Author: Derek Smith
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Morphable materials: Researchers coax nanoparticles to reconfigure themselves
It’s a step toward smart coatings that change color—or other properties—on the fly.
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The corona is weirdly hot—Parker Solar Probe rules out one explanation
S-shaped bends in the sun’s magnetic field don’t form at the sun’s surface, like some scientists thought, and can’t directly heat the sun’s corona.
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U-M solar car team returns to the American Solar Challenge
For the first time since 2018, the University of Michigan solar car team will stake their claim as one of the nation’s best.
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Sea ice’s cooling power is waning faster than its area of extent
A shift in Antarctica’s melting trends and slushy Arctic ice pushes warming from changing sea ice toward the upper limits of climate model estimates.
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You’re just a stick figure to this camera
The anonymity could reduce unnecessary surveillance in an age of smart devices.
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Nanoscale engineering brings light-twisting materials to more extreme settings
New manufacturing method builds tougher materials that were previously considered useless for twisting light into more robust optical devices.
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Managing screen time by making phones slightly more annoying to use
Delaying a phone’s swiping and tapping functions forces users to think harder, making it easier for them to consider whether to keep scrolling.
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New $14.5M center to help US Navy overcome emerging challenges
The center will connect faculty, students, postdocs and US Navy engineers, building a community to find cutting-edge solutions to naval and marine engineering issues.
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Snowfall and drought: $4.8M field campaign will improve forecasts in western US, led by U-M
A mountaintop laboratory and a suite of radar instruments will study winter storms from large-scale cloud movement down to individual snowflakes in an NSF-funded project.
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Better battery manufacturing: Robotic lab vets new reaction design strategy
Mixing unconventional ingredients in just the right order can make complex materials with fewer impurities. The robotic lab that tested the idea could be widely adopted.
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Seeing the sun in a new light
For scientists, students and the rest of us, the upcoming eclipse will help illuminate some of the sun’s deepest mysteries.
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New reactor could save millions when making ingredients for plastics and rubber from natural gas
With oil production dropping, a process using natural gas is needed to avert a shortage of a workhorse chemical used for automotive parts, cleaning products and more.