And Doesn't Metals, which conduct electricity, and insulators, which don, are polar opposites. At least that what wee believed until now.
But we have discovered that a well-known insulator can simultaneously act like a conductor in certain measurements.
such as glass, are stuck largely in one place, yielding high resistance to the flow of electricity.
On the other hand, electrons in conducting materials such as metals flow freely over long distances. So how can you possibly get electrons behaving in both ways in a single material?
which the bulk itself behaves both as a metal and an insulator. Crystal clear? The material we explored is a well-known insulator that has been studied
We made the discovery by applying a magnetic field and looking for undulations in sample properties such as the resistance
and magnetisation a property known as uantum oscillations Such quantum oscillations are inherently a property of metals,
when we placed a small sample of the insulating material on a cantilever in a magnetic field,
and saw rapid wiggles on the screen indicating that the electrons were travelling long distances characteristic of a metal. ou do realise,
it was also severely violating the rules for conventional metals. Explaining the inexplicable How can we resolve the apparent contradiction inherent in a material that is both a metal and an insulator?
One possibility is that, contrary to current understanding, electrons in certain insulators can somehow behave as if they were in a metal.
This behaviour may involve the strange properties of quantum mechanics. According to quantum mechanics, particles can occupy two states at the same time.
If an internal monitor detects radioactivity, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat.
But as long as we don check the monitor we have to consider the cat both dead and alive.
In this way, the strange behaviour of our material could be explained by the fact that wee discovered a new quantum state that fluctuates between being a metal and an insulator.
Our discovery of a material that is neither a conventional metal nor a conventional insulator could be such an mergentquantum phase of matter.
we plan to do more experiments on high-quality crystals to distinguish between predictions of the various theories.
decades of conventional wisdom regarding the fundamental dichotomy between metals and insulators are likely about to be turned on their head.
Suchitra Sebastian is University Lecturer in Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory at University of Cambridge.
#New Cell division Mechanism Discovered Researchers have discovered that chromosomes play an active role in animal cell division.
It was observed by a team of researchers including Gilles Hickson, an assistant professor at the University of Montreal Department of Pathology and Cell biology and researcher at the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Centre, his assistant Silvana Jananji, in collaboration with Nelio
Rodrigues, a Phd student, and Sergey Lekomtsev, a postdoc, working in the group led by Buzz Baum of the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell biology at University college London.
Cell division is fundamental to all life forms: the human body develops from a single cell that divides billions of times to generate all tissue types,
and it was unknown until now that chromosomes could play an active role at this step in cytokinesis.
the separation of chromosomes followed by splitting of the cell into two new daughter cells by cytokinesis."
it can be a source for triggering cancer, for example, said Hickson. It is well known that microscopic cable-like structures,
called microtubules, were involved in pulling chromosomes to opposite poles of the cell during the division process. t this time,
microtubules physically separate the chromosomes via their central kinetochores while other microtubules signal to the cortex of the cell where its equator is, i e.,
it was believed that the chromosomes only played a passive role: that they were pulled by the microtubules
the research team discovered that chromosomes emit signals that influence the cortex of the cell to reinforce microtubule action.
This is what makes fruit flies such a powerful system for helping us to understand human biology.""When chromosomes are segregated,
they approach the membrane at the poles of the cell, and thanks to this enzyme actions, this contributes to the softening of the polar membrane,
and to certain diseases, said Hickson, who has devoted the last 15 years of his research life to cell biology.
In fact, all cancers are unchecked characterised by cell division, and the underpinning processes are potential targets for therapeutic interventions that prevent cancer onset
and spread. ut before we get there, we must continue to expand our knowledge about the basic processes
and signals involved in normal cell division to understand how they can go awry, or how they can be exploited..
Ultimately, this could help the rational design of more specific therapies to inhibit the division of cancer cells,
PP1DS22 couples chromosome segregation to polar relaxationin Nature on July 13, 2015. http://dx. doi. org/10.1038/nature14496
#New tiny silicon chip paves the way for light-speed computers The smallest ever'ultracompact polarisation beamsplitter'-a component used in silicon photonic chips-has been developed by engineers in the US,
the device points to a new generation of computers that can transmit information at the speed of light."
