2018

Seeking Origins of Life in Rocks

Stephan Hlohowskyj, a third-year doctoral student in the earth and ecosystem science program in the College of Science and Engineering at Central Michigan University, is using state-of-the-art techniques to explore the origins of life and the first signs of oxygen on Earth by examining trace metals in rocks.

Blazes of Light Reveal How Plants Signal Danger Long Distances

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are part of a multi-university study that revealed how plant communication systems respond to threats from herbivores. The results, featured in Science, show that once wounded, plants use calcium signals to warn distant tissues of future attacks.

Engineers on a Roll Toward Smaller, More Efficient Radio Frequency Transformers

University of Illinois engineers have minimized the size of one notoriously large element of integrated circuits used for wireless communication – the transformer – creating three-dimensional rolled-up radio frequency transformers that take 10 to 100 times less space, perform better when the power transfer ratio increases, and have a simpler fabrication process than their 2-D progenitors

Understanding the Proton's Weak Side

Research from the Qweak experiment provides a precision measurement of the proton’s weak charge and narrows the search for new physics.

Uncertainty in Long-run Economic Growth Likely Points Toward Greater Emissions, Climate Change Costs

Researchers from the University of Illinois and Yale University present a systematic method of integrating current models to develop forecasts of uncertainty in global and regional per capita economic growth rates through the year 2100.

Self-Assembling 3D Battery Would Charge in Seconds

Ulrich Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University, and collaborators have developed a block copolymer self-assembled 3D energy storage architecture that could help change the way batteries are constructed.

Strain Game: Leveraging Imperfections to Create Better-Behaved Quantum Dots

Potentially paving the way toward advanced computers, lasers or optical devices, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have revealed new effects in tiny electronic devices called quantum dots.

New Device Could Increase Battery Life of Electronic Devices by More than a Hundred-fold

A group of physicists led by Deepak K. Singh, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Missouri, has applied for a patent for a magnetic material that employs a unique structure—a “honeycomb” lattice that exhibits distinctive electronic properties.