Polymers containing plastics are essential in modern life. Being lightweight, strong and unreactive, a vast range of technologies depend on them. However, most polymers do not adhere naturally to other materials, so they need adhesives or corrosive chemical treatments to be attached to other materials. This is a problem in areas like food and medicine,…
Feeling the Pressure With Universal Tactile Imaging
Touch, or tactile sensing, is fundamentally important for a range of real-life applications, from robotics to surgical medicine to sports science. Tactile sensors are modeled on the biological sense of touch and can help researchers to understand human perception and motion. Researchers from Osaka University have now developed a new approach to pressure distribution measurement…
Ultrathin Black Phosphorus for Solar-Driven Hydrogen Economy
Hydrogen as a fuel source, rather than hydrocarbons like oil and coal, offers many benefits. Burning hydrogen produces harmless water with the potential to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions and their environmental burden. In pursuit of technologies that could lead to a breakthrough in achieving a hydrogen economy, a key issue is making hydrogen cheaply. Using…
Key Compound for High-Temperature Superconductivity Found
A research group in Japan found a new compound H5S2 that shows a new superconductivity phase on computer simulation. Further theoretical and experimental research based on H5S2 predicted by this group will lead to the clarification of the mechanism behind high-temperature superconductivity, which takes place in hydrogen sulfide . Superconductivity is the total disappearance of electrical resistance…
Anomalous Sinking of Spheres in Apparently Fixed Powder Beds Discovered
A group of researchers at Okayama University and Osaka University, Japan examined the state of the surface of apparently fixed powder beds in which air weak enough not to move the powder is injected, and observed anomalous sinking phenomena, a world first. The following anomalous sinking phenomena were found by Jun Oshitani, Associate Professor, Graduate…
Simulating Supermassive Black Holes
Near the edge of the visible Universe are some of the brightest objects ever observed, known as quasars, which are believed to contain supermassive black holes of more than a billion times the mass of our Sun. Simulations by Kentaro Nagamine at Osaka University’s Department of Earth and Space Science, Isaac Shlosman at the University…
Creation Of Jupiter Interior, A Step Towards Room Temperature Superconductivity
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and a major component of stars such as the Sun, as well as gas-giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn. In recent years, hydrogen’s behavior at high temperature and high pressure has been in the realm of interest not only for planetary science, but also for…
Clues on the Development of Magnetic Sensors with Pure Spin Current
“Spintronics” is a new class of electronics where charge and spin are utilized. A pure spin current, flow of spin without charge current, is one of the important physical quantities in its field, which could play an essential role in low energy consumption electronics of the next generation.A group of researchers in Japan and France…