Topic description and stories

Woman in face mask walking down the street during a coronavirus lockdown

Study measures effectiveness of different face mask materials when coughing

29 Oct 2020

A team of researchers has tested everything from t-shirts and socks to jeans and vacuum bags to determine what type of mask material is most...

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Easy-to-make, ultra-low-power electronics could charge out of thin air

13 Oct 2020

Researchers have developed a new approach to printed electronics that allows ultra-low-power electronic devices which could recharge from ambient...

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Soundwave

Scientists find upper limit for the speed of sound

12 Oct 2020

A research collaboration between the University of Cambridge, Queen Mary University of London and the Institute for High Pressure Physics in Troitsk...

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Cambridge researchers awarded European Research Council funding

01 Apr 2020

Four researchers at the University of Cambridge have won advanced grants from the European Research Council (ERC), Europe’s premier research funding...

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The 'P' word

16 Jan 2020

How do we shift our 'take, make, throw-away' plastic world towards 'recycle, recover, re-use'? It's time for blue-sky thinking plus practical...

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‘Magnetic graphene’ switches between insulator and conductor

01 Feb 2019

Researchers have found that certain ultra-thin magnetic materials can switch from insulator to conductor under high pressure, a phenomenon that could...

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All the things

Living in a material world: why 'things' matter

18 Oct 2017

Things structure our lives. They enrich us, embellish us and express our hopes and fears. Here, to introduce a month-long focus on research on...

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A huge range of materials are classified as granular – including sand, gravel, snow, nuts, coal, rice, barley, coffee and cereals. Globally, they are the second-most processed type of material in industry, after water.

Study reveals mysterious equality with which grains pack it in

26 Jun 2017

For the first time, researchers have been able to test a theory explaining the physics of how substances like sand and gravel pack together, helping...

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Patching up a broken heart

16 Jun 2017

It is almost impossible for an injured heart to fully mend itself. Within minutes of being deprived of oxygen – as happens during a heart attack when...

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Fingerprinting rare earth elements from the air

01 Jul 2016

Vital to many modern technologies yet mined in few places, the ‘rare earth elements’ are in fact not that rare – they are just difficult to find in...

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Would you live in a city made of bone?

23 Jun 2016

The cities of today are built with concrete and steel – but some Cambridge researchers think that the cities of the future need to go back to nature...

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Polymer Opals

Squeezing out opal-like colours by the mile

03 Jun 2016

Researchers have devised a new method for stacking microscopic marbles into regular layers, producing intriguing materials which scatter light into...

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