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PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Whether for use in cybersecurity, gaming or scientific simulation, the world needs true random numbers, but generating them is harder than one might think. But a group of Brown University physicists has developed a technique that can potentially generate millions of random digits per second by harnessing the behavior of — tiny magnetic anomalies that arise in certain two-dimensional materials.

Their research, published in Nature Communications, reveals previously unexplored dynamics of single, the researchers say. Discovered around a half-decade ago, have sparked interest in physics as a path toward next-generation computing devices that take advantage of the magnetic properties of particles — a field known as spintronics.

“There has been a lot of research into the global dynamics of, using their movements as a basis for performing computations,” said Gang Xiao, chair of the Department of Physics at Brown and senior author of the research. “But in this work, we show that purely random fluctuations in the size of can be useful as well. In this case, we show that we can use those fluctuations to generate random numbers, potentially as many as 10 million digits per second.”

Researchers at Leipzig University have succeeded in moving tiny amounts of liquid at will by remotely heating water over a metal film with a laser. The currents generated in this way can be used to manipulate and even capture tiny objects. This will unlock groundbreaking new solutions for nanotechnology, the manipulation of liquids in systems in tiny spaces, or in the field of diagnostics, by making it possible to detect the smallest concentrations of substances with new types of sensor systems.

The findings are described in an article recently published in Nature Communications (“Hydrodynamic manipulation of nano-objects by optically induced thermo-osmotic flows”).

Illustration of a gold nanoparticle trapped near a locally heated gold surface by hydrodynamic and van der Waals forces. (Image: Martin Fränzl, Universität Leipzig)

A non-invasive graphene-based sensor detects brain waves with high sensitivity and reliability.

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Still from the future.

A potential fertility treatment involves taking skin cells and reverse engineering them into eggs and sperm.

This Yale researcher is creating an experimental therapy for cystic fibrosis made from viruses — and it’s working.

All memory storage devices, from your brain to the RAM in your computer, store information by changing their physical qualities. Over 130 years ago, pioneering neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal first suggested that the brain stores information by rearranging the connections, or synapses, between neurons.

Since then, neuroscientists have attempted to understand the physical changes associated with memory formation. But visualizing and mapping synapses is challenging to do. For one, synapses are very small and tightly packed together. They’re roughly 10 billion times smaller than the smallest object a standard clinical MRI can visualize. Furthermore, there are approximately 1 billion synapses in the mouse brains researchers often use to study brain function, and they’re all the same opaque to translucent color as the tissue surrounding them.

Continue reading “New brain imaging technique suggests memories are stored in the connections between your neurons” »

The NASA TESS mission hit a milestone of 5,000 exoplanet candidates or TOIs (TESS Object of Interest). The TESS catalog has been growing steadily since the start of the mission in 2018, and the batch of TOIs boosting the catalog to over 5,000 comes primarily from the Faint Star Search led by MIT postdoc Michelle Kunimoto. Now in its extended mission, TESS is observing the Northern Hemisphere and ecliptic plane, including regions of the sky previously observed by the Kepler and K2 missions, so we can expect more discoveries until 2025.

To discuss this achievement, SETI Institute Senior Astronomer Franck Marchis is joined by Dr. Kunimoto, TESS postdoctoral associate at MIT Kavli Institute. Dr. Kunimoto focuses her work on detecting transiting exoplanets and the statistical determination of exoplanet demographics. She will tell us how astronomers worldwide will study each of these TOIs to confirm whether they are bonafide planets and what we can expect from this complicated task.

Continue reading “SETI Live: 5,000 Exoplanet Candidates and Counting!” »