Intermolecular Force

A graduate student accidentally created a blend of oil, water and nickel particles that formed an unexpected shape.

The discovery doesn't have any practical applications right now, but so what? It's still cool.

Physicists at the University of Innsbruck have succeeded in creating hot Schrödinger cat states in a superconducting microwave resonator.

With properties of a superfluid but with a crystalline structure, supersolids have previously only been observed in ultracold condensates—until now.

Physicists from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Hamburg have observed how electrons, excited by ultrafast light pulses, danced in unison around a subnanometer C60 fullerene (buckminsterfullerene) molecule.

A protein engineering toolkit for molecular design // Engineering enzymes to break down plastic with ProtGPT2, OmegaFold, TemStaPro // Designing drugs with RFDiffusion, ProteinMPNN, ColabFold

The first crystal structure of an alternative DNA shape from the insulin gene has been revealed by a UCL-led research team.

The world's most powerful supercomputer is helping resolve conflicting research results that have puzzled scientists for more than a decade, which could also shine new light inside collapsing stars.

Man-made emissions of nitrous oxide (N₂O) are rapidly increasing globally and are predicted to pose a growing threat to Earth's ozone layer. In the 1970s, it was discovered that N₂O in the upper atmosphere can trigger ozone-depleting reactions through its interaction with low-energy electrons. However, the full impact of this process on the ozone layer remains poorly understood.

Engineers at MIT and ATI discovered an approach for creating new titanium alloys with exceptional combinations of strength and ductility, which might lead to new applications in aerospace and other industries.

Two-dimensional (2D) materials have unique physical and chemical properties and potential for a wide variety of applications. Peptoids, a type of molecule, compose a class of sequence-defined polymers that mimic biological compounds and can self-assemble into 2D crystalline sheets with unusual properties, such as high chemical stability and the ability to repair themselves.

An Australian-led study has found unusual insulating behavior in a new atomically-thin material—and the ability to switch it on and off.

Researchers likened material's structure to a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs.

Accidents happen every day, and if you drop your smartwatch, or it gets hit really hard, the device probably won't work anymore. But now, researchers report on a soft, flexible material with "adaptive durability," meaning it gets stronger when hit or stretched. The material also conducts electricity, making it ideal for the next generation of wearables or personalized medical sensors.

In the pursuit of clean and endless energy, nuclear fusion is a promising frontier. But in fusion reactors, where scientists attempt to make energy by fusing atoms together, mimicking the sun's power generation process, things can get extremely hot. To overcome this, researchers have been diving deep into the science of heat management, focusing on a special metal called tungsten.

In the quest to develop quantum computers and networks, there are many components that are fundamentally different than those used today. Like a modern computer, each of these components has different constraints. However, it is currently unclear which materials can be used to construct those components for the transmission and storage of quantum information.

Capturing the excitations of electrons in the span of attoseconds is far from easy.

An interdisciplinary research team, led by Assistant Prof. Jun Nishida and Associate Prof. Takashi Kumagai at the Institute for Molecular Science, has successfully observed vibrational spectra of single proteins, consisting of approximately 500 amino acid residues, using advanced measurement techniques based on near-field optical microscopy. This method utilizes light confined at the nanometer scale, allowing for…

Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital are tackling Mycobacterium abscessus (Mab) antibiotic resistance. This naturally antibiotic-resistant pathogen is becoming more prevalent, highlighting the urgent need for novel therapeutics. To address this, the scientists designed new versions of the drug spectinomycin that overcome efflux, the main mechanism driving resistance. The work is published in…

Hydrogels—polymer networks with high water content—can act as a tissue mimic, providing conditions for a viable culture of embedded cells, with various applications in biomedical engineering such as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.