Phys.og July 25, 2022 Peer review is an essential part of academic publishing, yet many authors, reviewers, and editors have reportedly encountered problems with the review process. Some scholars view peer-review as a necessary process for the advancement of science, while other scholars argue that for many publishers and journals, both authors and reviewers are being exploited. An international team of researchers (Australia, UK, United States) provides a narrative review of current perspectives and available research on the peer-review process to date and, summarizes potential solutions elicited from scholars on Twitter. A review of the literature identified several problems with […]
Report identifies seven ‘global megatrends’ shaping the 21st century
Phys.org July 27, 2022 In 2012, CSIRO published a report called Our Future World, which delivered an evidence-based view of future megatrends many of which are living reality. In the new report researchers in Australia provide an update on the 2012 report and capture other trends and drivers. According to the researchers the new megatrends are: Climate change; Leaner, cleaner and greener innovative solutions to meet demand; Escalating health imperative (aging populations, high rates of chronic illness); Geopolitical shifts (disrupted patterns of global trade); Diving into digital (rapid growth of telehealth, online retail, education, and entertainment); Increasingly autonomous (AI use); […]
Researchers 3D print sensors for satellites
MIT News July 27, 2022 Researchers at MIT designed, fabricated and characterized digitally manufactured, compact retarding potential analyzers (RPAs) multi-electrode instruments that can be used as in-orbit mass spectrometers and as on-ground/in-orbit ion energy analyzers. The RPA electrode housing, which is the most critical component of the RPA, was additively manufactured in a printable glass-ceramic via vat polymerization, resulting in non-porous, high-temperature compatible, and high-vacuum compatible hardware. Four different RPA designs were synthesized to probe the ionosphere (design with floating grid alignment at the aperture level) and laboratory plasmas (designs with floating grid aperture alignment at the cluster level). Simulations […]
Researchers develop nanoporous zinc electrodes that make primary alkaline zinc batteries rechargeable
Science Daily July 25, 2022 Alkaline Zn batteries have limited rechargeability. The short cycle life is caused by the transition between metallic Zn and ZnO, whose differences in electronic conductivity, chemical reactivity, and morphology undermine uniform electrochemical reactions and electrode structural stability. To address this an international team of researchers (Hong Kong, USA- Georgia Institute of Technology, China) has proposed an electrode design with bi-continuous metallic zinc nanoporous structures capable of stabilizing the electrochemical transition between metallic Zn and ZnO. Via in situ optical microscopy and electrochemical impedance measurements, they demonstrated the kinetics-controlled structural evolution of Zn and ZnO. In […]
Scientists capture first-ever view of a hidden quantum phase in a 2D crystal
Phys.org July 25, 2022 Nonequilibrium hidden states provide a unique window into thermally inaccessible regimes of strong coupling between microscopic degrees of freedom in quantum materials. However, mapping the ultrafast formation of a long-lived hidden phase remains a longstanding challenge since the initial state is not recovered rapidly. Using state-of-the-art single-shot spectroscopy techniques, a team of researchers in the US (MIT, Harvard University, UT Austin) has realized a direct ultrafast visualization of the photoinduced phase transition to both transient and long-lived hidden states in an electronic crystal, 1T-TaS2, and demonstrated a commonality in their microscopic pathways, driven by the collapse […]
Strange new phase of matter created in quantum computer acts like it has two time dimensions
Phys.org July 20, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA -research organization, UT Austin, UMass Amherst, Canada) has demonstrated an emergent dynamical symmetry-protected topological phase using an array of 10 trapped-ion of yitterbium as quantum processor. Each ion is individually held and controlled by electric fields produced by an ion trap and can be manipulated or measured using laser pulses. This phase showed edge qubits that are dynamically protected from control errors, crosstalk, and stray fields. The edge protection relies purely on emergent dynamical symmetries that are stable to generic coherent perturbations. The work paves the way for implementation of […]
Study finds ultimate limits of spaceplates in optical systems
Phys.org July 22, 2022 Spaceplates are novel flat-optic devices that implement the optical response of a free-space volume over a smaller length, effectively “compressing space” for light propagation. Together with flat lenses such as metalenses or diffractive lenses, spaceplates have the potential to enable the miniaturization of any free-space optical system. The metrics of the ultimate limits of spaceplates bandwidth remains as a crucial roadblock for the adoption of this platform. An international team of researchers ( USA – Cornell University, University of Rochester, Canada) has derived the fundamental bounds on the bandwidth of spaceplates as a function of their […]
Using AI to train teams of robots to work together
Science Daily July 25, 2022 Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) is a promising framework for solving complex tasks with many agents. However, a key challenge in MARL is defining private utility functions that ensure coordination when training decentralized agents. This challenge is especially prevalent in unstructured tasks with sparse rewards and many agents. Researchers at the University of Illinois have shown that successor features can help address this challenge by disentangling an individual agent’s impact on the global value function from that of all other agents. They used disentanglement to compactly represent private utilities that support stable training of decentralized agents […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of July 22, 2022
01. Researchers present anti-reflective coating that blocks waves of many types 02. Researchers explore a hydrodynamic semiconductor where electrons flow like water 03.Bioinspired whisker arrays can work as antennae to detect sources of flow disturbances under water or in the air 04. The handedness of light holds the key to better optical control 05. How ultrathin polymer films can be used for storage technology 06. Key material development for fusion energy application 07. Photovoltaics: Fully scalable all-perovskite tandem solar modules 08. Physicists harness quantum ‘time reversal’ to measure vibrating atoms 09. A quantum wave in two crystals 10. Researchers create […]
The best semiconductor of them all?
MIT News July 21, 2022 Among the ultrahigh–thermal conductivity materials, cubic boron arsenide (c-BAs) is predicted to exhibit simultaneously high electron and hole mobilities of >1000 centimeters squared per volt per second. Using the optical transient grating technique, a team of researchers in the US (MIT, University of Houston, UT Austin, Boston College) experimentally measured thermal conductivity of 1200 watts per meter per kelvin and ambipolar mobility of 1600 centimeters squared per volt per second at the same locations on c-BAs samples at room temperature despite spatial variations. Ab initio calculations show that lowering ionized and neutral impurity concentrations is […]