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Research is underway around the world to find alternatives to our current electronic computing technology, as great, electron-based systems have limitations. A new way of transmitting information is emerging from the field of magnonics. Instead of electron exchange, the waves generated in magnetic media could be used for transmission, but magnonics-based computing has been (too) slow to date.

Scientists at the University of Vienna have now discovered a significant new method. When the intensity is increased, the spin waves become shorter and faster—another step towards magnon computing. The results are published in the journal Science Advances.

Magnonics is a relatively new field of research in magnetism in which spin waves play a central role. A local disturbance in the magnetic order of a magnet can propagate as waves through a material. These waves are called spin waves, and the associated quasiparticles are called magnons. They carry information in the form of angular momentum pulses. Because of this property, they can be used as low-power data carriers in smaller and more energy-efficient computers of the future.

Researchers have developed a fluorescence microscope that uses structured illumination for fast super-resolution imaging over a wide field of view. The new microscope was designed to image multiple living cells simultaneously with a very high resolution to study the effects of various drugs and mixtures of drugs on the body.

“Polypharmacy—the effect of the many combinations of drugs typically prescribed to the chronically sick or elderly—can lead to dangerous interactions and is becoming a major issue,” said Henning Ortkrass from Bielefeld University in Germany. “We developed this microscope as part of the EIC Pathfinder OpenProject DeLIVERy, which aims to develop a platform that can investigate polypharmacy in individual patients.”

In the journal Optics Express, the researchers describe their new microscope, which uses optical fiber delivery of excitation light to enable very high image quality over a very large field of view with multicolor and high-speed capability. They show that the instrument can be used to image liver cells, achieving a field of view up to 150 × 150 μm² and imaging rates up to 44 Hz while maintaining a spatiotemporal resolution of less than 100 nm.

Imec, a research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, has presented the successful integration of a pinned photodiode structure in thin-film image sensors.

The report, published in the August 2023 edition of Nature Electronics, is titled “Thin-film image sensors with a pinned photodiode structure.” Initial results were presented at the 2023 edition of the International Image Sensors Workshop.

With the addition of a pinned-photogate and a transfer gate, the superior absorption qualities of thin-film imagers—beyond one µm wavelength—can finally be exploited, unlocking the potential of sensing light beyond the visible in a cost-efficient way.

Quantum computers are the next step in computation. These devices can harness the peculiarities of quantum mechanics to dramatically boost the power of computers. Not even the most powerful supercomputer can compete with this approach. But to deliver on that incredible potential, the road ahead remains long.

Still, in the last few years, big steps have been taken, with simple quantum processors coming online. New breakthroughs have shown solutions to the major challenges in the discipline. The road is still long, but now we can see several opportunities along the way. For The Big Questions, IFLScience’s podcast, we spoke to Professor Winfried Hensinger, Professor of Quantum Technology at the University of Sussex and the Chief Scientific Officer for Universal Quantum, about the impact these devices will have.

AI can be fooled into making mistakes, sometimes risking lives, but quantum computing could provide a strong defence, say University of Melbourne experts.

Def Con hosted a contest to identify software vulnerabilities of chatbots like Google’s Bard or OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

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For 80 years, researchers at Harvard have followed participants into old age, collecting data on their physical and mental health, jobs, relationships, etc.

Stem cells have been used to produce organoids that release the proteins responsible for forming dental enamel, a substance that shields teeth from harm and decay. This initiative was led by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle.

“This is a critical first step to our long-term goal to develop stem cell-based treatments to repair damaged teeth and regenerate those that are lost,” said Hai Zhang, professor of restorative dentistry at the UW School of Dentistry and one of the co – authors of the paper describing the research.

The findings are published today in the journal Developmental Cell. Ammar Alghadeer, a graduate student in Hannele Ruohola-Baker’s laboratory in the Department of Biochemistry at the UW School of Medicine was the lead author on the paper. The lab is affiliated with the UW Medicine Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine.