A new fundamental understanding of polymeric relaxor ferroelectric behavior could lead to advances in flexible electronics, actuators and transducers, energy storage, piezoelectric sensors and electrocaloric cooling, according to a team of researchers at Penn State and North Carolina State.

Researchers have debated the theory behind the mechanism of relaxor ferroelectrics for more than 50 years, said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. While relaxor ferroelectrics are well-recognized, fundamentally fascinating and technologically useful materials, a Nature article commented in 2006 that they were heterogeneous, hopeless messes.

Without a funda...

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have discovered the absence of an unstable massive star in a dwarf galaxy. Scientists think this could indicate that the star became less bright and partially obscured by dust. An alternative explanation is that the star collapsed into a black hole without producing a supernova. “If true,” says team leader and PhD student Andrew Allan of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, “this would be the first direct detection of such a monster star ending its life in this manner.”

Between 2001 and 2011, various teams of astronomers studied the myster...

Researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center have developed eye drops that could prevent vision loss after retinal vein occlusion, a major cause of blindness for millions of adults worldwide.A study, in mice, suggests that the experimental therapy — which targets a common cause of neurodegeneration and vascular leakage in the eye — could have broader therapeutic effects than existing drugs.The study was published in Nature Communications.What is Retinal Vein Occlusion?Retinal vein occlusion occurs when a major vein that drains blood from the retina is blocked, usually due to a blood clot...

Intricate sugar networks dissolve to create pathways for blood in lab-grown tissues. Bioengineers have shown they can keep densely packed cells alive in lab-grown tissues by creating complex networks of branching blood vessels from templates of 3D-printed sugar.

Powdered sugar is the special ingredient in a Rice University recipe for mimicking the body’s intricate, branching blood vessels in lab-grown tissues.

In research published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, Rice bioengineers showed they could keep densely packed cells alive for two weeks in relatively large constructs.

“One of the biggest hurdles to e...