Pacific Northwest National Laboratory May 16, 2018 To vitrify the material, researchers mixed the liquid waste with glass-forming materials and pumped it, at a controlled rate, into the melter which sits inside a furnace that keeps the glass forming materials within it at 2100°F. The test produced approximately 20 pounds of glass immobilizing the radioactive and chemical materials within a durable glass waste form. The laboratory-scale demonstration is an important step toward the eventual treatment of millions of gallons of hazardous waste generated during past plutonium production at Hanford… read more.
Researcher warns China’s program ‘riskiest environmental project in history’
Eurekalert May 15, 2018 An international team of researchers (Portugal, Spain Canada, USA – Montana State University, China, Australia, Germany) is urging China to undertake rigorous strategic planning before embarking on its ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, which will ultimately span at least 64 nations across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific region. By mid-century, the Belt and Road could involve 7,000 infrastructure projects and $8 trillion in investment. It could impact over 1,700 critical biodiversity areas and hundreds of threatened species. China claims its Belt and Road will be a blueprint for responsible development… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Self-assembling 3D battery would charge in seconds
Science Daily May 17, 2018 Researchers at Cornell University propose a three-dimensional architecture for batteries, where instead of having the batteries’ anode and cathode on either side of a nonconducting separator, intertwine the components. For their proof of concept architecture, they used gyroidal thin films of carbon as anode featuring thousands of periodic pores coated with electronically insulating but ion-conducting separator. They used sulfur as anode backfilling it with an electronically conducting polymer poly[3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene] (PEDOT). According to the researchers, due to the nanoscale dimensions of the battery’s elements it has the potential for very fast charging… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Self-propelled mindless tiny robots work together to move a corral
Phys.org May 16, 2018 Researchers in France used assemblies of rodlike robots made motile through self-vibration. When confined in circular arenas, dilute assemblies of these rods act as a gas. Increasing the surface fraction leads to a collective behavior near the boundaries. The coexistence between a gas and surface clusters is a direct consequence of inertial effects as shown by their simulations. By using deformable but free to move arenas the surface induced clusters can lead to directed motion, while the topology of the surface states can be controlled by biasing the motility of the particles… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Supersonic waves may help electronics beat the heat
Science Daily May 17, 2018 A team of researchers in the US (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, industry) has demonstrated supersonic channel for the propagation of lattice energy in fresnoite (Ba2TiSi2O8) using neutron scattering. Lattice energy propagates 2.8−4.3 times the speed of sound in the form of phasons, which are caused by an incommensurate modulation in the flexible framework structure of fresnoite. The phasons enhance the thermal conductivity by 20% at room temperature and carry lattice-energy signals at speeds beyond the limits of phonons. The discovery may dramatically improve heat transport in insulators and enable new strategies for heat management in […]
Team tests feasibility of EmDrive and Mach Effect Thrusters
Phys.org May 23, 2018 The idea behind the EmDrive is simple—it is a hollow cone made of copper or other material and placed in a frame. Natural microwaves bouncing around inside the cone are supposed to provide thrust. If feasible, such an engine could push a rocket through space without the need to carry fuel. But as many physicists have pointed out, such an engine would defy the laws of physics as we know them. To test this concept researchers in Germany built an EmDrive similar to the one NASA had looked at. They report that while the EmDrive did […]
E. coli tailored to convert plants into renewable chemicals
Science Daily May 18, 2018 Economically and efficiently converting tough plant matter, called lignin, has long been a stumbling block for wider use of the plant energy source and making it cost competitive. Piecing together mechanisms from other known lignin degraders, a team of researchers in the US (Sandia National Laboratory, Joint BioEnergy Institute, University of Minnesota, UC Berkeley) has engineered E. coli into an efficient and productive bioconversion cell factory… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Detecting the shape of laser pulses
Science Daily May 17, 2018 The existing method to study the shape of laser pulses relies on the generation of attosecond X-ray pulses which requires detection equipment in vacuum chambers. Researchers in South Korea demonstrate that an arbitrary time-dependent laser field can be directly sampled using subcycle tunneling ionization in a gaseous medium or in air. This unique approach enables the complete temporal characterization of the laser field, including its carrier-envelope phase, for a broad spectral range in ambient air, providing a universal tool for the precise measurement of the laser field… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Can a quantum drum vibrate and stand still at the same time?
Science Daily May 18, 2018 The preparation of mechanical quantum superposition states remains outstanding due to weak coupling and thermal decoherence. An international team of researchers (Australia, UK) present a novel optomechanical scheme that significantly relaxes these requirements allowing the preparation of quantum superposition states of motion of a mechanical resonator by exploiting the nonlinearity of multi-photon quantum measurements. The method can generate non-classical mechanical states without the need for strong single-photon coupling, is resilient against optical loss, and offers more favourable scaling against initial mechanical thermal occupation than existing schemes. It offers potential for the development of powerful new […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Innovations for the Week of May 18, 2018
01. The Big Bell Test: Global physics experiment challenges Einstein 02. Cloaking devices — it’s not just ‘Star Trek’ anymore 03. Light could make semiconductor computers a million times faster or even go quantum 04. Learning to See in the Dark 05. Deeper understanding of quantum chaos may be the key to quantum computers 06. Microwaved plastic increases lithium-sulfur battery lifespan 07. Shedding light on a cyclic molecule with a twist 08. The Unhackable Envelope 09. Artificial intelligence needs to be socially responsible, says new policy report 10. Nationwide program launches to train new generation of quantum engineers And others… […]