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Jan 26, 2024

See the humanoid robots that will build new BMWs

Posted by in categories: employment, robotics/AI

This can free humans from taking on those tedious — and potentially dangerous — jobs, but it also means manufacturers need to build or buy a new robot every time they find a new task they want to automate.

General purpose robots — ones that can do many tasks — would be far more useful, but developing a bot with anywhere near the versatility of a human worker has thus far proven out of reach.

Continue reading “See the humanoid robots that will build new BMWs” »

Jan 26, 2024

JWST turns up even more heavier-than-expected black holes

Posted by in category: cosmology

Astronomers are using it to peer back to near “cosmic dawn,” a time when the first stars and galaxies were forming. And JWST is showing that these early galaxies are different than astronomers had anticipated, in a plethora of ways: Some are settling into shapes we didn’t think were possible so early after the Big Bang. Others are unexpectedly large.

And recent research shows that even the black holes in the early universe were odd — they’re way bigger than they should be, relative to the mass of the galaxy around them. Unexpectedly, JWST is spotting mammoth black holes anchoring relatively small galaxies.

Jan 26, 2024

New method flips the script on topological physics

Posted by in categories: mathematics, physics

The branch of mathematics known as topology has become a cornerstone of modern physics thanks to the remarkable—and above all reliable—properties it can impart to a material or system. Unfortunately, identifying topological systems, or even designing new ones, is generally a tedious process that requires exactly matching the physical system to a mathematical model.

Researchers at the University of Amsterdam and the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon have demonstrated a model-free method for identifying topology, enabling the discovery of new topological materials using a purely experimental approach. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Topology encompasses the properties of a system that cannot be changed by any “smooth deformation.” As you might be able to tell from this rather formal and abstract description, topology began its life as a branch of mathematics. However, over the last few decades physicists have demonstrated that the mathematics underlying topology can have very real consequences. Topological effects can be found in a wide range of physical systems, from individual electrons to large-scale .

Jan 26, 2024

New simulation tool advances molecular modeling of biomolecular condensates

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, neuroscience

A University of Massachusetts Amherst team has made a major advance toward modeling and understanding how intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) undergo spontaneous phase separation, an important mechanism of subcellular organization that underlies numerous biological functions and human diseases.

IDPs play crucial roles in cancer, neurodegenerative disorders and infectious diseases. They make up about one-third of proteins that human bodies produce, and two-thirds of cancer-associated proteins contain large, disordered segments or domains. Identifying the hidden features crucial to the functioning and self-assembly of IDPs will help researchers understand what goes awry with these features when diseases occur.

In a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, senior author Jianhan Chen, professor of chemistry, describes a novel way to simulate separations mediated by IDPs, an important process that has been difficult to study and describe.

Jan 26, 2024

Astrophysicist ‘Fixes’ General Relativity by Throwing Out a Major Law

Posted by in categories: law, quantum physics

Albert Einstein was one smart cookie; there’s no doubt about it. But even he knew his general theory of relativity – the 21st century’s answer to Newton’s universal theory of gravity – wasn’t perfect.

Like the second-hand car you bought using your first paycheck, it does the job for day-to-day errands. Push it too hard up a steep hill or park it near a quantum strip mall, and that engine shudders to a standstill.

Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia astrophysics grad student Hamidreza Fazlollahi’s solution is to dive under the hood and see which components aren’t as essential as they seem.

Jan 26, 2024

Startling Signs of Gravity’s Laws Breaking Down Detected in Twin Stars

Posted by in categories: cosmology, quantum physics

In 1,859, French astronomer and mathematician Urbain Le Verrier detected something strange: Mercury deviated in its dance around the Sun, defying the orderly precession predicted by Newtonian physics.

This odd anomaly couldn’t be explained by unknown planets tugging at Mercury’s orbit; only by physicist Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity creates curves in the fabric of space-time.

Einstein’s general theory has held strong in the century since, but there are a few things about the Universe his mind-bending model can’t explain. It breaks down in the centers of black holes and at the dawn of the Universe, for example, and doesn’t fit very easily with quantum mechanics, leading some physicists to ponder alternative takes on how gravity works.

Jan 26, 2024

Combining two types of molecular boron nitride could create hybrid material for faster, more powerful electronics

Posted by in categories: chemistry, particle physics

In chemistry, structure is everything. Compounds with the same chemical formula can have different properties depending on the arrangement of the molecules they’re made of. And compounds with a different chemical formula but a similar molecular arrangement can have similar properties.

Graphene and a form of called hexagonal boron nitride fall into the latter group. Graphene is made up of . Boron nitride, BN, is composed of boron and nitrogen atoms. While their chemical formulas differ, they have a similar structure —so similar that many chemists call hexagonal boron nitride “white graphene.”

Carbon-based graphene has lots of useful properties. It’s thin but strong, and it conducts heat and electricity very well, making it ideal for use in electronics.

Jan 26, 2024

Researchers grow a twisted multilayer crystal structure for next-gen materials

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics, solar power, sustainability

Researchers with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University and the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have grown a twisted multilayer crystal structure for the first time and measured the structure’s key properties. The twisted structure could help researchers develop next-generation materials for solar cells, quantum computers, lasers and other devices.

“This structure is something that we have not seen before—it was a huge surprise to me,” said Yi Cui, a professor at Stanford and SLAC and co-author of a paper published in Science describing the work. “A new quantum electronic property could appear within this three-layer twisted structure in future experiments.”

Jan 26, 2024

Discovery of high order skyrmions and antiskyrmions

Posted by in categories: climatology, particle physics

Researchers at the University of Augsburg and the University of Vienna have discovered co-existing magnetic skyrmions and antiskyrmions of arbitrary topological charge at room temperature in magnetic Co/Ni multilayer thin films. Their findings have been published in Nature Physics and open up the possibility for a new paradigm in skyrmionics research.

The discovery of novel spin objects with arbitrary topological charge promises to contribute to advances in fundamental and applied research, particularly through their application in information storage devices.

Magnetic skyrmions are localized, stable topological magnetic spin textures resembling a tornado-like whirl in a magnetic material. They can be very small, with diameters in the nanometer range, and behave as particles that can be moved, created, and annihilated, which makes them suitable for ‘abacus’-type applications in information storage and logic devices.

Jan 26, 2024

New method for incorporating structurally unusual amino acids into proteins

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A team of biochemists at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge has developed a new method to incorporate structurally unusual amino acids into proteins by using bacteria. The method is described in the journal Nature.

Prior research has shown that DNA codes for just 20 , the for making all the proteins used by living creatures. These are known as alpha amino acids. Prior research has also suggested that beneficial compounds could be created with a method to create proteins using beta amino acids. Researchers have suggested that applications could include the development of new kinds of medicines and possibly novel catalysts for .

Such proteins have been engineered via syntheses in the lab. but scientists would prefer a more natural approach, which would be both cheaper and more efficient. This means that a technique is required to get a living cell to generate a desired using a beta amino acid.