Researchers Shinjiro Takano, Yuya Hamasaki, and Tatsuya Tsukuda of the University of Tokyo have successfully visualized the geometric structure of growing gold nanoclusters in their earliest stages. During this process, they also successfully grew a novel structure of elongated nanoclusters, which they named gold quantum needles.
Scientists have discovered a giant black hole that they believe may have been formed in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang. The black hole is so huge that it may change our understanding of how these cosmic giants form. If the findings are confirmed, this will be the first evidence of primordial black holes, which were predicted to exist by Stephen Hawking in the 1970s.
The discovery comes from observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest telescope in space. JWST spotted a group of small, red, faint objects called “Little Red Dots” (LRDs), which are thought to be baby galaxies that are home to young, growing black holes.
A paper by an international team of scientists led by astrophysicist Ignas Juodžbalis of the University of Cambridge in the UK has directly measured the mass of one of the LRDs. Their results indicate that a mysterious glow from the red dot named QSO1 is a black hole with a mass equivalent to 50 million suns. This large astronomical object is in the early stages of a process called accretion, where its gravity is pulling in surrounding gas and dust. The study is published on the arXiv preprint server.
A study from Würzburg reveals that pox viruses have developed a unique strategy to rapidly multiply after infecting a host cell. The findings uncover a previously unknown role for a well-known molecule and may serve as a starting point for the development of new antiviral agents.
In the English society of former times, a chaperone, traditionally an older woman, was assigned to accompany a young unmarried woman to ensure her proper behavior, especially during interactions with men, in line with the social norms of the time.
In biochemistry, chaperones also play a protective role. One of their main functions is to assist newly synthesized proteins in folding correctly and to prevent misfolded protein chains from clumping.
New research has found similarities in how humans and artificial intelligence integrate two types of learning, offering new insights about how people learn as well as how to develop more intuitive AI tools.
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Led by Jake Russin, a postdoctoral research associate in computer science at Brown University, the study found by training an AI system that flexible and incremental learning modes interact similarly to working memory and long-term memory in humans.
It doesn’t take an expert photographer to know that the steadier the camera, the sharper the shot. But that conventional wisdom isn’t always true, according to new research led by Brown University engineers.
The researchers showed that with the help of a clever algorithm, a camera in motion can produce higher-resolution images than a camera held completely still. The new image processing technique could enable gigapixel-quality images from run-of-the-mill camera hardware, as well as sharper imaging for scientific or archival photography.
“We all know that when you shake a camera, you get a blurry picture,” said Pedro Felzenszwalb, a professor of engineering and computer science at Brown. “But what we show is that an image captured by a moving camera actually contains additional information that we can use to increase image resolution.”
Spintronics, or spin-electronics, is a revolutionary approach to information processing that utilizes the intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of electrons, rather than solely relying on electric charge flow. This technology promises faster, more energy-efficient data storage and logic devices. A central challenge in fully realizing spintronics has been the development of materials that can precisely control electron spin direction.
In a new development for spin-nanotechnology, researchers led by Professor Young Keun Kim of Korea University and Professor Ki Tae Nam of Seoul National University have successfully created magnetic nanohelices that can control electron spin.
This technology, which utilizes chiral magnetic materials to regulate electron spin at room temperature, has been published in Science.
