Nanowerk June 27, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (SUNY Binghamton, Clarkson University) has developed a new synthesis technique to produce electrode sheets made from nanostructured selenium. The new positive electrodes have the electrical and mechanical properties needed for use in rechargeable batteries. The sheet is mechanically self-supporting, potentially eliminating the need for a cathode current collector entirely, further reducing battery volume…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Perfect quantum portal emerges at exotic interface
Nanowerk June 26, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (University of Maryland, UC Irvine) has observed perfect Andreev reflection in point-contact spectroscopy—a clear signature of Klein tunneling and a manifestation of the underlying ‘relativistic’ physics of a proximity-induced superconducting state in a topological Kondo insulator. The findings shed light on a previously overlooked aspect of topological superconductivity and can serve as the basis for a unique family of spintronic and superconducting devices, the interface transport phenomena of which are completely governed by their helical topological states…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance—by their heartbeat
MIT Technology Review June 26. 2019 An individual’s cardiac signature is unique, it remains constant and cannot be altered or disguised. Researchers have developed a device called Jetson for the Pentagon which uses laser vibrometry to detect the surface movement caused by the heartbeat. It works at 200 meters (219 yards), longer distances could be possible with a better laser. A special gimbal was added so that an invisible, quarter-size laser spot could be kept on a target. It takes about 30 seconds to get a good return. They developed algorithms capable of extracting a cardiac signature from the laser […]
Racing Toward Yottabyte Information
IEEE Spectrum June 26, 2019 The highest prefix in the international system of units is yotta, Y is 10 to the power of 24. We’ll have that many bytes within a decade. And once we start creating more than 50 trillion bytes of information per person per year, will there be any real chance of making effective use of it? It is easier to find new prefixes for large databases than to decide how large is large enough. After all, there are fundamental differences between accumulated data, useful information, and insightful knowledge…read more.
The RoboBee flies solo
Science Daily June 26, 2019 Researchers at Harvard University have demonstrated a sustained untethered flight of an insect-sized 90-milligram flapping-wing microscale aerial vehicle. It uses four wings driven by two alumina-reinforced piezoelectric actuators to increase aerodynamic efficiency and achieve a peak lift-to-weight ratio of 4.1 to 1. The integrated system weighs 259 milligrams, with an additional payload capacity allowing for additional onboard devices. Consuming only 110–120 milliwatts of power, the system matches the thrust efficiency of similarly sized insects such as bees…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Scientists combine light and matter to make particles with new behaviors
Phys.org July 4, 2019 Researchers at University of Chicago developed techniques to manipulate quantum matter using Floquet engineering. By varying the intensity of a laser field tuned precisely to an atomic resonance, the team was able to shift the orbitals of an electron. Shaking the orbitals by periodically varying this intensity produced the desired copies. By allowing photons to interact with these shaken atoms, the team has created what they call “Floquet polaritons”—quasi-particles which are part-light and part-atom, and unlike regular photons, interact with each other quite strongly. These interactions are essential for making matter from light. Making polaritons with […]
Superhydrophobic ‘nanoflower’ for biomedical applications
Science Daily July 2, 2019 Current superhydrophobic materials require alteration to the chemistry or topography of the surface to work which limits their use. Researchers at Texas A&M adopted a ‘nanoflower-like’ assembly of Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) atomic layers to protect the surface from wetting. With their hexagonal packed layer 2D materials repel water adherence, however, a missing atom from the top layer can allow easy access to water molecules by the next layer of atoms underneath making it transit from hydrophobic to hydrophilic. For biomedical applications specifically, the study demonstrated that blood and cell culture media containing proteins do not […]
‘Tsunami’ on a silicon chip: A world first for light waves
Science Daily July 3, 2019 An international team of researchers (Singapore, Australia) has shown CMOS‐compatible, on‐chip Bragg solitons, with a soliton‐effect pulse compression with a factor of × 5.7, along with time‐resolved measurements of soliton fission on a CMOS‐compatible photonic circuit platform. These observations are enabled by the combination of a unique cladding‐modulated Bragg grating design and the high nonlinearity and negligible nonlinear loss of compositionally engineered ultra‐silicon‐rich nitride (USRN: Si7N3). Manipulating solitons on-chip could potentially allow for the speed up of photonic communications devices and infrastructure…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
What Happens When a CBRN Agent is Released in an Urban Area? Ask HASP.
Global Biodefense June 26, 2019 The Hazard Assessment Simulation and Prediction Suite (HASP) software was developed by the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). It models how CBRN threats will disperse if released in urban or open areas. It provides hazard predictions in a matter of minutes, greatly improving upon previous models. It also takes into consideration the interactions between indoor and outdoor dispersion as well as estimates the source parameters, such as location, discharge time, and the amount of substance released. The HASP Suite will be available in a next generation CBRN information management system known as EuroSIM […]
With little training, machine-learning algorithms can uncover hidden scientific knowledge
Science Daily July 3, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley) fed 3.3 million abstracts from papers on materials science published in more than 1,000 journals between 1922 and 2018 into an algorithm called Word2vec. The algorithm took each of the approximately 500,000 distinct words in those abstracts and turned each into a 200-dimensional vector, or an array of 200 numbers, and predicted discoveries of new thermoelectric materials years in advance and suggested as-yet unknown materials as candidates for thermoelectric materials. The research suggests that latent knowledge regarding future discoveries is to a […]