Nanowerk August 12, 2020 By embedding micron-scale diamond particles at an annular interface within the cross section of a silicate glass fiber, researchers in Australia demonstrated a robust fiber material capable of sensing magnetic fields. NV centers in the diamond microcrystals are well preserved throughout the fiber drawing process. The hybrid fiber presents a low propagation loss of ∼4.0 dB/m in the NV emission spectral window, permitting remote monitoring of the optically detected magnetic resonance signals. They demonstrated NV-spin magnetic resonance readout through 50 cm of fiber. The study paves a way for the scalable fabrication of fiber-based diamond sensors […]
Tag Archives: Sensors
‘Hot and messy’ entanglement of 15 trillion atoms
Nanowerk May 15, 2020 Quantum technologies often employ strong cooling and isolation to protect entangled entities from decoherence by random interactions. Researchers in Spain heated a collection of atoms to 450 Kelvin. The individual atoms collided with each other every few microseconds, and each collision set their electrons spinning in random directions. They observed an enormous number of entangled atoms – about 100 times more than ever before observed. The entanglement is non-local and the entanglement remains for about 1 millisecond, which means that 1000 times per second a new batch of 15 trillion atoms is being entangled. This clearly […]
Quantum entanglement offers unprecedented precision for GPS, imaging and beyond
Science Daily April 20, 2020 To date, almost all quantum-metrology demonstrations are restricted to improving the measurement performance at a single sensor. A team of researchers in the US (University of Arizona, industry) has demonstrated an entangled sensor network, empowered by continuous-variable (CV) multipartite entanglement, which is composed of three sensor nodes each equipped with an electro-optic transducer for the detection of radio-frequency (RF) signals. By properly tailoring the CV multipartite entangled states, the network can be reconfigured to maximize the quantum advantage in distributed RF sensing problems such as measuring the angle of arrival of an RF field. The […]
Experimental fingerprint test can distinguish between those who have taken or handled cocaine
Science Daily February 6, 2020 An international team of researchers (UK, Ireland) has designed a test that can tell whether an individual has consumed the class A drug, or simply handled it. They took fingerprints from people who had testified to ingesting cocaine during the previous 24 hours. Fingerprints were collected again after the participants washed their hands thoroughly with soap and water. This same process was used to collect samples from a pool of non- drug users who had touched street cocaine. By cross-referencing the information from the non-users who had touched cocaine with that of volunteers who testified […]
Army wants tech that can identify people through walls
Fedscoop January 30, 2020 A new request for information is soliciting white papers on portable technology that can detect, identify, and monitor persons, animals, and materials behind multi-leveled obstruction(s) from a long standoff range, a technology that works both in the city and that can be deployed in dense foliage. The ideal system should be able to read biometric data, perform knowledge management functions and use machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve its science-fiction-like vision powers. Army is looking for information about technology that is ready to be used. Whether any such exists is uncertain. While wall-penetrating technology has […]
The Army working on a battlefield AI ‘teammate’ for soldiers
FedScoop February 3, 2020 To provide a more detailed picture of the battlefield for a solider and get them the most critical information researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are working with the Army to develop a system called the Aided Threat Recognition from Mobile Cooperative and Autonomous Sensors (ATR-MCAS), that will scan and classify imagery from sensors that can be mounted on vehicles, aerial coverage and autonomous vehicles to help soldiers recognize incoming threats. Currently the algorithms are being trained on test data. Soldiers will be able to the feed to show desired area of interest or livestream the raw […]
Suspending Threats in Mid-Air: Army Laser Beam Capable of Detecting Chem-Bio Warfare Agents
Global Biodefense January 14, 2020 An international team of researchers (US – US Army, Australia) used a single laser beam to develop an advanced analytical technique that can detect and characterize any type of airborne particles, naturally occurring (dust, smoke, pollen, ash, etc.) or those harmful and deliberately disseminated such as chemical and biological warfare agents. They used two small parabolic mirrors to shape up a hollow laser beam and create highly efficient trapping forces — instead of using expensive microscope objectives and complex optical setup. The approach provides contactless particle manipulation and allows a rapid and precise physio-chemical characterization. […]
Lasers learn to accurately spot space junk
Phys.org December 24, 2019 Scientists have developed space junk identification systems, but it has proven tricky to pinpoint the swift, small specks of space litter. Researchers in China trained a back propagation neural network to recognize space debris using two correcting algorithms. The Genetic Algorithm and Levenberg-Marquardt optimized the neural network’s thresholds for recognition of space debris, ensuring the network wasn’t too sensitive and could be trained on localized areas of space. The team demonstrated the improved accuracy by testing against three traditional methods. The observation data of 95 stars was used to solve the algorithm coefficients from each method, […]
Novel material switches between electrically conducting and insulating states
Nanowerk December 4, 2019 Researchers at Northwestern University designed the picoscale crystalline structure of molybdenum oxynitride (MoON), to host the phase transition. The researchers found the metal-insulator transition (MIT) occurred near 600 degrees Celsius, revealing its potential for applications in high-temperature sensors and power electronics. They noted multiple design parameters influenced MoON’s phase transition. The inclusion of multiple anions in the material activated the phase transition due to specific electron configurations related to the spatial orientation of electronic orbitals. The findings offer insight into how subtle changes on the nanoscale can be used to control macroscopic behavior, like conductivity, in […]
Scientists develop electrochemical platform for cell-free synthetic biology
Eurekalert November 25, 2019 To date, gene-circuit-based sensors have primarily used optical proteins as reporter outputs, which has limited the potential to measure multiple distinct signals. An international team of researchers (Canada, USA – Arizona State University) has engineered a scalable system of reporter enzymes that cleave specific DNA sequences in solution, which results in an electrochemical signal when these newly liberated strands are captured at the surface of a nanostructured microelectrode. They describe the development of this interface and show its utility using a ligand-inducible gene circuit and toehold switch-based sensors by demonstrating the detection of multiple antibiotic resistance […]