Lifeboat Foundation

As space missions delve deeper into the outer solar system, the need for more compact, resource-conserving and accurate analytical tools has become increasingly critical—especially as the hunt for extraterrestrial life and habitable planets or moons continues.

A University of Maryland–led team developed a new instrument specifically tailored to the needs of NASA space missions. Their mini laser-sourced analyzer is significantly smaller and more resource efficient than its predecessors—all without compromising the quality of its ability to analyze planetary material samples and potential biological activity onsite. The team’s paper on this new device was published in the journal Nature Astronomy on January 16, 2023.

Weighing only about 17 pounds, the instrument is a physically scaled-down combination of two important tools for detecting signs of life and identifying compositions of materials: a pulsed ultraviolet laser that removes small amounts of material from a planetary sample and an Orbitrap analyzer that delivers high-resolution data about the chemistry of the examined materials.

Bosons, one of the two fundamental classes of particles, have been the focus of countless physics studies. When bosonic particles are transitioning into an already occupied final quantum state, the rate of this transition is enhanced by its so-called “occupation number,” an effect known as bosonic stimulation. The appearance of bosonic stimulation in light scattering processes was first predicted over three decades ago, yet directly observing it in experimental settings has so far proved challenging.

Researchers at the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms have recently observed bosonic enhanced light scattering in an ultracold gas for the first time. Their findings, published in Nature Physics, could open new exciting possibilities for the study of bosonic systems.

“For bosons, the transition rate into an already occupied quantum state is enhanced by its occupation number: the effect of bosonic stimulation,” Yu-Kun Lu, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org.

Cambridge researchers have developed a new test that “fishes” for multiple respiratory viruses at once using single strands of DNA as bait and gives highly accurate results in under an hour.

The test uses DNA “nanobait” to detect the most common respiratory viruses —including influenza, rhinovirus, RSV and COVID-19—at the same time. In comparison, PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests, while highly specific and highly accurate, can only test for a single virus at a time and take several hours to return a result.

While many common respiratory viruses have similar symptoms, they require different treatments. By testing for multiple viruses at once, the researchers say their test will ensure patients get the right treatment quickly and could also reduce the unwarranted use of antibiotics.

When searching for catalysts for the energy transition, materials consisting of at least five elements are considered highly promising. But there are theoretically millions of them—how do we identify the most powerful one?

A Bochum-based research team led by Professor Alfred Ludwig, head of the Materials Discovery and Interfaces Department (MDI), has succeeded in placing all possible combinations of five elements on a carrier in a single step. In addition, the researchers developed a method to analyze the electrocatalytic potential of each of the combinations in this micromaterial library in high throughput.

This is how they hope to speed up the search for potential catalysts by a considerable degree. The team from Ruhr University Bochum published its findings in the journal Advanced Materials.

For decades, transistors—the heart of computer chips—have been getting smaller and smaller. As a result, the electronic components in many devices can be made even more compact, faster and also more powerful. But is this development coming to a natural halt? The smaller the components, the greater the danger that individual defects in the atomic structure will significantly change the behavior of the component. This applies to the established silicon technology and novel nanotechnologies based on 2D materials.

At Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), intensive work has been done on the physical description of this problem at the transistor level. Now the researchers are going a step further and looking at the influence of defects at the level of electronic circuits, which sometimes consist of several—sometimes even billions—of transistors. In some cases, individual transistors can operate outside the desired specification, but still perform well as part of a circuit consisting of several transistors. With this new approach at the circuit level, significant advances in miniaturization are still possible.

The study is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

This video was recorded at the Foresight Vision Weekend 2022 at Château du Feÿ in France.

Michael Greve | Longevity Investing.

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An experimental campaign was conducted on the Säntis mountain in north-eastern Switzerland during the summer of 2021 with a high-repetition-rate terawatt laser. The guiding of an upward negative lightning leader over a distance of 50 m was recorded by two separate high-speed cameras.

A terawatt laser filament is shown to be able to guide lightning over a distance of 50 m in field trials on the Säntis mountain in the Swiss Alps.

Plants are often thought of as sources of food, oxygen, and decoration, but not as a source of electricity. However, scientists have discovered that by harnessing the natural transport of electrons within plant cells, it is possible to generate electricity as part of a green, biological solar cell. In a recent study published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, researchers for the first time used a succulent plant to create a living “bio-solar cell” that runs on photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis is how plants and some microorganisms use sunlight to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water.