Phys.org December 13, 2021 The ions released from the metal’s surface are toxic to bacterial cells. But this process is slow when standard copper is used. Researchers in Australia used a special copper mold casting process to make the alloy, arranging copper and manganese atoms into specific formations. The manganese atoms were then removed from the alloy using dealloying leaving pure copper full of tiny microscale and nanoscale cavities in its surface. The resulting copper is composed of comb-like microscale cavities and within each tooth of the comb structure are much smaller nanoscale cavities; it has a massive active surface […]
Quantum algorithms bring ions to a standstill
Phys.org December 13, 2021 Most ions and other charged particles of spectroscopic interest lack the fast, cycling transitions that are necessary for direct laser cooling. In most cases, they can still be cooled sympathetically through their Coulomb interaction with a second, coolable ion species confined in the same potential. If the charge-to-mass ratios of the two ion types are too mismatched, the cooling of certain motional degrees of freedom becomes difficult. This limits both the achievable fidelity of quantum gates and the spectroscopic accuracy. Researchers in Germany developed algorithmic cooling protocol for transferring phonons from poorly to efficiently cooled modes. […]
A quantum view of ‘combs’ of light
Phys.org December 16, 2021 An international team of researchers (USA – Stanford University, Germany) used second-order photon correlations to study the underlying quantum processes of soliton microcombs in an integrated silicon carbide microresonator. They showed that a stable temporal lattice of solitons can isolate a multimode below-threshold Gaussian state from any admixture of coherent light and predict that all-to-all entanglement can be realized for the state. Their work opens a pathway toward a soliton-based multimode quantum resource. Microcombs have the potential to enhance countless technologies, including GPS systems, telecommunications, autonomous vehicles, greenhouse gas tracking, spacecraft autonomy and ultra-precise timekeeping…read more. […]
Researchers identify new meteorological phenomenon dubbed ‘atmospheric lakes’
Phys.org December 16, 2021 Researchers at the University of Miami will present a new meteorological phenomenon called “atmospheric lakes,” at the 2021 AGU meeting. Atmospheric lakes start as filaments of water vapor in the Indo-Pacific. They begin as water vapor streams that flow from the western side of the South Asian monsoon and pinch off to become their own measurable, isolated objects. They then float along ocean and coastal regions at the equatorial line in areas where the average wind speed is around zero. They researchers used five years of satellite data to spot 17 atmospheric lakes lasting longer than […]
A step toward “living biotherapeutics”
MIT News December 10, 2021 One of the obstacles to developing “living biotherapeutics” is that many of the species that could be beneficial are harmed by oxygen, making it difficult to manufacture, store, and deliver them. Researchers at MIT have shown that they can protect those bacteria with a coating that helps them to survive the manufacturing process. They developed a self-assembling cellular coating to improve the viability and stability of the next generation biotherapeutic Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. They have demonstrated protection from both harsh processing conditions and oxygen exposure, even in the absence of canonical cryoprotectants. According to the researchers […]
Success in visualizing the propagation path of electromagnetic waves from space to ground
Science Daily December 9, 2021 Electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves (EMIC waves) are an important class of EM wave in Geospace that control variations in the Geospace plasma environment. The EMIC waves are considered to propagate north to south along the geomagnetic field lines. The specific spatial size of the EMIC wave source region and the 3D aspect of how the propagation path is formed from space to ground are yet to be elucidated. An international team of researchers (Japan, USA – University of Colorado, University of Minnesota, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Canada) investigated the growth and propagation of fine-structured EMIC […]
Unbreakable bionic glove made from silk for human-machine-interfacing
Nanowerk December 14, 2021 An international team of researchers (Denmark, Finland) has designed a new electronic material called CareGum by mixing silk fibroin and reduced graphene oxide. They used a phenolic glue to facilitate sacrificial and hierarchical hydrogen bonds. The hierarchal bonding scheme gives rise to high mechanical toughness, record-breaking elongation capacity of ≈25 000%, excellent conformability to arbitrary and complex surfaces, 3D printability, a tenfold increase in electrical conductivity, and a fourfold increase in Young’s modulus compared to its pristine counterpart. Since its conductivity is based on ions, CareGum can convey information over longer distances than rigid electronics based […]
Women and young academics suffered most during pandemic and may face long-term career consequences
Phys.org December 16, 2021 On March 6, 2020, universities across the U.S. announced systematic laboratory closures, social distancing policies and travel bans to cope with the growing coronavirus epidemic. A multi-university project, called SciOPS, conducted a survey which revealed that the pandemic’s hardships in academia have been widespread and lasting, and female and early career scientists faced more negative impacts than other groups. These differences are likely aggravating already existing disparities and potentially altering career trajectories. The negative outcomes may last well beyond the end of the pandemic. On the research side, 93% of respondents experienced university shutdowns and 88% […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of December 10, 2021
01. Crucial leap in error mitigation for quantum computers 02. Liquid crystals for fast switching devices 03. Memristive spintronic neurons: Combining two cognitive computing nano-elements into one 04. This New Ultra-Compact Camera Is The Size of a Grain of Salt And Takes Stunning Photos 05. A pair of gold flakes creates a self-assembled resonator 06. Physicists discover special transverse sound wave 07. Scientists document the presence of quantum spin liquids, a never-before-seen state of matter 08. Sodium-based material yields stable alternative to lithium-ion batteries 09. Transforming materials with light 10. Development of a transparent and flexible ultra-thin memory device And […]
To capture single photons, researchers create an interference ‘wall’
Phys.org December 3, 2021 Creating entangled photons can be a difficult task requiring a complicated setup as non-classical kinds of light have a small number of photons. In a new scheme researchers at the University of Chicago used two different sources to simultaneously emit photons into a cavity that has an extremely weak nonlinearity. With careful tuning, these sources then cancel each other out with destructive interference—creating a “wall” that blocks photons—once the selected number of photons are captured in the cavity. The basic mechanism can also be applied to all electromagnetic radiation. It can be used to generate and […]