Rajesh Menon from the University of Utah, said in press release.""But that information has to be converted to electrons
when it comes into your laptop. In that conversion, you're slowing things down. The vision is to do everything in light."
and we now communicate with each other via underwater optical fibres that transmit light particles-or photons-between almost every continent On earth.
these optical fibres still have to work with existing electronic computer chips, which means once information is delivered to your computer or router in photon form,
it has to be converted into the slower electron form in order to be processed, which slows everything down.
For this reason, scientists around the world have been working towards taking the functionality of an electronic chip
and computer processing speeds would skyrocket. That means less power required and longer battery life.""With all light, computing can eventually be millions of times faster,
"Menon said. Menon and his team figured out how to take current beamsplitters, which are about 100 by 100 microns in size,
and shrink them down to a mind-boggling 2. 4 by 2. 4 microns. That one-50th the width of a human hair,
they were still able to perform their most important function-splitting guided light beams into the chip two components.
which is what needs to happen in order for them to rival existing electronic chips. And all of this isn so far off."
"The first supercomputers using silicon photonics-already under development at companies such as Intel and IBM-will use hybrid processors that remain partly electronic,
"the press release explains.""Menon believes his beamsplitter could be used in those computers in about three years.
Data centres that require faster connections between computers also could implement the technology soon, he says."
"Streaming Netflix at light-speed? Can't wait to never leave the house again a
#Solar cells that work on cloudy days just hit a record-breaking 22.1%efficiency There's been plenty of good news about solar power lately-not only are governments around the world using it more and more,
we're now able to harvest the Sun's energy more cheaply and efficiently than ever before.
But there's still one big problem: traditional solar cells simply don't work that well unless they're in direct, bright sunlight.
To rectify this, researchers have been working on creating structures called black silicon solar cells, which absorb way more light
and are useful even on overcast days. But they've never been efficient enough to be real players in the solar race-up until now, that is.
A team of European researchers has announced just that they've set a new record by creating black silicon solar cells that can convert 22.1 percent of the Sun's light into electricity-an increase of almost four percent on their previous record.
While this doesn't compare to the record of 40 percent efficiency in traditional silicon solar cells,
it shows that black silicon solar cells are now real contenders that could help greatly reduce the cost of solar power in the future.
Even more impressively, the team compared their new black silicon solar cells with traditional solar cells of the same efficiency,
and showed that their cells increased daily energy production by 3 percent, thanks to their ability to suck up light even
"project coordinator Hele Savin from Aalto University in Finland said in a press release.""We have demonstrated that in winter Helsinki,
black cells generate considerably more electricity than traditional cells even though both cells have identical efficiency values."
"What's different about black silicon solar cells is that their surfaces are covered in tiny, nanoscale ridges,
rather than flowing through the cell as electricity-a problem that's created a limit to how efficient the cells could become.
the researchers from Aalto University worked with a team from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Spain
and added a thin film to their nanostructures, as well as a thick coating to the back of the cells,
Publishing in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers report that their resulting cells are the most efficient black silicon solar cells to date, capable of turning 22.1 percent of available light into electricity."
and black silicon solar cells have real potential for industrial production, "the authors write. What's even more exciting about this research is the fact that the team hasn't optimised the new cells as yet,
Basically, this means that we may soon see solar panels on the market that can create electricity no matter where the Sun is in the sky,
Developed by a company called Ossur, the world-first technology involves surgically implanting 5 mm by 3 mm myoelectric sensors (IMES) into a person residual muscle tissue to measure
Leg movement is triggered by a connected receiver, and the process is streamlined so, it allows a patient to perform actions subconsciously."
actually gives impulses through the brain into the muscles, then the muscles contract,"orthopaedic surgeon and director of research and development at Ossur,
Thorvaldur Ingvarsson, told Amy Pollack at Reuters."We put sensors into the muscles, and the muscles would pick up the signals,
This requires an intense amount of mental training by the patient, because their brain has to get used to their muscle tissue functioning in a completely different region of the body.
Ingvarsson says that the next step for the technology might be embed to a network of sensors into the prosthetic limbs to create a feedback loop about
what going on in the surrounding environment, similar to how sensors in driverless cars create an impression of the pathways and obstacles around them.
Watch the technology being tested here s
#New bionic contact lenses could make glasses obsolete Your eyesight may be about to get a huge boost
Invented by an optometrist in Canada, the Ocumetics Bionic Lens promises to enhance eyesight to a level that's three times better than 20/20-the universal standard for normal vision.
though-the lens developed by Gareth Webb is inserted into the eye via a painless procedure that takes less than 10 minutes (Webb says the process is a lot like cataract surgery).
so you'll never have a problem with cataracts or failing vision no matter how long you live.
