Rotating terahertz polarisation.

Rice University physicists have demonstrated the ability of ultrathin, highly-aligned carbon nanotube films to efficiently rotate the polarisation vector of terahertz waves. They suggest that the thin films are ideal for making compact wave plates with reduced dimensions.

Learn about their work in Optica: https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/viewmedia.cfm?uri=optica-8-5-760&html=true
#sciencenews #THz

Clearing the air.

Fossil fuel reliance has pushed air pollution to record levels. Nitrogen oxides are particularly harmful pollutants for human health. Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology researchers hope to reduce pollution by using novel catalysts to selectively convert nitrogen oxides to hydroxylamine which can be further applied as an alternate energy source.

The results can be viewed in Nature Communications: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22147-7
#sciencenews #environment #healthcare

Biosensing breast cancer.

Researchers at Universitat Politècnica de Valencia have developed a new biosensor device that can help detect breast cancer at its earliest stages. They use a liquid biopsy approach to rapidly, cheaply, and accurately analyse breast cancer biomarkers in blood samples.

Their work has been published in ACS Sensors: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acssensors.0c02222
#sciencenews #health #cancer

Today is the International Women in Engineering Day.

Before engineering was recognized as a formal profession, women with engineering skills often sought recognition as inventors. During the Islamic Golden Period from the 8th century until the 15th century there were many Muslim women who were inventors and engineers, such as the 10th-century astrolabe maker Al-ʻIjliyyah.

In the 18th and 19th century, there were few formal training opportunities for women to train as engineers and frequently women were introduced to engineering through family companies or their spouses. Some women did have more formal educations in the late 19th century and early 20th century, normally in mathematics or science subjects.

In the early years of the 20th century, greater numbers of women began to be admitted to engineering programs, but they were generally looked upon as anomalies by the men in their departments.

Women's roles in the workforce, specifically in engineering fields, changed greatly during the Post–World War II period. The War created a serious shortage of engineering talent, as men were drafted into the armed forces.

As women started to marry at later ages, have fewer children, divorce more frequently and stopped depending on male breadwinners for economic support, they started to become even more active in the engineering labor force despite the fact that their salaries were less than men's.

During this time, there were few public attacks on female engineers. Chiefly, these attacks were kept quiet inside institutions due to the fact that women did not pressure aggressively to shift the gender gap between men and women in the engineering field. Another reason why these “attacks” were kept private is due to how men believed that it was impossible for engineering to stop being a male-dominated field.

Gender stereotypes, low rates of female engineering students, and engineering culture are factors that contribute to the current situation where men are dominated in the engineering field.

Today is the International Women in Engineering Day.

We would like to thank all the brilliant female Engineers for being our mothers, sisters, friends, to work with us and be there for us in need!

We wish all the ladies in Engineering to enjoy studying and working the field they have chosen, to achieve tremendous success in education and career, and lots of support from their friends and colleagues.

Happy International Women in Engineering Day!

Deep learning in disease diagnosis.

Heart disease and cancer are two of the leading causes of death in the world. A team of engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a deep learning algorithm that enables simultaneous dual screening for both cardiovascular disease and lung cancer from a single CT scan.

Details of their method have been published in Nature Communication: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23235-4

How can you succeed as a Mother in STEMM?

Being a Woman in STEMM is a challenge. Being a Mother in STEMM brings even more difficulties. But challenges are meant to be overcome — motherhood should not be a barrier to success in STEMM.

Dr. Yue (Christina) Wang is a RAEng Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of York, and a mother to two children. She discusses how she has successfully balanced becoming a mother with her ongoing career in academia, including her experiences of maternity, the systems of support she has found, and what still needs to change to help mothers unleash their full scientific potential.

Subscribe STEMM Global Audio Learning Podcast and join the STEMM Global Scientific Community

#podcast #womeninstemm #mothersinstemm #equality

Can your smartphone predict the future of wine?

Cornell University engineers have teamed up with plant scientists to develop an app that predicts the yield of vineyards earlier in the season and much more cheaply than traditional methods. The computer vision based system is simple to implement and use around the globe.

The work has recently been published in Frontiers in Agronomy: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fagro.2021.648080
#sciencenews #wine

Light out of thin air.

Carbon dioxide has been converted into light-emitting solid carbon by a team working at the University of Ottawa. They use surface plasmons to template the conversion process, giving spatial control of the carbon emitter deposition.

