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The rules about what makes a good magnet may not be as rigid as scientists thought. Using a mixture containing magnetic nanoparticles, researchers have now created liquid droplets that behave like tiny bar magnets.

Magnets that generate persistent magnetic fields typically are composed of solids like iron, where the magnetic poles of densely packed atoms are all locked in the same direction (SN: 2/17/18, p. 18). While some liquids containing magnetic particles can become magnetized when placed in a magnetic field, the magnetic orientations of those free-floating particles tend to get jumbled when the field goes away — causing the liquid to lose its magnetism.

Continue reading “Permanent liquid magnets have now been created in the lab” »

Trump meets with astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins and the family of Neil Armstrong to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

A stealthy new drug-delivery system disguises chemotherapeutics as fat in order to outsmart, penetrate and destroy tumors.

Thinking the drugs are tasty fats, tumors invite the drug inside. Once there, the targeted drug activates, immediately suppressing tumor growth. The drug also is lower in toxicity than current chemotherapy drugs, leading to fewer side effects.

“It’s like a Trojan horse,” Northwestern University’s Nathan Gianneschi, who led the research. “It looks like a nice little fatty acid, so the tumor’s receptors see it and invite it in. Then the drug starts getting metabolized and kills the tumor cells.”

Hardcore gamers predict Google’s no-console Stadia video games will fail, but Google doesn’t need them. The real target: the 57% of gamers who don’t want to buy a console.

People have been gazing skyward at night for all of human history, studying the stars and wondering what could lie beyond them. But soon, scientists will have a powerful new tool at their disposal: the Giant Magellan Telescope, which is expected to be the world’s largest optical telescope once it’s completed.

Under the football stadium at the University of Arizona, Patrick McCarthy, the vice president and senior astronomer at the GMT project, heads the international group building the Giant Magellan.

“One of the big discoveries in astronomy in the past 20 years is that 97% of the universe, we have no idea what it is,” McCarthy said.

Is it too late to rein it in?

7 Followers, 2 Following, 3 Posts — See Instagram photos and videos from @kriorus_eng

Dr. Wim Melis from the University of Greenwich is working on deconstructing and reconstructing audio signals with extremely high accuracy.

Audio is captured and, from there, converted into a spiking signal—the type the brain uses. This is then fed into the brain and reconstructed as a 90–100 percent replica of the original sound.

Current technologies, known as cochlear implants, only achieve a fraction of this. They do the work of damaged parts of the inner ear (cochlea) to provide sound signals to the brain, whereas hearing aids make sounds louder.

Scientists at Berkeley Lab have made a new material that is both liquid and magnetic, opening the door to a new area of science in magnetic soft matter. Their findings could lead to a revolutionary class of printable liquid devices for a variety of applications from artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots that can change their shape to adapt to their surroundings. (Video credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab; footage of droplets courtesy of Xubo Liu and Tom Russell/Berkeley Lab)