The Ocumetics Bionic Lens incorporates a patented miniature optics system that works like a tiny digital camera:
dedicated to helping organisations that provide eye surgery in developing countries. Funds have also been earmarked for eye research institutes across the world d
#Audi has made a synthetic, high-grade fuel from plant sugars Just last month, German car manufacturer Audi invented a carbon-neutral diesel fuel,
made from water, carbon dioxide and renewable energy sources, and they say their pilot plant in Dresden will pump out 160 litres of the of the stuff every day in the coming months to power their Audi a8 cars.
Now, theye announced the development of another new type of environmentally friendly, petroleum-free synthetic fuel,
'Manufactured in France by Audi partner company, Global Bioenergies, the fuel is produced by converting corn-derived glucose-a renewable source of biomass sugar-into isobutane gas.
Commonly used in refrigeration systems and aerosols, isobutane gas is also one of the staples of the petrochemical industry.
and used to produce various types of fuels, plastics and elastomers. In this case, the team at Global Bioenergies refined it into a clear, high-grade,'unleadedfuel."
"The next step in the process was to run the material through a conditioning and purification process, allowing it to be collected
so that no biomass is required-just water, hydrogen, CO2 and sunlight, like how they're producing their new'e-diesel'fuel."
vice president for chemical engineering at Global Bioenergies, told Gizmag.""It's basically how we're moving away from an oil-based economy towards something that has a renewable, sustainable future to it."
"With an'e-gas'-or synthetic methane-being made on an industrial scale already, and projects dedicated to getting'e-ethanol Audi'e-diesel'and Audi'e-benzin'on the market in the coming years,
it hard not to be impressed by a car company that appears to be invested so in making petroleum-based fuels a thing of the past
#Science has found a gene for pain Scientists have identified a gene essential to the ability to sense pain, a discovery
The study, of people with the rare condition Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), is published in the journal Nature Genetics.
The idea came to University of Guelph public health researcher Christopher Charles, during a trip to Cambodia six years ago,
and leaving the women so tired they were unable to work. Iron tablets weren working,
as they were hard to distribute and left locals with unpleasant side effects, writes Philippa Roxby for BBC Health.
000 fish have been distributed to hospitals and charity organisations around the country. Being deficient in iron means the body doesn produce enough red blood cells,
making us tired, pale and more vulnerable to illness. It hits women and children the hardest, with almost 50 percent in the developing world being diagnosed with anaemia.
and the disorder can be caused by a multitude of things, such as vitamin deficiencies and parasitic infections.
While perhaps not as necessary, experts say it do us no harm d
#Old antibiotic altered to fight six types of drug-resistant bacteria With antbiotic use becoming more widespread and frequent than ever before,
and it become one of the biggest challenges facing public health today. But new findings suggest that old,
More recently, researchers at St jude Children Research Hospital in Memphis revisited the drug, with an interest in increasing its potency.
it could more easily bind to the cell ribosomes to fight a range of bacterial infections. his study demonstrates how classic antibiotics derived from natural products can be redesigned to create semisynthetic compounds to overcome drug resistance, one of the team,
biological chemist Richard Lee, said in a press release. The team went on to develop six compounds that form a new class of antibiotics called aminomethyl spectinomycins.
as well as respiratory tract infections, including pneumonia and influenza. Publishing the results in Science Translational Medicine, the team observed no serious side effects.
Studies on mice and rats showed the drug could also be used to prolong survival in particularly severe pneumonia,
while previous research published last year in Nature Medicine has shown this class of drugs could also be effective in treating tuberculosis.
The particular variety-known as 1599-appears to be just as effective as current TB drugs on the market,
"I hope the result will be drugs that are more effective against tuberculosis and offer a faster route to a cure with fewer side effects,"said Lee.
With TB remaining a leading cause of global illness and death, killing roughly 1. 3 million people each year,
we certainly hope so too i
#Drug based on herpes successfully treats skin cancer patients A modified version of the herpes virus has been used to treat skin cancer patients,
and one in four have responded positively to the treatment, remaining in remission at least six months afterwards.
