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After years of dedicated research and over 5 million supercomputer computing hours, a team has created the world’s first high-resolution 3D radiation hydrodynamics simulations for exotic supernovae. This work is reported in The Astrophysical Journal.

Ke-Jung Chen at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan, led an international team and used the powerful supercomputers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan to make the breakthrough.

Supernova explosions are the most spectacular endings for massive stars, as they conclude their in a self-destructive manner, instantaneously releasing brightness equivalent to billions of suns, illuminating the entire universe.

🏅 R&D 100 Award Winner 🏅

The Noncontact Laser Ultrasound (NCLUS) is a portable laser-based system that acquires ultrasound images of human tissue without touching a patient. It offers capabilities comparable to those of an MRI and CT but at vastly lower cost in an automated and portable platform.

In addition to receiving an R&D 100 Award, NCLUS received the Silver Medal in the Special Recognition: Market Disruptor Products category. Congratulations to the NCLUS team!


Researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory and their collaborators at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Ultrasound Research and Translation (CURT) have developed a new medical imaging device: the Noncontact Laser Ultrasound (NCLUS). This laser-based ultrasound system provides images of interior body features such as organs, fat, muscle, tendons, and blood vessels. The system also measures bone strength and may have the potential to track disease stages over time.

“Our patented skin-safe laser system concept seeks to transform medical ultrasound by overcoming the limitations associated with traditional contact probes,” explains principal investigator Robert Haupt, a senior staff member in Lincoln Laboratory’s Active Optical Systems Group. Haupt and senior staff member Charles Wynn are co-inventors of the technology, with assistant group leader Matthew Stowe providing technical leadership and oversight of the NCLUS program. Rajan Gurjar is the system integrator lead, with Jamie Shaw, Bert Green, Brian Boitnott (now at Stanford University), and Jake Jacobsen collaborating on optical and mechanical engineering and construction of the system.

Medical ultrasound in practice

Apple unveiled its new iPhone lineup on Tuesday, with its Lightning charger ports replaced on the newest models by a universal charger after a tussle with the European Union.

The European bloc is insisting that all phones and other small devices must be compatible with the USB-C charging cables from the end of next year, a move it says will reduce waste and save money for consumers.

The firm had long argued that its cable was more secure than USB-C chargers, which are already deployed by Apple on other devices and widely used by rivals including the world’s biggest smartphone maker Samsung.

At the recent launch of its new BEV factory, Toyota vowed its next-generation electric vehicles will deliver longer range and faster charging at a lower price. The Japanese automaker now says its new EVs, due out in 2026, will feature nearly 500 miles of range.

At a technical briefing in June, Toyota revealed several new innovations, including advanced battery plans, improvements in aerodynamics, and manufacturing upgrades as it looks to boost EV sales with its next-gen electric models.

The company shared at the launch of its BEV factory, which is not an actual plant but rather “an organization dedicated to battery EVs,” that production of Toyota’s new EVs will begin in 2026.

For eons, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has served as a sort of instruction manual for life, providing not just templates for a vast array of chemical structures but a means of managing their production.

In recent years engineers have explored a subtly new role for the molecule’s unique capabilities, as the basis for a biological computer. Yet in spite of the passing of 30 years since the first prototype, most DNA computers have struggled to process more than a few tailored algorithms.

A team researchers from China has now come up with a DNA integrated circuit (DIC) that’s far more general purpose. Their liquid computer’s gates can form an astonishing 100 billion circuits, showing its versatility with each capable of running its own program.

Using laser light, researchers have developed the most robust method currently known to control individual qubits made of the chemical element barium. The ability to reliably control a qubit is an important achievement for realizing future functional quantum computers.

The paper, “A guided light system for agile individual addressing of Ba+ qubits with 10−4 level intensity crosstalk,” was published in Quantum Science and Technology.

This new method, developed at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), uses a small glass waveguide to separate laser beams and focus them four microns apart, about four-hundredths of the width of a single human hair. The precision and extent to which each focused laser beam on its target qubit can be controlled in parallel is unmatched by previous research.