News overview 2019

Science LinX newsletter for March 2019

A new study by scientists from the Universities of Groningen and Manchester, which was published in Applied Physics Letters on 21 February 2019, shows how best to study this transfer from electonspins to a non-conductive magnet.

At the SRON Groningen workshop, scientists and technicians have assembled three survey telescopes to look for the optical source of gravitational waves.

In September 2017, Science LinX started an EU-funded project to involve secondary school pupils and their teachers from the Netherlands, Spain and Cyprus in research as real ‘citizen scientists’. Project leader Maaike de Heij explains what has been done so far.

University of Groningen scientists have developed nanopores that can be used to directly measure the mass of peptides. An article on this discovery was published on 19 February in Nature Communications.

VSC, de sectororganisatie van wetenschapsmusea en science centers waar ook Science LinX bij aangesloten is, vraagt om het instellen van een speciaal fonds of een regeling voor het financieren van goede wetenschapscommunicatie.

University of Groningen scientists Casper van der Kooi and Doekele Stavenga used microscopy and mathematical models describing how light interacts with petals of poppies, to find out how the vibrant colours are created.

Scientists led by Prof. Justin Ye of the University of Groningen have now managed to produce devices with stable germanene. The material is an insulator, and it becomes a semiconductor after moderate heating and a very good metallic conductor after stronger heating.

The ferroelectric polymer PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) has interesting properties and could be used to store information or energy. University of Groningen scientists have created block copolymers from PVDF that leave its ferroelectricity intact, but allow them to tune its characteristics.

When it comes to realizing low-power electronic devices, spintronics look promising. However, to generate a suitable spin current, you need a relatively large magnet. An alternative method that uses a special type of molecule has been proposed, but the big question is: does it work? University of Groningen PhD student Xu Yang has constructed a theoretical model which describes how to put this new method to the test.

Science LinX newsletter for February 2019

An alternative to PET can be made from bio-based furan molecules, but to polymerize these furans you need toxic catalysts and high temperatures. Now, polymer chemists from the University of Groningen, led by Prof. Katja Loos, have described an enzyme-based polymerization method.

In a study published on 18 January in the journal Nature Communications, scientists from the University of Groningen show that gut bacteria can metabolize levodopa into dopamine. As dopamine cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, this makes the medication less effective.

A team of scientists led by University of Groningen Professor of Systems Chemistry, Sijbren Otto, have discovered a new class of complex folding molecules that emerge spontaneously from simple building blocks. The results were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on 16 January.