Phys.org February 13, 2024 Researchers in Hong Kong assessed the performance of atmospheric rivers (ARs) in Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) models on both seasonal and interannual timescales within the historical period and investigated the future projection of ARs under different emission scenarios on a global scale. The multi-model mean results obtained using the PanLu detection algorithm consistently exhibited agreement with the observational AR climatology and captured interannual fluctuations as well as the relationships with large-scale drivers. The future projections revealed increased AR frequency, intensity, duration, and spatial extent and decreased landfall intervals with regional variations […]
Tag Archives: S&T Hong Kong
A positive spin-electrospinning and electrospraying synergism for the nanomaterials industry
Nanowerk February 1, 2024 Researchers in Hong Kong reviewed the development history of E-spinning and E-spraying technologies and showed how they move from unity to fragmentation. According to the different forms of cooperation, EES is mainly divided into three categories: E-spinning before E-spraying, alternate E-spinning/E-spraying, and simultaneous E-spinning/E-spraying. They summarized the development, application, and challenges of the EES in four different main areas, namely natural environment, energy utilization, human health, and functional membrane regulation. The challenges, bottlenecks, and development prospects of EES technology in all fields were highlighted, summarized, and discussed from a future perspective… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Scientists develop energy-saving, tunable meta-devices for high-precision, secure 6G communications
Nanowerk March 16, 2023 Researchers in Hong Kong has invented a synthetic phase design of rotary doublet Airy beam and triplet Gaussian beam varifocal meta-devices to fully control the terahertz beam’s propagation direction and coverage area. The focusing spot can be delivered to arbitrary positions in a two-dimensional plane or a three-dimensional space. The highly concentrated signal can be delivered to a specific position, and the transmission direction can be adjusted freely to enable secure, flexible, and high-directivity 6G communication systems. According to the researchers this technology avoids the high costs associated with extensive use of active components. 6G communication […]
Ultra-lightweight multifunctional space skin created to withstand extreme conditions in space
Nanowerk March 22, 2023 Current tissue engineering approaches combine different scaffold materials with living cells to provide biological substitutes that can repair and eventually improve tissue functions. Both natural and synthetic materials have been fabricated for transplantation of stem cells and their specific differentiation into muscles, bones, and cartilages. One of the key objectives for bone regeneration therapy to be successful is to direct stem cells’ proliferation and to accelerate their differentiation in a controlled manner using growth factors and osteogenic inducers. An international team of researchers (Singapore, South Korea) has shown that graphene provides a promising biocompatible scaffold that […]
Researchers develop ultra-strong aerogels with materials used in bullet-proof vests
Science Daily October 3, 2022 Researchers in Hong Kong have developed new type of polymer aerogel material involving self-assembled 3D networks of aramid nanofiber composites with high nodal connectivity and strong crosslinking between fibrils. Theoretical simulations of 3D networks revealed that these features at fibrillar joints may lead to an enhancement of macroscopic mechanical properties by orders of magnitude even with a constant level of solid content. They verified that polymeric aerogels achieved both high specific tensile modulus and fracture energy which are advantageous for diverse structural applications. According to the researchers the fabrication process is simple, the material can […]
Direct printing of nanodiamonds at the quantum level
Nanowerk May 4, 2022 The quantum defects in nanodiamonds, such as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers, are emerging as promising candidates for nanoscale sensing and imaging, and the controlled placement with respect to target locations is vital to their practical applications. Researchers in Hong Kong have developed on-demand electrohydrodynamic printing of nanodiamonds containing NV centers with high precision control over quantity and position. After thorough characterizations of the printing conditions, they showed that the number of printed nanodiamonds can be controlled at will, attaining the single-particle level precision. This printing approach enables positioning NV center arrays with a controlled number directly on […]
Engineers develop the first anti-COVID-19 stainless steel
Phys.org December 9, 2021 SARS-CoV-2 exhibits strong stability on conventional stainless steel (SS) surface, with infectious virus detected even after two days. Researchers in Hong Kong investigated the stabilities of SARS-CoV-2, H1N1 influenza A virus (H1N1), and Escherichia coli (E.coli) on the surfaces of Cu-contained (SS), pure Cu, Ag-contained SS, and pure Ag. They found that pure Ag and Ag-contained SS surfaces do not display apparent inhibitory effects on SARS-CoV-2 and H1N1. In comparison, both pure Cu and Cu-contained SS with a high Cu content exhibit significant antiviral properties. Anti-pathogen SS with 20 wt% Cu can distinctly reduce 99.75% and […]
Physicists discover special transverse sound wave
Phys.org December 7, 2021 According to the researchers in Hong Kong the absence of shear force in the air, or fluids, makes sound waves longitudinal. Synthetic shear force may arise if the air is discretized into “meta-atoms,” whose collective motion can give rise to a transverse sound on the macroscopic scale. To implement this idea they designed micropolar metamaterial like a complex network of resonators. Air was confined inside the mutually connected resonators, forming the meta-atoms. Through theoretical calculations they showed that the collective motion of meta-atoms produces the shear force, which gives rise to the transverse sound with spin-orbit […]
Engineering team develops novel miniaturized organic semiconductor
Science Daily October 8, 2020 Organic Field Effect Transistors (OFETs) have the advantage of being flexible when compared with their inorganic counterparts like silicon. The main limitation on enhanced performance and mass production of OFETs lies in the difficulty in miniaturizing them. Products currently using OFETs in the market are still in their primitive forms, in terms of product flexibility and durability. The major problem now confronting scientists in reducing the size of OFETs is that the performance of the transistor will drop significantly with a reduction in size, partly due to the problem of contact resistance. Researchers in Hong […]
AI at the Speed of Light
IEEE Spectrum August 29, 2019 Researchers in Hong Kong have demonstrated a fully functioning all-optical neural network (AONN) in which linear operations are programmed by spatial light modulators and Fourier lenses, while nonlinear optical activation functions are realized in laser-cooled atoms with electromagnetically induced transparency. Because all errors from different optical neurons are independent, it is possible to scale up the size of the AONN. The hardware system is reconfigurable for different applications without the need to modify the physical structure. The AONN scheme can be used to construct various ANN architectures with intrinsic optical parallel computation…read more. Open Access […]