An image of the cyanobacterium Tolypothrix. Source: Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 3.0 The human body’s inability to break down sucralose, an artificial sweetener found in many low-calorie food and beverage products, has been well established by scientific research. The compound is so stable that it escapes wastewater treatment and finds its way into drinking water … Read more
Microbial dynamics during fermentation influence the performance of industrial bioethanol production. Credit: Nature communication (2024). DOI file: 10.1038/s41467-024-49683-2 A new technique to monitor pollution in bioethanol production could increase revenues by more than $1.6 billion and reduce carbon emissions.2 -emissions by 2 million tons. For the first time ever, researchers from the Novo Nordisk Foundation … Read more
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Ever notice that a polyester T-shirt stinks more than a cotton one after you work out? New research from the University of Alberta now shows why. Analysis of various fibers soaked in a solution of simulated sweat showed that cotton and viscose, cellulose fibers or vegetable fibers absorbed and then released … Read more
Experimental setup of the superposition of quantum evolution and its inverse evolution. Credit: Prof. Li Chuanfeng’s team A research team has constructed a coherent superposition of quantum evolution with two opposite directions in a photonic system and confirmed its advantage in characterizing input-output indeterminacy. The study was published in Physical assessment letters. The idea that … Read more
Phase diagram as a function of the total density 𝑛 and the proton fraction 𝑥 at N3LO. The neutron droplet and proton droplet phases are given by the regions enclosed by the blue and red lines. Credit: Physical assessment letters (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.232701 Neutron stars are extreme and mysterious objects that astrophysicists cannot see inside. … Read more
Multiple photonic orbitals emerge within a photonic crystal superlattice. Credit: Physical assessment B (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.109.235141 Researchers from the University of Twente in the Netherlands have gained important insights into photons, the elementary particles that make up light. They ‘behave’ in an astonishingly greater variety than electrons that surround atoms, while also being much easier … Read more
Rate of relative evolution of brain mass. Credit: Nature Ecology & Evolution (2024). DOI file: 10.1038/s41559-024-02451-3 The largest animals don’t have proportionally larger brains, and humans are an exception to this trend, according to a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has revealed. Researchers from the University of Reading and the University of Durham … Read more
The rate at which the universe is expanding is accelerating across the cosmos, driven by a mysterious force known as dark energy. However, new research suggests that this may not be the case at the edges of black holes. Rather than suggesting that dark energy does not act at the boundaries of black holes, this … Read more
The rate at which the universe is expanding is accelerating across the cosmos, driven by a mysterious force known as dark energy. However, new research suggests that this may not be the case at the edges of black holes. Rather than suggesting that dark energy does not act at the boundaries of black holes, this … Read more
Scheme of nonclassical mechanical states of a resonator-qubit combination. A transmon qubit capacitively couples to acoustic mechanical modes of a separate sapphire slab, one of which is shown as a series of blue and red antinodes. Nonclassical mechanical states emerge from this interaction. Three vignettes reproduce Wigner functions of i) a squeezed vibrational state, ii) … Read more