Phys.org March 26, 2019 In this review article researchers in China highlight the advances in stretchable electronics, with an emphasis on underlying methods and engineering strategies in stretchable device construction and their applications. Currently there are two main strategies for manufacturing stretchable electronics. The first is to use intrinsically stretchable materials, such as rubber, which can endure large deformations but have high electrical resistance. The second method is to make non-flexible materials stretchable using innovative design. In the future, stretchable electronics may be enhanced with new capabilities, such as wireless communication, self-charging or even self-healing. Bringing stretchable electronic devices to […]
Engineers demonstrate metamaterials that can solve equations
Science Daily March 22, 2019 Signal processing of light waves can be used to represent certain mathematical functions and to perform computational tasks on signals or images in an analog fashion using complex systems of bulk optical elements such as lenses, filters, and mirrors. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated that specially designed nanophotonic structures can take input waveforms encoded as complex mathematical functions, manipulate them, and provide an output that is the integral of the functions. The results, demonstrated for microwaves, provide a route to develop chip-based analog optical computers and computing elements… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
EmTech Digital 2019 Coverage
MIT Technology Review March 25, 2019 Everything you need to know from EmTech Digital 2019, where the sharpest minds in the technology, management, startup, engineering, and academic communities converge. The article covers the following 14 stories: Tech companies must anticipate the looming risks as AI gets creative ; AI researchers must confront “missed opportunities” to achieve social good; Deepfakes are solvable—but don’t forget that “shallowfakes” are already pervasive ; Robots won’t make it into our houses until they get common sense ; How malevolent machine learning could derail AI ; How machine learning is accelerating last-mile, and last-meter, delivery ; Your next car could have […]
Computer program developed to find ‘leakage’ in quantum computers
Science Daily March 19, 2019 Researchers in the UK used the dimension witnessing approach to show that in program making use of the permitted ‘single qubit’ instructions, unwanted states were being accessed in the transmon circuit components. Their quantum computer program detects the presence of ‘leakage’, where information being processed by a quantum computer escapes from the states of 0 and 1. Most quantum computing hardware platforms suffer from this issue. They verified experimental data from its application on a publicly accessible machine, which shows that undesirable states are affecting certain computations. Even a miniscule leakage accumulating over many millions […]
Debating China’s BRI and Being Home to the Next Silicon Valley
Next Big Future March 18, 2019 China’s Belt and Road has some questionable economic return potential. However, the Belt and Road is providing geopolitical returns. It has successful projects in Pakistan, Greece and some other countries. The projects are boosting the volume of trade with the countries in the Belt and Road. China is already second to the United States in large technology companies and second in billion+ dollar technology unicorn companies. Shenzhen is the location of this new silicon valley… read more.
The best topological conductor yet: Spiraling crystal is the key to exotic discovery
Science Daily March 20, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – Princeton University, Louisiana State University, industry, Taiwan, Germany, China) has observed chiral properties in the DNA-like spiraling structure, or helicoid, in cobalt-silicon and rhodium-silicon crystals. In some cases, chirality can be flipped proving that this is a new state of quantum matter, which is also exhibiting nearly ideal topological surface properties. Its topological conductivity was measured to be about 100 times larger than that observed in previously identified topological metals. They can produce an electrical current of a fixed strength when you shine a light on them regardless […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of March 22, 2019
01. Recovering scattered data from twisted light via ‘scattering-matrix-assisted retrieval technique (SMART)’ 02. Research paves the way for next generation of optical tweezers 03. Device that ‘shakes’ light a breakthrough In photonics 04. Designing next-generation optical antennas 05. Long-distance quantum information exchange—success at the nanoscale 06. Finding the right ‘dose’ for solar geoengineering 07. Critical materials: Researchers eye huge supply of rare-earth elements from mining waste 08. Turning an organic molecule into a coherent two-level quantum system 09. Nanocrystal ‘factory’ could revolutionize quantum dot manufacturing 10. Nanocoating makes lightweight metal foams bone-hard and explosion-proof And others… Army looks to put […]
Turning an organic molecule into a coherent two-level quantum system
Phys.org March 18, 2019 Researchers in Germany have demonstrated that an organic molecule placed into an optical microcavity behaves as a coherent two-level quantum system. This allows the observation of 99% extinction of a laser beam by a single molecule, saturation with less than 0.5 photons and non-classical generation of few-photons super-bunched light. They demonstrated that their molecule-microcavity system could interact with single photons generated by a second molecule in a distant laboratory. The research is an important step towards linear and nonlinear quantum photonic circuits based on organic platforms…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Ten big global challenges technology could solve
MIT Technology Review February 27, 2019 According to the editors of MIT Technology Review the following 10 challenges are incredibly important but none is easy: Carbon sequestration, Grid-scale energy storage, Universal flu vaccine, Dementia treatment, Ocean clean-up, Energy-efficient desalination, Safe driverless car, Embodied AI, Earthquake prediction and Brain decoding…read more.
Russian Army Has New Body Armor and Promise Combat Exoskeletons
Next Big Future March 11, 2019 Russia is promising to develop Ratnik-3 which would be advanced combat exoskeletons, UAVs and combat robots. They are displaying mockups of advanced guns, new helmets and more complete body armor. The main problem for real exoskeletons that boost the weight that a soldier can carry or provide real force multipliers is the batteries and power systems for the gear. US has also been developing combat exoskeletons. Russia and the USA have had small field tests of some exoskeleton systems. US military research has admitted that it will still be 5-10 years or more before […]