Science Daily November 2, 2020 Real-time health monitoring and sensing abilities of robots require soft electronics. Unlike rigid devices, being elastic and pliable makes their performance less repeatable due to hysteresis. Researchers in Singapore have developed a sensor, Tactile Resistive Annularly Cracked E-Skin (TRACE) which addresses the trade-off between sensitivity and hysteresis in tactile sensors when using soft materials. They discovered that piezoresistive sensors made using an array of three-dimensional metallic annular cracks on polymeric microstructures possess high sensitivities, low hysteresis over a wide pressure range and have fast response. They have demonstrated that TRACE sensors can accurately detect and […]
Scientists in Japan Just Found a Detailed Record of Earth’s Last Magnetic Switcharoo
Science Alert October 31, 2020 Every 200,000 to 300,000 years, Earth’s magnetic poles reverse. The last reversal was unusual because for some reason, the poles have remained oriented the way they are now for about three-quarters of a million years. Researchers in Japan collected new samples and conducted paleo- and rock-magnetic analyses of samples from the Chiba composite section which is considered to contain the most detailed marine sedimentary record of the Matuyama-Brunhes geomagnetic reversal. It provides the most reliable chronostratigraphic framework of the time period around the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal. According to their study it took about 20,000 years, including […]
Sea-level rise will have complex consequences
Science Daily November 4, 2020 According to an international team of researchers (UK, Canada, Hong Kong, the Netherlands) while the change from land to sea represents a dramatic and permanent shift for preexisting human populations, the process of change is driven by a complex set of physical and cultural processes with long transitional phases of landscape and socioeconomic change. The team used reconstructions of prehistoric sea-level rise, paleogeographies, terrestrial landscape change, and human population dynamics to show how the gradual inundation of an island archipelago resulted in decidedly nonlinear landscape and cultural responses to rising sea levels. Interpretation of past […]
An underwater navigation system powered by sound
MIT News November 2, 2020 Researchers at MIT have designed and demonstrated the first underwater backscatter localization (UBL) system. The networks communicate by simply backscattering acoustic signals. While such backscatter-based communication enables them to operate at net-zero power, it also introduces new and unique challenges for underwater localization. They explored various challenges for bringing localization to underwater backscatter, including extreme multipath, acoustic delay spread, and mobility. In the article they describe how an adaptive and context-aware algorithm may address some of these challenges and adapt to diverse underwater environments (such as deep vs shallow water, and high vs low mobility). […]
World’s fastest open-source intrusion detection is here
TechXplore November 5, 2020 Network operators are faced with securing 100Gbps networks with 100K+ concurrent connections by deploying IDS/IPSes to search for 10K+ rules concurrently. Through the Pigasus IDS/IPS, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University show that this goal is achievable by building on recent advances in FPGA-capable SmartNICs. Pigasus’ design takes an FPGA-first approach, where most of the processing, and all state and control flow are managed on the FPGA. However, doing so requires careful design of algorithms and data structures to ensure fast common-case performance while densely utilizing system memory resources. Their experiments with a variety of traces showed […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of October 30, 2020
01. On-surface synthesis of graphene nanoribbons could advance quantum devices 02.Physicists circumvent centuries-old theory to cancel magnetic fields 03. A Quantum Tango between Magnons and Phonons 04. Single-atom alloy: Superb cocatalyst for photocatalysis 05. Tailoring 2D materials to improve electronic and optical devices 06. AI detects hidden earthquakes 07. The Lithium-Ion Battery With Built-In Fire Suppression 08. Topological states caught in the act 09. 60-year-old limit to lasers overturned by quantum researchers 10. Infrared light antenna powers molecular motor And others… How France overcame the odds to build a research mega-campus How to figure out what you don’t know An […]
On-surface synthesis of graphene nanoribbons could advance quantum devices
Nanowerk October 26, 2020 The lack of atomic-scale precision in using current state-of-the-art “top-down” synthetic methods — cutting a graphene sheet into atom-narrow strips – stymie graphene’s practical use. An international team of researchers (USA – Oak Ridge National Laboratory, The University of Tennessee, Poland, Luxembourg) has developed a “bottom-up” approach — building the graphene nanoribbon directly at the atomic level in such a way that it can be used in specific applications. The nanoribbons were synthesized on the surface of rutile titanium dioxide that assisted the cyclode-hydrofluorination of specifically designed precursor molecules through a series of thermally triggered transformations. […]
60-year-old limit to lasers overturned by quantum researchers
Phys.org October 27, 2020 Researchers in 1958 showed theoretically that the coherence of a beam cannot be greater than the square of the number of photons stored in the laser based on the assumptions they made about how energy is added to the laser and how it is released to form the beam. Now according to researchers in Australia the assumptions made sense at the time, and still apply to most lasers today, but they are not required by quantum mechanics. They have shown that the true limit imposed by quantum mechanics is that the coherence cannot be greater than […]
AI detects hidden earthquakes
Science Daily October 22, 2020 Earthquake signal detection and seismic phase picking are challenging tasks in the processing of noisy data and the monitoring of microearthquakes. A team of researchers (Stanford University, Georgia Institute of Technology) has developed a global deep-learning model for simultaneous earthquake detection and phase picking. Performing these two related tasks in tandem improves model performance in each individual task by combining information in phases and in the full waveform of earthquake signals by using a hierarchical attention mechanism. They applied their model to 5 weeks of continuous data recorded during 2000 Tottori earthquakes in Japan and […]
How France overcame the odds to build a research mega-campus
Nature News October 27, 2020 A decade in the making, Paris-Saclay University, officially formed this year, is one of Europe’s biggest research universities. The behemoth merged 14 institutions. Planners envisioned fostering an innovation hub, similar to Silicon Valley in California. The focus is instead on promoting French higher education and research globally. Although some researchers are still settling into their environment, many say that Saclay seems to be on the right track to achieve its other goals. It hosts more than 300 labs and advanced research equipment, such as the SOLEIL synchrotron. About 100 companies and 6 of France’s public […]