Device aids stroke, physio patients:
The ‘robotic arm’ is a lightweight equipment that uses flexible, inflatable material to give support as the arm makes basic movements.
Max Tegmark argues that the downplaying is not accidental and threatens to delay, until it’s too late, the strict regulations needed.
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong discovered Dirac spinons in the material YCu3-Br, providing evidence of a quantum spin liquid state and potentially advancing applications in quantum computing and high-temperature superconductivity.
Quasiparticles are fascinating entities that arise from collective behavior within materials and can be treated as a group of particles. Specifically, Dirac spinons are anticipated to exhibit unique characteristics similar to Dirac particles in high-energy physics and Dirac electrons in graphene and quantum moiré materials, such as a linear dispersion relation between energy and momentum. However, spin-½ charge-neutral quasiparticles had not been observed in quantum magnets until this work.
‘“To find Dirac spinons in quantum magnets has been the dream of generations of condensed matter physicists; now that we have seen the evidence of them, one can start to think about the countless potential applications of such highly entangled quantum material. Who knows, maybe one-day people will build quantum computers with it, just as people have been doing in the past half-century with silicon,’” said Professor Meng, HKU physicist and one of the corresponding authors of the paper.
The James Webb Space Telescope may have spotted the birth of some of the earliest galaxies in the universe for the first time ever, new research hints.
While wearable technologies with embedded sensors, such as smartwatches, are widely available, these devices can be uncomfortable, obtrusive and can inhibit the skin’s intrinsic sensations.
“If you want to accurately sense anything on a biological surface like skin or a leaf, the interface between the device and the surface is vital,” said Professor Yan Yan Shery Huang from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who led the research. “We also want bioelectronics that are completely imperceptible to the user, so they don’t in any way interfere with how the user interacts with the world, and we want them to be sustainable and low waste.”
There are multiple methods for making wearable sensors, but these all have drawbacks. Flexible electronics, for example, are normally printed on plastic films that don’t allow gas or moisture to pass through, so it would be like wrapping your skin in plastic film. Other researchers have recently developed flexible electronics that are gas-permeable, like artificial skins, but these still interfere with normal sensation, and rely on energy-and waste-intensive manufacturing techniques.
In the early 2010s, LightSquared, a multibillion-dollar startup promising to revolutionize cellular communications, declared bankruptcy. The company couldn’t figure out how to prevent its signals from interfering with those of GPS systems.
The climate transition is a materials transition. Decades of international diplomacy around oil, gas and pipelines are now giving way to conversations around the supply of critical raw materials. And not before time: to meet the EU’s energy and climate targets, we need to build the right technologies, in the right quantities, at the right speed. The problem is that many of these technologies are built with materials imported from just a handful of countries.
Most of the deepfakes (videos with fake hyper-realistic recreations) generated by artificial intelligence (AI) that spread through social media feature political representatives and artists and are often linked to current news cycles.
A study from Japan published in the International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology reveals a way to optimize the composition of functionally graded materials (FGMs). FGMs are advanced composite materials with a gradual variation in composition and properties across their volume, designed to optimize performance under specific loading conditions.
There are three ways to look for evidence of alien technological civilizations. One is to look out for deliberate attempts by them to communicate their existence, for example, through radio broadcasts. Another is to look for evidence of them visiting the solar system. And a third option is to look for signs of large-scale engineering projects in space.
A team of astronomers have taken the third approach by searching through recent astronomical survey data to identify seven candidates for alien megastructures, known as Dyson spheres, “deserving of further analysis.”
This is a detailed study looking for “oddballs” among stars—objects that might be alien megastructures. However, the authors are careful not to make any overblown claims. The seven objects, all located within 1,000 light-years of Earth, are “M-dwarfs”—a class of stars that are smaller and less bright than the sun.