Making the most of twists and turns: The rise of small-scale, portable electronics and wearable devices has boosted the desire for ways to harvest energy from mechanical motion. Such approaches could be used to provide battery-free power with a small footprint. Kim et al. present an energy harvester made from carbon nanotube yarn that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy from both torsional and tensile motion. Their findings reveal how the extent of yarn twisting and the combination of homochiral and heterochiral coiled yarns can maximize energy generation. Science , this issue p. 773

The precise measurement of the spectrum of protons, the most abundant component of the cosmic radiation, is necessary to understand the source and acceleration of cosmic rays in the Milky Way. This work reports the measurement of the cosmic ray proton fluxes with kinetic energies from 40 GeV to 100 TeV, with 2 ¹/₂ years of data recorded by the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE). This is the first time that an experiment directly measures the cosmic ray protons up to ~100 TeV with high statistics. The measured spectrum confirms the spectral hardening at ~300 GeV found by previous experiments and reveals a softening at ~13.6 TeV, with the spectral index changing from ~2.60 to ~2.85. Our result suggests the existence of a new spectral feature of cosmic rays at energies lower than the so-called knee and sheds new light on the origin of Galactic cosmic rays.

Ion distributions and velocity profiles for electroosmotic flow in nanochannels of different widths are studied in this paper using molecular dynamics and continuum theory. For the various channel widths studied in this paper, the ion distribution near the channel wall is strongly influenced by the finite size of the ions and the discreteness of the solvent molecules. The classical Poisson–Boltzmann equation fails to predict the ion distribution near the channel wall as it does not account for the molecular aspects of the ion–wall and ion–solvent interactions. A modified Poisson–Boltzmann equation based on electrochemical potential correction is introduced to account for ion–wall and ion–solvent interactions. The electrochemical potential correction term is extracted from the ion distribution in a smaller channel using molecular dynamics. Using the electrochemical potential correction term extracted from molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of electroosmotic flow in a 2.22 nm channel, the modified Poisson–Boltzmann equation predicts the ion distribution in larger channel widths (e.g., 3.49 and 10.00 nm) with good accuracy. Detailed studies on the velocity profile in electro-osmotic flow indicate that the continuum flow theory can be used to predict bulk fluid flow in channels as small as 2.22 nm provided that the viscosity variation near the channel wall is taken into account. We propose a technique to embed the velocity near the channel wall obtained from MD simulation of electroosmotic flow in a narrow channel (e.g., 2.22 nm wide channel) into simulation of electroosmotic flow in larger channels. Simulation results indicate that such an approach can predict the velocity profile in larger channels (e.g., 3.49 and 10.00 nm) very well. Finally, simulation of electroosmotic flow in a 0.95 nm channel indicates that viscosity cannot be described by a local, linear constitutive relationship that the continuum flow theory is built upon and thus the continuum flow theory is not applicable for electroosmotic flow in such small channels.