The Atlantic is brimming with activity, and AccuWeather forecasters say things could heat up even more with a developing system that could aim for the Gulf Coast.
Researchers have developed a way to dynamically switch the surface of liquidmetal between reflective and scattering states. This technology could one day be used to create electrically controllable mirrors or illumination devices.
Liquid metals combine the electrical, thermal and optical properties of metals with the fluidity of a liquid. The new approach uses an electrically driven chemical reaction to create switchable reflective surfaces on a liquid metal. No optical coatings nor polishing steps, which are typically required to make reflective optical components, are necessary to make the liquid metal highly reflective.
In the Optical Society (OSA) journal Optical Materials Express, researchers led by Yuji Oki of Kyushu University in Japan show that switching between reflective and scattering states can be achieved with just 1.4 V, about the same voltage used to light a typical LED. The researchers collaborated with Michael D. Dickey’s research team at North Carolina State University to develop the new method, which can be implemented at ambient temperature and pressures.
What Are Telomeres?
As our cells divide (a process known as mitosis), our cells replicate the long strands of DNA located within the nucleus of our cells (known as chromosomes). This process however is imperfect, and due to the mechanics of how this is carried out by the body, the DNA is shorted ever so slightly during each replication cycle. I will not get into the details on how exactly this happens in this article, but if you are interested then this video should give you a better understanding of this process. In order to prevent important parts of the DNA being lost through the replication process, areas of what is mostly blank DNA at the end of the chromosomes are used as a sort of sacrificial buffer, allowing for the DNA to be replicated without the loss of genetic information. These areas of the chromosomes are known as telomeres. In addition to providing a buffer zone for DNA replication, telomeres also prevent broken strands of DNA attaching themselves to the ends of chromosomes, which both prevents chromosomes from becoming conjoined, as well as allowing for the opportunity for the broken strand of DNA to be repaired.
Continue reading “Does Telomere Length Really Affect Lifespan?” »
Exceptionally high-quality videos allow scientists to formally introduce a remarkable new comb jelly.
Tendrils of galaxies up to hundreds of millions of light-years long may be the largest spinning objects in the universe, a new study finds.
Tanzania considers crypto—and boosts bitcoin—as nations line up behind el salvador to embrace decentralized finance.
El Salvador voted to adopt bitcoin as legal tender last week.
U.S. chip goliath Qualcomm has said it is open to the idea of investing in U.K. chip designer Arm if the company’s $40 billion sale to Nvidia is blocked by regulators, according to The Telegraph newspaper.
Qualcomm’s incoming CEO, Cristiano Amon, said Qualcomm would be willing to buy a stake in Arm alongside other industry investors if SoftBank, Arm’s current owner, listed the company on the stock market instead of selling it to Nvidia, the newspaper reported Sunday.
“If Arm has an independent future, I think you will find there is a lot of interest from a lot of the companies within the ecosystem, including Qualcomm, to invest in Arm,” Amon said. “If it moves out of SoftBank and it goes into a process of becoming a publicly-traded company, [with] a consortium of companies that invest, including many of its customers, I think those are great possibilities.”
Eight-core vs. eight-core, fight!
We put Intel’s Core i7-11700K up against AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X in a six-round battle of eight-core CPUs.
NVIDIA released a low-key update on its plans for end-of-lifing cards based on the Kepler architecture. According to a new post on NVIDIA’s support site, Kepler cards like the GeForce GTX 780 Ti will no longer receive driver updates from August 2021 onwards.
The Tesla chief’s tweets about his homes come only a week after news outlet ProPublica reported that billionaires like Musk, along with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Berkshire Hathway CEO Warren Buffett paid little income tax relative to their outsize wealth.
