Explore the latest scientific discoveries, science news, breakthroughs and developments from around the world.
Anyone who has ever woken up with a hangover will recognize its physical and psychological effects: headache, nausea, self-loathing, regret and perhaps even some shame at the uninhibited behavior that accompanied the intoxication.
Thermoelectric materials can directly convert heat into electricity, making them promising for recovering waste heat from factories, vehicles and other sources. They can also transport heat when an electric current is applied through a phenomenon known as the Peltier effect. These properties have attracted considerable interest in energy-saving technologies and thermal management.
"Color coatings are expected to provide vivid color, brightness, gloss and long-term durability, yet no existing technology satisfies all of these requirements simultaneously," says Kobe University materials engineer Hiroshi Sugimoto. Conventional coatings usually rely on relatively thick pigment layers that fade and add significant weight.
The central north Amazon, with extensive areas of high forest cover, natural savannas and vast, important Indigenous territories, was not previously considered the area most affected by climate change.
Plans to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels depend on reaching net-zero emissions and, in many cases, actively removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air. While this helps limit extreme weather, sea level rise, ecosystem loss and the risk of triggering irreversible climate tipping points, a new study, published in Science Advances, finds that reducing CO2 levels may have an unexpected effect. Climate simulations used in the study suggest that the Southern Ocean around Antarctica may switch from being an important carbon sink to being a prolific source of carbon.
For cancer patients undergoing head and neck radiation therapy, people living with Sjögren's syndrome, people with diabetes or older people, reduced saliva production and the resulting dry mouth are far more than uncomfortable. They can have major consequences for quality of life, making it difficult to eat, speak and swallow, altering taste perception, and increasing the risk of dental cavities and oral infections.
A study by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has found that new cutting-edge techniques can accurately edit genes in human embryos—giving scientists indispensable tools for understanding normal human development—but has also uncovered important risks that currently preclude the use of the techniques in the clinic.
Physicists at CERN have found a new way to peer deep inside atomic nuclei and distinguish between two competing explanations for how gluons behave. Using the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, researchers measured particle production at unprecedented spatial resolution, revealing structures as small as about one-quarter the size of a proton. At the smallest scales, they saw a surprising drop in J/ψ production that conventional “nuclear shadowing” struggles to explain.
As sea levels rise, coastal wetlands around the world are expected to shrink—and researchers at the University of British Columbia have found this could put the world's shorebirds and their critical habitat at risk.
A 10-year study of more than 6,000 adults found that popular coronary calcium scans may add little to standard heart disease risk estimates for many people. But for patients with borderline or intermediate risk, the scans could make a meaningful difference by revealing who is actually more likely to develop heart disease.
Researchers at Harvard have demonstrated a way to protect quantum information using microscopic sound waves. By continuously surrounding a diamond-based qubit with mechanical vibrations, they extended its coherence time by roughly threefold. The same phonons could eventually both transmit and protect quantum information, opening the door to compact sound-based quantum networks on chips.
Quantum computers promise to tackle problems that are extraordinarily difficult for today's computers. But there is a major obstacle: quantum systems are notoriously fragile. Noise, loss and even tiny disturbances can destroy the delicate behavior that gives them their power. Building systems with many quantum particles is also extremely challenging.