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Scientists repurpose old solar panels to convert CO₂ exhaust into valuable chemicals

Centuries ago, alchemists worked furiously to convert the common metal lead to valuable gold. Today, chemists are repurposing discarded solar panels to create valuable organic compounds from carbon dioxide (CO2), a common greenhouse gas.

Significantly reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to mitigate the most devastating effects of climate change will require a large reduction in emissions as well as strategies designed to sequester emitted CO2 and other offending gases. While simply sequestering greenhouse gases would fulfill this goal, creating useful organic chemicals from waste CO2 is akin to generating valuable materials from trash.

A team of chemists from Yokohama National University, Electric Power Development Co., Ltd. and the Renewable Energy Research Center at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) recently decided to tackle two waste problems—excess CO2 emissions and decommissioned —in the pursuit of creating value-added organic chemicals. The team designed a study to determine if recycled components of discarded solar panels could be used to efficiently convert CO2 into useful, carbon-based compounds.

‘Ice cube’ clouds discovered at the galaxy’s center shouldn’t exist — and they hint at a recent black hole explosion

Twin orbs of superhot plasma at the Milky Way’s center known as the “Fermi bubbles” contain inexplicable clouds of cold hydrogen, new research reveals. They could help scientists figure out when our galaxy’s black hole last erupted.

Observation of charge–parity symmetry breaking in baryon decays

The LHCb experiment is being built, operated and maintained by the LHCb Collaboration. All authors contributed to the design, construction, deployment and operation of the detector, the data taking, the development of the reconstruction and simulation software, data processing and data analysis. The final manuscript was reviewed and approved by all authors.

Correspondence to X. Yang.

Scientists successfully develop half metal material that conducts single-spin electrons

Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich have successfully created the world’s first experimentally verified two-dimensional half metal—a material that conducts electricity using electrons of just one spin type: either “spin-up” or “spin-down.” Their findings, now published as an Editors’ Suggestion in Physical Review Letters, mark a milestone in the quest for materials enabling energy-efficient spintronic that go beyond conventional electronics.

Half metals are key to spintronics: Unlike traditional conductors, half metals allow only one spin orientation to pass through. This makes them ideal candidates for spintronics, a next-generation information technology that leverages both the charge and the spin of electrons for data storage and processing. In conventional electronics, on the other hand, only the charge is used.

However, all known half metals operate only at and lose their special properties at the surface—limiting their use. This was until now, when the team at Forschungszentrum Jülich engineered a 2D half metal in the form of an ultrathin alloy of iron and palladium, just two atoms thick, on a palladium crystal. Using a state-of-the-art imaging technique called spin-resolved momentum microscopy, they showed that the alloy allows only one spin type to conduct, confirming the long-sought 2D half-metallicity.

Scientists achieve ‘magic state’ quantum computing breakthrough 20 years in the making — quantum computers can never be truly useful without it

Scientists demonstrate a process called “magic state distillation” in logical qubits for the first time, meaning we can now build quantum computers that are both error-free and more powerful than supercomputers.

‘Reliable quantum computing is here’: Novel approach to error-correction can reduce errors in future systems up to 1,000 times, Microsoft scientists say

Microsoft scientists developed a 4D geometric coding method that reduces errors 1,000-fold in quantum computers.

Landmark study investigates potential of Ambroxol, a cough medicine, to slow Parkinson’s-related dementia

LONDON, Ont. – Dementia poses a major health challenge with no safe, affordable treatments to slow its progression.

Researchers at Lawson Research Institute (Lawson), the research arm of St. Joseph’s Health Care London, are investigating whether Ambroxol — a cough medicine used safely for decades in Europe — can slow dementia in people with Parkinson’s disease.

Published today in the prestigious JAMA Neurology, this 12-month clinical trial involving 55 participants with Parkinson’s disease dementia (PDD) monitored memory, psychiatric symptoms and GFAP, a blood marker linked to brain damage.

Parkinson’s disease dementia causes memory loss, confusion, hallucinations and mood changes. About half of those diagnosed with Parkinson’s develop dementia within 10 years, profoundly affecting patients, families and the health care system.