new Tel Aviv University study has uncovered alarming findings about the spread of microplastic particles in the marine food web. In recent years, numerous studies have examined the dangers of marine animals and more specifically, filter-feeding organisms, ingesting non-degradable microplastic particles. In the current study, the research team sought to understand how the biological filtration by filter-feeding organisms effect the microplastics in their environment. 

A team of researchers from GSI/FAIR, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz has succeeded in exploring the limits of the so-called island of stability within the superheavy nuclides more precisely by measuring the superheavy rutherfordium-252 nucleus, which is now the shortest-lived known superheavy nucleus. The results were published in the journal Physical Review Letters and highlighted as an “Editor's suggestion”.

In a study published in Nature Communications, a research team led by Prof. YANG Weishen and Assoc. Prof. PENG Yuan from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a wear-resistant MOF membrane, ZIF-67, featuring a tangential-normal interweaving configuration. This membrane enables accurate separation of propylene from propane by utilizing the paralyzed cage windows and addressing intergranular defects.

The simultaneous capability of colloidal QDs to sustain robust room-temperature spin quantum coherence and to engage in photochemistry inspired Prof. WU Kaifeng and his team from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to explore a highly interdisciplinary field—using quantum coherence of QDs to control photochemical reactions. 

This is a summary of recent progress on the polymerization of diazocarbonyl compounds developed by the Ihara group. The main topics are 1) Pd-initiated C1 polymerization of diazoacetates, which affords carbon-carbon main chain polymers where each main chain carbon atom bears an alkoxycarbonyl group and 2) polycondensation of bis(diazocarbonyl) compounds, which can yield a variety of new polymers with an unprecedented chemical structure.

Rice researchers have published a study describing how quasiparticles called polarons behave in tellurene, a nanomaterial first synthesized in 2017 that is made up of tiny chains of tellurium atoms and has properties useful in sensing, electronic, optical and energy devices.