Using Butterfly Morphology to 3D-print Colored Nanostructures

The male of the tropical butterfly species Cynandra opis served as the model for the 3D-printed structural colors. Credit: ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich researchers have created artificial colors by 3D printing certain nanostructures inspired by those of a butterfly. This principle can be used in the future to produce color screens.

For their new technology, scientists in the group of Andrew deMello, Professor of Biochemical Engineering, drew inspiration from butterflies. The wings of the species Cynandra opis, native to tropical Africa, are decorated with brilliant colors. These are produced by extremely intricate regular surface structures in the size range of the wavelength of visible light...

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Predicting the Efficiency of Oxygen-Evolving Electrolysis on the Moon and Mars

Lomax and Just. Credit The University of Manchester

Scientists at The University of Manchester and The University of Glasgow have today provided more insight into the possibility of establishing a pathway to generate oxygen for humans to potentially call the Moon or Mars ‘home’ for extended periods of time.

Creating a reliable source of oxygen could help humanity establish liveable habitats off-Earth in an era where space travel is more achievable than ever before. Electrolysis is a popular potential method which involves passing electricity through a chemical system to drive a reaction and can be used to extract oxygen out of lunar rocks or to split water into hydrogen and oxygen...

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Researchers discover Repair Properties of a Protein Critical for Wound-Healing in Gut Diseases

An international team led by the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has discovered novel properties of the protein Gasdermin B that promotes repair of cells lining the gastrointestinal tract in people with chronic inflammatory disorders like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

The new findings, recently published in the journal, Cell, are significant because the impact of Gasdermin B (GSDMB) on healing epithelium — a type of body tissue that lines the organs that have direct contact with the external environment — will play a key role in research on wound formation and designing novel therapeutics to enhance wound repair, said Theresa Pizarro, lead study author and the Louis Pillemer Professor of Experimental Pathology at the School of Medicine...

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Mutating Quantum Particles Set in Motion

​Density plots showing how two particles move through bosonic (“0”) and pseudo-fermionic (π) regions after being released next to each other in two different scenarios. Left: The particles start out as bosons and move together (solid lines) left and right before impinging on a 0-π; border, where they are partially reflected (solid lines) and partially split (dotted lines). For each splitting, one particle escapes the bosonic region. Right: Starting as pseudo-fermions, the particles move in a “superposition” of two ways: in one, they rapidly move apart as ordinary fermions and pass straight through the π-0 borders (dotted lines); in the other, they are bound together, move very slowly, and are forever trapped in the fermionic region (solid lines).

In the world of fundamenta...

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