ScienceDaily: Matter & Energy News

About three years ago, a team of astronomers went looking for the universe's missing mass, better known as dark matter, in the heart of an atom. Their expedition didn't lead them to dark matter, but they still found something that had never been seen before, something that defied explanation. Well, at least an explanation that everyone could agree on.

Computers can be trained to better detect distant nuclear detonations, chemical blasts and volcano eruptions by learning from artificial explosion signals, according to a new method.

Nonthermal plasma (NTP) is used to activate CO2 molecules for hydrogenation into alternative fuels at low temperatures, also enabling the conversion of renewable electricity to chemical energy. Researchers from Tokyo Tech combined experimental and computational methods to investigate the hydrogenation pathway of NTP-promoted CO2 on the surface of Pd2Ga/SiO2 catalysts. The mechanistic insights from their study can help improve the efficiency of catalytic hydrogenation of CO2 and allows the engineers to design new concept catalysts.

Researchers have successfully tested a device that may one day use the chemical biomarkers in sweat to detect changes in a person's health.

Fluorine-containing gases -- including so-called per- or polyfluorinated hydrocarbons, or PFCs -- have a significant share in global warming. Researchers recently developed new crystalline materials that can selectively adsorb the molecules of such carbon-fluorine bonds. They hope that these porous crystals may be useful for targeted binding and recovery of PFCs.

Scientists explore the physics of how polarization-filtered colors emerge, how they can be controlled, and why subtle changes in viewing angle, sample orientation, and the order of layers of films between polarizers can have dramatic effects on the observed colors. The research emphasizes visual examples of concepts related to birefringence, such as addition, subtraction, and order-of-operations.

Researchers have discovered thousands of biological traits that influence whether cancer cells take up nanoparticles. Researchers analyzed interactions between 35 different types of nanoparticles and nearly 500 types of cancer cells.

A material known as cubic boron arsenide has two major advantages over silicon, research shows. It provides high mobility to both electrons and holes, and it has excellent thermal conductivity. It is, the researchers say, the best semiconductor material ever found.

C60 molecules on a gold substrate appear more complex than their graphene counterparts, but have much more ordinary electronic properties. This is now shown by measurements with ARPES at BESSY II and detailed calculations.

Research suggests a trio of roadway treatments would enable people age 65 and older to travel on foot more safely.

To save the world's fish stocks and oceans, scientists are racing to find better and sustainable ways to make healthy nutritional products such as Omega-3 fatty acids, biodiesel, aquaculture and livestock food from fast-growing microalgae. New research has discovered a simple, low-cost and effective way to extract high-value bioactives from single-cell algae oil -- using waste sulfur from industries such as petrochemical production.