An ultraporous compound can extract water molecules from dry desert air, store them as tiny "icicles" and then release them as clean drinking water. A new study has shown this novel humidity sponge's developers how it works in detail, taking it a step closer to practical applications. Along with government, industry and university partners, the researchers are working to turn their project into portable hydration systems capable of conjuring fresh water almost anywhere in an increasingly thirsty world. The specific mechanism underlying these superior water-extraction abilities has now been explained by an international team led by University of California, Berkeley, chemist Omar Yaghi . "We figured out which water comes first and the way it fills up, step by step," he says. Yaghi's team had previously developed MOF-303 specifically for water extraction and successfully demonstrated it in dry laboratory conditions.

From computers to credit cards to cloud servers, today's technology relies on magnets to hold encoded data in place on a storage device. But a magnet's size limits storage capacity; even a paper-thin magnet takes up space that could be better used for encoding information. Now, for a study published in Nature Communications, researchers have engineered a magnet among the world's thinnest—a flexible sheet of zinc oxide and cobalt just one atom thick. "That means we can store larger amounts of data using the same amount of materials," says University of California, Berkeley, engineer Jie Yao , the study's senior author.

If the conditions are just right, some of the electrons inside a material will arrange themselves into a tidy honeycomb pattern — like a solid within a solid. Physicists have now directly imaged these 'Wigner crystals', named after the Hungarian-born theorist Eugene Wigner, who first imagined them almost 90 years ago. Researchers had convincingly created Wigner crystals and measured their properties before, but this is the first time that anyone has actually taken a snapshot of the patterns, says study co-author Feng Wang, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. "If you say you have an electron crystal, show me the crystal," he says. For more on this story, please see our press release at Berkeley News

Nuclear engineering students at Berkeley have built a tabletop neutron source that's relatively cheap, portable, and able to produce a narrow but useful range of neutron energies without undesirable radioactive byproducts. "Any hospital in the country could have this thing, they could build it for a few hundred thousand dollars to make local, very short-lived medical isotopes -- you could just run them up the elevator to the patient," says nuclear engineering professor Karl van Bibber, the faculty member overseeing the project. "It has application in geochronology, neutron activation analysis for law enforcement agencies -- when the FBI wants to determine the provenance of a sample as evidence, for example -- neutron radiography, to look for cracks in aircraft parts. This is very compact, the size of a little convection oven; I think it's great, we are excited about this." This story originated at Berkeley News.

Most plastics advertised as "biodegradable" aren't all that degradable. In fact, researchers estimate that most of these supposedly eco-friendly plastics end up in landfills and last just as long as forever plastics. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new method for composting biodegradable plastics -- one that actually works. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

Guide dogs offer social, physical and mental benefits for some people who are blind, but training them is a costly and lengthy process, so researchers have created a robotic alternative. Zhongyu Li at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues programmed a four-legged, dog-like robot to safely guide people with a lead, even when faced with obstacles and narrow passages.

The recent proliferation of believable deepfake videos - including ones featuring actor Tom Cruise - have raised new fears about phony events that can be used to sway public opinion. Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the Cruise videos demonstrate a step up in the technology's evolving sophistication. "This is clearly a new category of deepfake that we have not seen before," said Farid, who researches digital forensics and misinformation. Deepfakes have been around for years, but, Farid says, the technology has been steadily advancing. "Every three to four months a video hits Tik Tok, YouTube, whatever, and it's just — wow, this is much, much better than before," he said. Another story on this topic appeared on ABC News.

The polymeric flame retardant PolyFR was developed as an "eco-friendly" substitute for more problematic flame retardants, but new research suggests the compound, commonly used in foam plastic building insulation, could be more harmful than anticipated. In a new paper, scientists argue the widespread adoption of PolyFR is premature, and that more research is needed to understand the polymer's exposure risk. "Our paper points out a lack of knowledge along the lifecycle of PolyFR and states that more information is needed before such chemicals are widely used," said study co-author Arlene Blum, research associate in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.

Scientists have, for the first time, measured the bond distance of einsteinium, one of the most radioactive and difficult to make elements on the periodic table. Researchers detailed rare experiments on the element, which carries the atomic number 99, in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "[The finding] is significant because the more we understand about its chemical behavior, the more we can apply this understanding for the development of new materials or new technologies," said UC Berkeley assistant professor of nuclear engineering and study author Rebecca Abergel.

Information can be encoded into all sorts of patterns, whether it's short and long beeps for Morse code, raised bumps for Braille, or ones and zeroes for computers. Now researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Ruhr-Universität Bochum have demonstrated a proof of concept for encoding information into artificial molecules, which could enable programmable materials or new types of computers. For more on MOFs, see our press release at Berkeley News.

In February, NASA announced it would cover, up to $300,000, the costs of launching a satellite built by a team of Berkeley students. Led by junior applied mathematics and physics student Paul Köttering, the project is part of the CubeSat Launch Initiative, which aims to fly shoebox-sized experiments as auxiliary payloads on nominal rocket launches. Köttering's launch, set for 2021, would build upon Berkeley physics research to test new navigation technology for satellites. To build the satellite, the team is raising money through crowdfunding and Berkeley's Big Give campaign, and they are seeking equipment donations from different manufacturers. With shelter-in-place rules, their work is continuing remotely, and Köttering hopes they'll be able to complete the project before he graduates.

Ventilator SOS, a project co-led by mechanical engineering professor Grace O'Connell, is seeking donations of unwanted CPAP and BiPAP machines from people who may have used them for sleep apnea. They are converting the devices into much-needed ventilators for COVID-19 patients. "Tens of thousands of COVID-19 patients in this country and around the world will need respiratory support in the coming weeks and months," Professor O'Connell says. "We believe that using sleep apnea machines is a viable solution for non-ICU patients. This way, higher-grade ventilators can be reserved for patients with more advanced stages of respiratory disease." For more on the project, see this story at Berkeley Engineering.

Mechanical engineering professor Grace O'Connell is co-leading a Berkeley effort to convert devices used to treat sleep apnea into much-needed ventilators for COVID-19 patients. In the schematic design she and her team developed, the modified CPAP or BIPAP machine accepts oxygen where ambient air enters the device. The oxygenated air is then filtered and delivered to a patient through an FDA-approved endotracheal tube, with the exhaled air re-filtered before being released. A volunteer community effort led by two students is gathering donated machines for conversion. It's estimated that there are 8-10 million machines available in American households for conversion. And since the devices and the components needed to convert them are readily available, these ventilators could be made available to patients much more quickly than newly manufactured ventilators. For more on this, see this story at Berkeley Engineering.