An April 15, 2024 news item on phys.org announces research into how an Arab scientist’s studies into optics established the basis for modern day physics, Scientists from the University of Sharjah [United Arab Emirates] and the Warburg Institute [University of London, UK] are poring over the writings of an 11th-century Arab-Muslim polymath to demonstrate their...

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Scientists can be just as competitive as anybody else, from a May 6, 2024 news item on phys.org, Move over, graphene. There’s a new, improved two-dimensional material in the lab. Borophene, the atomically thin version of boron first synthesized in 2015, is more conductive, thinner, lighter, stronger and more flexible than graphene, the 2D version...

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Since tickets for the Perimeter Institute’s free event go quickly, I’m prefacing this post with the information that there are still tickets available for the August 1, 2024 in person event. Onto more details For those unfamiliar with Canadian institutions, Perimeter Institute (PI) is also known as the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics located in...

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There’s more than one ‘living’ material story here on this blog; it’s the plant cells that make this latest story different from the others. From a May 1, 2024 news item on phys.org, Note: A link has been removed, Scientists are harnessing cells to make new types of materials that can grow, repair themselves and...

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This April 29, 2024 Xia & He Publishing press release is in fact the abstract for the paper, Background and objectives Honey is a viscous, hygroscopic liquid in nature. It has the ability to treat wounds, wrinkles, aging, and inflammation. This study’s objective was to create and characterize a nanoemulsion containing honey and evaluate its...

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There has been a lot of talk about Tim Cook (Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.) and his policy for data privacy at Apple and his push for better consumer data privacy. For example, there’s this, from a June 10, 2022 article by Kif Leswing for CNBC, Key Points Apple CEO Tim Cook said in...

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I do love word play although I am pushing it a bit with ‘book’, ‘literature’, and ‘literal’. These poison books each contain heavy metals used to create striking colours [in] the 1800s. Source: Museums Victoria Photo: Rob French [downloaded from https://museumsvictoria.com.au/article/if-books-could-kill-poison-heavy-metal-and-literature/] Mark Lorch’s, Professor of Science Communication and Chemistry at the University of Hull (UK),...

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This work may lead to new uses for cotton waste products according to an April 10, 2024 news item on phys.org, Cotton gin waste, also known as cotton gin trash, is a byproduct of the cotton ginning process and occurs when the cotton fibers are separated from the seed boll. For cotton gin waste, the...

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A Kirigami pattern of the hydrogel (top) and the hydrogel swollen from dry state (bottom). (Image: NIMS) [downloaded from https://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news3/newsid=65005.php] An April 11, 2024 news item on Nanowerk highlights research that combines kiragami with hydrogel production, Note 1: A link has been removed, Note 2: Kiragami is described in the excerpt after this one, New...

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An April 16, 2024 news item on ScienceDaily announces yet another addition to the world of 2D materials, For the first time, scientists have managed to create sheets of gold only a single atom layer thick. The material has been termed goldene. According to researchers from Linköping University, Sweden, this has given the gold new...

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