ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

The secret to producing large batches of stem cells more efficiently may lie in the near-zero gravity conditions of space. Scientists have found that microgravity has the potential to contribute to life-saving advances on Earth by facilitating the rapid mass production of stem cells.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have increased significantly over the last 50 years, resulting in higher global temperatures and abrupt changes to Earth's climate. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the new technologies that scientists hope will play an important role in tackling the climate crisis. It involves the capture of CO2 from emissions from industrial processes, or from the burning of fossil fuels in power generation, which is then stored underground in geological formations. CCS will also be key if we want to produce 'clean-burning' hydrogen from hydrocarbon systems.

A team of scientists has developed a 'smart' food packaging material that is biodegradable, sustainable and kills microbes that are harmful to humans. It could also extend the shelf-life of fresh fruit by two to three days.

Researchers have presented a method that allows the heavier hydrogen 'brother' deuterium to be introduced specifically into many different molecules. The deuterated compounds obtained in this way are more stable against degradation by certain enzymes. Drugs produced using this method can be effective for longer, meaning they have to be taken in lower doses or less frequently.

A large, unconventional anomalous Hall resistance in a new magnetic semiconductor in the absence of large-scale magnetic ordering has been demonstrated, validating a recent theoretical prediction. Their findings provide new insights into the anomalous Hall effect, a quantum phenomenon that has previously been associated with long-range magnetic order.

A study calculates how cyclic strain and stress affects nanotubes and describes how fibers under cyclic loads can fail over time.

Superconducting uranium ditelluride is a promising material in the race to create fault-tolerant quantum computers, but physicists are rethinking how superconductivity arises in the material in light of puzzling new experimental evidence.

Researchers have developed a technique to improve the flexibility of ultra-thin electronics, such as those used in bendable devices or clothing. To do so, they used water-vapor plasma to directly bond gold electrodes fixed onto separate ultra-thin polymer films. This is a significance advance because the technique works without adhesives or high temperatures.

An electric field transforms an iron oxide nanoparticle suspension into a model for the emergence of complex dissipative structures.

Microorganisms can convert oil into natural gas, i.e. methane. Until recently, it was thought that this conversion was only possible through the cooperation of different organisms. In 2019, a researcher suggested that a special archaeon can do this all by itself, as indicated by their genome analyses. Now, researchers have succeeded in cultivating this 'miracle microbe' in the laboratory. This enabled them to describe exactly how the microbe achieves the transformation. They also discovered that it prefers to eat rather bulky chunks of food.