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Blog – Page 382

Inside every jar of honey is a taste of the local environment, its sticky sweet flavor enhanced by whichever nearby flowers bees have decided to sample. But a new study from Tulane University has found that honey can also offer a glimpse of nearby pollution.

The study, published in Environmental Pollution, tested 260 honey samples from 48 states for traces of six toxic metals: arsenic, lead, cadmium, nickel, chromium and cobalt. None of the honeys showed unsafe levels of toxic metals—based on a serving size of one tablespoon per day—and concentrations in the United States were lower than global averages.

However, researchers found in toxic metal distribution: the highest arsenic levels were found in honeys from a cluster of states in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Nevada); the Southeast tested highest for cobalt levels, including Louisiana and Mississippi; and two of the three highest lead levels were found in the Carolinas.

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A joint research team led by Yuuki Kubo and Shiji Tsuneyuki of the University of Tokyo has developed a new computational method that can efficiently determine the crystal structures of multiphase materials, powders that contain more than one type of crystal structures. The method can predict the structure directly from powder X-ray diffraction patterns, the patterns of X-rays passing through crystals roughly the same size as instant coffee particles.

Unlike conventional methods, this approach does not require the use of “lattice constants” and can be applied to existing experimental data that could not be analyzed until now. Thus, the new method is a crucial asset for discovering new material phases and developing new materials. The findings are published in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

Many materials can have several crystal structures, “phases,” even in the same solid state. Determining the underlying crystal structures of materials is essential for understanding their properties and formulating strategies to develop new materials. However, conventional methods make calculations using the “lattice constant,” a property of the crystal being investigated.

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A research team has clarified the mechanism behind the generation of runaway electrons during the startup phase of a tokamak fusion reactor. The paper, “Binary Nature of Collisions Facilitates Runaway Electron Generation in Weakly Ionized Plasmas,” was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Nuclear energy refers to a power generation method that harnesses the energy of an artificial sun created on Earth, using resources extracted from seawater. To achieve this, technology capable of confining high-temperature plasma exceeding 100 million degrees for extended periods in a fusion is essential.

A tokamak is an artificial sun system in the shape of a torus, with no beginning or end, where magnetic fields are applied to confine particles.

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Polarization photodetectors (pol-PDs) have widespread applications in geological remote sensing, machine vision, and biological medicine. However, commercial pol-PDs usually require bulky and complicated optical components and are difficult to miniaturize and integrate.

Chinese researchers have made important progress in this area by developing an on-chip integrated polarization .

This study, published in Science Advances on Dec. 4, was conducted by Prof. Li Mingzhu’s group from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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The use of quantum simulators for studying non-equilibrium quantum transport has been limited. Here the authors demonstrate the steady quantum transport between many-body qubit baths on a superconducting quantum processor, revealing insights into pure-state statistical mechanics for nonequilibrium quantum systems.

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Scientists at the University of California, Irvine have uncovered the atomic-scale mechanics that enhance superconductivity in an iron-based material, a finding published recently in Nature.

Using advanced spectroscopy instruments housed in the UC Irvine Materials Research Institute, the researchers were able to image atom vibrations and thereby observe new phonons—quasiparticles that carry thermal energy—at the interface of an iron selenide (FeSe) ultrathin film layered on a (STO) substrate.

“Primarily emerging from the out-of-plane vibrations of oxygen atoms at the interface and in apical oxygens in STO, these phonons couple with electrons due to the spatial overlap of electron and phonon wave functions at the interface,” said lead author Xiaoqing Pan, UC Irvine Distinguished Professor of materials science and engineering, Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Engineering and IMRI director.

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Did you know the “probiotic” sodas Olipop and Poppi are both facing lawsuits for exaggerating their gut health claims? Jessica did a deep dive to discover which probiotics for longevity are *actually* scientifically backed:

Ignore the gut health hype & choose the best probiotics for longevity based on science– Microbial strains, capsule types & ingredients matter!

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Three-dimensional (3D) printing isn’t just a way to produce material products quickly. It also offers researchers a way to develop replicas of human tissue that could be used to improve human health, such as building organs for transplantation, studying disease progression and screening new drugs. While researchers have made progress over the years, the field has been hampered by limited existing technologies unable to print tissues with high cell density at scale.

A team of researchers from Penn State have developed a novel bioprinting technique that uses spheroids, which are clusters of cells, to create complex tissue. This new technique improves the precision and scalability of tissue fabrication, producing tissue 10-times faster than existing methods. It further opens the door to developing functional tissues and organs and progress in the field of regenerative medicine, the researchers said.

They published their findings in Nature Communications.

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