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Oct 4, 2024

3D anatomy of the Cretaceous–Paleogene age Nadir Crater

Posted by in category: futurism

A 9.2 km diameter rim, concentric normal faults and an extended damage zone are observed in 3-dimensional seismic reflection data from the Nadir crater offshore Western Africa and provide strong evidence for an impact origin.

Oct 4, 2024

People infer the past better than the future, study finds

Posted by in category: futurism

If you started watching a movie from the middle without knowing its plot, you’d likely be better at inferring what had happened earlier than predicting what will happen next, according to a new Dartmouth-led study published in Nature Communications.

Oct 4, 2024

New microchip captures exosomes for faster, more sensitive lung cancer detection from a blood draw

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing

A new way of diagnosing lung cancer with a blood draw is 10 times faster and 14 times more sensitive than earlier methods, according to University of Michigan researchers.

Oct 4, 2024

Hexagonal magnetic defects could lead to energy-efficient neuromorphic computing

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

Artificial intelligence applications are experiencing a boom and expected to be mainstream technologies in the near future. However, these applications run on classic computing hardware and are extremely power-hungry.

Oct 4, 2024

Study suggests statistical ‘noise’ affects perceived evolutionary rates

Posted by in categories: evolution, existential risks

For decades, researchers have observed that rates of evolution seem to accelerate over short time periods—say five million years versus fifty million years. This broad pattern has suggested that “younger” groups of organisms, in evolutionary terms, have higher rates of speciation, extinction and body size evolution, among other differences from older ones.

Oct 4, 2024

Physicists achieve strong coupling of Andreev qubits via microwave resonator

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

Physicists from the University of Basel have succeeded in coupling two Andreev qubits coherently over a macroscopic distance for the first time. They achieved this with the help of microwave photons generated in a narrow superconducting resonator. The results of the experiments and accompanying calculations were recently published in Nature Physics, laying the foundation for the use of coupled Andreev qubits in quantum communication and quantum computing.

Oct 4, 2024

Engineers create a chip-based tractor beam for biological particles

Posted by in categories: biological, computing, particle physics, tractor beam

Traditional , which trap and manipulate particles using light, usually require bulky microscope setups, but chip-based optical tweezers could offer a more compact, mass manufacturable, broadly accessible, and high-throughput solution for in biological experiments.

However, other similar integrated optical tweezers can only capture and manipulate cells that are very close to or directly on the chip surface. This contaminates the chip and can stress the cells, limiting compatibility with standard biological experiments.

Using a system called an integrated optical phased array, the MIT researchers have developed a new modality for integrated optical tweezers that enables trapping and tweezing of cells more than a hundred times further away from the chip surface.

Oct 4, 2024

New materials and techniques show promise for microelectronics and quantum technologies

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

The next generation of handheld devices requires a novel solution. Spintronics, or , is a revolutionary new field in condensed-matter physics that can increase the memory and logic processing capability of nano-electronic devices while reducing power consumption and production costs. This is accomplished by using inexpensive materials and the magnetic properties of an electron’s spin to perform memory and logic functions instead of using the flow of electron charge used in typical electronics.

New work by Florida State University scientists is propelling spintronics research forward.

Professors Biwu Ma in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Peng Xiong in the Department of Physics work with low-dimensional organic metal halide hybrids, a new class of hybrid materials that can power optoelectronic devices like solar cells, light-emitting diodes, or LEDs and photodetectors.

Oct 4, 2024

Quantum research paves the way toward efficient, ultra-high-density optical memory storage

Posted by in categories: engineering, quantum physics

Now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have proposed a new type of memory, in which optical data is transferred from a rare earth element embedded within a to a nearby quantum defect. Their analysis of how such a technology could work is published in Physical Review Research.

“We worked out the basic physics behind how the transfer of energy between defects could underlie an incredibly efficient optical storage method,” said Giulia Galli, an Argonne senior scientist and Liew Family Professor at PME. “This research illustrates the importance of exploring first-principles and quantum mechanical theories to illuminate new, emerging technologies.”

Most optical memory storage methods developed in the past, including CDs and DVDs, are limited by the diffraction limit of . A single data point cannot be smaller than the wavelength of the laser writing and reading the data. In the new work, the researchers proposed boosting the bit density of optical storage by embedding many rare-earth emitters within the material. By using slightly different wavelengths of light—an approach known as wavelength multiplexing—they hypothesized that these emitters could hold more data within the same area.

Oct 4, 2024

Logic with light: Introducing diffraction casting, optical-based parallel computing

Posted by in categories: computing, mobile phones

Whether it’s the smartphone in your pocket or the laptop on your desk, all current computer devices are based on electronic technology. But this has some inherent drawbacks; in particular, they necessarily generate a lot of heat, especially as they increase in performance, not to mention that fabrication technologies are approaching the fundamental limits of what is theoretically possible.

As a result, researchers explore alternative ways to perform computation that can tackle these problems and ideally offer some new functionality or features too.

One possibility lies in an idea that has existed for several decades but has yet to break through and become commercially viable, and that’s in optical computing.

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