Aestus Ajith

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a new technique to study the surface of different types of glass. Using this technique, they discovered a surprising property of the top layer of glasses, which could pave the way to developing better glass materials. The research was led by Yue Zhang, a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry in Penn's School of Arts & Sciences, and Zahra Fakhraai, assistant professor of chemistry. Zhang received an APS Padden Award for the research, which recognizes excellence in polymer physics research. The distinction between crystals and liquids is that, while crystals are ordered and solid, liquids are disordered and can move around to fill whatever container they are in. But if one were to cool a liquid sufficiently, it would remain disordered while the  motion  of its molecules would slow down so much that it would seem solid. This is how amorphous materials such as glasses form. Honey, for instan...

Stochastic surface walking simulations can explain why graphite turns into hexagonal, not cubic, diamond under pressures of 5-20 gigapascals. Credit: Xie et al. ©2017 American Chemical Society Researchers have finally answered a question that has eluded scientists for years: when exposed to moderately high pressures, why does graphite turn into hexagonal diamond (also called lonsdaleite) and not the more familiar cubic diamond, as predicted by theory? The answer largely comes down to a matter of speed—or in chemistry terms, the reaction kinetics. Using a brand new type of simulation, the researchers identified the lowest-energy pathways in the graphite-to-diamond transition and found that the transition to hexagonal diamond is about 40 times faster than the transition to cubic diamond. Even when cubic diamond does begin to form, a large amount of hexagonal diamond is still mixed in. The researchers, Yao-Ping Xie, Xiao-Jie Zhang, and Zhi-Pan Liu at Fudan University and S...

Drug delivery is tricky because the therapeutic compound needs to be non-toxic and deliver the correct dosage at the correct time. Some therapeutics are chemically unstable and others do not have the correct solubility profile for cellular uptake. One way that researchers have overcome some of these drawbacks is using stimuli-responsive polymers. In a research paper in  ACS Omega , Jian Wang, Eri Ayano, Yoshie Maitani, and Hideko Kanazawa of Keio University in Japan report the synthesis of the temperature-responsive polymer poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-co-N,N'-dimethylaminopropylacrylamide (P(NIPAAm-co-DMAPAAm)) and analyzed liposomes modified with this polymer. They found that their polymer undergoes dehydration at around 40 o C and that temperature-responsive polymer-modified liposomes had faster cellular uptake and release compared to nonmodified liposomes.   Researchers have been interested in finding ways to modify liposomes, hollow spheres comprised of pho...

Topological transitions of a deformed kagome lattice by uniform soft twisting. Credit:  Nature Communications  (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14201 When a material is made, you typically cannot change whether that material is hard or soft. But a group of University of Michigan researchers have developed a new way to design a "metamaterial" that allows the material to switch between being hard and soft without damaging or altering the material itself. Metamaterials are man-made  materials  that get their properties—in this case, whether a material is hard or soft—from the way the material is constructed rather than the material that constructs it. This allows researchers to manipulate a metamaterial's structure in order to make the material exhibit a certain property. In the group's study, published in the journal  Nature Communications , the U-M researchers discovered a way to compose a metamaterial that can be easily manipulated to increase the ...

Unlocking the secrets of gold. Credit: Massey University Gold is prized for its preciousness and as a conductor in electronics, but it is also important in scientific experimentation. Ernest Rutherford utilised it when mapping the atom, in an experiment, which needed a thin metal foil made of  gold . However, despite its usefulness in experimentation, scientists found gold would not always perform how they theorised it would at the atomic level. Scientists do not like what they cannot explain, so debate grew amongst the communities best minds to explain this why gold is special, which until now remained unsolved even for the most basic atomic properties. Acting Head of Institute of the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study, Distinguished Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger, alongside international colleagues, solved the problem and uncovered more precise calculations for gold that will help scientists bridge the gap between theory and experiment. "Precision in s...

THE BIRTH OF CONDUCTIVE PLASTICS Before the 2000s, conductive plastics were  virtually unheard of . The recycle bin fodder was only utilized as an insulator to protect electricians from any fatal electric shocks until 1974, when a scientist stumbled upon a plastic that could conduct electricity. SciShow’s Hank Green explains the birth of conductive plastics and the inner scientific machinations of a new form of plastic. He highlights the particular properties of the plastic that enable its conductivity while also talking about other methods used today to conduct electricity. Take a look below: These advances have spilled over into consumer technology. A conductive plastic called PEDOT protects electronics from static electricity by dispersing the charge. Through these  methods , scientists have created the innovations needed to print electronics  on inkjet printers . Companies are transforming heavy, expensive silicon solar panels to more affordable and...

Nanoparticles can be pushed by pure nothingness. Researchers have discovered a new and unexpected force that acts on nanoparticles in a vacuum, allowing them to be pushed around by pure 'nothingness'. Of course, quantum physics is beginning to make it clear that 'nothingness', as we like to think of it,  doesn't actually exist  - even vacuums are filled with tiny electromagnetic fluctuations. This new research is further proof that we're only beginning to understand the strange forces that are at work at the smallest level of the material world, by showing how nothingness can drive lateral motion. So how can a vacuum carry force? One of the first things we learn in classical physics is that in a perfect vacuum - a place entirely devoid of matter - friction can't exist, because empty space can't exert a force on objects travelling through it. But, in recent years, quantum physicists have shown that vacuums are actually filled by tiny electrom...

This could explain one of the oldest mysteries in physics. Despite sounding like the most egregious contradiction in physics, hot water appears to freeze faster than cold water under certain circumstances. The phenomenon can be traced back to  Aristotle himself , but after centuries of experiments demonstrating this phenomenon, no one’s been able to explain it.  Now physicists are pointing to strange properties of hydrogen bonds as the solution to one of the oldest mysteries in physics - but others are claiming the so-called Mpemba effect doesn’t even exist at all. For a bit of background into the  Mpemba effect , this phenomenon has been confounding physicists since Aristotle first noticed it more than 2,000 years ago. After similar accounts from the likes of  Francis Bacon and René Descartes , the possibility of hot water freezing faster than cold water finally gained widespread acceptance in the 1960s, thanks to a Tanzanian schoolboy who noticed the ef...

Wait, what? One of the first things you learn about evolution in school is that the human body has a number of  'vestigial' parts  - appendix, wisdom teeth, tailbone - that gradually fell out of use as we adapted to more advanced lifestyles than our primitive ancestors. But while our wisdom teeth are definitely causing us  more pain than good  right now, the human appendix could be more than just a ticking time bomb sitting in your abdomen. A new study says it could actually serve an important biological function - and one that humans aren’t ready to give up. Researchers from Midwestern University traced the appearance, disappearance, and reemergence of the appendix in several mammal lineages over the past 11 million years, to figure out how many times it was cut and brought back due to evolutionary pressures.  They found that the organ has evolved  at least 29 times  - possibly as many as 41 times - throughout mammalian evolution, and has ...

What's cooler than cool? For the first time, physicists have cooled a mechanical object to a temperature colder than previously thought possible, taking it below the so-called "quantum limit" and bending the laws of physics. Using a new technique, the team managed to chill a microscopic mechanical drum to an unheard-of  360 microKelvin , or 10,000 times colder than the vacuum of space. It's the coldest mechanical object on record. "It’s much colder than any naturally occurring temperature anywhere in the Universe," team leader John Teufel from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado,  told Leah Crane from  New Scientist . "The results were a complete surprise to experts in the field," added one of the researchers, José Aumentado,  in a press release .  To be clear, this isn't the coldest object ever - that title goes to  Bose-Einstein condensates . Bose-Einstein condensates are a dilute gas of ...