Phys.org July 25, 2019 Researchers in Canada report hierarchically structured hydrogels of self-organized M13 bacteriophage bundles, composed of hundreds of M13 nanofilaments, which exhibit both long-range and micron-scale order, are visible in electron micrographs of the cross-linked state. They adsorb up to 16× their weight in water, exhibit advanced properties at room temperature, namely, self-healing under biological conditions, autofluorescence in three channels, which decays through biodegradation, potentiating non-destructive imaging capability, and bioactivity toward the host bacteria. The latter is a powerful property, allowing the development of hydrogels with tunable bioactivity when combined with the phage display and/or recombinant DNA technology. […]
China Claims Metamaterial Breakthroughs for Stealth Fighters
Next Big Future July 30, 2019 Researchers in China claim that they created the world’s first mathematical model to precisely describe how electromagnetic waves behave when they strike a piece of metal engraved with microscopic patterns. In one test, the new technology cut the strength of a reflected radar signal – measured in decibels – by between 10 and nearly 30dB in a frequency range from 0.3 to 40 gigahertz…read more.
A hybrid material that switches reversibly between two stable solid states
Phys.org August 7, 2019 To obtain dual stable states, the underlying mechanism must form an energy barrier between the two, where each state rested at an energetic minimum. An international team of researchers (Canada, USA – Case Western Reserve University, Louis Stokes Cleveland DVA Medical Center, University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University) prepared sal-gel by mixing melted sodium acetate trihydrate with polymer pre-cursors of poly(acrylic acid) and a liquid mixture of acetic acid with water. The resulting gel mixture remained transparent, suggesting the constituents to be miscible with each other. The resulting gel had two solid states; a transparent soft […]
Is AI the next big climate-change threat? We haven’t a clue
MIT Technology Review July 29, 2019 Some predict that in the absence of significant innovation in materials, chip manufacturing and design, data centers’ AI workloads could account for a tenth of the world’s electricity usage by 2025 while others expect data center energy consumption to remain relatively flat over the next few years, in spite of a spike in AI-related activity. These widely diverging predictions highlight the uncertainty around AI’s impact on the future of large-scale computing and the ultimate implications for energy demand. But pessimistic forecasts ignore several important developments that could limit AI’s power grab. One of them […]
New process discovered to completely degrade flame retardant in the environment
EurekAlert August 8, 2019 Among the most common flame retardants that hinder combustion and slow the spread of fire, tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) is added to manufactured materials, including computer circuit boards and other electrical devices, papers, textiles and plastics. With a variety of health concerns, including cancer and hormone disruption, TBBPA has been widely detected in the environment, as well as in animals and human milk and plasma. It is a persistent global pollutant nontoxic. An international team of researchers (USA – UMass Amherst, China) has developed a process that breaks down TBBPA to harmless carbon dioxide and water. The […]
Physicists solve 2,000-year-old optical problem
Phys.org August 9, 2019 Over 2,000 years ago, Greek scientist Diocles recognized a problem with optical lenses—when looking through devices equipped with them, the edges appeared fuzzier than the center. He proposed that the effect occurs because the lenses were spherical so that light striking at an angle could not be focused because of differences in refraction. Most such efforts have involved creating aspherical lenses to counteract refraction problems. And while they have resulted in improvement, the solutions have generally been expensive and inadequate for some applications. Researchers in Mexico have found a way of fixing the problem with any […]
Portable radiation detectors make the invisible, visible
Physics World August 8, 2019 Traditionally, workers have used hand-held meters to survey small areas methodically, square centimetre by square centimetre. This process is cumbersome, and it can also mean that technicians spend unnecessarily long periods of time in dangerous environments. An international team of researchers (UK, Japan) developed Hot Spot Locator (HSL) that images gamma radiation similar to the way digital cameras image visible light. Signals from an array of high-energy radiation sensors are coupled with a coded aperture, a collection of around a dozen pinholes, which the HCL’s deconvolution algorithms can interpret to create a true image of […]
Quantum teleportation moves into the third dimension
Physics World August 7, 2019 All demonstrations of teleportation to date were limited to a two-dimensional subspace−so-called qubit−of the quantized multiple levels of the quantum systems. In general, a quantum particle can naturally possess not only multiple degrees of freedom, but also, many degrees of freedom can have high quantum number beyond the simplified two-level subspace. Making use of multiport beam-splitters and ancillary single photons, an international team of researchers (China, Austria) propose a resource-efficient and extendable scheme for teleportation of arbitrarily high-dimensional photonic quantum states. Experimentally they have demonstrated teleportation of a qutrit, which is equivalent to a spin-1 […]
Researchers design a light-trapping, color-converting crystal
Phys.org August 7, 2019 Existing photonic crystal cavities usually only confine one wavelength of light and their structures are highly customized to accommodate that one wavelength. To force the coexistence of the two laser beams using a photonic crystal cavity, an international team of researchers (USA -Stanford University, Italy) devised a structure that combines two different ways to confine light, one to hold onto the infrared light and another to hold the green, all still contained within one tiny crystal. After ironing out the details of their two-part structure, the researchers produced a list of four conditions, which should guide […]
Researchers turn off backscattering, aim to improve optical data transmission
Nanowerk August 12, 2019 The most common manifestation of subwavelength disorder is Rayleigh light scattering, which is observed in nearly all waveguiding technologies today and can lead to both irreversible radiative losses as well as undesirable intermodal coupling. A team of researchers in the US (University of Illinois, University of Maryland, NIST) has demonstrated an optomechanical approach for dynamically suppressing Rayleigh backscattering within dielectric resonators by locally breaking the time-reversal symmetry in a silica resonator through a Brillouin scattering interaction that is available in all materials. They confirmed complete suppression of Rayleigh backscattering in their experiment through two independent measurements—the […]