Optics and Photonics November 16, 2018 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, USA – industry) has demonstrated a quantum key distribution system with a 2.5 GHz repetition rate using a three-state time-bin protocol combined with a one-decoy approach. Taking advantage of superconducting single-photon detectors optimized for quantum key distribution and ultralow-loss fiber, they can distribute secret keys at a maximum distance of 421 km and obtain secret key rates of 6.5 bps over 405 km. The research could ultimately enable cheaper and more practical systems that are a commercially viable alternative to conventional technology…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Quantum artificial life created on the cloud
Phys.org November 16, 2018 An international team of researchers (UK, Spain) has developed a quantum biomimetic protocol that reproduces the characteristic process of Darwinian evolution adapted to the language of quantum algorithms and quantum computing. The research is aimed at designing a set of quantum algorithms based on the imitation of biological processes, which take place in complex organisms, and transfer them to a quantum scale. The researchers anticipate a future in which machine learning, artificial intelligence and artificial life itself will be combined on a quantum scale…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
NSF awards $50M in grants to improve STEM education
NSF News November 15, 2018 The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) program aims to help K-12 students and STEM teachers have new prospects to sharpen their skills and innovate in their classrooms. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2018, DRK-12 issued 59 new awards to institutions in 24 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands totaling more than $50 million. The DRK-12 program funds applied research and development activities that support teachers and students in enhancing their understanding and use of STEM content, practices and skills in the classroom…read more.
MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts
MIT News November 21, 2018 The aircraft, which weighs about 5 pounds and has a 5-meter wingspan, carries an array of thin wires beneath the front-end act as positively charged electrodes, while similarly arranged thicker wires beneath the back end serve as negative electrodes. The fuselage of the plane holds a stack of lithium-polymer batteries supplying electricity at 40,000 volts to positively charge the wires via a lightweight power converter. Once the wires are energized, they act to attract and strip away negatively charged electrons from the surrounding air molecules. The air molecules that are left behind are newly ionized […]
Magnetic topological insulator makes its own magnetic field
Nanowerk November 19, 2018 In experiments, a team of researchers in the US (Rice University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NIST) found magnons in CrI3 samples. The structure of the magnon, and the movement of the magnetic wave was quite similar to how electron waves move around graphene. Both graphene and CrI3 contain Dirac points where electrons move just like photons, with zero effective mass, and if they move along the topological edges, there will be no resistance. This is important for dissipationless spintronic applications…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
The land that failed to fail: How China caught up with the West
The Star November 21, 2018 China’s communist leaders have defied expectations again and again. They embraced capitalism even as they continued to call themselves Marxists. They used repression to maintain power but without stifling entrepreneurship or innovation. And they presided over 40 years of uninterrupted growth, often with unorthodox policies the textbooks said would fail. China is not the only country that has squared the demands of authoritarian rule with the needs of free markets. But it has done so for longer, at greater scale and with more convincing results than any other…read more.
Infinite-dimensional symmetry opens up possibility of a new physics—and new particles
Phys.org November 16, 2018 For a half-century, physicists have been trying to construct a theory that unites all four fundamental forces of nature, describes the known elementary particles and predicts the existence of new ones. An international team of researchers (Germany, Poland) posit that the symmetries that govern the world of elementary particles at the most elementary level could be radically different from what has so far been thought and that it unifies all the forces of nature in a way that is consistent with existing observations and anticipates the existence of new particles with unusual properties that may even […]
Graphene boosts GHz signals into terahertz territory
Nanowerk November 19, 2018 An international team of researchers (Germany, the Netherlands, Spain) has generated terahertz harmonics up to the seventh order in single-layer graphene at room temperature and under ambient conditions, driven by terahertz fields of only tens of kilovolts per centimetre, and with field conversion efficiencies in excess of 10−3, 10−4 and 10−5 for the third, fifth and seventh terahertz harmonics, respectively. The results provide a direct pathway to highly efficient terahertz frequency synthesis using the present generation of graphene electronics, which operate at much lower fundamental frequencies of only a few hundreds of gigahertz…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Getting rid of sweat at the push of a button
Phys.org November 19, 2018 Using HYDRO_BOT technology developed by researchers in Switzerland, a company has developed a ski jacket that removes sweat from the inner clothing and transports it out of the jacket eliminating the moisture trapped in the inner clothing. This ensures the body spend minimal energy to stay warm. The jacket is easy to switch on and off using the integrated control unit or the iPhone & Android app. HYDRO_BOT technology consists of three layers: a membrane of billions of pores per square meter surrounded by an electrically conductive fabric. By means of a small electrical impulse, the […]
Five nanosecond decision-making
Eurekalert November 15, 2018 Matching hardware with software can require a cluster of specialists. A team of researchers in the US (Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Michigan) developed a domain-focused advanced software-reconfigurable heterogeneous System on a Chip (DASH-SoC). They are developing an intelligent scheduler that maps out which physical areas of the chip complete which tasks and when. It learns how to schedule the tasks for specialized processors and control the power needed to process them. The research provides for a powerful, energy-efficient and easy-to-use SoCs that can be used in a wide range of applications…read more.