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    A new microbead proves effective as a plastic-free skin scrubber

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    A new degradable microbead could soon replace plastic exfoliants in skin cleansers.

    The polymer spheres effectively remove permanent marker and eyeliner on animal skin samples and break down into molecules similar to sugars and amino acids, researchers report December 6 in Nature Chemical Engineering. The beads offer a more environmentally friendly alternative to microplastic beads, the scientists say.

    In 2015, the United States banned companies from adding plastic microbeads to personal care products that get rinsed down the drain to prevent them from entering waterways where marine life might ingest them. Several countries have implemented similar bans, but others still allow companies to add plastic microbeads as scrubbers and exfoliants. More

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      Starchy nanofibers shatter the record for world’s thinnest pasta

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      The world record for the thinnest pasta has been shattered, though the new, narrow noodles are better suited to wound dressings than the dinner table.

      From white flour, researchers made starch-rich nanofibers that are about 370 nanometers thick, on average — or about two hundredths the thickness of a human hair. The nano-noodles could be used in biodegradable bandages, chemist Adam Clancy and colleagues reported October 30 in Nanoscale Advances.

      To make the noodle “dough,” the scientists mixed the flour with formic acid, a liquid that helps uncoil the long starch molecules in the flour. “Normally, if you want to cook starch, then you use water and heat to break up the tight packing of starch,” says Clancy, of University College London. “We do that chemically with formic acid. So we effectively pickle it instead of cooking it.” More

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      New electrical stitches use muscle movement to speed up healing

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      Stitches are getting a shocking upgrade.

      In an experiment in rats, a new strong, flexible thread hastened wound healing by transforming muscle movement into electricity, researchers report October 8 in Nature Communications.

      If the material is eventually deemed safe for use in people, it “could change how we treat injuries,” says materials scientist Chengyi Hou of Donghua University in Shanghai.

      Researchers already knew that pumping electricity through stitches could speed healing, but previous technologies relied on bulky external batteries. The new sutures are powered by the body itself (SN: 3/2/23). More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

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      A materials scientist seeks to extract lithium from untapped sources

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      Electric vehicles promise to help wean us off of fossil fuels, but they introduce a new problem: how to get enough of the lithium that EV batteries require (SN: 5/7/19).

      Materials scientist Chong Liu of the University of Chicago has some ideas. Existing technology can extract lithium only from sources with highly concentrated ions, like hard rocks or underground deposits of salty water called brines. Not only will those sources not be enough to meet demand, but mining them also comes with environmental consequences (SN: 3/15/22). More

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      A quantum computer corrected its own errors, improving its calculations 

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      For the first time, a quantum computer has improved its results by repeatedly fixing its own mistakes midcalculation with a technique called quantum error correction.

      Scientists have long known that quantum computers need error correction to meet their potential to solve problems that stump standard, “classical” computers (SN: 6/22/20). Quantum computers calculate with quantum bits, or qubits, which are subject to quantum physics but suffer from jitters that result in mistakes. 

      In quantum error correction, multiple faulty qubits are combined to make reliable qubits, called logical qubits, which are then used to perform the calculation. Previous efforts found that error correction made calculations worse, rather than better, or detected errors but didn’t actually fix them (SN: 10/4/21). More

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      Jurassic Park’s amber-preserved dino DNA is now inspiring a way to store data 

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      Sometimes science fiction does inspire science research. À la Jurassic Park’s entombed mosquito, scientists have developed a method to store DNA in an amberlike material and still extract it easily hours later. This storage method is cheaper and faster than existing options, the researchers report in the June Journal of the American Chemical Society.

      If you want to store information for a very long time, possibly forever, DNA is the way to do it, says James Banal, a chemist at MIT and technical director of a biotechnology company called Cache DNA, headquartered in San Carlos, Calif. DNA stores the genetic information of millions of organisms, but it can potentially be used to store any kind of information, including digital data such as text, photos, videos and more (SN: 10/2/19). More

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      Two real-world tests of quantum memories bring a quantum internet closer to reality

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      In the quest to build a quantum internet, scientists are putting their memories to the test. Quantum memories, that is.

      Quantum memories are devices that store fragile information in the realm of the very small. They’re an essential component for scientists’ vision of quantum networks that could allow new types of communication, from ultra-secure messaging to linking up far-flung quantum computers (SN: 6/28/23). Such memories would help scientists establish quantum connections, or entanglement, throughout a network (SN: 2/12/20). More

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      The neutrino’s quantum fuzziness is beginning to come into focus

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      Neutrinos are known for funny business. Now scientists have set a new limit on a quantum trait responsible for the subatomic particles’ quirkiness: uncertainty.

      The lightweight particles morph from one variety of neutrino to another as they travel, a strange phenomenon called neutrino oscillation (SN: 10/6/15). That ability rests on quantum uncertainty, a sort of fuzziness intrinsic to the properties of quantum objects, such as their location or momentum. But despite the importance of quantum uncertainty, the uncertainty in the neutrino’s position has never been directly measured.  More

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      Artificial intelligence helped scientists create a new type of battery 

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      In the hunt for new materials, scientists have traditionally relied on tinkering in the lab, guided by intuition, with a hefty serving of trial and error.

      But now a new battery material has been discovered by combining two computing superpowers: artificial intelligence and supercomputing. It’s a discovery that highlights the potential for using computers to help scientists discover materials suited to specific needs, from batteries to carbon capture technologies to catalysts. 

      Calculations winnowed down more than 32 million candidate materials to just 23 promising options, researchers from Microsoft and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, or PNNL, report in a paper submitted January 8 to arXiv.org. The team then synthesized and tested one of those materials and created a working battery prototype. More