Kyoto University researchers have designed a temperature-controllable, copper-based material for sieving or storing gases. The principle used to design the material, described in the journal Science, could act as a blueprint for developing nanoporous materials with a wide variety of energy, medical and environmental applications. The porous nanomaterials that are currently used for gas separation and storage are…
Electro-Mechano-Optical NMR Detection
An international research project led by Kazuyuki Takeda of Kyoto University and Koji Usami of the University of Tokyo has developed a new method of light detection for nuclear magnetic resonance — NMR — by up-converting NMR radio-frequency signals into optical signals. This new detection method — appearing in the journal Optica — has the…
Visualizing Nuclear Radiation
Extraordinary decontamination efforts are underway in areas affected by the 2011 nuclear accidents in Japan. The creation of total radioactivity maps is essential for thorough cleanup, but the most common methods, according to Kyoto University’s Toru Tanimori, do not ‘see’ enough ground-level radiation. “The best methods we have currently are labor intensive, and to measure…
Did the LIGO Gravitational Waves Originate from Primordial Black Holes?
Binary black holes recently discovered by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration could be primordial entities that formed just after the Big Bang, report Japanese astrophysicists. If further data support this observation, it could mark the first confirmed finding of a primordial black hole, guiding theories about the beginnings of the universe. In February, the LIGO-Virgo collaboration announced…
Seeing ‘Living’ Nanofibers in Real Time
The Greek goddess Psyche borrowed help from ants to sort a room full of different grains. Cells, on the other hand, do something similar without Olympian assistance, as they organize molecules into robust, functional fibers. Now scientists are able to see self-sorting phenomena happen in real time with artificial molecules. The achievement, reported in Nature…
‘Seeing’ Black Holes With A Home-use Telescope
All you need is a 20 cm telescope to observe a nearby, active black hole. An international research team reports that the activity of such phenomena can be observed by visible light during outbursts, and that flickering light emerging from gases surrounding black holes is a direct indicator of this. The team’s results, published in…
Grooving Crystal Surfaces Repel Water
Researchers from Kyoto University in Japan have developed a novel way to waterproof new functionalized materials involved in gas storage and separation by adding exterior surface grooves. Their study, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, provides a blueprint for researchers to build similar materials involved in industrial applications, such as high performance gas separation and…