Materials

by KeAi Communications Co. Innovative detection of LCMs across diverse environments. Credit: Liu, Y., Li, W., Li, Z., Kannan, K. Liquid crystal monomers (LCMs) are synthetic organic chemicals used in manufacturing liquid crystal displays (LCDs) present in numerous digital electronic devices. As the use of digital electronics, such as computers and smartphones, becomes increasingly prevalent, … Read more

From mechanisms to applications. Credit: Yuhang Sheng, Xiaoming Wen, Baohua Jia, and Zhixing Gan Metal halide perovskites have become well-deserved “star” materials among a variety of semiconductors owing to their excellent optoelectronic properties, such as high photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield (QY), high absorption coefficient, tunable bandgaps, long carrier diffusion lengths, and high defect tolerance, attracting … Read more

Chloroplast assemblies and phylogeny. Chloroplast genomes of assorted pear cultivars—assemblies and annotations. Plastid assemblies were carried out using NOVOPlasty v4.4.1 and annotated using GeSeq v2.0.3. Phylogenetic relationships were estimated using maximum likelihood under the generalized time reversible model. Credit: G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics (2024). DOI: 10.1093/g3journal/jkae003 Pears are big business in the Pacific Northwest US. … Read more

Anne-Linda Camerini. Credit: SNSF Always on their mobile phones? That can’t be good for them. Media Scientist Anne-Linda Camerini is looking into how true this is. The feared effects on young people cannot be clearly proven. “My son is in his last year of primary school. And yes, he wants to have a smartphone! But … Read more

Sea-floor samples for the study were taken with this deep-sea submersible vehicle (Alvin) from inactive as well as active hydrothermal systems in several thousands of meters of water. Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, National Deep Submergence Facility, National Science Foundation. Under certain conditions microbial communities can grow and thrive, even in places that are seemingly … Read more

Little auks flying over the colony (Siorapaluk, Greenland, 2022). Credit: Monica Ogawa Acoustic recordings of a colony of little auks reveal their nocturnal activities and offer valuable monitoring means for avian biology in the Arctic. A collaborative study conducted by researchers from the Arctic Research Center at Hokkaido University and the Department of Ecoscience at … Read more

Using photographs, scientist Andrea Bonilla draws reproductions of the details of the tails of the enormous marine mammals, which can reach up to 18 meters (59 feet) long and weigh about 40 tons. In Antarctica, a scientist waits patiently for two frolicking humpback whales to poke their tails out of the icy waters so she … Read more

Credit: AI-generated image Advanced killer robots are more likely to be blamed for civilian deaths than military machines, new research has revealed. The University of Essex study shows that high-tech bots will be held more responsible for fatalities in identical incidents. Led by the Department of Psychology’s Dr. Rael Dawtry, it highlights the impact of … Read more

The drawing on the left shows the area where heifers were trained. Anticipatory and play behaviors were recorded in the “start box” (area B in the diagram) while cattle were waiting to enter the training area (C and D above). Heifers in the training treatment learned that they would receive a food reward to initially … Read more

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain We are all aware of the dangers of pollution to our air, water, and Earth. In a letter recently published in Nature Human Behavior, scientists are advocating for the recognition and mitigation of another type of environmental pollution that poses equivalent personal and societal dangers: information overload. With the internet at … Read more