Lifeboat Foundation

The development of functional nanomaterials has been a major landmark in the history of materials science. Nanoparticles with diameters ranging from 5 to 500 nm have unprecedented properties, such as high catalytic activity, compared to their bulk material counterparts. Moreover, as particles become smaller, exotic quantum phenomena become more prominent. This has enabled scientists to produce materials and devices with characteristics that had been only dreamed of, especially in the fields of electronics, catalysis, and optics.

But what if we go smaller? Sub-nanoparticles (SNPs) with particle sizes of around 1 nm are now considered a new class of materials with distinct properties due to the predominance of quantum effects. The untapped potential of SNPs caught the attention of scientists from Tokyo Tech, who are currently undertaking the challenges arising in this mostly unexplored field. In a recent study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a team of scientists from the Laboratory of Chemistry and Life Sciences, led by Dr. Takamasa Tsukamoto, demonstrated a novel molecular screening approach to find promising SNPs.

As one would expect, the synthesis of SNPs is plagued by technical difficulties, even more so for those containing multiple elements. Dr. Tsukamoto explains: “Even SNPs containing just two different elements have barely been investigated because producing a system of subnanometer scale requires fine control of the composition ratio and particle size with atomic precision.” However, this team of scientists had already developed a novel method by which SNPs could be made from different metal salts with extreme control over the total number of atoms and the proportion of each element.

Musk’s Dragons stand ready to help.

Russian rockets are essential for keeping the station in place — but a modified Crew Dragon could do the trick.

Combining two cutting-edge techniques reveals that neurons in the prefrontal cortex are built to respond to reward or aversion, a finding with implications for treating mental illness and addictions.

The prefrontal cortex plays a mysterious yet central role in the mammalian brain. It has been linked to mood regulation, and different cells in the prefrontal cortex seem to respond to positive and negative experiences. How the prefrontal cortex governs these opposing processes of reward or aversion, however, has been largely unknown.

In a new paper published online May 26 in Cell, researchers at Stanford, led by Karl Deisseroth, have united two transformational research techniques to show how the prefrontal circuits that process positive and negative experiences are distinctly and fundamentally different from one another, both in how they function and in how they are wired to other parts of the brain.

Is Metaverse a boom or a bubble?

There is hardly a day that goes by without a mention of the metaverse. Since Facebook’s brand name changed to Meta, the word has really caught on and everybody wants to be a part of it.

Mark Zuckerberg may have drawn the world’s attention to the metaverse but the digital world has been on the rise for quite some time. Minecraft, an online game, has been around since 2011, where not only does one get to stay in a digital world but also has the tools to build it around themselves. With their versions of the metaverse, what Meta and the others now want to do, is build up these worlds rapidly, so that people can just come and spend their time in there. ## Time is Money.

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