Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of May 3, 2019

01. Researchers transmit data via a semiconductor laser, opening the door to ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi 02. Ice-proof coating for big structures relies on a ‘beautiful demonstration of mechanics’ 03. Battery research: New breakthroughs in research on super-batteries 04. Can AI and autonomous systems detect hostile intent? 05. New technique uses power anomalies to ID malware in embedded systems 06. Squishy robots can drop from a helicopter and land safely 07. New holographic technique opens the way for quantum computation 08. Using DNA templates to harness the sun’s energy 09. The Fundamentals Behind Hacking: MIT Technology Review’s Martin Giles 10. Self-powered wearable […]

Mystery of negative capacitance in perovskite solar cells solved

Eurekalert  April 5, 2019 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Iran) found that the large perovskite capacitances are not classical capacitances in the sense of charge storage, but just appear as capacitances because of the cells’ slow response time. They found that the origin of the apparent capacitance is a slow modification of the current passing the contact of the solar cells, which is regulated by a slow accumulation of mobile ionic charge. A slowly increasing current appears like a negative capacitance in the impedance spectra. The work sheds light on the interaction between the photovoltaic effect in these devices […]

How to ice-proof the next generation of aircraft

Science Daily  April 1, 2019 To prevent ice formation on aircraft during flight, current systems utilize the heat generated by burning fuel, but these high-temperature, fuel-dependent systems cannot be used on the proposed all-electric, temperature-sensitive materials of next-generation aircraft. An international team of researchers (China, USA – Iowa State University) has shown that equipment important in controlling landing and takeoff can double-up to control icing based on plasma acutators. When high voltage is applied across electrodes most is converted into heat and the rest is converted into an induced flow or ionic wind over the actuator, so the plasma actuator […]

Signals from distant lightning could help secure electric substations

Science Daily  February 26, 2019 To monitor the power grid substation activities researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a radio frequency-based distributed intrusion detection system (RFDIDS) that utilizes a radio receiver as a diagnostic tool to provide air-gapped, independent, and verifiable information about the radio emissions from substation components, particularly at low frequencies. The simulation and experimental results verified that four types of diagnostic information can be extracted from radio emissions of power system substation circuits: i) harmonic content of the circuit current, ii) fundamental frequency of the circuit current, iii) impulsive signals from rapid circuit current […]

New Cryptography Must Be Developed and Deployed Now, Even Though a Quantum Computer That Could Compromise Today’s Cryptography Is Likely at Least a Decade Away, Says New Report

National Academies  December 4, 2018 According to a NAS [Open Access] report  it is still too early to be able to predict the time horizon for a practical quantum computer. The current research on quantum computing has clear implications for national security. Any entity that has a large-scale quantum computer could break today’s cryptography to read intercepted communications or stored data. Continued support from the U.S. to this field is imperative if the country wants to maintain its leadership position…read more.

Hybrid qubits solve key hurdle to quantum computing

Phys.org  December 28, 2018 Single-spin qubits in semiconductor quantum dots hold promise for universal quantum computation. However, initialization and readout of a qubit is orders of magnitude slower than control. An international team of researchers (Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland) combined slow initializing single-spin qubit called a Loss-DiVincenzo qubit, which has very high control fidelity and a singlet-triplet qubit, which has quick initialization and read out, but quickly becomes decoherent. For the study they combined the two types with a type of quantum gate known as a controlled phase gate, which allowed spin states to be entangled between the qubits in […]

New attack could make website security captchas obsolete

Science Daily  December 5, 2018 Using Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) an international team of researchers (China, UK) has created a captcha solver. A captcha synthesizer automatically generates synthetic captchas to learn a base solver, and then fine-tuning the base solver on a small set of real captchas using transfer learning. They evaluated their approach by applying it to 33 captcha schemes, including those used by popular websites. It outperformed state-of-the-art text-captcha solvers with higher accuracy. Their approach can solve a captcha within 0.05 second using a desktop GPU bypassing the advanced security features employed by most modern text captcha schemes…read […]

High-temperature electronics? That’s hot

Science Daily  December 7, 2018 Commercial electronics operate between minus 40 and 85 degrees Celsius. A team of researchers in the US (Purdue University, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford University) created a material by blending a semiconductor, which can conduct electricity, and a conventional insulating polymer. They had to find the right ratio so that they merge nicely, and one doesn’t dominate the other. This results in an organized, interpenetrating network that allows the electrical charge to flow evenly throughout while holding its shape in extreme temperatures. The performance of these new polymer blend remained stable across a wide temperature range, […]

Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of August 31, 2018

01. Enzyme can convert any blood into universally donated type O 02. Nanobot pumps destroy nerve agents 03. Quantum bugs, meet your new swatter 04. D-Wave demonstrates first large-scale quantum simulation of topological state of matter 05. Future information technologies: Nanoscale heat transport under the microscope 06. These lithium-ion batteries can’t catch fire because they harden on impact 07. Research team finds evidence of matter-matter coupling 08. Chemists make breakthrough on road to creating a rechargeable lithium-oxygen battery 09. Breaking down band structures 10. Bowtie-funnel combo best for conducting light; team found answer in simple equation And others… Big data and technology […]

Top 10 Science and Technology Innovations for the Week of August 10, 2018

01. Memristor based equation solver could cut energy used by 100 times for longer lasting smartphones 02. Quantum dot floating gates improve light-erasable memories 03. Physicists Tied Laser Beams into Knots 04. Switchable plasmonic routers controlled by external magnetic fields by using magneto-plasmonic waveguides 05. The ultimate combination: A 3D-printed optical deep learning network 06. Nanotube ‘rebar’ makes graphene twice as tough 07. Algorithms Help Power Grids Survive GPS Spoofs 08. Artificial intelligence can predict your personality … simply by tracking your eyes 09. The Defense Department has produced the first tools for catching deepfakes 10. Analysis Chronicles Changes in […]