December 31, 2019. A Sacramento, California electricity provider has installed an experimental cooling system: panels that stay colder than their surroundings, even under the blazing hot sun, without consuming energy. The panels emerged from a discovery at Stanford University in California. In 2014, researchers there announced that they had created a material that stayed colder than its surroundings in direct sunlight.

January 6, 2020.  A new study offers a nanoscopic view of complex oxides, which have great potential for advanced microelectronics. Analysis from a team led by Argonne researchers reveals never-before-seen details about a type of thin film being explored for advanced microelectronics.

January 8, 2020. Hotter objects typically glow brighter than cooler ones, making them stand out in infrared images. But a newly designed coating bucks the rule that hotter equals brighter. A coating of samarium nickel oxide counteracts hotter objects’ tendency for brighter thermal radiation, and could camouflage objects from infrared cameras.

January 10, 2020. Stanford scientists have developed a prototype for a nanoscale particle accelerator — a gadget small enough to fit on a chip, and whose miniature size could offer a new approach to cancer therapy while simultaneously increasing scientific access to a highly coveted instrument.

January 13, 2020. Fifty years ago, a meteorite landed in Australia, carrying with it a rare sample from interstellar space. A new analysis of the meteorite revealed stardust that formed between five to seven billion years ago. That makes the meteorite and its stardust the oldest solid material ever discovered on Earth.

January 15, 2020. The Pachacamac Idol of ancient Peru was a multicolored and emblematic sacred icon worshiped for almost 700 hundred years before Spanish conquest, according to a new study. Chemical analysis of the statue reveals its age and original polychromatic design.

January 15, 2020. Researchers have created a form of concrete that not only comes from living creatures but—given the right inputs—can turn one brick into two, two into four, and four into eight. The new concrete is the latest addition to the burgeoning field of engineered living materials (ELMs), in which organisms—typically bacteria—are added to inanimate materials to enable them to sense, communicate, and even respond to their environments.

January 17, 2020. Crystals with ultrahigh piezoelectric performance that are also transparent have been created for first time. The research was undertaken using equipment housed within the X-ray Diffraction Research Technology Platform based in the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics.

January 17, 2020. Scientists have captured video of the intimate dance of two atoms as they bond with one another, break apart and come back together again. In a sequence of images from an electron microscope, two atoms of the metal rhenium, bound together to create a molecule, shimmied around one another, moving closer and then farther apart.

January 17, 2020. While the scientists who discovered graphene in 2004 won a Nobel Prize for finding the new “wonder material”, for years, no one was quite sure what to use it for. That is changing with the help of investment from Abu Dhabi. From electric aeroplanes to easier water desalination, advocates believe graphene will become part of our everyday lives.

January 20, 2020.  The Dallas Museum of Art’s Conservation and Arts of Africa departments have collaborated with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to learn more about a fearsome-looking West African helmet mask – inside and out. The komo mask and its CT scans make up the exhibition Not Visible to the Naked Eye: Inside a Senufo Helmet Mask

January 21, 2020. Astrochemists map phosphorus-bearing molecules in a star-forming cloud, giving clues to how this vital element may have arrived on Earth.

January 22, 2020. China has launched a new university enrolment scheme that prioritises scientific skills. Academics cheer for end of "exploited" system but urge institutions to learn from experience.

January 22, 2020. A new, extremely efficient source of terahertz radiation has been developed at TU Wien (Vienna): Lasers turn air into plasma, thereby producing terahertz rays for many possible applications.

January 22, 2020. A team of scientists have created a mathematical model for what they say is the ideal brew for coffee, recommending that a less-is-more approach could lead baristas to produce one heavenly espresso after another, using around a quarter fewer beans.

January 22, 2020. Mount Vesuvius eruption turned victim's brain to glass. Scientists discover vitrified remains caused by immense 520°C heat of this AD79 disaster.

January 22, 2020. A method for producing air-stable 2D materials on an industrial scale is a key step in bringing them to market as flexible electronics, biosensors and in water purification.

January 23, 2020. A re-created version of a mummy’s vocal tract reveals what this ancient Egyptian might have sounded like.

January 23, 2020. A materials science professor in UT’s Tickle College of Engineering has received a five-year $1.7 million award from a leading scientific research foundation to pursue cutting-edge work in the emerging field of quantum materials.

January 23, 2020. The infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, considered one of NASA’s four “great observatories,” will be switched off on 31 January after a 16-year career. It probed some of the earliest galaxies ever seen, charted how they evolved and formed stars, and picked apart the constituents of exoplanet atmospheres.

January 23, 2020. Dallas scientists have developed a fundamentally new approach to cooling things down — by understanding that twisting and untwisting fibers can result in temperature changes.

January 24, 2020. An international team of researchers reports that it has developed a way to unambiguously identify and count metal atoms in proteins in an efficient and routine way. Using it, the team — which included scientists from UB, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute and others — revealed new information that was there, but previously hidden.

January 24, 2020. A team from Japan’s National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) used spray deposition—a cost-effective, atmospheric fabrication mode—to create a silicon anode for solid-state batteries that showed performance previously seen only in film electrodes developed by evaporation processes.

January 24, 2020. University of California, Berkeley, scientists have created a blue light-emitting diode (LED) from a trendy new semiconductor material, halide perovskite, overcoming a major barrier to employing these cheap, easy-to-make materials in electronic devices. The researchers also found that these materials are inherently unstable, requiring careful control of temperature and chemical environment to maintain their precise color.

January 26, 2020. Hundreds of years ago, an artist mixed together mineral pigments with oil and a drying additive to make a painting. Today, art conservators at the Eskenazi Museum of Art will examine that painting, now crusted with age, and then use chemical solvents, analytical tools and intense focus to execute an age-defying regiment.