The results come from a clinical trial in the UK involving more than 400 patients with aggressive melanoma,
who signed up to be treated through virotherapy-a technique that uses altered viruses to attack specific pathogens such as cancer cells."
from the Institute of Cancer Research London, told Hannah Devlin at The Guardian. The herpes-based drug, named Talimogene Laherparepvec (T-VEC), has proven so effective,
Harrington and his team hope to see it on the market by 2016. A successful phase 3 trial means the only remaining hurdle for it to be sold commercially in the US and Europe by pharmaceuticals company,
Amgen, is to get approval from the FDA and the European Medicines Agency. The drug is administered once every two weeks for up to 18 months
and while participants in the trial received flu-like side effects after the first few injections, this was far preferable to the side effects that come with chemotherapy drugs.
According to the study, published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, of the 436 patients with inoperable melanoma, 16.3 percent of them were still in remission six months after the treatment,
which boosts a patient immune response to the cancer. Of those who took the T-VEC drug,
'having showed no signs of the cancer following the treatment, and during the trial, the T-VEC group lived an average of 41 months,
or metastatic form of the cancer, were too far along to respond to conventional treatments,
even if the cancer had spread to various other organs in the body.""They had ranged disease that from dozens to hundreds of deposits of melanoma on a limb all the way to patients where cancer had spread to the lungs and liver,
"Harrington told her. Harrington, who has been developing the treatment for over 10 years, has been trying it out across a range of different cancer types,
and found that melanoma responded the most positively to it. The team figured out how to harness its amazing capacity for replication by removing two genes that made it impossible for it to multiply inside healthy cells,
but it still had its run of things inside the cancerous melanoma cells.""Meanwhile, T-VEC has also been modified to produce a molecule called GM-CSF,
which serves as a red flag waved at the immune system,"Rachel Feltman reports for The Washington post."
"So in addition to the destructive power of the T-VEC cells themselves, the therapy summons the immune system right to where it's needed-the tumour."
"The team will continue to test out the drug on other forms of cancer through clinical trials,
light batteries from wood pulp Researchers have created a new type of high-capacity storage device that both elastic and super-strong,
and it will let us store way more electricity in much smaller spaces. The foam-like batteries and supercapacitors were made using an aerogel material taken from tree fibres,
and unlike today batteries, could be used to create 3d structures, and line flexible and odd-shaped materials such as clothing or the bodies of vehicles."
"There are limits to how thin a battery can be, but that becomes less relevant in 3d,"lead researcher Max Hamedi,
from the KTH Royal Institute of technology in Sweden and Stanford university in the US, said in a press release."
"We are restricted no longer to two dimensions. We can build in three dimensions, enabling us to fit more electronics in a smaller space."
"Publishing their results in the journal Nature Communications, the announcement comes just a few days after another group of researchers made a biodegradable computer chip out of wood."
"It is possible to make incredible materials from trees and cellulose,"said Hamedi. The batteries and supercapacitors-which are devices that store
and release power much faster than batteries-were made out of a wood-based aerogel. To create this aerogel, the team first broke down cellulose,
the fibre found in trees, making it around one million times thinner. They then dissolved this nanocellulose and freeze-dried it,
so that the moisture evaporates without the material ever going through a liquid state. The molecules in the material are then stabilised,
so that it does not collapse.""The result is a material that is both strong, light and soft,"said Hamedi."
"This aerogel is coated then with a special ink that conducts electricity within the aerogel, giving it the electronic properties that a battery requires.
Using the material as a base, the team carefully engineered a 3d supercapacitor with carbon nanotube electrodes,
and a hybrid battery. Both of them were fully functional even at 75 percent compression,
and the supercapacitor worked stably for 400 charge cycles.""Our results demonstrate that layer-by-layer self-assembly inside aerogels is a rapid,
precise and scalable route for building high-surface-area 3d thin-film devices, "the authors write.
While in the past it was assumed that 3d, porous batteries such as this one would not be practical
or have much storage capacity, Hamedi explains that it actually offers more functionality. He compares the material to a pair of human lungs,
which, if unfurled, could cover a football field.""You can press it as much as you want.
While flexible and stretchable electronics already exist, the insensitivity to shock and impact are somewhat new,
and show that they work in electronic systems, but in the future they could be used to store electricity in places that current batteries can't,
and could help electric cars travel further on a single charge, thanks to their light and bendy structure.
They could also line clothing, helping to develop wearable electronics, such as A t-shirt that capable of charging your iphone.
