found for the first time evidence that even microquasars containing a low-mass star are efficient particle accelerators, which leads to a significant impact on the interpretation of the abundance of gamma rays in the universe.

Journal: The Astrophysical Journal Letters

New acoustic wave phenomenon discovered

Tohoku University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

This novel finding regarding the nonreciprocal diffraction of acoustic waves could open doors for next-generation communication devices.

Journal: Physical Review Letters

Tropical-extratropical interactions induce the end of the rainy (Baiu) season in Japan

University of Tsukuba
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The abrupt enhancement of convective activity (precipitation) over the northeast of the Philippines in late July, known as the "convection jump," is closely related to the end of the rainy season in the Kanto region and northern Japan. Researchers at University of Tsukuba have investigated the mechanism of the convection jump over the subtropical western North Pacific, influenced by upper-tropospheric mid-latitude variations. Their findings have demonstrated the importance of tropical-extratropical interactions during the boreal summer.

Scaling the pressure fluctuation in an accelerated liquid

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A research team from the Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and the Department of Mechanical Science, Saitama University, has developed a unified model to scale the transitional pressure development in a one-dimensional flow. This achievement provides a better understanding of how pressure fields build up in the confined fluid system for various acceleration situations, which might be applicable to the biomechanics-related impact problem, such as human brain injuries caused by physical contact.

Journal: Journal of Fluid Mechanics
Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Japan Science and Technology Agency, PRESTO, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development

New avenues in quantum research: supramolecular qubit candidates detected

University of Freiburg
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Freiburg and the Institut Charles Sadron at the University of Strasbourg were able to demonstrate for the first time that non-covalent bonds between spin centres are also capable of producing quartet states through spin mixing.

Supramolecular chemistry is thus a valuable tool for the research, development and scaling of new materials for quantum technologies.

The results were recently published in the journal Nature Chemistry.

Journal: Nature Chemistry

A new register with thousands of entangled nuclei to scale quantum networks

University of Cambridge
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In a groundbreaking achievement for quantum technologies, researchers at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, have created a functional quantum register using the atoms inside a semiconductor quantum dot.

Journal: Nature Physics