01. Using drones to create local quantum networks 02. New metamaterial offers reprogrammable properties 03. Designing customized “brains” for robots 04. DNA origami enables fabricating superconducting nanowires 05. The long-range transport of deconfined magnetic hedgehogs 06. Storing information with light 07. Using graphene, researchers increase optical data transmission speed by a factor of at least 10,000. 08. Experimental evidence of an intermediate state of matter between a crystal and a liquid 09. A display that completely blocks off counterfeits 10. A New Institutional Approach to Research Security in the United States And others… DARPA Opens Door to Producing “Unimaginable” Designs […]
DARPA Opens Door to Producing “Unimaginable” Designs for DoD
DARPA News January 15, 2021 DARPA’s TRAnsformative DESign (TRADES) program, which began in 2017, set out to develop foundational design tools needed to explore the new materials and additive manufacturing processes (3D printing). The program recently concluded. In the past four years, TRADES has explored new ideas from mathematics and computer science that have allowed us to now represent things – like parts and components – that are a million times more complex than current state-of-the-art systems can represent. Now it is possible to describe both shape and material in a coordinated way across multiple physics to allow intricate designs […]
Designing customized “brains” for robots
MIT News January 21, 2021 In complex situations robots often do not move quickly because perceiving stimuli and calculating a response takes a lot of computation which limits reaction time. A team of researchers in the US (MIT, Harvard University) used robomorphic computing to bridge the mismatch between a robot’s “mind” and body. Their system creates a customized hardware design to best serve a particular robot’s computing needs. The user inputs the parameters of a robot, the system translates these physical properties into mathematical matrices. These matrices contain many zero values that roughly correspond to movements that are impossible given […]
DNA origami enables fabricating superconducting nanowires
Science Daily January 19, 2021 An international team of researchers (Israel, Germany, USA – Columbia University, Brookhaven National Laboratory) used DNA origami as the platform to build superconducting nanoarchitectures which involves two major components: a circular single-strand DNA as the scaffold, and a mix of complementary short strands acting as staples that determine the shape of the structure. The DNA nanowires were dropcast onto a substrate with a channel and coated with superconducting niobium nitride to convert them into conductive wires. The nanowires were suspended over the channel to isolate them from the substrate during the electrical measurements. Superconducting wires […]
A display that completely blocks off counterfeits
EurekAlert January 22, 2021 Researchers in South Korea have developed a device using nanostructures that is capable of encrypting full-color images depending on the polarization of light. The on and off states can be adjusted according to the polarization of the incident light. It displays full-color images during the on state and shows no images in the off state and it can switch between different images. According to the researchers this feature can be utilized as an anti-forgery device security label that appears to be a simple color image to the naked eye but reveals the serial number when a […]
Experimental evidence of an intermediate state of matter between a crystal and a liquid
EurekAlert January 19, 2021 Researchers in Russia present a detailed analysis of their experimental study, which shows clear evidence of a two-stage melting process of a quasi-two-dimensional dusty plasma system in a high-frequency gas discharge. They accurately calculated global parameters of the orientational and translational order, as well as their susceptibilities to determine two critical points, related to “solid-to-hexatic” and “hexatic-to-liquid” phase transitions. The nature of the emerging defects and changes in their mutual concentration, in addition to the estimate of core energy of free dislocations also counts in favor of the formation of an intermediate hexatic phase. These results […]
Iceland Genetically Sequences Every COVID-19 Case in World-Leading Strategy
Science Alert January 17, 2021 Researchers at the biopharma group deCODE Genetics’ laboratory in Iceland have analyzed all the around 6,000 COVID-19 cases reported in Iceland making it the world leader in COVID sequencing. They have identified 463 separate variants – which scientists call haplotypes. Authorities have used the sequencing information to decide on precise, targeted measures to curb the spread of the virus. South African variant has not been detected in Iceland, 41 people have been identified as carriers of the British variant. If there are differences between viruses with the various pattern mutations, they are not obvious. While […]
The long-range transport of deconfined magnetic hedgehogs
Phys.org January 18, 2021 Using magnetic insulators to achieve long-range transport of spins has proved highly challenging. Researchers at UCLA resorted to topological spin textures rather than spins themselves for the purpose of long-range transport. The magnetic hedgehog is one type of topologically protected spin texture that generically exits in three-dimensional magnets. The researchers showed that the hedgehog current is a well conserved quantity and can be explored to achieve long-range transport in magnetic insulators. The study is based on the theoretical construct topological conservation law, which allowed the researchers to leverage the idea of hydrodynamics of topological spin textures. […]
Mysterious, Upside-Down Lightning May Not Be a Freak Phenomenon After All
Science Alert January 21, 2021 Lightning-like blue jets of atmospheric electric discharges fan into cones as they propagate from the top of thunderclouds into the stratosphere. They are thought to initiate in an electric breakdown between the positively charged upper region of a cloud and a layer of negative charge at the cloud boundary and in the air above. The breakdown forms a leader that transitions into streamers when propagating upwards. An international team of researchers (Denmark, Norway, Spain) report that they observed five intense, approximately 10-microsecond blue flashes from a thunderstorm cell. One flash initiated a pulsating blue jet […]
A New Institutional Approach to Research Security in the United States
Georgetown University January 2021 Most U.S. research and development (R&D) takes place in the private sector. To truly protect U.S. R&D, the government needs to empower frontline researchers as true partners. That means investing more in supporting security-informed decision making in business, philanthropy, and academia, and relying less on mandates and punitive tactics. To achieve these results, in a report “A New Institutional Approach to Research Security in the United States” researchers at Georgetown University propose a new, public-private research security clearinghouse, with leadership from academia, business, philanthropy, and government have a presence in the most active R&D hubs across […]