Science Alert July 1, 2022 The initial explosion and subsequent plume triggered atmospheric waves which propagated around the world multiple times. An international team of researchers (UK, USA – industry, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Virginia Tech, University of Colorado Boulder, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Catholic University of America, Germany, Australia, France) show the details of this response, using a comprehensive set of satellite and ground-based observations to quantify it from surface to ionosphere. A broad spectrum of waves was triggered by the initial explosion, including Lamb waves propagating at phase speeds of 318.2±6 ms-1 at surface level and between […]
Author Archives: Hema Viswanath
Valleytronics researchers fabricate novel 2D material enjoying long-life excitons
Phys.org June 28, 2022 Researchers in China presented the observation of the IXs in trilayer type-II staggered band alignment of MoS2/MoSe2/WSe2 van der Waals (vdW) HSs by photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The central energy of IX is 1.33 eV, and the energy difference between the extracted double peaks is 23 meV. They confirmed the origin of IX through PL properties and calculations by the density functional theory and studied the dependence of the IX emission peak on laser power and temperature. The polarization-resolved PL spectra of HS were also investigated, and the maximum polarizability of the emission peak of WSe2 reached […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of June 24, 2022
01. A Huge Step Forward in Quantum Computing Was Just Announced: The First-Ever Quantum Circuit 02. Achieving sub-MHz optical features resonator-free in solid-state 03. Biodegradable electronic ink for recyclable printed electronics 04. Humans Can Learn to ‘Echolocate’ in Just 10 Weeks, Experiment Shows 05. Improving quantum sensors by measuring the orientation of coherent spins inside a diamond lattice 06. Keeping objects levitated by sound airborne despite interference 07. Magnetic superstructures as a promising material for 6G technology 08. Nanoparticles control flow of light like road signs direct traffic 09. New device gets scientists closer to quantum materials breakthrough 10. Organic […]
Achieving sub-MHz optical features resonator-free in solid-state
Nanowerk June 17, 2022 Conventionally, high-Q resonators that have a minimum loss in optical power are used to generate ultra-narrow optical features in solid-state, but they require complex and costly fabrication processes, which limits their large-scale commercial production. Researchers in Canada have demonstrated a resonator-free approach to generate such ultra-narrow features exploiting gain-enhanced polarization pulling in a twisted birefringent medium where polarization eigenmodes are frequency-dependent. Using Brillouin gain in a commercial spun fibre, they experimentally achieved a 0.72 MHz spectral dip. Further optimization can potentially reduce the linewidth to <0.1 MHz. According to the researchers their approach is simple and broadly […]
Biodegradable electronic ink for recyclable printed electronics
Nanowerk June 22, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (UC Berkely, Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory) has developed recyclable conductive composites that are introduced for printed circuits formulated with polycaprolactone (PCL), conductive fillers, and enzyme/protectant nanoclusters. Circuits can be printed with flexibility (breaking strain ≈80%) and conductivity (≈2.1 × 104 S m−1). These composites are degraded at the end of life by immersion in warm water with programmable latency. Approximately 94% of the functional fillers can be recycled and reused with similar device performance. The printed circuits remain functional and degradable after shelf storage for at least 7 months […]
Dual Use Research of Concern: NIH to Host Stakeholder Engagement Meeting on Oversight Policies
Global Biodefense June 14, 2022 The NIH will hold a virtual stakeholder engagement meeting on the United States government’s policies for the oversight of life sciences dual use research of concern (DURC) on June 29, 2022. DURC provides knowledge, information, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied to pose a significant threat with broad potential consequences to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, materiel, or national security. USG Policy for Oversight aims to preserve the benefits of life sciences research while minimizing the risk that the knowledge, information, products, or technologies generated by […]
A Huge Step Forward in Quantum Computing Was Just Announced: The First-Ever Quantum Circuit
Science Alert June 22, 2022 Researchers in Australia have created a functional quantum processor and tested it by modeling a small molecule in which each atom has multiple quantum states. They used a scanning tunneling microscope in an ultra-high vacuum to place quantum dots with sub-nanometer precision. The trickiest parts were figuring out: exactly how many atoms of phosphorus should be in each quantum dot; exactly how far apart each dot should be; and then engineering a machine that could place the tiny dots in exactly the right arrangement inside the silicon chip. The final quantum chip contained 10 quantum […]
Humans Can Learn to ‘Echolocate’ in Just 10 Weeks, Experiment Shows
Science Alert June 20, 2022 Researchers in the UK conducted a training study investigating the effects of blindness and age on the learning of a click-based echolocation. Blind and sighted participants of various ages trained in 20 sessions over the course of 10 weeks in various practical and virtual navigation tasks. They found that both sighted and blind people improved considerably on all measures, and in some cases performed comparatively to expert echolocators at the end of training. Sighted people performed better than those who were blind in some cases. However, neither age nor blindness was a limiting factor in […]
Improving quantum sensors by measuring the orientation of coherent spins inside a diamond lattice
Phys.org June 16, 2022 Researchers in Japan have developed a new method for implementing magnetic field measurements in nitrogen-vacancy centers. The spin state of an extra electron at this site can be read or coherently manipulated using pulses of light. They used an “inverse Cotton-Mouton” effect to test their method. They used light of different polarizations to create tiny controlled local magnetic fields. They have demonstrated that by measuring the orientation of coherent spins inside a diamond lattice, the magnetic fields can be measured even over very short times. The team hopes that this work will help enable quantum spintronic […]
Keeping objects levitated by sound airborne despite interference
Phys.org June 20, 2022 Researchers in the UK developed a computational technique that allows high-speed multipoint levitation even with arbitrary sound-scattering surfaces and demonstrated a volumetric display that works in the presence of any physical object. Their technique has a two-step scattering model and a simplified levitation solver, which together could achieve more than 10,000 updates per second to create volumetric images above and below static sound-scattering objects. They explained the technique achieved its speed with minimum loss in the trap quality and illustrate how it brought digital and physical content together by demonstrating mixed-reality interactive applications…read more. Open Access […]