01. How can digital data stored as DNA be manipulated? 02. Scientists Transformed Pure Water Into a Metal, And There’s Footage 03. A molecular multi-qubit model system for quantum computing 04. New measurements quantifying qudits provide glimpse of quantum future 05. Physicists have developed a new photonic system with electrically tuned topological features 06. Quantum Entanglement Has Now Been Directly Observed at The Macroscopic Scale 07. Light-driven molecular swing 08. Researchers aim to solve the rare earths crisis 09. Researchers develop novel robust superhydrophobic coating 10. Thinnest ferroelectric material ever paves the way for new energy-efficient devices And others… Diazotrophs […]
Diazotrophs are overlooked contributors to carbon and nitrogen export to the deep ocean
Phys.org October 17, 2022 Diazotrophs are widespread microorganisms that alleviate nitrogen limitation in 60% of our oceans, thereby regulating marine productivity. Yet, the group-specific contribution of diazotrophs to organic matter export has not been quantified. An international team of researchers (France, Israel, Spain) examined the fate of five groups of globally distributed diazotrophs by using an original combination of mesopelagic particle sampling devices across the subtropical South Pacific Ocean. They demonstrated that cyanobacterial and non-cyanobacterial diazotrophs are exported down to 1000 m depth. Phycoerythrin-containing UCYN-B and UCYN-C-like cells were recurrently found embedded in large organic aggregates or organized into clusters of […]
Gravity Is Still Shaping Earth’s Surface From Deep Within, New Study Finds
Science Alert October 17, 2022 Within extreme continental extension areas, ductile middle crust is exhumed at the surface as metamorphic core complexes. A team of researchers in the US (Columbia University, Stony Brook University, University of Houston, Purdue University) developed a general model for metamorphic core complexes formation and demonstrated that they resulted from the collapse of a mountain belt supported by a thickened crustal root. They showed that gravitational body forces generated by topography and crustal root caused an upward flow pattern of the ductile lower-middle crust, facilitated by a detachment surface evolving into low-angle normal fault. This detachment […]
How can digital data stored as DNA be manipulated?
Nanowerk October 20, 2022 An international team of researchers (Japan, France) has pioneered the application of a new method that harnesses enzymes, offering initial clues as to how these technical obstacles may be overcome. They made use of the reactions of three enzymes to design chemical “neurons” that reproduce the network architecture and have the ability for complex calculations exhibited by true neurons. Their chemical neurons can execute calculations with data on DNA strands and express the results as fluorescent signals. They have also innovated by assembling two layers of the artificial neurons to refine calculations. Precision was further enhanced […]
Light-driven molecular swing
Science Daily October 18, 2022 An international team of researchers (Germany, USA – UC Irvine) used electric-field-resolved spectroscopy and quantum-chemical modelling to precisely measure and describe the complete coherent energy transfer between octave-spanning mid-infrared waveforms and vibrating molecules in aqueous solution. The sub-optical-cycle temporal resolution of their technique revealed alternating absorption and (stimulated) emission on a few-femtosecond time scale. This behaviour can only be captured when effects beyond the rotating wave approximation are considered. At a femtosecond-to-picosecond timescale, optical-phase-dependent coherent transients, and the dephasing of the vibrations of resonantly excited methylsulfonylmethane (DMSO2) were observed. Ab initio modelling using density functional […]
A molecular multi-qubit model system for quantum computing
Phys.org October 13, 2022 An international team of researchers (UK, Italy) developed a molecular model system with several separate qubit units, which can be spectroscopically detected and the states of which can be switched by interacting with one another. They used pulsed Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) techniques to characterize and separately address the individual electron spin qubits; CuII, Cr7Ni ring and a nitroxide, and to determine the strength of the inter-qubit dipolar interaction. Orientation selective Relaxation-Induced Dipolar Modulation Enhancement (os-RIDME) detecting across the CuII spectrum revealed a strongly correlated CuII-Cr7Ni ring relationship; detecting on the nitroxide resonance measured both the […]
Mussel-inspired dynamic poly(disulfides) ultra-strong underwater adhesives
Phys.org October 18, 2022 Researchers in China have developed a simple and robust strategy that combines natural thioctic acid and mussel-inspired iron-catechol complexes to enable ultra-strong adhesive materials that can be used underwater and simultaneously exhibit unprecedented high adhesion strength on diverse surfaces. Their experimental results showed that the robust crosslinking interaction of the iron-catechol complexes as well as high-density hydrogen bonding were responsible for the ultra-high interfacial adhesion strength. The embedding effect of the hydrophobic solvent-free network of poly(disulfides) further enhanced the water-resistance. The network also made possible the resulting materials reconfigurable, thus enabling multiple reusability via repeated heating […]
New measurements quantifying qudits provide glimpse of quantum future
Science Daily October 13, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Purdue University, industry, Switzerland) combined state-of-the-art frequency-bin production with state-of-the-art light sources to develop an effective technique to characterize high-dimensional qudit entanglement. They fully characterized an entangled pair of eight-level qudits, which formed a 64-dimensional quantum space — quadrupling the previous record for discrete frequency modes. The researchers began their experiments by shining a laser into a micro-ring resonator — a circular, on-chip device fabricated and designed to generate nonclassical light. This powerful photon source which took 1 square millimeter of space and allowed […]
Physicists have developed a new photonic system with electrically tuned topological features
Phys.org October 14, 2022 In optoelectronics momentum and polarization degrees of freedom of light are interwoven and interfaced with electronics. However, manipulating photons through electrical means is a daunting task given their charge neutrality. An international team of researchers (Poland, Iceland, Italy) has developed electrically tunable microcavity exciton-polariton resonances in a Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling field. They showed that different spin-orbit coupling fields and the reduced cavity symmetry led to tunable formation of the Berry curvature, the hallmark of quantum geometrical effects. They implemented an architecture of a photonic structure with a two-dimensional perovskite layer incorporated into a microcavity filled with […]
Quantum Entanglement Has Now Been Directly Observed at The Macroscopic Scale
Science Alert October 16, 2022 To date, entanglement has generally been limited to microscopic quantum units such as pairs or multiples of single ions, atoms, photons, and so on. Previous studies had also reported on macroscopic quantum entanglement, all the necessary measurements were recorded rather than inferred, and the entanglement was generated in a deterministic, non-random way. An international team of researchers (Finland, Australia) have shown how it’s possible to measure the position and momentum of the two drumheads at the same time, getting around Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle working with macroscopic drums (oscillators) in a state of quantum entanglement. In […]