Room-temperature superconductivity
Last year researchers from IISc Bengaluru were in the news for confirming superconductivity at an ambient temperature of 13 degrees Celsius using silver and gold nanoparticles. Now physicists from the U.S. have shown superconductivity at 15 degrees Celsius. They used a high pressure device called a diamond anvil cell to compress and alter the properties. The team writes that this could revolutionise the energy grid, and change every device that’s electronically driven.
Saving the heart
Published in Science Translational Medicine
How to study heart attacks? Build a heart. Researchers from Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences developed a heart-on-a-chip with special sensors for this purpose. They used the device to understand how special nanovesicles called exosomes can be used to revive the cells after a heart attack and also keep the cells functioning when they are deprived of oxygen.
Fast and furious photos
Published in Nature Communications
If you are a photophile here is a new camera for you which can capture up to 100 billion frames per second. Called “single-shot stereo-polarimetric compressed ultrafast photography," or SP-CUP, it is a stereo camera with one lens. But the one lens functions as two halves that provide two views just mimicking our two eyes. A computer then runs the data from the two channels of the camera converting it into one three-dimensional movie.
Octopus inspired suckers
Ultra-thin and delicate tissue grafts have been used in recent times for wound healing. However, transferring this graft to the patients is a tedious process, taking about 30-60 minutes for a single sheet and requires skilled technicians. Inspired by the suckers in octopus, researchers have developed a small handheld device that uses hydrogel to pick up the thin sheet and transfer to the required surface in just about 10 seconds.
Smoky Mountain Rain
Faith can move mountains, so can rain. Researchers from the University of Bristol have shown how rain plays an important role in the evolution of mountainous landscapes. Studying the erosion rates from the central and eastern Himalaya of Bhutan and Nepal, the team measured how rainfall increased the speed of the rivers and patterns of how rocks beneath them eroded. These findings can also help in land use management in the mountainous regions.
