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Because gadolinium is more magnetic, the "ferrimagnetic" material as a whole is magnetized in the direction of the gadolinium atoms.

"We do not understand the full details of this mechanism yet," says Thomas Ostler of the University of York in the United Kingdom, who performed calculations on the ferrimagnetic material.

Because ferrimagnetic substances are electrically nonconducting�therefore immune to stray currents�they have proved highly useful material for the coating of magnetic tape, computer memory cores and other important Electronic Age components.