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A team led by Philipp Werner, professor of physics at the University of Fribourg and leader of NCCR MARVEL’s Phase 3 project Continued Support, Advanced Simulation Methods, has applied their advanced quantum simulation method to the investigation of the complex material 1T-TaS₂. The research, recently published in Physical Review Letters, helped resolve a conflict between earlier experimental and theoretical results, showing that the surface region of 1T-TaS₂ exhibits a nontrivial interplay between band insulating and Mott insulating behavior when the material is cooled to below 180 k.

1T-TaS₂ is a layered transition metal dichalcogenide that has been studied intensively for decades because of intriguing links between temperature dependent distortions in the lattice and phenomena linked to electronic correlations.

Upon cooling, the material undergoes a series of lattice rearrangements with a simultaneous redistribution of the electronic density, a phenomenon known as charge density wave (CDW) order. In the phase reached when the material is cooled to below 180 k, an in-plane periodic lattice distortion leads to the formation of star-of-David (SOD) clusters made of 13 tantalum atoms. Simultaneously, a strong increase in resistivity is observed. Additional interesting properties of the low temperature phase include a transition to a superconducting state under pressure as well as the possibility to switch this phase into long-lived metallic metastable phases by applying short pulses of laser or voltage, making the material potentially interesting for use in future memory devices.

What happens when you CRISPR people?

Few questions generated more contentious discussion in biotech in the mid-2010s, as researchers and executives debated the relative merits of preclinical studies that pointed both to the new gene-editing tool’s potential to cure numerous diseases and its potential to cause unintended genetic damage.

The European research consortium EUROfusion has announced the start of a five-year conceptual design phase for its demonstration fusion power plant DEMO, capable of net electricity production, shortly after the middle of the century in its Roadmap to Fusion Energy.

The first-of-its-kind facility represents the next technological step after the global ITER fusion experiment. It aims to demonstrate the net production of 300 to 500 megawatt of electricity generated by nuclear fusion, clean and safe energy, as well as essential technologies such as remote maintenance and tritium breeding. The tritium breeding technology will allow operators to produce the tritium fusion fuel on-site is a crucial requirement not just for DEMO but also for any future fusion power device to follow ITER.

Fusion is the process that powers stars like our Sun and promises an inherently safe and nearly unlimited long-term clean energy source here on Earth. Fusion energy will generate immense amounts of energy from just a few grams of the abundant fuels found all over the world.

The advanced global tech market is set to experience the effect of quantum computing on artificial intelligence in 2022 and beyond. It is essential to integrate quantum computing into artificial intelligence models to boost decision-making abilities more efficiently.

Selmer Bringsjord, and his colleagues have proposed the Lovelace test as a substitute for the flawed Turing test. The test is named after Ada Lovelace.

Bringsjord defined software creativity as passing the Lovelace test if the program does something that cannot be explained by the programmer or an expert in computer code.² Computer programs can generate unexpected and surprising results.³ Results from computer programs are often unanticipated. But the question is, does the computer create a result that the programmer, looking back, cannot explain?

When it comes to assessing creativity (and therefore consciousness and humanness), the Lovelace test is a much better test than the Turing test. If AI truly produces something surprising which cannot be explained by the programmers, then the Lovelace test will have been passed and we might in fact be looking at creativity. So far, however, no AI has passed the Lovelace test.⁴ There have been many cases where a machine looked as if it were creative, but on closer inspection, the appearance of creative content fades.

Planet Labs uses shoebox-sized satellites to send back real-time images of the Earth every day.

Global warming fueled rampant overgrowth of microbes at the end of the Permian period. Such lethal blooms may be on the rise again.

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Physicists have discovered that certain magnetic material freezes when the temperature rises to a certain point. We’ve typically only seen this behavior when we cool down magnetic materials, not when we heat them up. As such, it has left physicists scratching their heads and baffled by the development.

Physicists Alexander Khajetoorians of Radboud University in the Netherlands says that the freezing of the magnetic materials is the opposite of what we normally see. The result is “counterintuitive, like water that becomes an ice cube when it’s heated up,” according to Khajetoorians.

Normally, ferromagnetic materials like iron feature aligned spins. This means that the magnetic spins of the atoms are all spinning in the same direction. Essentially, the south and north magnetic poles are all aligned in the same direction. Some alloys made of both iron and copper, though, feature randomized spins. Physicists refer to this state as spin glass.

Though they are discrete particles, water molecules flow collectively as liquids, producing streams, waves, whirlpools, and other classic fluid phenomena.

Not so with electricity. While an electric current is also a construct of distinct particles—in this case, electrons —the particles are so small that any collective behavior among them is drowned out by larger influences as electrons pass through ordinary metals. But, in certain materials and under specific conditions, such effects fade away, and electrons can directly influence each other. In these instances, electrons can flow collectively like a fluid.

Now, physicists at MIT and the Weizmann Institute of Science have observed electrons flowing in vortices, or whirlpools—a hallmark of fluid flow that theorists predicted electrons should exhibit, but that has never been seen until now.