Self-diagnostic carbon nanocomposites

Nanowerk  November 23, 2020 Studies have shown that carbon nanomaterials can increase required mechanical properties with relatively small addition amounts, all the while allowing the final material to be electrically conductive and piezoresistive in nature but their incorporation into large scale production requires intensive facility upgrades. Researchers in Russia used masterbatches and industrially available, inexpensive manufacturing techniques to examine how the addition of carbon nanoparticles can change the electric conductivity of polymer matrices. Essentially, the use of such materials has the potential to replace sensors in weight critical systems such as aircraft structures, with the material itself being able to […]

Shift in atmospheric rivers could affect Antarctic sea ice, glaciers

Science Daily  November 23, 2020 Researchers at UCLA investigated the atmospheric river (AR) frequency trends over the Southern Hemisphere using three reanalyses and two Community Earth System Model (CESM) ensembles. Their results show that AR frequency has been increasing over the Southern Ocean and decreasing over lower latitudes in the past four decades and that ARs have been shifting poleward. While the observed trends are mostly driven by the poleward shift of the westerly jet, the experiments indicate anthropogenic forcing would result in positive AR frequency trends over the Southern Ocean due mostly to moisture changes. They conclude that the […]

Topological mechanical metamaterials go beyond Newton’s third law

Phys.org November 19, 2020 An international team of researchers (Israel, Los Alamos) found a way to mimic non-Newtonian behavior in mechanical systems, and thereby develop a mechanical implementation for some of the more intractable topological quantum systems, which may offer fundamentally new insights into both the mechanical and quantum topological systems. The unit cells in a mechanical lattice are subjected to active feedback forces that are processed through autonomous controllers, pre-programmed to generate the desired local response in real-time. They demonstrated that the required topological phase, characterized by chiral edge modes, can be achieved in an analogous mechanical system only […]

This Weird, Cheap Quantum Device Can Run For a Year With a Single Kick of Energy

Science Alert  November 22, 2020 Continuous, battery-free operation of sensor nodes requires ultra-low-power sensing and data-logging techniques. According to the researchers at Washington University by directly coupling a sensor/transducer signal into globally asymptotically stable monotonic dynamical systems based on Fowler-Nordheim quantum tunneling, it is possible to achieve self-powered sensing at an energy budget that is currently unachievable using conventional energy harvesting methods. They have developed a device that uses a differential architecture to compensate for environmental variations and the device can retain sensed information for durations ranging from hours to days. With a theoretical operating energy budget less than 10 […]

Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of November 20, 2020

01. Novel magnetic spray transforms objects into millirobots for biomedical applications (with video) 02. Analysis paves way for more sensitive quantum sensors 03.  New fiber optic sensors transmit data up to 100 times faster 04. No losses: Scientists stuff graphene with light 05. Quantum algorithm breakthrough 06. Ultra-fast polymer modulators that can take the heat 07. Engineering a Way Out of Climate Change: Genetically Modified Organisms Could be the Key 08. New technology allows more precise view of the smallest nanoparticles 09. Order from chaos 10. The troubling rise of facial recognition technology (podcast; 35 minutes) And others… New technique […]

Scientists Discover Exotic New Mineral Forged in The Furnace of a Russian Volcano

Science Alert  November 18, 2020 The ‘Great Tolbachik Fissure Eruption’ of 1975–1976, and a second, lesser follow-up that took place between 2012–2013 opening rocky terrain to 130 unknown minerals which were identified. researchers in Russia have identified the latest one, petrovite, a sulfate mineral that takes shape as blue globular aggregates of tabular crystals, many holding gaseous inclusions. The copper atom in the crystal structure of petrovite has an unusual and rare coordination of seven oxygen atoms. At the chemical level, petrovite represents a new type of crystal structure. Its molecular framework – consisting of oxygen atoms, sodium sulphur and […]

Analysis paves way for more sensitive quantum sensors

Nanowerk  November 16, 2020 Researchers at the University of Chicago proposed creating a string of photonic cavities, where photons can be transported to adjacent cavities. Such a string could be used as a quantum sensor. By harnessing non-Hermitian dynamics, where dissipation leads to interesting consequences, they were able to calculate that a string of these cavities would increase the sensitivity of the sensor much more than the number of cavities added. In fact, it would increase the sensitivity exponentially in system size. To prove the theory, they are building a network of superconducting circuits that can move photons between cavities. […]

Engineering a Way Out of Climate Change: Genetically Modified Organisms Could be the Key

Technology.org  November 17, 2020 An international team of researchers (USA – Boston University, UC Santa Barbara, industry, DOE, UC Berkeley, Harvard Medical School, Arizona State University, University of Washington, Woods Hole, Colorado State University, MIT, Cornell University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Israel) has identified the possible ways in which synthetic and systems biology (SSB) could be used to reduce greenhouse gas. According to the researchers the range of possibilities include: Engineer plants to reduce atmospheric CO2, Identify genes that control the distribution of Biomass, Genetically modify the Root-to-Shoot ratio of Plants, Engineer plants to increase productivity, Engineer plants to Self-Fertilize, […]

New fiber optic sensors transmit data up to 100 times faster

EurekAlert  November 16, 2020 Distributed optical fibre sensors deliver a map of a physical quantity along an optical fibre, providing a unique solution for health monitoring of targeted structures. An international team of researchers (China, Switzerland, Chile) propose a technique encoding the interrogating light signal by a single-sequence aperiodic code and spatially resolving the fibre information through a fast-post-processing. The code sequence is once forever computed by a specifically developed genetic algorithm, enabling a performance enhancement using an unmodified conventional configuration for the sensor. They demonstrated in Brillouin and Raman based sensors, both outperforming the state-of-the-art sensors. The new technique […]

New technique seamlessly converts ammonia to green hydrogen

Phys.org  November 18, 2020 A team of researchers in the US (Northwestern University, industry) built a unique electrochemical cell with a proton-conducting membrane and integrated it with an ammonia-splitting catalyst to convert ammonia to hydrogen. The ammonia encounters the catalyst that splits it into nitrogen and hydrogen which is immediately converted into protons; protons are electrically driven across the proton-conducting membrane in the electrochemical cell. Continually pulling off the hydrogen drives the reaction to go further than it would otherwise. By removing hydrogen the reaction is pushed forward, beyond what the ammonia-splitting catalyst can do alone. The technique is a […]