A research team comprised of scientists at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Washington has for the first time directly imaged “edge conduction” in monolayer tungsten ditelluride, or WTe2, a newly discovered 2-D topological insulator and quantum material. The research makes it possible to exploit this edge conduction feature to build more…
UC Riverside Physicists Create Exotic Electron Liquid
By bombarding an ultrathin semiconductor sandwich with powerful laser pulses, physicists at the University of California, Riverside, have created the first “electron liquid” at room temperature. The achievement opens a pathway for development of the first practical and efficient devices to generate and detect light at terahertz wavelengths — between infrared light and microwaves. Such…
Nontraditional Sites for Future Solar Farms
There’s a tradeoff when sprawling solar farms pop up on agricultural land: farmland disappears, perhaps forever, in return for growth in the promising renewable energy sector. But what if large solar installations could be built away from agricultural land, eliminating the competition between two important industries? In a study published today in Environmental Science and…
Accelerating The Quest For Quicker, Longer-Lasting Electronics
In the world of electronics, where the quest is always for smaller and faster units with infinite battery life, topological insulators (TI) have tantalizing potential. In a paper published today in Science Advances, Jing Shi, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and…
New Battery Coating Could Improve Smart Phones and Electric Vehicles
High-performing lithium-ion batteries are a key component of laptops, smart phones, and electric vehicles. Currently, the anodes, or negative charged side of lithium ion batteries, are generally made with graphite or other carbon-based materials. But the performance of carbon based materials is limited because of the weight and energy density, which is the amount of…
Large Number Of Dwarf Galaxies Discovered In The Early Universe
A team of researchers, led by University of California, Riverside astronomers, found for the first time a large population of distant dwarf galaxies that could reveal important details about a productive period of star formation in the universe billions of years ago. The findings, just published in The Astrophysical Journal, build on a growing body of…
Next-Gen Navigation System Uses Existing Cellular Signals, Not GPS; Will Support Autonomous Vehicle Development
A team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside has developed a highly reliable and accurate navigation system that exploits existing environmental signals such as cellular and Wi-Fi, rather than the Global Positioning System (GPS). The technology can be used as a standalone alternative to GPS, or complement current GPS-based systems to enable highly…
Explaining Why the Universe Can Be ‘Transparent’: Universe’s Reionization is Based on a Galaxy’s Dust Content
Two papers published by an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside and several collaborators explain why the universe has enough energy to become transparent. The study led by Naveen Reddy, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UC Riverside, marks the first quantitative study of how the gas content…
Study Explains Why Galaxies Stop Creating Stars
Galaxies come in three main shapes — elliptical, spiral (such as the Milky Way) and irregular. They can be massive or small. To add to this mix, galaxies can also be blue or red. Blue galaxies are still actively forming stars. Red ones mostly are not currently forming stars, and are considered passive. The processes…
Tracing Star Formation Rates in Distant Galaxies
When we think of a galaxy the first thing that comes to our minds is an assembly of stars. Indeed, the stars of a galaxy are one of its most important characteristics. To understand the physics of the evolution and formation of galaxies it is crucial to know at what rate galaxies form stars, referred…
Dark Matter Satellites Trigger Massive Birth of Stars
One of the main predictions of the current model of the creation of structures in the universe, known at the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, is that galaxies are embedded in very extended and massive halos of dark matter that are surrounded by many thousands of smaller sub-halos also made from dark matter. Around large galaxies,…
Smart Energy Management Systems Can Improve Plug-in Hybrid Efficiency
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) can reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions compared to their gas-only counterparts. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering have taken the technology one step further, demonstrating how to improve the efficiency of current PHEVs by almost 12 percent. Since plug-in hybrids combine gas or…
Shrimp Inspires New Body Armor & Football Helmet Design
The mantis shrimp is able to repeatedly pummel the shells of prey using a hammer-like appendage that can withstand rapid-fire blows by neutralizing certain frequencies of “shear waves,” according to a new research paper by University of California, Riverside and Purdue University engineers. The club is made of a composite material containing fibers of chitin,…
Chemists Fabricate Novel Rewritable Paper
First developed in China in about the year A.D. 150, paper has many uses, the most common being for writing and printing upon. Indeed, the development and spread of civilization owes much to paper’s use as writing material. According to some surveys, 90 percent of all information in businesses today is retained on paper, even…
Hacking Gmail with 92 Percent Success
UC Riverside assistant professor is among group that develops novel method to attack apps on Android, and likely other, operating systems Riverside, CA — A team of researchers, including an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering, have identified a weakness believed to exist in Android, Windows and iOS mobile…
Charging Portable Electronics in 10 Minutes
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering have developed a three-dimensional, silicon-decorated, cone-shaped carbon-nanotube cluster architecture for lithium ion battery anodes that could enable charging of portable electronics in 10 minutes, instead of hours. Lithium ion batteries are the rechargeable battery of choice for portable electronic devices and electric vehicles. But,…
Using Holograms to Improve Electronic Devices
Researchers have demonstrated a holographic memory device that could improve storage capacity and processing capabilities in electronics Riverside, Calif.— A team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and Russian Academy of Science have demonstrated a new type of holographic memory device that could provide unprecedented data storage capacity and…
2 Vortex Trails with 1 Stroke
UC Riverside research shows hovering hummingbirds generate two trails of vortices under their wings, challenging 1-vortex consensus RIVERSIDE, Calif. — As of today, the Wikipedia entry for the hummingbird explains that the bird’s flight generates in its wake a single trail of vortices that helps the bird hover. But after conducting experiments with hummingbirds in…