Building electronic devices often requires stacking different crystalline materials on top of one another with atomic precision. This process, called heteroepitaxy, works best when the two crystals share similar atomic patterns. When their symmetries differ, the upper crystal tends to grow in several orientations at once instead of a single one, creating defects that degrade […]
Auhtors: Samantha Lawler, Associate Professor, Astronomy, University of Regina and Aaron Boley, Professor, Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia A giant mirror to create “sunlight on demand” was just approved by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), despite opposition from astronomers and the public, and real safety concerns. The FCC approved the company […]
Biochemistry • Chemical engineering • Chemistry • DIPC Biochemistry • Food processing
Enzymes and other biomolecules are often anchored onto solid materials so they can be reused, purified more easily, and made more stable, a strategy biotechnology has relied on since industrial-scale immobilized enzymes first appeared in chemical manufacturing in the mid-twentieth century. Immobilized enzymes today drive processes from food and pharmaceutical production to biosensors and medical […]
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to solve the mathematical equations that describe the physical world, not only to recognize images or generate text. One promising approach, developed over the last decade, is the physics-informed neural network, or PINN: a type of neural network trained not on labeled examples but on the governing equations of […]
When energy storage is discussed in the context of the energy transition, the conversation almost invariably turns to electricity. Solar and wind power have made the temporal mismatch between energy production and energy demand one of the defining challenges of low-carbon energy systems, and technologies capable of storing electrical energy have consequently become central to […]
Catalysis • Chemical engineering • Chemistry • Materials • Mechanical Engineering
Steel and metal production are among the largest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for approximately 10% of global CO2 emissions. At the same time, modern technology relies on tailored steels and metals for applications in fields such as mobility, energy, infrastructure, safety and medicine. Hydrogen-based metal production offers a promising CO2-free alternative and […]
Over a century ago, quantum physics revealed a surprising fact: truly identical particles do not behave like tiny billiard balls. When two indistinguishable particles meet under the right conditions, they can interfere with each other in ways that have no classical explanation. One of the most famous demonstrations of this phenomenon is the Hong–Ou–Mandel effect […]
Author: Melissa Lee, Senior Lecturer, School of Mathematics, Monash University Last week, OpenAI shocked the mathematical community by revealing that one of its internal artificial intelligence (AI) models had found a counterexample to a famous conjecture made by legendary Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős in 1946. The planar unit distance problem, or Erdős problem 90, has […]
How can scientists see the intricate details inside cells far too small for regular light microscopes? A powerful technique called expansion microscopy is revolutionizing how researchers study tiny organisms from plankton to developing embryos. Making the invisible visible Expansion microscopy works by doing the opposite to what we had been doing until now: instead of […]
Light can do more than illuminate matter. In some metal complexes, it can break chemical bonds in a highly controlled way, releasing specific molecules only when and where light is applied. This idea lies behind photoactivated chemotherapy, a strategy in which relatively inactive compounds become chemically reactive after irradiation. Ruthenium complexes are among the most […]