Science Daily April 18, 2018 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Austria, Cyprus) presents a pilot study with compact and orthogonal sensor arrays to detect the breath- and skin-emitted metabolic tracers acetone, ammonia, isoprene, CO2, and relative humidity, all together serving as sign of life. It consists of three nanostructured metal-oxide sensors (Si-doped WO3, Si-doped MoO3, and Ti-doped ZnO), each specifically tailored at the nanoscale for highly sensitive and selective tracer detection along with commercial CO2 and humidity sensors. When tested on humans enclosed in plethysmography chambers to simulate entrapment, this sensor array rapidly detected sub-ppm acetone, ammonia, and isoprene […]
Singapore bets big on synthetic biology
Nature April 25, 2018 The government is pouring money into a new research programme and is encouraging scientists to make synthetic microorganisms, or redesign natural ones, that can be used to produce food, electronics, medicine and energy. The national synthetic-biology strategy prioritizes three areas: developing synthetic cannabinoids, producing rare fatty acids and developing new strains of microorganisms that can be used to create products for industry… read more.
Structured light and nanomaterials open new ways to tailor light at the nanoscale
Eurekalert April 20, 2018 An international team of researchers (Finland, Germany) has shown that carefully structured light and matching arrangements of metal nanostructures (plasmonic oligomers) can be combined to alter the properties of the generated light at the nanometer scale. They designed and fabricated assemblies of gold nanorods with well-defined dimensions and orientations such that their overall size matches the size of a focused laser beam, i.e., about 1 micron. The results show in general how important it is to tailor the incident optical beam to couple light efficiently into complex nanostructures. Their results will be useful in the design […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of April 20, 2018
01. Face recognition technology that works in the dark 02. For the first time, researchers place an electron in a dual state—neither freed nor bound 03. New device modulates light and amplifies tiny signals 04. Physicists Just Broke a Quantum Record, Taking Entanglement to a Spooky New Level 05. Virtual contact lenses for radar satellites 06. Ultra-powerful batteries made safer, more efficient 07. From insulator to conductor in a flash 08. Novel thermal phases of topological quantum matter in the lab 09. Engineering a plastic-eating enzyme 10. Quantum shift shows itself in coupled light and matter And others… Best of […]
Best of arXiv.org for AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning – February 2018
Inside Big data March 16, 2018 The articles listed in here represent a fraction of all articles appearing on the preprint server. A brief overview of each paper and a link to the paper are provided… read more.
China is deploying metamaterials and railguns using SR-71 like development speed and flexibility
Next Big Future April 14, 2018 China has implemented metamaterials for enemy radar absorption and improved active radar, deployed a railgun to a navy ship before the United States, will have an operational hypersonic missile before the USA, making large investments in artificial intelligence, quantum computer and other quantum technologies. These show that China is competitive with the USA in science and technology for military systems. They are able to build, upgrade and incorporate the new technology with more flexibility and speed than the US… read more.
Demonstration of world record: 159 Tb/s transmission over 1,045 km with 3-mode fiber
Eurekalert April 13, 2018 Researchers in Japan have developed a 3-mode optical fiber, capable of wide-band wavelength multiplexing transmission with standard outer diameter (0.125 mm) that can be cabled with existing equipment. They have demonstrated a transmission experiment over 1045 km with a data-rate of 159 Tb/s. Converting the results to the product of data-rate and distance results in 166 Pb/s×km. This is the world record in a standard outer diameter few-mode optical fiber and the largest data-rate over 1000 km for any kind of standard-diameter fiber… read more.
Engineering a plastic-eating enzyme
Phys.org April 16, 2018 An international team of researchers (UK, USA – DOE NERL, University of South Florida, Brazil) engineered an enzyme that is even better at degrading the plastic than the one that evolved in nature. The enzyme can also degrade polyethylene furandicarboxylate, or PEF, a bio-based substitute for PET plastics that is being hailed as a replacement for glass beer bottles. The researchers are now working on improving the enzyme further to allow it to be used industrially to break down plastics in a fraction of the time. The discovery could result in a recycling solution for millions […]
Face recognition technology that works in the dark
Science Daily April 16, 2018 Researchers at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory used advanced domain adaptation techniques based on deep neural networks to overcome the challenge of cross-spectrum, or heterogeneous, face recognition to process thermal image of a person’s face captured in low-light or nighttime conditions. The fundamental approach is composed of two key parts: a non-linear regression model that maps a given thermal image into a corresponding visible latent representation and an optimization problem that projects the latent projection back into the image space. In face verification experiments using a common open source deep neural network architecture, their approach […]
For the first time, researchers place an electron in a dual state – neither freed nor bound
Phys.org April 16, 2018 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Germany, Spain) controlled the shape of the laser pulse to keep an electron both free and bound to its nucleus and regulate the electronic structure of the atom. They made these unusual states amplify laser light and identified a no-go area, nicknamed “Death Valley,” where they lost all their power over the electron. These results shatter the usual concepts related to the ionisation of matter. The discovery gives the option of creating new atoms dressed by the field of the laser, with new electron energy levels. This will play a […]