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Robot successfully builds space structure in first autonomous construction demo

A robotic truss builder that was conceived, designed and built by Caltech researchers has successfully built a structure in space—without the help of astronauts—for the first time. The truss builder, part of DARPA’s Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program, consists of an autonomous manipulator that picks up struts and joints held in nearby dispensers to repeatedly assemble identical sections, or bays, of a perimeter truss.

“This is the first time that a structure has been autonomously constructed in space,” says Sergio Pellegrino, the Joyce and Krent Kresa Professor of Aerospace and Civil Engineering, the Lynn Booth and Kent Kresa Department of Aerospace Leadership Chair, the executive officer for aerospace and a senior research scientist at JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA.

Pellegrino is team leader of Caltech’s Autonomous In-Space Tensioned Reflector Assembly (ASTRA) demonstration, a robotic builder that has spent the last six months in space, working to construct a 1.4-meter-diameter (4.6-foot-diameter) reflector antenna from composite fiber tubes, aluminum joints and a Kapton reflective surface.

Smart packaging film ‘lights up’ under UV as meat loses freshness

Food spoilage causes chemical changes that are not always easy to detect by appearance alone. To provide a clearer indication of freshness and quality, researchers at Kyushu University have developed a smart packaging film that changes color and glows under ultraviolet (UV) light as meat loses freshness. Tested with refrigerated mutton, the film responds to compounds released during spoilage, offering two ways to track changes in food quality. The findings are published in the Chemical Engineering Journal.

Food packaging is generally designed to protect food from the external environment and spoilage, but it typically provides little information about food quality. Certain food components can act as freshness indicators and provide additional information about their condition. Anthocyanins, for example, are natural plant pigments that change color as acidity changes, making them useful for detecting chemical changes associated with food spoilage. However, these color changes can be subtle during early stages and may be affected by lighting conditions.

A research team led by professor Fumihiko Tanaka and associate professor Fumina Tanaka of Kyushu University’s Faculty of Agriculture set out to address this challenge. Working with collaborators from Nanjing Agricultural University in China, Ghent University in Belgium and Nguyen Tat Thanh University in Vietnam, they aimed to develop a more reliable and sensitive method for monitoring food freshness in real time.

New 3D microscope packs many imaging tools into one system

An international team of researchers led by UT Southwestern Medical Center has developed a versatile light-sheet microscope that captures 3D views of biological samples, from activity inside living cells to larger tissues. Designed to make detailed imaging much simpler and faster, the approach could help laboratories stretch equipment budgets and expand research that may ultimately inform patient care.

“Our work makes a popular microscope technique, called light-sheet fluorescence microscopy, more versatile and user-friendly,” said corresponding author Reto Fiolka, Ph.D., associate professor in the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics and of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern. “It extends what a single instrument can do in terms of sample coverage and imaging applications.”

Described in Nature Methods, the multi-immersion oblique plane microscope (miOPM) addresses a long-standing challenge: Advanced microscopes are often designed for a narrow range of tasks. Studying different samples can require separate instruments, specialized preparation and considerable technical expertise.

Harnessing atomic structure to advance next-generation memory storage

The growth of artificial intelligence has increased demand for more efficient data storage. Instead of adding bulk to satiate this appetite, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are working to increase memory capacity by manipulating materials’ characteristics at the atomic level.

Rohan Mishra, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the McKelvey School of Engineering, and his team of researchers have been pursuing this challenge. Through computational modeling, advanced microscopy and experimental collaboration with researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and other institutions, Mishra and his team have gained exciting insights into material behavior.

Atom-scale model could help improve material growth for advanced electronics

Penn State researchers have refined an atom-scale model of how silicon carbide changes from a solid into vapor during crystal growth, work that could help manufacturers produce higher-quality material for advanced electronics while reducing costly trial-and-error experiments.

The study, published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, is the first publication from Penn State’s Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance, or SCIA, an industry-university research partnership.

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a crystalline material used in high-power electronics, including electric vehicles and clean-energy systems. As opposed to other crystals, which can be grown by melting the material and then cooling it into a solid, silicon carbide is grown using physical vapor transport (PVT). In this process, solid silicon carbide is heated until it turns directly into vapor, which then settles onto a seed crystal and builds a larger crystal.

Paired but out of step: Why electron pairing alone is not enough for room-temperature superconductivity

Levitating trains, ultra-efficient energy storage, and quantum computers: superconductivity could unlock a wealth of possibilities for the future. New research led by scientists from Utrecht, Leiden, and Munich has now shed light on one of the key requirements for achieving superconductivity at room temperature. Their findings, published in Science, bring scientists a step closer to understanding how this might be achieved.

When you turn on a toaster, electricity flows through a metal wire. The wire heats up until it glows red-hot, toasting your bread. This happens because the wire resists the flow of electric current, converting electrical energy into heat.

That is exactly what you want in a toaster. But for most other applications, resistance is undesirable. For example, when you want to charge your phone, resistance causes valuable energy to be lost.

Scientists Find a Clever Way to Read Quantum Information Without Destroying It

Simulations suggest that one type of qubit could reveal its state through its own electric current, helping researchers monitor quantum computers with less disturbance and fewer components.

Like a bit in an ordinary computer, a qubit stores information using states labeled 0 and 1. A qubit can also be prepared in a superposition, a quantum combination of the two. These states belong to a physical system that researchers build and control. In the design explored here, that system is a tiny wire connected to superconducting materials.

The aim of quantum computing is to use quantum behavior to perform certain calculations more efficiently than conventional computers. That requires control: researchers must prepare qubits and change their states deliberately. Unwanted interactions with the surroundings can disrupt them, and measuring a qubit can alter it, too.

Earthquake Faults Can Suddenly Become Almost As Fluid as Water, Study Finds

Scientists have uncovered evidence of an unexpected process that may allow earthquake faults to slip enormous distances.

Rocks along Japan’s Boso Peninsula have preserved evidence of an extraordinary process that may occur during powerful earthquakes. Researchers discovered ancient fault structures suggesting that clay trapped between moving rock surfaces became nearly as fluid as water, potentially allowing the fault to slip enormous distances with little resistance.

The findings, from a research team led by Professor Tetsuro Hirono of Osaka Metropolitan University, could help explain how some earthquakes produce the massive seafloor movements capable of triggering devastating tsunamis.

Scientists Reveal How a Mysterious Brain Structure Keeps Memories From Fading

Memories that last only seconds shape everyday thinking, and research in mice is revealing how a small brain structure supports an ability impaired in ADHD and schizophrenia.

To understand a sentence, the brain has to keep earlier words in mind as new ones arrive. Working memory makes that possible, holding information for a few seconds so we can compare it with new information, manipulate it, and use it to guide our behavior.

We rely on it to follow conversations, solve problems, and decide what to do next. Yet sensory information fades within moments once a stimulus ends, leaving the brain with the demanding task of maintaining a usable representation of something that is no longer there.