Individual atoms trapped by optical ‘tweezers’ are emerging as a promising computational platform.
Category: computing – Page 348
A 3D mesh is a three-dimensional object representation made of different vertices and polygons. These representations can be very useful for numerous technological applications, including computer vision, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) systems.
Researchers at Florida State University and Rutgers University have recently developed Wi-Mesh, a system that can create reliable 3D human meshes, representations of humans that can then be used by different computational models and applications. Their system was presented at the Twentieth ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys ‘22), a conference focusing on computer science research.
“Our research group specializes in cutting-edge wi-fi sensing research,” Professor Jie Yang at Florida State University, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. “In previous work, we have developed systems that use wi-fi devices to sense a range of human activities and objects, including large-scale human body movements, small-scale finger movements, sleep monitoring, and daily objects. Our E-eyes and WiFinger systems were among the first to use wi-fi sensing to classify various types of daily activities and finger gestures, with a focus on predefined activities using a trained model.”
Arizona State University has officially begun a new chapter in X-ray science with a newly commissioned, first-of-its-kind instrument that will help scientists see deeper into matter and living things. The device, called the compact X-ray light source (CXLS), marked a major milestone in its operations as ASU scientists generated its first X-rays on the night of Feb. 2.
“This marks the beginning of a new era of science with compact accelerator-based X‑ray sources,” said Robert Kaindl, who directs ASU’s Compact X-ray Free Electron Laser (CXFEL) Labs at the Biodesign Institute and is a professor in the Department of Physics. “The CXLS provides hard X-ray pulses with high flux, stability and ultrashort durations, in a very compact footprint. This way, matter can be resolved at its fundamental scales in space and time, enabling new discoveries across many fields — from next-generation materials for computing and information science, to renewable energy, biomolecular dynamics, drug discovery and human health.”
Building the compact X-ray light source is the first phase of a larger CXFEL project, which aims to build two instruments including a coherent X-ray laser. As the first-stage instrument, the ASU CXLS generates a high-flux beam of hard X‑rays, with wavelengths short enough to resolve the atomic structure of complex molecules. Moreover, its output is pulsed at extremely short durations of a few hundred femtoseconds — well below a millionth of one millionth of a second — and thus short enough to directly track the motions of atoms.
The emerging quantum technology industry offers a dynamic career pathway for creative and adaptable physical scientists, as Stuart Woods of Oxford Instruments NanoScience explains.
As quantum technology companies shift gears to translate their applied research endeavours into commercial opportunities – at scale – they’re going to need ready access to a skilled and diverse quantum workforce of “all the talents”. A case study in this regard is Oxford Instruments NanoScience, a division of parent group Oxford Instruments, the long-established UK provider of specialist technologies and services to research and industry.
The NanoScience business unit, for its part, designs and manufactures research tools to support the development, scale-up and commercialization of next-generation quantum technologies. Think cryogenic systems (operating at temperatures as low as 5 mK) and high-performance magnets that enable researchers to harness the exotic properties of quantum mechanics – entanglement, tunnelling, superposition and the like – to yield practical applications in quantum computing, quantum communications, quantum metrology and quantum imaging.
Samsung has earned a strong reputation among PC enthusiasts when it comes to solid-state storage. Its Pro series of SSDs are often among reviewers’ top recommendations for users seeking high-speed storage for large work files, apps, and boot drives. Over the past year, though, reliability concerns around Samsung’s 980 Pro and most recent 990 Pro have marred this reputation. It has become so notable that custom PC-maker Puget Systems, a top proponent of Samsung SSDs since the SATA days, has pulled 1TB and 2TB Samsung drives from its lineup.
For Puget, problems with Samsung SSDs, which the 22-year-old boutique PC shop sells in its custom-built systems, started with the 980 Pro that came out in September 2020. On January 31, Puget wrote a blog noting it received a surprising number of reports of failing Samsung drives, specifically with the 2TB version of the 980 Pro.
The most common failure mode that we have found is that the drives are suddenly locked into read-only mode, rendering the drive unusable. If the failed drive is the primary drive, then the system becomes unbootable until the drive is replaced and the OS is reinstalled, Chris Newhart, a Tier 2 repair technician at Puget, wrote.
Spintronics is a technology that utilizes the spin of electrons — in addition to their charge — in order to store and process information. Unlike traditional electronics, which rely on the movement of electrons to perform their functions, spintronics uses the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons to achieve the same results. Spintronics offers the potential to address some limitations of traditional, charge-based computing and it has the potential for developing new types of devices such as spin-based transistors and logic gates.
In the year 1,808, French chemists Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thenard, and independently, English chemist Humphry Davy, discovered the fifth element of the periodic table—boron. In crystalline form, boron primarily possesses three polymorphs, i.e., three distinct unit cell configurations: α-rhombohedral, β-rhombohedral, and β-tetragonal, among 16 possible bulk allotropes.
The unique properties of this element have resulted in its use in numerous applications, including chemistry, materials science, life sciences, energy research and electronics. Moreover, based on studies conducted over the past decade, boron has significant potential for use in pharmaceutical drug design as it plays an essential role in bone growth and maintenance, wound healing, prevention of vitamin-D deficiency and other processes.
In the periodic table of elements, boron lies to the left of carbon, which causes boron to have similar valence orbitals but a shorter covalent radius. In contrast to carbon, which favors a 2D (two-dimensional) layered structure (aka graphite) in its bulk form, the bulk allotropes of boron are composed of B12 icosahedral cages. As a result, it was challenging to experimentally realize a 2D atomic network of boron, also known as borophene, until 2015.
Only by knowing the average number of friends each person has, scientists at Complexity Science Hub (CSH) were able to predict the group sizes of people in a computer game. For this purpose, they modeled the formation of social groups on an example from physics, namely the self-organization of particles with spin.
Sociologists have focused on how social groups are forming and the mechanism behind it for a long time. The urge to avoid stress, as well as homophily—the tendency of people to join groups with others who share similar features, traits, or opinions—have been observed in many different contexts.
“Although multiple models have been studied, little is known about how homophily and stress avoidance affect the formation of human groups, and in particular the size distribution of them—whether there are many small groups or few large ones, for example,” explains Jan Korbel from CSH and first author of the study. By using two contemporary fields from physics, called self-assembly and spin glasses, scientists now shed new light on social group formation.
Trapped ions have previously only been entangled in one and the same laboratory. Now, teams led by Tracy Northup and Ben Lanyon from the University of Innsbruck have entangled two ions over a distance of 230 meters.
The nodes of this network were housed in two labs at the Campus Technik to the west of Innsbruck, Austria. The experiment shows that trapped ions are a promising platform for future quantum networks that span cities and eventually continents.
Trapped ions are one of the leading systems to build quantum computers and other quantum technologies. To link multiple such quantum systems, interfaces are needed through which the quantum information can be transmitted.
White LEDs’ reign as the top light source may soon come to an end with the advent of a new alternative that offers superior directionality.
A photonic crystal or nanoantenna, a 2D structure with periodic arrangement of nano-sized particles, is being developed as a cutting-edge optical control technology. Upon exposure to light, combining a nanoantenna with a phosphor plate produces a harmonious mix of blue and yellow light.
White LEDs have already been improved upon in the form of white laser diodes, or LDs, which consist of yellow phosphors and blue LDs. While the blue LDs are highly directional, the yellow phosphors radiate in all directions, resulting in an undesired mixing of colors.