Science Daily December 9, 2019 DNA storage offers substantial information density and exceptional half-life. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Israel) devised a ‘DNA-of-things’ (DoT) storage architecture to produce materials with immutable memory. In a DoT framework, DNA molecules record the data, and these molecules are then encapsulated in nanometer silica beads, which are fused into various materials that are used to print or cast objects in any shape. They applied DoT to three-dimensionally print a Stanford Bunny that contained a 45 kB digital DNA blueprint for its synthesis. Then they synthesized five generations of the bunny, each from the memory […]
Thunderquakes make underground fiber optic telecommunications cables hum
Science Daily December 11, 2019 Researchers at Pennsylvania State University report on a distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) array using preexisting underground fiber optics beneath the Penn State campus for detecting and characterizing thunder‐induced ground motions. During a half‐hour interval in State College, PA, they identified 18 thunder‐induced seismic events in the DAS array data. The high‐fidelity DAS data show that the thunder‐induced seismic are very broadband, with their peak frequency ranging from 20 to 130 Hz. The dense DAS data enable them to simulate thunder‐seismic wave propagation and full waveform synthetics and further locate the thunder‐seismic source by time‐reversal migration. […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of December 6, 2019
01. Controlling the optical properties of solids with acoustic waves 02. Novel material switches between electrically conducting and insulating states 03. Quantum dot lasers move a step closer with electric-pumping development 04. Bending an organic semiconductor can boost electrical flow 05. Daylight damage to photovoltaics 06. Researchers find potential solution to overheating mobile phones 07. Study sheds light on the peculiar ‘normal’ phase of high-temperature superconductors 08. An alloy that retains its memory at high temperatures 09. Developing a digital twin 10. A missing link in haze formation And others… Atmospheric river storms create $1 billion-a-year flood damage A decade […]
An alloy that retains its memory at high temperatures
Science Daily December 3, 2019 In the conventional high-temperature shape memory alloy Ti-Ta, the formation of this phase compromises completely the shape memory effect. Addition of other elements to form Ti-Ta-X alloys often modifies the transformation temperatures. Researchers in Germany used transparent descriptors derived from first-principles calculations to search for new ternary Ti-Ta-X alloys that combine stability and high temperatures. They suggest four alloys with these properties, namely Ti-Ta-Sb, Ti-Ta-Bi, Ti-Ta-In, and Ti-Ta-Sc. Their predictions for the most promising of these alloys, Ti-Ta-Sc, are subsequently fully validated by experimental investigations showing no traces of omega phase after cycling. Their computational […]
Bending an organic semiconductor can boost electrical flow
Science Daily December 3, 2019 Slightly bending semiconductors made of organic materials can roughly double the speed of electricity flowing through them. An international team of researchers (USA – Rutgers University, UMass Amherst, Japan, South Korea) shows a very strong, anisotropic, and reversible modulation of the intrinsic (trap‐free) charge carrier mobility of single‐crystal rubrene transistors with strain, showing that the effective mobility of organic circuits can be enhanced by up to 100% with only 1% of compressive strain. This study lays the foundation of the strain engineering in organic electronics and advances the knowledge of the relationship between the carrier […]
Atmospheric river storms create $1 billion-a-year flood damage
Science Daily December 4, 2019 Researchers found that flooding has caused nearly $51 billion in damages to western states in the last 40 years. More than 84 percent of these damages were caused by atmospheric rivers (ARs), long narrow corridors of water vapor in the atmosphere, capable of carrying more than twice the volume of the Amazon river through the sky. A team of researchers in the US (UC San Diego, US Army) used 40 years of data from the National Flood Insurance Program to show that ARs are the primary drivers of flood damages in the western United States. […]
Controlling the optical properties of solids with acoustic waves
Science Daily December 2, 2019 So far moderately large changes in the exitons control parameters — temperature, pressure, electric and magnetic fields that can tune excitonic properties have only been achieved under equilibrium conditions and at low temperatures. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Spain, Germany, USA- Simons Foundation Flatiron Institute, France) has demonstrated the control of excitonic properties using acoustic waves in titanium dioxide at room temperature. To do this, the researchers launched a high-frequency (hundreds of gigahertz), large-amplitude acoustic wave in the material using ultrashort laser pulses. This strategy allows for the dynamical manipulation of the exciton properties […]
Daylight damage to photovoltaics
Science Daily December 2, 2019 The cumulative damage from the sun tends to erode efficiency of a new class of solar cells that utilizes layers of carbon-based polymers. Based on the results of current-voltage curves, impedance spectroscopy, and UV-VIS spectrophotometry, researchers in Japan have determined that exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet light can damage the fragile organic molecules in the semiconducting layer just like it damages human skin. When some sulfur atoms in the materials get replaced by oxygen atoms from the atmosphere, the molecules no longer function as intended. The degradation products from solar damage increased the electrical resistance […]
A decade of Physics World breakthroughs: 2009 – the first quantum computer
Physics World November 29, 2019 Physics World journalists look back at the past decade of winners and explore how research in that field has moved on. Here they examine the 2009 breakthrough for the first “quantum computer”. In August 2009, a NIST team unveiled the first small-scale device that could be described as a quantum computer building up to the breakthrough where the team had used ultracold ions to demonstrate separately all of the steps needed for quantum computation; initializing the qubits; storing them in ions; performing a logic operation on one or two qubits; transferring the information between different […]
Developing a digital twin
Eurekalert December 5, 2019 A team of researchers in the US ( UT Austin, MIT, industry) is working on Dynamic Data-Driven Application Systems (DDDAS), a project sponsored by the US Air Force, to develop a predictive digital twin for a custom-built UAV. The twin represents each component of the UAV, as well as its integrated whole. The twin also ingests on-board sensor data from the vehicle and integrates that information with the model to create real-time predictions of the health of the vehicle. They paired computational modeling is paired with machine learning to produce predictions that are reliable, and explainable. […]