ScienceDaily: Matter & Energy News

Researchers have discovered that engineering one-dimensional line defects into certain materials can increase their electrical performance.

A digital tool that will make it cheaper, safer and faster to develop new medicines is being rolled out by scientists.

Long interested in interactions between robots and humans, researchers have created EVA, a new autonomous robot with a soft and expressive face that responds to match the expressions of nearby humans.

Lead paint and leaded gasoline have been banned for decades, but unsafe levels of lead remain in some urban soils, a new study finds. The researchers mapped soil lead concentrations along 25 miles of streets in Durham, N.C. Though contamination generally has declined since the 1970s, soil collected near houses predating 1978 still averaged 649 milligrams of lead per kilogram of soil, well above the 400 mg/kg threshold associated with health risks to children.

Researchers have developed a new technique that allows microscopic fluorescence imaging at four times the depth limit imposed by light diffusion. Fluorescence microscopy is often used to image molecular and cellular details of the brain in animal models of various diseases but, until now, has been limited to small volumes and highly invasive procedures due to intense light scattering by the skin and skull.

Chemists have determined the structure of the complex that forms when N2 binds to an iron-sulfur cluster, offering clues as to how microbes use nitrogenase enzymes to convert atmospheric dinitrogen into ammonia.

Researchers are playing with shape-engineered nanoscale building blocks that are up to 100-times larger than atoms and ions. Although these nano 'Lego bricks' interact with each other with forces vastly different and much weaker than those holding atoms and ions together, they form crystals all by themselves, the structures of which resemble the ones of natural minerals. These superlattices exhibit unique properties such as superfluorescence - and may well usher in a new era in materials science.

Using the circular vibration of surface acoustic waves, a collaborative research group have successfully controlled the magnetization of a ferromagnetic thin film.

A small Japanese fishing community devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 managed to recover from the disaster through cooperative community activity despite the propensity for individualist-competitive behavior within fisheries - cooperative activity that continued many years later.

Food producers can use a mathematical model to ensure their products do not cause botulism.

Researchers tracked down the first step in ice formation at a surface, revealing that additional energy is needed for water before ice can start to form.

Researchers have developed a new method that improves how artificial intelligence learns to see.

If a ban were introduced on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, and they were replaced by electric cars, the result would be a great reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. That is the finding of new research, looking at emissions from the entire life cycle - from manufacture of electric cars and batteries, to electricity used for operation.

Scientists summarize, compare and contrast research in learned robot manipulation through the lens of adaptability and outline promising research directions for the future.