Global Biodefense January 23, 2021 Researchers in Israel have developed a sensitive, rapid, antibody-independent assay for the identification of ricin in body fluids using mass spectrometry. The assay involves lectin affinity capturing of ricin by easy-to-use commercial lactose–agarose beads, followed by tryptic digestion and selected marker identification using targeted Multiple Reaction Monitoring analysis. This enables ricin identification down to 5 ng/mL in serum samples in 2.5 hours. They demonstrated the technology in a clinical scenario where the toxin was identified in an abdominal fluid sample taken 72 h post self-injection of castor beans extraction. This method has the potential application […]
Record-breaking laser link could help us test whether Einstein was right
Science Daily January 22, 2021 An international team of researchers (Australia, France) combined phase stabilisation technology with advanced self-guiding optical terminals that allowed laser signals to be sent from one point to another without interference from the atmosphere. They demonstrated phase-stabilized optical frequency transfer over a 265 m horizontal point-to-point free-space link between optical terminals with active tip-tilt mirrors to suppress beam wander, in a compact, human-portable set-up. They could correct for atmospheric turbulence in 3D, that is, left-right, up-down and, critically, along the line of flight. According to the researchers if you have one of these optical terminals on the […]
Researchers achieve extreme-ultraviolet spectral compression by four-wave mixing
Phys.org January 25, 2021 Nonlinear optical techniques have made it possible to change the color of light and modify its spectral bandwidth without compromising the intensity. However, nonlinear optical techniques are not readily available in the XUV region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Researchers in Germany have demonstrated a concept for efficient spectral compression by four-wave mixing exploiting a phase-matching scheme based on closely spaced resonances. They compressed broadband radiation in the 145–130 nm wavelength range into a narrow-bandwidth XUV pulse at 100.3 nm wavelength in the presence of a broadband near-infrared pulse in a krypton gas jet. The narrowband XUV pulses has […]
Researchers construct molecular nanofibers that are stronger than steel
MIT News January 25, 2021 Small-molecule self-assembly is an established route for producing high-surface-area nanostructures with readily customizable chemistries and precise molecular organization. The whole structure falls apart when you remove water, particularly when any kind of external force is applied. An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, Argonne National Laboratory, France) has shown that a small-molecule platform, the aramid amphiphile overcomes these dynamic instabilities by incorporating a Kevlar-inspired domain into the molecular structure. Strong, anisotropic interactions between aramid amphiphiles suppress molecular exchange and elicit spontaneous self-assembly in water to form nanoribbons with lengths of up to 20 micrometres. […]
Simulating 800,000 years of California earthquake history to pinpoint risks
EurekAlert January 25, 2021 A team of researchers in the US (University of Southern California, Columbia University, UC Riverside, USGS) developed a prototype Rate-State earthquake simulator (RSQSim) that simulates hundreds of thousands of years of seismic history in California. When this is coupled with CyberShake, the framework can calculate the amount of shaking that would occur for each quake. It can simulate up to 100,000s of years on a complicated fault system. RSQSim transforms mathematical representations of the geophysical forces at play in earthquakes into algorithms, and then solves them on some of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet. […]
Solar material can ‘self-heal’ imperfections, new research shows
Phys.org January 27, 2021 Broken bonds introduced at extended defects in covalently bonded semiconductors generally introduce deep electronic states within the gap, negatively impacting performance for applications in electronics, photochemistry, and optoelectronics. Researchers in the UK found that Sb2Se3 and Sb2S3, which show exceptional promise for photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical applications, exhibit a remarkable ability to self‐heal broken bonds through structural reconstructions, thereby eliminating the associated deep electronic states. These materials appear intrinsically resilient to the formation of dangling bonds at extended defects, which should be advantageous for a wide range of applications. They could reduce costs and improve scalability of […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of January 22, 2021
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 […]