News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Researchers at the University of Houston are reporting the invention of a new class of porous catalysts that will speed up reactions, breaking the molecular traffic jam that can slow them down. The discovery has immediate relevance to industry for a host of applications, including the production of fuels, chemicals for plastics and polymers, and reactions that make molecules for food, medicine and personal care products.

Researchers have found electrons that behave as if they have no mass, called Dirac electrons, in a compound used in rewritable discs, such as CDs and DVDs. The discovery of "massless" electrons in this phase-change material could lead to faster electronic devices.

Modified metal organic frameworks that can behave as porous liquids offer new possibilities for gas separation technologies.

Quantum systems are notoriously prone to errors and noise. In order to overcome this and build a functional quantum computer, physicists should ideally understand the noise across an entire system. That has been out of reach until now, with Dr Robin Harper and colleagues developing the first system-wide quantum algorithm to characterise noise.

POSTECH professor In Su Lee's research team develops a magnetic field-induced heating 'hollow nanoreactors'.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension is a rare disease in which excessive proliferation of the cells of pulmonary arterial walls obstructs the blood flow in the lungs. A group of scientists based in Okayama, Japan, has now used 3D cell culture technology to recapitulate the pathogenetic process involved in pulmonary arterial hypertension in the laboratory, with potential applications in drug testing.