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Blog – Page 11

A small team of engineers from the U.S., Chile and Ireland has found a way to extract more water from drier air, allowing for water production in arid places like the Atacama Desert. Their paper is published in Device.

Instead of looking for ways to improve sorbent materials, the team sought to optimize the way -based water-capture systems work.

Scientists believe there will be a global water crisis in the coming years. As the demand for fresh water increases and existing sources become depleted, new sources are required. One popular area of study involves extracting water from the air.

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Researchers at the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (TIBI) have developed a technique that could help advance treatments in tissue engineering. The study, published in the journal Small, introduces a technique for producing tissues with precise cellular organization designed to mimic the natural structure of human tissue.

Using a simple light-based 3D printing method, the team created microgels with controlled internal architectures. These structures help guide how cells behave and grow, mimicking the way cells naturally behave in the body.

By adjusting properties of light as it interacts with hydrogels, the team modified the internal structure of these microgels, enabling precise control of cell organization in 3D space. This breakthrough addresses a major challenge in creating realistic, functional tissue environments critical for tissue repair and regeneration.

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Imagine a T-shirt that could monitor your heart rate or blood pressure. Or a pair of socks that could provide feedback on your running stride. It may be closer than you think, with new research from Washington State University demonstrating a particular 3D ink printing method for so-called smart fabrics that continue to perform well after repeated washings and abrasion tests. The research, published in the journal ACS Omega, represents a breakthrough in smart fabric comfort and durability, as well as using a process that is more environmentally friendly.

Hang Liu, a textile researcher at WSU and the corresponding author of the paper, said that the bulk of research in the field so far has focused on building technological functions into fabrics, without attention to the way fabrics might feel, fit, and endure through regular use and maintenance, such as washing.

“The materials used, or the technology used, generally produce very rigid or stiff fabrics,” said Liu, an associate professor in the Department of Apparel, Merchandising, Design and Textiles. “If you are wearing a T-shirt with 3D printed material, for example, for sensing purposes, you want this shirt to fit snugly on your body, and be flexible and soft. If it is stiff, it will not be comfortable and the sensing performance will be compromised.”

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We have long taken it for granted that gravity is one of the basic forces of nature – one of the invisible threads that keeps the universe stitched together. But suppose that this is not true. Suppose the law of gravity is simply an echo of something more fundamental: a byproduct of the universe operating under a computer-like code.

That is the premise of my latest research, published in the journal AIP Advances. It suggests that gravity is not a mysterious force that attracts objects towards one another, but the product of an informational law of nature that I call the second law of infodynamics.

It is a notion that seems like science fiction – but one that is based in physics and evidence that the universe appears to be operating suspiciously like a computer simulation.

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Researchers at the University of Turku in Finland have developed a simple method to explore a complex area of quantum science. The discovery makes research in this field cheaper and more accessible, which could significantly impact the development of future laser, quantum and high-tech display technologies.

A team of researchers developed a new method for fabricating small structures known as optical microcavities. These structures allow scientists to study how light interacts with matter in a very precise process that can lead to the creation of novel quantum states called polaritons. Polaritons are unusual hybrid particles made from light and matter.

The results have been published in the journal Advanced Optical Materials.

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Butterflies’ flight trajectories often appear random or chaotic, and compared with other hovering insects, their bodies follow seemingly mysterious, jagged, jerking motions.

These unique hovering patterns, however, can potentially provide critical design insights for developing micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) with flapping wings. To help achieve these applications, researchers from Beihang University studied how butterflies use aerodynamic generation to achieve hovering. They discuss their findings in Physics of Fluids.

“Hovering serves as an essential survival mechanism for critical behaviors, including flower visitation and predator evasion,” said author Yanlai Zhang. “Elucidating its aerodynamic mechanisms provides fundamental insights into the evolutionary adaptations of butterflies’ flight kinematics.”

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But such measurements are notoriously challenging: the instruments used are themselves governed by , and their interaction with particles can alter the very properties they are meant to observe.

“The field of quantum measurements is still poorly understood because it has received little attention so far. Until now, research has mainly focused on the states of themselves, which feature properties—like entanglement or superposition—that are more directly applicable to areas such as quantum cryptography or ,” explains Alejandro Pozas Kerstjens, Senior Research and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Applied Physics, Physics Section, at the UNIGE Faculty of Science.

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Time crystals represent a new phase of matter proposed by Frank Wilczek, the Nobel laureate of Physics in 2004; they can break original time-translation symmetry and create new time oscillations spontaneously.

Recently, a joint research team from the National Time Service Center (NTSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Jiao Tong University observed a time crystal in a maser system.

The results are published in Communications Physics.

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Scientists have developed a dual-laser Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry (BOCDR) system that uses two frequency-modulated lasers. By scanning the relative modulation phase between the pump and reference lasers, the setup measures strain and temperature all along an optical fiber. In a proof-of-concept test on a 13-meter silica fiber, the team recorded Brillouin gain spectra (BGS) at only about 200 MHz—over 50 times lower than the usual 11 GHz band.

The research was published in the Journal of Physics: Photonics on April 25, 2025.

“The dual-laser approach makes BOCDR equipment simpler, more cost-effective, and easier to deploy, giving engineers a practical tool for long-term structural health monitoring, factory process control, and many other sensing tasks,” said senior author Associate Professor Yosuke Mizuno of Yokohama National University.

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Medieval alchemists dreamed of transmuting lead into gold. Today, we know that lead and gold are different elements, and no amount of chemistry can turn one into the other.

But our modern knowledge tells us the basic difference between an atom of lead and an atom of gold: the lead atom contains exactly three more . So can we create a gold atom by simply pulling three protons out of a lead atom?

As it turns out, we can. But it’s not easy.

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