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Blog – Page 1041

Fans of perovskite solar cell technology have been promising the moon, and stakeholders are increasingly confident that it will deliver. Among them is Toyota, which has just tapped its Woven Capital branch to put down a 5.5 billion yen stake in the perovskite solar startup EneCoat Technologies. If you’re thinking the solar-powered electric car of the future is coming, that’s a good guess, because EneCoat lists mobility applications among its areas of focus.

New Solar Cells For The Solar Car Of The Future

The idea of pasting solar cells on an electric vehicle seems reasonable enough. The surface area is relatively small, but a typical car can spend many hours outside, baking in the sun. The advantage would be less reliance on EV charging stations, and more use of free energy from the sun.

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Researchers at the Ye Lab at JILA (the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado Boulder) and University of Delaware recently created a highly precise optical lattice clock based on trapped strontium atoms. Their clock, presented in a Physical Review Letters paper, exhibits a total systematic uncertainty of 8.1 × 10–19, which is the lowest uncertainty reported to date.

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Wings aren’t the only things that make birds so successful. If it weren’t for their feet, how would pelicans skimming the tips of waves be able to suddenly land on a pier piling, or owls grab a mouse at 64 kilometers per hour without missing a beat? Robot birds must be able to do the same—something that has been a challenge, until now.

In a new study, researchers analyzed the anatomy and behavior of a tiny American parrot called a parrotlet and peregrine falcons, two species known for their expert footwork. They then designed “SNAG” (Stereotyped Nature-Inspired Aerial Grasper) — a pair of jointed legs attached to feet with jointed talons that automatically close around any object they encounter, be it a dowel, branch, or tennis ball.

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Researchers developed adjustable arrays of waveguides that introduce synthetic modal dimensions, enhancing the management of light within photonic systems. This innovation has potential applications ranging from mode lasing to quantum optics and data transmission.

In the realm of physics, synthetic dimensions (SDs) have emerged as a cutting-edge research frontier, providing a means to investigate phenomena in higher-dimensional spaces beyond our conventional 3D geometry. This concept has gained substantial attention, particularly in topological photonics, due to its potential to reveal complex physics that cannot be accessed within traditional dimensions.

Researchers have proposed various theoretical frameworks to study and implement SDs, aiming at harnessing phenomena like synthetic gauge fields, quantum Hall physics, discrete solitons, and topological phase transitions in four dimensions or higher. Those proposals could lead to new fundamental understandings in physics.

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The project, led by Professor Zhiqin Chu from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and Professor Qiang Wei from Sichuan University, utilized label-free quantum sensing technology to measure cellular force at the nanoscale. This advancement surpasses the limitations of traditional cellular force measurement tools and provides new insights into cellular mechanics, particularly regarding how cellular adhesion forces affect cancer cell spreading.

The research team has developed a new Quantum-Enhanced Diamond Molecular Tension Microscopy (QDMTM) that offers an effective approach for studying cell adhesion forces. Compared to cell force measurement methods that utilize fluorescent probes, QDMTM has the potential to overcome challenges such as photobleaching, limited sensitivity, and ambiguity in data interpretation. Furthermore, QDMTM sensors can be cleaned and reused, enhancing the absolute accuracy of comparing cell adhesion forces across various samples.

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