Science Alert February 12, 2019 Robert H. Goddard said “every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realised, it becomes commonplace.” Science has the power to change the world, but it’s not always an easy path to enlightenment. At many junctures throughout history, proponents of revolutionary ideas have come up against criticism and pushback from the establishment. Science is all about experimentation, trial, error, and evidence. It may have taken years, but each of the following five ideas, once considered preposterous or silly, has now been accepted as correct: Continental drift ; Evolution ; Heliocentricity ; […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of February 15, 2019
01. Quantum strangeness gives rise to new electronics 02. Hydrophobic or hydrophilic? Aero-gallium nitride is both 03. Toward Ghost Imaging on a Chip 04. In the fight against human trafficking, industrial engineers can help 05. Autonomous drones that can ‘see’ and fly intelligently 06. Data-transmitting light signal gets power boost from nanosized amplifier 07. Scientists build the smallest optical frequency comb to-date 08. Questions in quantum computing—how to move electrons with light 09. Lightning’s electromagnetic fields may have protective properties 10. Undersea gases could superheat the planet And others… Climate of North American cities will shift hundreds of miles in […]
Wave device could deliver clean energy to thousands of homes
Science Daily February 12, 2019 An international team of researchers (Italy, UK) developed a device, known as a Dielectric Elastomer Generator (DEG), using flexible rubber membranes. It is designed to fit on top of a vertical tube which, when placed in the sea, partially fills with water that rises and falls with wave motion. As waves pass the tube, the water inside pushes trapped air above to inflate and deflate the generator on top of the device. As the membrane inflates, a voltage is generated. This increases as the membrane deflates, and electricity is produced. In a commercial device, this […]
Undersea gases could superheat the planet
Science Daily February 13, 2019 As volcanic activity releases heat, carbon dioxide and methane accumulating underwater and scattered across the seafloor can congeal into liquid and solid hydrates which encapsulate the reservoirs. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Southern California, Australia, Sweden) shows that the natural reservoirs are vulnerable in a warming ocean and provides proof the Earth’s climate has been affected by rapid release of geologic carbon. They focused on the Eastern Equatorial Pacific (EEP) which is a primary conduit through which the ocean releases carbon to the atmosphere. Undersea carbon gas reservoirs have been found […]
Toward Ghost Imaging on a Chip
Optics and Photonics February 12, 2019 To overcome the bulky spatial light modulators and other optical components for ghost imaging, researchers in Japan used a phased array of 128 tiny phase shifters packed onto a chip with a 4×4-mm footprint. In the chip setup, input light from a 1550-nm laser, coupled into the array via a lensed fiber, is split into 128 waveguides and piped into the phase-shifting elements of the array. Each individual phase shifter can be electrically controlled, allowing rapid creation of a series of random speckled patterns at refresh rates faster than the few-frame-per-second. The random pattern […]
Scientists build the smallest optical frequency comb to-date
Eurekalert February 11, 2019 Electrically-driven, photonic chip-based microcombs are inhibited by the required high threshold power and the frequency agility of the laser for soliton initiation. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Russia) has built an integrated soliton microcomb operating at a repetition rate of 88 GHz using a chip-scale indium phosphide laser diode and the silicon nitride microresonator. At only 1 cm in size, the device is the smallest of its kind to-date. A small portion of the laser light is reflected back to the laser due to intrinsic scattering from the microresonator. This direct feedback helps to both […]
Questions in quantum computing—how to move electrons with light
Phys.org February 12, 2019 To study the light-matter interaction an international team of researchers (japan, Ukraine) coupled the cyclotron motion of a collection of electrons on the surface of liquid helium to the microwave field. For the corotating component of the microwave field, the strong coupling is pronouncedly manifested by the normal-mode splitting in the spectrum of coupled field-particle motion. For the counterrotating component of the microwave field, they observed a strong resonance when the microwave frequency is close to both the cyclotron and cavity frequencies. They found that fluctuations in the speed, location or overall charge of individual electrons […]
Quantum strangeness gives rise to new electronics
Eurekalert February 11, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – Arizona State University, Japan, China, UK) explored the charge transport properties through the molecules. They demonstrated that quantum interference can be precisely modulated in two different configurations of the molecule, known as Para and Meta. It turns out that quantum interference effects can cause substantial variation in the conductance properties of molecule-scale devices. By controlling the quantum interference, the group showed that electrical conductance of a single molecule can be fine-tuned over two orders of magnitude. The research shows that the field of molecular electronics is open to a […]
Lightning’s electromagnetic fields may have protective properties
Space Daily February 11, 2019 Researchers in Israel repot that in the course of numerous laboratory experiments, where they induced fields similar to those in the atmosphere, they witnessed significant effects on living heart cells of rats within 30-40 minutes. Extremely weak magnetic fields in the 7.6-8Hz frequency range induced several effects when applied to rat cardiac cells, including reductions in spontaneous contractions, calcium transients and the release of Creatine Kinase. It may explain why all living organisms have electrical activity in the same ELF spectral range. This may have some therapeutic implications down the line, since these ELF fields […]
In the fight against human trafficking, industrial engineers can help
Phys.org February 8, 2019 An estimated 24.9 million people worldwide are victims of human trafficking. Although it is notoriously difficult to track, the industry is thought to be worth $150 billion. Researchers at Northeastern University suggest that the same techniques used to model supply chains or plan media campaigns can be adapted to find ways to disrupt trafficking networks or organize support services for survivors different industrial engineering or operations research techniques can be expanded to address human trafficking issues. They are examining factors contributing to potential trafficking across countries and working with U.S. organizations to model the underground networks […]