News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Argonne scientists have further explored a new effect that enhances their ability to control the direction of electron spin in certain materials. Their discovery may lead to more powerful and energy-efficient materials for information storage.

New studies from Lawson Health Research Institute and Western University have found for the first time that HIV can be transmitted through the sharing of equipment used to prepare drugs before injection and that a simple intervention - heating the equipment with a cigarette lighter for 10 seconds - can destroy the HIV virus, preventing that transmission. The findings, used to inform a public health campaign called 'Cook Your Wash,' have helped reduce rates of HIV transmission in London, Ontario.

Researchers at Berkeley Lab have 3D-printed an all-liquid "lab on a chip" that, with the click of a button, can be repeatedly reconfigured on demand to serve a wide range of applications - from making battery materials to screening drug candidates.

The universe is getting bigger every second -- but how fast? Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope say they have crossed an important threshold in revealing a discrepancy between the two key techniques for measuring the universe's expansion rate.

Scholars at the Institute for Advanced Study recently submitted a paper announcing the discovery of six new binary black hole mergers, which exceed the detection thresholds defined by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration. Applying a unique set of signal processing techniques the team, nearly doubled the total number of binary black hole mergers found within the data of LVC's second observing run (O2) from 7 to 13.

Hubble's measurements of today's expansion rate do not match the rate that was expected based on how the Universe appeared shortly after the Big Bang over 13 billion years ago. Using new data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have significantly lowered the possibility that this discrepancy is a fluke.

For the first time, physicists at the University of Basel have succeeded in measuring the magnetic properties of atomically thin van der Waals materials on the nanoscale. They used diamond quantum sensors to determine the strength of the magnetization of individual atomic layers of the material chromium triiodide. In addition, they found a long-sought explanation for the unusual magnetic properties of the material. The journal Science has published the findings.

Chemical engineers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering have recreated collaboration and competition responses within a microchamber environment of microscopic particles, sheets, and catalysts, effectively mimicking responses of feeding, fighting, and fleeing.