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Cicada’s cries ring out in the hot air and their discarded exoskeletons decorate tree branches in the southeast and midwest United States at the height of summer. While their ability to emerge in huge numbers is astounding, they have other surprising features too. In fact, their wings kill bacteria on contact and are self-cleaning. Researchers using the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory user facilities investigated this bizarre phenomenon. They learned how structures in the cells are able to pull off such a feat and how it could be used in medical applications.

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To produce biofuels from nonedible plants, researchers can use cellulase to break down plant cellulose into glucose, which can be fermented to generate bioethanol. Researchers have now used a specialized optical microscope to visualize single cellulase enzymes interacting with different forms of cellulose. This allowed them to investigate enzyme function in the presence of the product of the reaction and other components of plant biomass.

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Isotope production facilities depend on cooling for proper function of target systems during irradiation. Examining these systems is challenging due to high radiation levels during target irradiation that make real-world measurements impossible.

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Theorists have performed the first systematic study of whether and how the viscosity of quark gluon plasma from heavy nuclei collisions changes over a wide range of collision energies. The calculations predict that the fluid’s viscosity increases with net-baryon density. The results will help researchers probe the entire phase diagram of nuclear matter.

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The summer sun beats down. People without air conditioning must find refuge in schools and community centers. Outdoor workers struggle to keep cool. Hot nights interrupt people’s sleep, not allowing them to get the rest needed to recover from the warmth of the day. People with cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses have these conditions worsen.

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The NGC 2419 globular cluster contains potassium and magnesium in ratios not found in other, similar globular clusters. Scientists have so far been unable to find the source for this unexpected pattern. However, previous uncertainties in the potassium-hydrogen fusion reactions hindered the predictions of stellar models.

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Understanding how materials can convert heat into electricity benefits from a view of those materials at the atomic scale. New research examined how the vibrational modes called phonons work in nanostructures and the interfaces between materials to more fully understand how heat transfers in those materials.

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Lijuan Ruan is a senior physicist at Brookhaven National Lab who studies the strong force interactions in the quark-gluon plasma created at RHIC.

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Quantum information devices need particles to be synchronized in space and time. In nickel molybdate (Ni2Mo3O8), nickel ions (Ni2+) form a triangular array of tetrahedrons and octahedrons with opposing magnetic spins. Electric fields in Ni2Mo3O8 induce parallel alignment of the spins; this alignment changes with time, producing spin excitons.

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Humans can learn a lot from nature, especially when dealing with climate change and other environmental issues. A clean energy future relies on us reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, breaking down waste, and storing atmospheric carbon. Biofuels made from decomposing living things or biological waste are a potential alternative to fossil fuels.

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: For the first time, scientists measured radium’s bonding interactions with oxygen atoms in an organic molecule. This finding will aid researchers developing chelators for the delivery of radium isotopes for cancer treatment. The results are important in part because they revealed that radium is less similar than expected to barium, which is often used as a substitute for radium during chelator development.

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Building large-scale quantum computers will require the ability to create and control qubits made of industrially relevant materials. Researchers have used atomic-level simulations to understand how the vacancies in silicon carbide that translate into spin-based qubits form and behave. This is an important step toward the future of quantum computing as well as quantum sensing.

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The way protons and neutrons move between two nuclei is key to understanding the processes in low-energy nuclear fusion reactions. As the nuclei draw close enough for the nuclear forces to become effective, neutrons and protons can migrate from one nucleus to another, potentially easing the fusion process.

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Lignin is the world’s largest renewable source of aromatic carbon for potential bioproducts manufacture. Scientists have now engineered a bacterium to convert this aromatic carbon into two useful chemical compounds: carotenoids and an acid called PDC. This could help make biorefineries more sustainable and economically viable.

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Bacteriophages are the most common biological entities in microbial communities, but it has been challenging to study their biology. As a result, the genomes of most phages contain many genes of unknown function. In this study, researchers developed a new CRISPR-based technology to reduce the activity of genes in phages to determine if those genes are essential.

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Astatine-211 is a promising alpha emitter for targeted alpha therapy for cancer, but astatine is among the least-studied elements. In this research, scientists investigated astatine’s behavior when interacting with ion exchange and extraction chromatography resins used to produce radioisotopes and delivering them to targets in the body.

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With her Early Career Research Award, Stanford University associate professor Sigrid Elschot studied the effects of fast-moving, microgram-sized particles that collide with spacecraft. These particles vaporize, ionize, and produce a plasma that radiates electromagnetic energy.

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Previous research found that twisted bilayer graphene is superconductive when the layers are rotated by 1.08 degrees. Electrons in parts of these materials move very slowly and should therefore not conduct electricity at all, much less display superconductivity. New research shows how the current theory of superconductivity, the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory, must be modified to fit the observations of twisted bilayer graphene.