The German national metrology institute, the Physikalisch-Techniche Bundesanstalt (PTB), has developed a new type of clock, which has the potential to measure time and frequency 1000 times more accurately than the caesium clocks that currently realize the SI second. Their results have been published in the current issue of Physical Review Letters.

As a promising candidate for large-scale energy storage, aqueous zinc batteries (AZBs) have faced a stubborn hurdle in the form of troublesome side reactions at the electrode/electrolyte interface, hindering their widespread application. Now, researchers from Hunan University and Nankai University, reporting in the National Science Review, have overcome this challenge. In their study, they developed self-polymerizable glutamate salts as universal interphase-forming additives to in-situ constructing robust electrode/electrolyte interphase (EEI) layers on both the cathode and anode of AZBs, effectively suppressing interfacial side reactions and Zn dendrite growth. This discovery could revolutionize the approach to construct EEI layers in aqueous electrolytes, opening a novel pathway to boost the stability of aqueous batteries.

Human ancestors like Australopithecus – which lived around 3.5 million years ago in southern Africa – ate very little to no meat, according to new research published in the scientific journal Science. This conclusion comes from an analysis of nitrogen isotope isotopes in the fossilized tooth enamel of seven Australopithecus individuals. The data revealed that these early hominins primarily relied on plant-based diets, with little to no evidence of meat consumption.

Pioneering researchers of self-generated spin torques have discovered a new one, anomalous Hall torque, that completes a triad of torques likely present in all conductive spintronic materials. Dubbed the Universal Hall Torques, the triad have unique spin behavior favorable to cutting-edge technologies, like human brain-inspired computing that processes massive amounts of data with much greater efficiency.