Cosmos magazine September 10, 2018 Synthetic biology was recognised as a priority area in the 2016 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap. In 2015 the synthetic biology component market (DNA parts) was worth $US5.5 billion – by 2020, it will approach $US40 billion. Those figures don’t count sales revenue from synthetic biology products. Road-maps and associated development structures have been developed through public agencies in many advanced economies, including the US , UK , EU , China , Singapore and Finland … read more.
Tuning terahertz beams with nanoparticles
Phys.org September 6, 2018 A team of researchers in the US (UT San Antonio, Los Alamos National Laboratory) demonstrated that when an assembly of ferromagnetic core (cobalt ferrite) and a ferroelectric shell (barium titanate) is operated in external magnetic fields, it exhibits a controllable amplitude modulation when the magnetic field is applied antiparallel to the THz wave propagation direction; yet the same assembly displays an additional phase modulation when the magnetic field is applied along the propagation direction. Phase modulation is a result of stress-mediated piezoelectricity of the outer ferroelectric shell. The findings could enable tiny, high frequency transistors, create […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of September 14, 2018
01. Scientists ‘teleport’ a quantum gate 02. Efficient generation of photon pairs from modified carbon nanotubes 03. Multifunctional carbon fibres enable massless energy storage 04. Quantum optical neural networks 05. Tuning terahertz beams with nanoparticles 06. Electromagnetic radiation protection shields developed 07. Army looks into laser-powered drones 08. DARPA Announces $2 Billion Campaign to Develop Next Wave of AI Technologies 09. Robot-bat, ‘Robat,’ uses sound to navigate and map a novel environment 10. The Scientific Prize Network Predicts Who Pushes the Boundaries of Science And others… AI could mean massive reskilling initiatives for the federal workforce China unveils blueprint for […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of September 7, 2018
01. Physicists hack the human visual system to create “ghost images” 02. Cannibalistic materials feed on themselves to grow new nanostructures 03. Battling Online Bots, Trolls and People 04. Building miniature lasers using nanowire 05. CyberWar Map visualizes global threats 06. Breakthrough could see bacteria used as cell factories to produce biofuels 07. Engineered sand zaps storm water pollutants 08. Dual-layer solar cell sets record for efficiently generating power 09. The New Science of Seeing Around Corners 10. Scientists predict superelastic properties in a group of iron-based superconductors And others… Canada has future tech leadership with quantum computers, AI, nanotechnology, […]
Battling Online Bots, Trolls and People
Inside Science August 31, 2018 Researchers at New York University developed a methodology for detecting bots on Twitter using an ensemble of classifiers and apply it to study bot activity within political discussions in the Russian Twittersphere focusing on the interval from February 2014 to December 2015. They found that on most days, the proportion of Tweets produced by bots exceeds 50%. They found that the software platform used for Tweeting is among the best predictors of bots. A recent report by RAND Corporation listed a number of recommendations for defending democracies in the advent of mal icious bots and […]
Breakthrough could see bacteria used as cell factories to produce biofuels
Science Daily August 29, 2018 Bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) have huge potential in biotechnology. However, a key obstacle to their utilisation is the difficulty of targeting new pathways and processes into the BMC in a controllable fashion. Researchers in the UK redesigned a key surface component of the BMC that enables them to not only internalise proteins within the BMC but also display them on the surface of the organelle. This breakthrough could open the possibility of utilising these organelles for a wide variety of applications, including the generation of biofuels, as well as for drug delivery and vaccine development and […]
Building miniature lasers using nanowire
Nanowerk August 29, 2018 An international team of researchers (Norway, Australia, Sweden) has developed single-mode and room-temperature lasing from 890 to 990 nm, utilizing a novel design of single nanowires with GaAsSb-based multiple axial superlattices as a gain medium under optical pumping. The control of lasing wavelength via compositional tuning with excellent room-temperature lasing performance is shown to result from the unique nanowire structure with efficient gain material, which delivers a low lasing threshold, a lasing quality factor as high as 1250, and a high characteristic temperature of ∼129 K. These results present a major advancement for the design and […]
Canada has future tech leadership with quantum computers, AI, nanotechnology, fusion and molten salt
Next Big Future August 29, 2018 In 2018, Canada is ranked tenth in the world in nominal GDP. Despite having an economy that is 11 times smaller than the USA or 7 times smaller than China, Canada has world competitive or world-leading projects in many fields – Nuclear fusion and nuclear-molten salt, Quantum Computers and AI leadership, Artificial intelligence ecosystem, Advanced molten salt and fast reactor fission, Atomic memory, and Molecular nanotechnology… read more.
Cannibalistic materials feed on themselves to grow new nanostructures
Science Daily August 31, 2018 A team of researchers in the US (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, Drexel University) has shown that by thermal exposure and electron-beam irradiation, hexagonal TiC single adlayers form on defunctionalized surfaces of Ti3C2 MXene at temperatures above 500 °C, generating new 2D materials Ti4C3 and Ti5C4, with the substrate being the source material. The work could lead to the development of bottom-up synthesis methods using substrates terminated with similar hexagonal-metal surfaces, for controllable synthesis of larger-scale and higher quality single-layer transition metal carbides… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
China applying naval electromagnetic catapult launch for land based missiles
Next Big Future August 30, 2018 Conventional rockets rely on chemical explosives or fuel, but the new rockets will be launched using additional electromagnetic force. The report suggested that the new electromagnetic rockets could be deployed in Tibet. With possibly hundreds of kilometres range, from there they would be able to strike the heartland of India. China has widely deployed 300mm PHL-03 rockets, modified from the Soviet BM-30. Those have a flight range of around 150km (about 93 miles) … read more.