The results are published in Optica: https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/fulltext.cfm?uri=optica-8-5-708&id=451118
#sciencenews #light

Goodbye to green?

Wherever ecologists look, from tropical forests to tundra, ecosystems are being transformed by human land use and climate change. Researchers at the University of Bergen have found fossil evidence that the rate of vegetation change began to accelerate between 4.6 and 2.8 thousand years ago and the acceleration is only increasing.

Their analysis is detailed in Science: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6544/860

#sciencenews #ecology

A new form of carbon.

Researchers at Aalto University have discovered a new carbon network made up of an ordered lattice of squares, hexagons, and octagons. The so-called biphenylene network has metallic properties at sizes where graphene is already a semiconductor.

The new material is characterized in Science: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6544/852

Controlled ionisation.

Ionization energy is one of the most important physicochemical parameters. Kazan Federal University physicists have described how the ionisation energy of atoms contained in photonic crystals can be tuned, allowing the synthesis of new compounds to be accessed.

The work has recently been published in Physics Letters A: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0375960121002711?via%3Dihub

#sciencenews #physics #science

Stem cell tuning.

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have quantified how mesenchymal stem cells respond to the mechanical stiffness of their environments. Specific proteins can be localized in the cell nucleus depending on the stiffness. Their findings will help scientists control the state of stem cells in medical treatments.

Their work has been published in Analytical Sciences: https://doi.org/10.2116/analsci.20SCP02

#sciencenews #biology #genetics #medicine

Safe to drink.

Micropollutants such as steroid hormones contaminate drinking water worldwide and pose a significant threat to human health. Scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have developed a new chemical process to remove hormones using photocatalysis to transform the pollutants into safe products.

The results can be viewed in Applied Catalysis B: Environmental: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092633732100223X?via%3Dihub

#sciencenews #environment

Light out of thin air.

Most commercial chemicals require catalysts to produce, which normally take the form of metal nanoparticles. A team at Vienna University of Technology have shown how the atomic scale surface structures of such catalysts can critically influence their reactive properties. They visualise the oxidation of hydrogen on a single rhodium nanoparticle in real time.

Their insights are published in Science: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/05/19/science.abf8107

#sciencenews #nano #physics

Plastic to combat pollution.

Biodegradable plastics are better for the environment, but their rapid degradation means they can’t be recycled. Researchers from the University of Canterbury have developed a method to convert the plastics to a foam that can be reused for insulation or flotation devices.

Their method is described in the journal Physics of Fluids: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0050649

#sciencenews #environment #chemistry

Recycling electric vehicle batteries.

University of Leicester researchers have developed an ultrasonic delamination technique to controllably separate the different metals used in lithium-ion batteries, improving the yield and purity of the recovered materials.

Their analysis is detailed in Green Chemistry: http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/D1GC01623G
#sciencenews #chemistry #environment

Down the nano-hole.

A sensing technique developed at the University of Cambridge has been used to reveal the fundamental physics governing the transport of DNA threads through nanopores. They assembled DNA molecules with ‘bumps’ at specific locations that could be used to track the passage of the molecule.

The study is published in Nature Physics: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01268-2

#sciencenews #genetics #nano

Life beneath Antarctic ice.

Pioneering research at the University of Bristol has shown the erosion of ancient sediments found deep beneath Antarctic ice is a vital source of the nutrients and energy needed to sustain for subglacial microbial life. Their lab-based experiments replicated the conditions in Lake Whillans, 800m underneath Antarctica, where crushed sediments could release methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen in substantial concentrations.

Learn about their insight in Communications Earth & Environment: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00202-x?proof=t

#sciencenews #environment

The earthworm in a new light.

By combining novel imaging techniques, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology has imaged the exciting variety of chemical interactions that take place inside the earthworm. Their chemo-histo-tomography method combines chemical imaging of the metabolites using mass spectrometry with micro-computed X-ray tomography of the microanatomy of the animal.

The work has recently been published in PNAS: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023773118

#sciencenews #microscopy #biology #microbiology

Visualizing atomic-scale structures with the optical force.

Researchers from Osaka University have achieved the first ever sub-nanometre resolution in photoinduced atomic force microscopy. They eliminated noise sources to map out the forces acting on quantum dots in 3D with a precision never previously achieved.

Their work has been published in Nature Communications: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24136-2

#sciencenews #microscopy #quantum