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Scientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and their collaborators have used DNA to overcome a nearly insurmountable obstacle to engineer materials that would revolutionize electronics.

One possible outcome of such engineered materials could be superconductors, which have zero electrical resistance, allowing electrons to flow unimpeded. That means that they don’t lose energy and don’t create heat, unlike current means of electrical transmission. Development of a superconductor that could be used widely at room temperature—instead of at extremely high or , as is now possible—could lead to hyper-fast computers, shrink the size of electronic devices, allow to float on magnets and slash energy use, among other benefits.

One such superconductor was first proposed more than 50 years ago by Stanford physicist William A. Little. Scientists have spent decades trying to make it work, but even after validating the feasibility of his idea, they were left with a challenge that appeared impossible to overcome. Until now.

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A handful of states already require new distributed resource installations to use smart inverters that meet a standard known as IEEE 1547–2018. As more devices that meet the standard become available, more states are evaluating such a requirement. The SunSpec Alliance expects that more than 30 states will set smart inverter requirements by April 2023 based on an examination of state regulatory dockets from the past year, said SunSpec Alliance Chair Tom Tansy in an email.

Most smart inverter manufacturers will be able to provide smart inverters to project developers and distributors sometime between March and August 2023, according to an analysis from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) authored by IREC chief regulatory engineer Brian Lydic.

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A roadmap for the future direction of quantum simulation has been set out in a paper co-authored at the University of Strathclyde.

Quantum computers are hugely powerful devices with a capacity for speed and calculation which is well beyond the reach of classical, or binary, computing. Instead of a binary system of zeroes and ones, it operates through superpositions, which may be zeroes, ones or both at the same time.

The continuously-evolving development of quantum computing has reached the point of having an advantage over classical computers for an artificial problem. It could have future applications in a wide range of areas. One promising class of problems involves the of quantum systems, with potential applications such as developing materials for batteries, industrial catalysis and nitrogen fixing.

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𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐚 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧?

A tiny marine creature with a strange lifestyle may provide valuable insights into human neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, according to scientists at Stanford Medicine.

Botryllus schlosseri, also called a star tunicate, is humans’ closest evolutionary relative among invertebrates in the sea. Attached to rocks along the coast, it appears as a tiny flower-shaped organism. Star tunicates start life as little tadpole-like creatures with two brains, swimming in the ocean. But eventually they drift down from the surface, settling into a stationary life on a rock, joining a colony of other tunicates.

As the tunicate, also known as a sea squirt, adapts to its new couch-potato lifestyle, it loses brain power: One of the two brains, its use for sea navigation now obsolete, begins to dissolve. The way the invertebrate’s brain degenerates and disappears has important parallels to the way the brain degenerates in human neural disorders, said Irving Weissman, MD, director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.

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This post is also available in: he עברית (Hebrew)

A recent report has shown that many social media databases are currently being sold on Breach Forums, a popular hacking forum on the Dark Web. According to cyber security researchers HackerOne, the database allegedly consisted of 5.4 million users, and included the datasets for celebrities, politicians and businesses. The owner of Breach Forums reportedly verified the authenticity of the leaked data.

This nefarious collection of information was due to an already known Twitter vulnerability that could possibly allow an attacker to acquire the phone number and/or email address associated with user accounts even if the user had hidden those fields in the platform’s privacy settings. This should worry many social media users, as it seems that privacy and anonymity are merely a veil that hides the many dangers we are exposed to on the internet.

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Wearable electronics, from health and fitness trackers to virtual reality headsets, are part of our everyday lives. But finding ways to continuously power these devices is a challenge.

University of Washington researchers have developed an innovative solution: the first-of-its kind flexible, wearable thermoelectric device that converts to electricity. This device is soft and stretchable, yet sturdy and efficient—properties that can be challenging to combine.

The team published these findings July 24 in Advanced Energy Materials.

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According to its designers, the device has a power density of 1.1 kW/L and an efficiency of 97%.

The micro-inverter utilizes GaN 600V diodes and power transistors developed by CEA’s electronic branch CEA-Leti. “With this coplanar technology, it would be possible to make the power component ‘smarter’ with protection (temperature, voltage, current, etc.) and control (driver) functions. It is also possible to design bidirectional voltage interrupters which do not exist at present,” the French scientists said in a statement.

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