ScienceDaily: Matter & Energy News

Researchers have developed a new approach for shape changing at the material level. They use rubber, metal, and temperature to morph materials and fix them into place with no motors or pulleys.

Ferromagnetic materials have a self-generating magnetic field, ferroelectric materials generate their own electrical field. Although electric and magnetic fields are related, physics tells us that they are very different classes of material. Now the discovery of a complex electrical 'vortex'-like pattern that mirrors its magnetic counterpart suggests that they could actually be two sides of the same coin.

Metal hydrides are considered a cutting-edge storage material for hydrogen. These hydrides function even better, if the micrometer-sized hydride particles are coated with a thin polymer film. Using a sophisticated microscopy technique, a team can now successfully show in detail, how the polymer-coated particles transform during charging and discharging with hydrogen. The results are encouraging and bring practical use of the new technology one step closer.

Signatures for a novel electronic phase that enables charge to flow spontaneously in loops have been observed in a kagome superconductor. Using ultra-sensitive muon spin spectroscopy, researchers discovered time-reversal symmetry-breaking magnetic fields inside the material, indicating the existence of long-searched-for 'orbital currents'.

An international team has launched CellRepo, a species and strain database that uses cell barcodes to monitor and track engineered organisms. The database keeps track and organizes the digital data produced during cell engineering. It also molecularly links that data to the associated living samples.

Prime editing is an improved variant of the CRISPR/Cas system that can introduce alterations in DNA with exquisite precision. But the method is complex and inefficient. A research group has now been able to show that the DNA mismatch repair process plays an essential role in prime editing.

Researchers devise a new approach to a highly studied exotic elastic material, uncover an intuitive geometrical description of the pronounced -- or nonlinear -- soft deformations, and show how to activate any of these deformations on-demand with minimal inputs. This new theory reveals that a flexible mechanical structure is governed by some of the same math as electromagnetic waves, phase transitions, and even black holes.

One year after winter storms crippled Texas' electricity grid, contributing to more than 200 deaths, an analysis recommends contracting improvements to reduce decentralized energy markets' vulnerability to rare events.

Researchers say an experimental approach for demonstrating the existence of an axionic behavior in specific materials may not have found it as previously reported. The multinational team was unable to detect the expected increased magnetoconductivity in the charge density wave of a compound made up of tantalum, selenium, and iodine, called (TaSe4)2I. The findings come three years after published research seemed to provide sufficient evidence for an axionic behavior using a similar approach.

A new set of molecular building blocks aims to make complex chemistry as simple and accessible as a toy construction kit. Researchers have developed a new class of chemical building blocks that simply snap together to form 3D molecules with complex twists and turns, and an automated machine to assemble the blocks like a 3D printer for molecules.