Astronomers have found an extraordinary trail of gas greater than 300,000 light years across originating from a nearby galaxy called NGC 4569, according to a report in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The tail is comprised of hydrogen gas, the material new stars are born from, and is five times longer than the galaxy itself.
Physicists have zoomed in on the transition that could explain why copper-oxides have such impressive superconducting powers.
Settling a 20-year debate in the field, they found that a mysterious quantum phase transition associated with the termination of a regime called the “pseudogap” causes a sharp drop in the number of conducting electrons available to pair up for superconductivity. The team hypothesizes that whatever is happening at this point is probably the reason that cuprates support superconductivity at much higher temperatures than other materials—about half way to room temperature.
“It’s very likely that the reason superconductivity grows in the first place, and the reason it grows so strongly, is because of that critical point,” CIFAR Senior Fellow Louis Taillefer (Université de Sherbrooke) says. The new findings are published in Nature.
Breaking the bacteria barriers.
If that field is at just the right magnitude, it will open up pores within the cell membrane, through which DNA can flow. But it can take scientists months or even years to figure out the exact electric field conditions to reversibly unlock a membrane’s pores.
A new microfluidic device developed by MIT engineers may help scientists quickly home in on the electric field “sweet spot” — the range of electric potentials that will harmlessly and temporarily open up membrane pores to let DNA in. In principle, the simple device could be used on any microorganism or cell, significantly speeding up the first step in genetic engineering.
Good news for chocolate lovers: eating the sweet treat has been found to have a positive association with cognitive performance, according to a new study.
Published in the journal Appetite, researchers used data collected from a Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Study (MSLS), in which 968 people aged between 23 and 98 were measured for dietary intake and cardiovascular risk factors, as well as cognitive function.
The researchers found that regularly eating chocolate was significantly associated with cognitive function “irrespective of other dietary habits”.
Your smartwatch screen may soon be rather more impressive: This 4.7-inch organic LCD display is flexible enough to wrap right around a wrist.
Produced by FlexEnable from the UK, the screen squeezes a full-color organic LCD onto a sheet that measures just one hundredth of an inch thick, which makes it highly conformable. The company claims that it can easily run vivid colour and smooth video content, which is a sight better than most wearables.
It’s not the first flexible display, of course. LG already has an 18-inch OLED panel that has enough flexibility to roll into a tube that’s an inch across. But this concept—which, sadly, is all it is right now—is the first large, conformable OLCD designed for wearables that we’ve seen.
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