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Electric buses are great for municipalities. They are cheaper to operate and maintain than diesel buses, and they emit no pollutants. For passengers, they’re awesome because they’re comfortable, smooth, and relatively quiet. But, even a decade ago they were almost unheard of. The price of batteries has come down significantly in recent years, making electric buses a more viable option for many city transit agencies.

So, it’s no surprise that sales of electric buses have exploded as prices fell and made them the superior choice in most circumstances. In 2012, only 15 electric buses were put into service throughout Europe’s urban areas. In 2021, every fourth newly registered bus in Western Europe was electric. Now, they’re showing up all over the place in much greater numbers.

Continue reading “Solaris Hits A Milestone With Its 2000th Electric Bus” | >

Researchers have optically synced the motion of two micrometer-sized objects separated by 5 km, a distance around a hundred million times longer than previous demonstrations.

Simulations indicate that plankton can gain quicker access to food by riding ascending turbulent ocean currents.

Simulations indicate that plankton can gain quicker access to food by riding ascending turbulent ocean currents.

Turbulence can be a nuisance for planes and boats, but for marine plankton, researchers have now shown that turbulence can be a boon. In simulations, they found that plankton that can hitch rides on the right turbulent ocean plumes can double their swimming speeds [1]. The researchers say that this ability could help a variety of tiny ocean organisms quickly rise to the water’s surface to reach food at night before returning to its murky depths to escape daytime predators.

Plankton consist of a wide variety of small and microscopic organisms that drift in the ocean. Unable to propel themselves very effectively, they travel by riding ocean currents. For example, the planktonic larvae of the Chesapeake blue crab ride vertical and horizontal water currents when migrating toward the shore and up an estuary.

A new model suggests that lattice defects are responsible for the way some semiconductors become harder under illumination.

Understanding how semiconductors respond to illumination has been crucial to the development of photovoltaics and optical sensors. But some light-induced behaviors have been less thoroughly investigated. For example, when some semiconductors are illuminated, their mechanical properties can change drastically, a phenomenon known as photoelasticity. Photoelastic materials could be useful in the development of flexible electronics, but researchers do not understand in detail the mechanism behind the effect. Now, based on experiments and simulations, Rafael Jaramillo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues present a new theoretical framework that explains photoelasticity in terms of lattice defects [1].

The researchers used a diamond-tipped probe to make nanometer-scale indentations in samples of zinc oxide, zinc sulfide, and cadmium sulfide—first in the dark, and then under a range of visible and ultraviolet wavelengths. All three materials hardened to varying degrees when illuminated, with cadmium sulfide showing the largest and most consistent response. For every sample, the effect increased as the photon energy increased toward the material’s band gap.

Long-baseline neutrino experiments are paving the way for the solution of two outstanding puzzles in neutrino physics—mass ordering and charge-parity violation.

Nanoparticle “backpack” repairs damaged stem cells. Stem cells that might save a baby’s life and be utilized to treat illnesses like lymphoma and leukemia are found in the umbilical cord of newborns. Because of this, many new parents decide to preserve (“bank”) the umbilical cord blood’s abundant s.

Stem cells that might save a baby’s life and be utilized to treat illnesses like lymphoma and leukemia are found in the umbilical cord of newborns. Because of this, many new parents decide to preserve (“bank”) the umbilical cord blood’s abundant stem cells for their child. However, since gestational diabetes destroys stem cells and makes them useless, parents are not given this choice in the 6 to 15% of pregnancies who are impacted by the illness.

In a study that will be published in the journal Communications Biology, bioengineers at the University of Notre Dame have now shown that a new approach may heal the injured stem cells and allow them to once again grow new tissues.

Specially-created nanoparticles are the key component of this new strategy. Each spherical nanoparticle may store medication and deliver it specifically to the stem cells by attaching it to the surface of the cells. These nanoparticles are about 150 nanometers in diameter or about a fourth of the size of a red blood cell. The particles deliver the medication gradually as a result of their unique tuning, which makes them very effective even at very low dosages.

Continue reading “New Invention Restores Life-Saving Cells” | >

A multinational research team has now been able to increase their understanding of species-specific variations in the architecture of cortical neurons thanks to high-resolution microscopy.

Researchers from the Developmental Neurobiology research group at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, led by Professor Petra Wahle, have demonstrated that primates and non-primates differ in an important aspect of their architecture: the origin of the axon, which is the process responsible for the transmission of electrical signals known as action potentials. The results were recently published in the journal eLife.

Archived histological material from tracing studies, immunohistochemistry, and Golgi impregnations allowed to discover a so far unrecognized structural difference, potentially of functional importance, between neocortical pyramidal neurons of rodent, carnivore, and ungulate as compared to monkey and man.