Eurekalert May 10, 2018 In a policy report “On AI and Robotics: Developing policy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution“, researchers in the UK contend that the development of new Artificial Intelligence technology is often subject to bias, and the resulting systems can be discriminatory, meaning more should be done by policymakers to ensure its development is democratic and socially responsible. In these ‘data-driven’ decision-making processes some social groups may be excluded, either because they lack access to devices necessary to participate or because the selected datasets do not consider the needs, preferences and interests of marginalised and disadvantaged people…read more.
The Big Bell Test: Global physics experiment challenges Einstein
Science Daily May 9, 2018 A Bell test requires spatially distributed entanglement, fast and high-efficiency detection and unpredictable measurement settings. Twelve laboratories on five continents, 13 experiments tested local realism using photons, single atoms, atomic ensembles and superconducting devices. More than 100,000 people around the world playing an online video game generated 97,347,490 binary choices. The observed correlations strongly contradict local realism and other realistic positions in bipartite and tripartite scenarios…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Cloaking devices — it’s not just ‘Star Trek’ anymore
Eurekalert May 10, 2018 Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have designed material to redirect approaching waves around an object without scattering the wave energy, concealing the object from the sound waves. They designed a 3-foot-tall pyramid out of perforated steel plates and placed the structure on the floor of a large underwater research tank. Inside the tank, a source hydrophone produced acoustic waves between 7,000 Hz and 12,000 Hz, several receiver hydrophones around the tank monitoring reflected acoustic waves. The wave reflected from the metamaterial matched the phase of the reflected wave from the surface demonstrating that the material could […]
Deeper understanding of quantum chaos may be the key to quantum computers
Phys.org May 14, 2018 An international team of researchers (UK, Austria, Switzerland) has provided a theoretical explanation for the robust oscillations that kept the atoms in a quantum state for an extended time as predicted by Harvard University and MIT. The team’s work suggests that these oscillations are due to a new physical phenomenon that called ‘quantum many-body scar’. Previous theories involving quantum scars have been formulated for a single particle. The work extends these ideas to systems which contain not one but many particles, which are all entangled with each other in complicated ways. Quantum many-body scars might represent […]
For how long will the USA remain the Nobel Prize leader?
Phys.org May 10, 2018 According to a researcher in Germany since first being awarded in 1901, most Nobel Prizes for science have gone to the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany and France. According to his analysis the Nobel Prize productivity in these countries is primarily determined by two factors: a long-term success rate, and periods during which each country has been able to win an especially large number of Nobel Prizes. The U.S. era is approaching its end, states the report. Since its zenith in the 1970s, U.S. Nobel Prize productivity has already declined by a factor of 2.4. A […]
Learning to See in the Dark
ArXiv May 1, 2018 To support the development of learning-based pipelines for low-light image processing, a team of researchers in the US (University of Illinois, industry) has developed a pipeline for processing low-light images, based on end-to-end training of a fully-convolutional network. The network operates directly on raw sensor data and replaces much of the traditional image processing pipeline. They report promising results on the new dataset, analyze factors that affect performance, and highlight opportunities for future work. The results are shown in the supplementary video …read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Light could make semiconductor computers a million times faster or even go quantum
Phys.org May 10, 2018 An international team of researchers (Germany, USA – University of Michigan) has demonstrated that a single layer of tungsten and selenium in a honeycomb lattice produces a pair of electron states known as pseudospins that can encode the 1 and 0. They prodded electrons into these states with quick pulses of infrared light. The initial pulse has its own spin, known as circular polarization, that sends electrons into one pseudospin state. Pulses of light that don’t have a spin can push the electrons from one pseudospin to the other—and back again. The work opens the door […]
Microwaved plastic increases lithium-sulfur battery lifespan
Science Daily May 9, 2018 Researchers at Purdue University soaked a plastic bag in sulfur-containing solvent and put it in a microwave to boost the temperature needed for transformation into low-density polyethylene promoting the sulfonation and carbonization of the plastic. It induced a higher density of pores for catching polysulfide and made it into porous sulfonated carbon (PSC) to divide the lithium and sulfur halves of a battery. When a PSC layer was utilized as an interlayer in lithium–sulfur batteries, the sulfur cathode delivered an improved capacity of 776 mAh g–1 at 0.5C and an excellent cycle retention of 79% […]
Nanoporous carbon electrodes harvest blue energy
Nanotechweb May 11, 2018 Capacitive mixing and capacitive deionization are currently developed as alternatives to membrane-based processes to harvest blue energy from salinity gradients between river and sea water and to desalinate water using charge-discharge cycles of capacitors. By simulating realistic capacitors based on aqueous electrolytes and nanoporous carbide-derived carbon electrodes, researchers in France accounted for both their complex structure and their polarization by the electrolyte under applied voltage. They have shown that molecular simulations can realistically predict the capacitance of devices that contain nanoporous carbon materials as the electrodes and salty water as the electrolyte…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL […]
Nationwide program launches to train new generation of quantum engineers
Eurekalert May 9, 2018 Funded by a $1.6 million award from the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and Harvard University will head a new nationwide graduate student training program for quantum science and engineering. The program, Quantum Information Science and Engineering Network, will group select graduate students with both an academic adviser and one from a leading technology company or national laboratory. Over the course of four years, the “triplets” will each address a pressing research question for both academia and industry. Approximately 20 students will receive four years of funding under […]