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 […]
New technology allows more precise view of the smallest nanoparticles
Science Daily November 16, 2020 Researchers at the University of Houston have developed a new imaging technology called PANORAMA (PlAsmonic NanO-apeRture lAbel-free iMAging) which uniquely relies on unscattered light to detect sub-100 nm dielectric nanoparticles. It provides diffraction-limited resolution, higher surface sensitivity, and wide-field imaging with dense spatial sampling. Its system is identical to a standard bright-field microscope with a lamp and a camera – no laser or interferometry is needed. In a parallel fashion, PANORAMA can detect, count and size individual dielectric nanoparticles beyond 25 nm, and dynamically monitor their distance to the plasmonic surface at millisecond timescale. The invention […]
No losses: Scientists stuff graphene with light
EurekAlert November 16, 2020 Researchers in Russia developed a technique to achieve 90% energy conversion from the pump laser field to the surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) on the base of the hybrid optoplasmonic multi‐level scheme of near‐resonant interaction with semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) placed in the proximity of a graphene surface. Using numerical simulations and semiclassical approach for the light–matter interaction they found that maximum efficiency of SPP generation is achieved in strong coupling conditions for a stationary regime of SPP‐QD interaction. The technique can be used for converting energy in solar cells, and nano and bio-object detection…read more. TECHNICAL […]
New electronic chip delivers smarter, light-powered AI
Nanowerk November 18, 2020 Realization of a single imaging unit with a combination of in‐built memory and signal processing capability is imperative to deploy efficient brain‐like vision systems. An international team of researchers (Australia, USA – Colorado State University, UC Berkeley, China) has designed a neuromorphic imaging element based on a fully light‐modulated 2D semiconductor in a simple reconfigurable phototransistor structure. This standalone device exhibits inherent characteristics that enable neuromorphic image pre‐processing and recognition. They exploited the unique photo response induced by oxidation‐related defects in 2D black phosphorus to achieve visual memory, wavelength‐selective multibit programming, and erasing functions, which allow […]
New tool to combat terrorism
EurekAlert November 19, 2020 Environmental samples serve as ideal forms of contact trace evidence as detection at a scene can establish a link between a suspect, location, and victim. Translation of these tools to forensic science remains in its infancy, due in part to the merging of traditional forensic ecology practices with unfamiliar DNA technologies and complex datasets, biomass environmental signals carried by people and objects. However, the sensitivity, and reducing cost, of MPS is now unlocking the power of both high and low biomass environmental DNA (eDNA) samples as useful sources of genetic information in forensic science. Researchers in […]
Novel magnetic spray transforms objects into millirobots for biomedical applications (with video)
EurekAlert November 18, 2020 An international team of researchers (Hong Kong, China) has constructed millirobots by coating inanimate objects with a composited agglutinate magnetic spray. The technique enables a variety of 1D, 2D, or 3D objects to be covered with a thin magnetically drivable film (~100 to 250 micrometers in thickness). The film is thin enough to preserve the original size, morphology, and structure of the objects while providing actuation of up to hundreds of times its own weight. Under the actuation of a magnetic field, the millirobots are able to demonstrate a range of locomotive abilities: crawling, walking, and […]
Order from chaos
EurekAlert November 13, 2020 Current technology in LiDARS bounces the laser beams off moving mirrors, a mechanical method that results in slower scanning speeds and inaccuracies. Researchers in Japan have developed a new beam scanning device utilizing ‘photonic crystals’ whose lattice points can be arranged as nanoscale antennae. They found that by adjusting both position and size resulted in a seemingly random photonic crystal, producing an accurate beam without power loss. They called this a ‘dually modulated photonic crystal’. They showed that the scanner can generate beams in one hundred different directions: a resolution of 10×10. With further refinements, the […]
Pearls may provide new information processing options for biomedical, military innovations
Science Daily November 13, 2020 To overcome the hardware limitations of conventional spectrometers and hyperspectral imagers a team of researchers in the US (Purdue University, AFRL) has developed a spectral information processing scheme in which light transport through an Anderson-localized medium serves as an entropy source for compressive sampling directly in the frequency domain. As implied by the “lustrous” reflection originating from the exquisite multilayered nanostructures, a pearl (or mother-of-pearl) allows us to exploit the spatial and spectral intensity fluctuations originating from strong light localization for extracting salient spectral information with a compact and thin form factor. The research can […]