Science Daily October 15, 2020 Sensory information processing in robot skins currently rely on a centralized approach where signal transduction is separated from centralized computation and decision-making, requiring the transfer of large amounts of data from periphery to central processors. An international team of researchers (Singapore, Italy) took a decentralized approach where intelligence is embedded in the sensing nodes, using a unique neuromorphic methodology to extract relevant information in robotic skins. They proposed a system to address pain perception and the association of nociception with tactile perception to trigger the escape reflex in a sensitized robotic arm. The system comprises […]
Solar-powered system extracts drinkable water from ‘dry’ air
MIT News October 14, 2020 An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, University of Utah, South Korea) had developed a similar device as a proof of concept. The system, harnessed temperature difference within the device to allow an adsorbent material to draw in moisture from the air at night and release it the next day. The current work has demonstrated adsorption-based solar-thermal-driven atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) in arid regions, but the daily water productivity remained low. They developed and tested a dual-stage AWH device with optimized transport. By recovering the latent heat of condensation of the top stage and […]
Well-formed disorder for versatile light technologies
Nanowerk October 13, 2020 In nonlinear crystals, two photons of a particular frequency can be turned into one photon having twice that frequency if they are phase matched. This often severely limits practical applications. Researchers in Switzerland combined resonances and disorder by implementing random quasi-phase-matching in Mie resonant spheres of a few micrometres realized by the bottom-up assembly of barium titanate nanocrystals. The measured second-harmonic generation reveals a combination of broadband and resonant wave mixing, in which Mie resonances drive and enhance the second-harmonic generation, while the disorder keeps the phase-matching conditions relaxed. The nanocrystal assemblies provide new opportunities for […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of October 9, 2020
01. An electrical trigger fires single, identical photons 02. A new interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that reality does not depend on the person measuring it 03. New quantum computing algorithm skips past time limits imposed by decoherence 04. New shortcut enables faster creation of spin pattern in magnet 05. Researchers use flying insects to drop sensors from air, land them safely on the ground 06. Sensor with 100,000 times higher sensitivity could bolster thermal imaging 07. Squeezing light inside memory devices could help improve performance 08. A step toward a universal flu vaccine 09. Engineering team develops novel miniaturized […]
New quantum computing algorithm skips past time limits imposed by decoherence
Phys.org October 5, 2020 An international team of researchers (USA – Los Alamos National Laboratory, industry, UK) has developed a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, called variational fast forwarding (VFF) which is a hybrid combining aspects of classical and quantum computing. Although well-established theorems exclude the potential of general fast forwarding with absolute fidelity for arbitrary quantum simulations, the researchers get around the problem by tolerating small calculation errors for intermediate times to provide useful, if slightly imperfect, predictions. The errors that build up as simulation times increase limits potential calculations. Still, the algorithm allows simulations far beyond the time scales that […]
3D-printed ‘invisible’ fibres can sense breath, sound, and biological cells
Nanowerk October 2, 2020 Researchers in the UK 3D printed the composite fibres which are made from silver and/or semiconducting polymers. It creates a core-shell fibre structure, with a high-purity conducting fibre core wrapped by a thin protective polymer sheath, a few micrometres in diameter. The printing technique can also be used to make biocompatible fibres of a similar dimension to biological cells, which enables them to guide cell movements and ‘feel’ this dynamic process as electrical signals. The sensor was used for testing respiratory conditions such as normal breathing, rapid breathing, and simulated coughing. It significantly outperformed comparable commercial […]
The Big 3 Infectious Diseases Besides COVID-19 Scientists Are Trying to Find a Vaccine For
Global Biodefense October 5, 2020 Researchers in Australia regard malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS as the “big three” infectious diseases. Together they are responsible for about 2.7 million deaths a year around the world. Although anti-malarial drugs are routinely used to treat and prevent malaria infection, the emergence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is a major cause of death and a serious public health concern. Since the discovery of HIV in the 1980s, the disease has caused 33 million deaths. Some 38 million people have HIV/AIDS worldwide. There is currently no cure or protective vaccine. The current pandemic highlights the need for […]
An electrical trigger fires single, identical photons
Phys.org October 8, 2020 An international team of researchers (USA – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Montana State University, Spain) has demonstrated electrically stimulated photon emission from individual atomic defects in monolayer WS2 and directly correlated the emission with the local atomic and electronic structure. Radiative transitions are locally excited by sequential inelastic electron tunneling from a metallic tip into selected discrete defect states in the WS2 bandgap. Coupling to the optical far field is mediated by tip plasmons, which transduce the excess energy into a single photon. The applied tip-sample voltage determines the transition energy. Inelastic charge carrier injection into […]
Engineering team develops novel miniaturized organic semiconductor
Science Daily October 8, 2020 Organic Field Effect Transistors (OFETs) have the advantage of being flexible when compared with their inorganic counterparts like silicon. The main limitation on enhanced performance and mass production of OFETs lies in the difficulty in miniaturizing them. Products currently using OFETs in the market are still in their primitive forms, in terms of product flexibility and durability. The major problem now confronting scientists in reducing the size of OFETs is that the performance of the transistor will drop significantly with a reduction in size, partly due to the problem of contact resistance. Researchers in Hong […]
Generating photons for communication in a quantum computing system
Phys.org October 10, 2020 Realizing a fully connected network of quantum processors requires the ability to distribute quantum entanglement. For distant processing nodes, this can be achieved by generating, routing, and capturing spatially entangled itinerant photons. Researchers at MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory have demonstrated the deterministic generation of such photons using superconducting transmon qubits that are directly coupled to a waveguide. They generated two-photon N00N states and showed that the state and spatial entanglement of the emitted photons are tunable via the qubit frequencies. Using quadrature amplitude detection, they reconstructed the moments and correlations of the photonic modes and […]