So wee pretty excited to see what the researchers do with the material next l
#Light-based computers will be even more awesome than we thought Researchers have come up with an efficient way of transporting data between computer chips using light rather than electricity.
Not only does this mean that computers will be able to transmit data much, much faster, it also means we could build machines that consume far less energy.
Wee already able to send data in the form of photons at incredible speeds through the optical fibres that make up our Internet,
but right now when this data hits our computers, it has to slow down so it can be converted into electrons
and pushed through wires around our devices. This process isn't just slow it's also energy intensive,
and it's responsible for making our computers so hot.""Up to 80 percent of the microprocessor power is consumed by sending data over the wires, one of the researchers,
Jelena Vuckovic from Stanford university in the US, said in a press release. But while engineers are getting very close to creating computer chips that can process light,
theye struggled to find an efficient way to transmit that light across the thousands of different connections,
known as interconnects, between them. In theory, light can be beamed between chips via silicon structures that bend it to the desired location,
but these are incredibly difficult to build, and having to create a new silicon structure to replace every single wire inside just one computer could be next to impossible.
Now the Stanford university team has come up with a better solution, by developing an inverse design algorithm that tells them exactly how to build the silicon structures they need to perform a desired task.
Theye already used the algorithm to design a working optical circuit, and have made several copies in their lab. Reporting in Nature Photonics,
the team has demonstrated now that these devices worked perfectly, despite tiny imperfections in the structures."
"Our manufacturing processes are not nearly as precise as those at commercial fabrication plants, "said Alexander Piggott,
who worked on the algorithm.""The fact that we could build devices this robust on our equipment tells us that this technology will be easy to mass-produce at state-of-the-art facilities."
By designing very precise segments of silicon and pairing them together-according to the instructions of the algorithm-the team are able to create switches or conduits that control the flow of photons,
By creating an algorithm that automates the development of these complex Swiss cheese silicon structures, the team has essentially"set the stage for the next generation of even faster
and far more energy-efficient computers that use light rather than electricity for internal data transport, "as the press release explains.
The algorithm could also be used to find design solutions to many other communication problems-all a researcher needs to do is plug in their desired result,
and the algorithm will come up with a plan. We're pretty excited to see what they do with it next h
#Physicists have observed virtually frictionless motion at the nanoscale For the first time, researchers in the US have made friction almost completely vanish between two surfaces at the nanoscale.
The discovery paves the way for engineering surfaces that can slide past each other with virtually no resistance,
and could hugely advance the development of nanomachines. Ordinarily, friction exists wherever two surfaces meet
-whether that car tyres on a road or a protein flowing through a blood stream.
The most direct application of this research is the creation of longer-lasting nanomachines made out of single molecules,
it could make pretty much everything from cars, trains, powerlines and computers-more efficient. here a big effort to understand friction and control it,
because it one of the limiting factors for nanomachines, but there has been relatively little progress in actually controlling friction at any scale,
lead researcher Vladan Vuletic from the Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT) in the US told Jennifer Chu from the MIT News Office. hat is new in our system is,
for the first time on the atomic scale, we can see this transition from friction to superlubricity. o do this, the team simulated friction at the nanoscale by engineering two special surfaces:
and an ion crystal made up of charged atoms held in place using specific voltages and something known as the Coulomb force.
and pull the ion crystal across the lattice, and also adjust the spacing of its atoms.
when the atoms in the ion crystal were spaced out at the same distance as the peaks and troughs of the optical lattice,
like interlocking Lego bricks getting stuck together and then ripped apart, Chu explains. But when the team changed the spacing of the ion crystal
so that the atoms weren matched up with the optical lattice, the friction almost entirely disappeared. hat we can do is adjust at will the distance between the atoms to either be matched to the optical lattice for maximum friction,
This knowledge could help them to engineer nanomachines that aren worn constantly down by friction, and could also help them to control proteins and other biological components.
It important to note that superlubricity doesn mean that friction disappears entirely, but the team managed to reduce friction down to a tiny friction coefficient of 0. 004,
dry concrete and rubber sliding past each other have a friction coefficient of around 1. Tobias Schaetz, a physicist at the University of Freiburg in Germany,
and related impact of their novel method propels a huge variety of research fields investigating effects relevant from raft tectonics down to biological systems
and motor proteins, said Schaetz. ust imagine a nanomachine where we could control friction to enhance contact for traction,
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