IEEE Spectrum September 30, 2019 The experiment began shortly after China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft made the first ever landing on the far side of the moon, on 3 January this year. Cotton, arabidopsis and potato seeds, fruit-fly eggs and yeast were all aboard the 2.6-kilogram mini biosphere, but only the cotton produced positive results. Image processing has now shown that two cotton leaves had grown. All the species died with the onset of the first lunar night, with no power to protect the canister from temperatures that reached as low as minus 190 degrees Celsius. The cotton leaves were dead within […]
Author Archives: Hema Viswanath
Clever materials make it easier to pull clean water from the air
MIT Technology Review September 27, 2019 Providing the global population with clean drinking water is one of the great engineering challenges of the 21st century. As significant amount of water vapor is stored in the atmosphere, dew harvesting holds potential for freshwater harvesting. An international team of researchers (China, USA) has developed a theoretical framework to analyze due harvesting. They provided a numerical design of a selective emitter, consisting of six layers optimized for dew-harvesting purposes. According to the researchers at an ambient temperature of 20 °C (68 °F) with a relative humidity of 40%, the selective emitter could harvest […]
Creating different kinds of light with manipulable quantum properties
Science Daily September 27, 2019 An international team of researchers (Louisiana State University, NIST, Mexico, Germany) experimentally demonstrated that the manipulation of the quantum electromagnetic fluctuations of two-mode squeezed vacuum states leads to a family of quantum-correlated multiphoton states with tunable mean photon numbers and degree of correlation. The technique relies on the use of conditional measurements to engineer the excitation mode of the field through the simultaneous subtraction of photons from two-mode squeezed vacuum states. They demonstrated the engineering of a quantum state of light with up to ten photons which is an important step towards the generation of […]
This flat structure morphs into shape of a human face when temperature changes
MIT News September 30, 2019 Shape-morphing structured materials have the ability to transform a range of applications. However, their design and fabrication remain challenging due to the difficulty of controlling the underlying metric tensor in space and time. A team of researchers in the US (MIT, Draper Laboratory, Boston University) exploited a combination of multiple materials, geometry and 4D printing to create structured heterogeneous lattices that overcome this problem. The printable ink’s elastic modulus and coefficient of thermal expansion can be precisely controlled. Multiplexed bilayer ribs were designed to control extrinsic curvature and enable wide range of 3-dimensional shape changes […]
Jumping the gap may make electronics faster
Science Daily September 26, 2019 According to an international team of researchers (India, USA – Pennsylvania State University) surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) waves guided by the interface of the two materials can continue propagating even if the metal wire has a break or the metal dielectric interface terminates abruptly. The SPP wave can travel in air for a few 10s of micrometers or the equivalent of 600 transistors laid end to end in a 14 nanometer technology chips. As waves are localized, signal delay and crosstalk may be reduced using optical interconnections based on SPP waves. The problem with using SPP waves […]
This New Chip Could Bridge The Gap Between Classical And Quantum Computing
Science Alert September 28, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – Purdue University, Japan) has developed hardware for a ‘probabilistic computer’ which solves quantum problems using a p-bit which can only be a 1 or a 0, but they can switch between those two states very quickly and p-bits work at room temperature. By carefully controlling these fluctuations, scientists can tackle calculations of a kind that are generally considered to be quantum computing problems. They modified MRAM device to present a proof-of-concept experiment for probabilistic computing. Factorization of integers up to 945 was demonstrated using eight correlated p-bits, and […]
New chip poised to enable hand-held microwave imaging
Science Daily September 26, 2019 Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used a standard semiconductor fabrication process to make a microwave imager chip, measuring just over 2 millimeters on each side, containing more than 1,000 photonic components. The imager uses four antennas to receive microwave signals reflected from an object. The microwave signals are then encoded into an optical signal and are optically processed to form an image. To demonstrate the new chip, the researchers used it to image objects with metallic surfaces. The system is significantly smaller and more efficient than its electronic equivalent and can operate with significantly […]
New liquid crystals allowing directed transmission of electricity synthesized
Science Daily October 1, 2019 Researchers in Germany have synthesized novel liquid crystals in which the molecules align in a self-assembly process to form columns when it is cooled slowly. The columns conduct electrical energy by electrons along their whole length. The materials can serve as organic, liquid crystalline “power cables” and provide targeted electricity transmission in electronic components. The liquid crystalline power cable will heal entirely by itself if it ruptures. If a single molecule is stimulated by exposure to UV light, it will glow in response. If the concentration of the molecule increases, this effect disappears only to […]
Preventing manipulation in automated face recognition
Fraunhofer Research October 1, 2019 In morphing processes two facial images are melded into a single synthetic facial image that contains the characteristics of both persons. As a result, biometric face recognition systems authenticate the identity of both persons based on this manipulated photo. Morphing attacks can take place before or during the process of applying for an ID document. To address this problem researchers in Germany are developing a process that identifies the image anomalies that occur during digital image processing focusing on analyzing and researching simulated imaging data using image processing, machine learning methods, and deep neural networks […]
Researchers synthesize ‘impossible’ superconductor
Phys.org October 1, 2019 The superconductors known today can only work at very low temperatures and extremely high pressures. As an alternative to metallizing hydrogen, an international team of researchers (China, USA – SUNY Stony Brook) placed a microscopic sample of the metal cerium into a diamond anvil cell, along with a chemical that releases hydrogen and heated with a laser. The cerium sample was squeezed between two flat diamonds to enable the pressure needed for the reaction. As the pressure grew, cerium hydrides with a progressively larger proportion of hydrogen formed in the reactor – CeH2, CeH3, etc. Through […]