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A team of German and Spanish researchers from Valencia, Münster, Augsburg, Berlin and Munich have succeeded in controlling individual light quanta to an extremely high degree of precision. In Nature Communications, the researchers report how, by means of a soundwave, they switch individual photons on a chip back and forth between two outputs at gigahertz frequencies. This method, demonstrated here for the first time, can now be used for acoustic quantum technologies or complex integrated photonic networks.

Light waves and soundwaves form the technological backbone of modern communications. While glass fibers with laser light form the World Wide Web, nanoscale soundwaves on chips process signals at gigahertz frequencies for wireless transmission between smartphones, tablets or laptops. One of the most pressing questions for the future is how these technologies can be extended to , to build up secure (i.e., tap-free) quantum communication networks.

“Light quanta or photons play a very central role in the development of quantum technologies,” says physicist Prof. Hubert Krenner, who heads the study in Münster and Augsburg. “Our team has now succeeded in generating on a chip the size of a thumbnail and then controlling them with unprecedented precision, precisely clocked by means of soundwaves,” he says.

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A SpaceX recovery ship is headed more than a thousand kilometers downrange to support the second expendable Falcon 9 rocket launch in nine days.

No earlier than (NET) 9:57 pm EST (02:57 UTC) on Monday, November 21st, a Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) LC-40 pad carrying the Eutelsat 10B geostationary communications satellite. For unknown reasons, the French communications provider paid extra to get as much performance as possible out of Falcon 9, requiring SpaceX to expend the rocket’s booster instead of attempting to land and reuse it.

The mission will be Eutelsat’s third Falcon 9 launch in less than three weeks and will wrap up a trio of launch contracts the company secretly signed with SpaceX to move satellites off of competitor Ariane Group’s unavailable Ariane 5 and delayed Ariane 6 rockets. In a rare coincidence, Eutelsat 10B will also be SpaceX’s second expendable Falcon 9 launch in a row and the third Falcon launch to expend a booster this month. But like those two other missions, not all of the Falcon rocket tasked with launching Eutelsat 10B will be lost.

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Liquid metals are a promising functional material due to their unique combination of metallic properties and fluidity at room temperature. They are of interest in wide-ranging fields including stretchable and flexible electronics, reconfigurable devices, microfluidics, biomedicine, material synthesis, and catalysis. Transformation of bulk liquid metal into particles has enabled further advances by allowing access to a broader palette of fabrication techniques for device manufacture or by increasing area available for surface-based applications. For gallium-based liquid metal alloys, particle stabilization is typically achieved by the oxide that forms spontaneously on the surface, even when only trace amounts of oxygen are present. The utility of the particles formed is governed by the chemical, electrical, and mechanical properties of this oxide. To overcome some of the intrinsic limitations of the native oxide, it is demonstrated here for the first time that 2D graphene-based materials can encapsulate liquid metal particles during fabrication and imbue them with previously unattainable properties. This outer encapsulation layer is used to physically stabilize particles in a broad range of pH environments, modify the particles’ mechanical behavior, and control the electrical behavior of resulting films. This demonstration of graphene-based encapsulation of liquid metal particles represents a first foray into the creation of a suite of hybridized 2D material coated liquid metal particles.

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UNSW researchers have overcome a major design challenge on the path to controlling the dimensions of so-called DNA nanobots—structures that assemble themselves from DNA components.

Self-assembling nanorobots may sound like science fiction, but new research in DNA nanotechnology has brought them a step closer to reality. Future nanobot use cases won’t just play out on the tiny scale, but include larger applications in the health and , such as wound healing and unclogging of arteries.

Researchers from UNSW, with colleagues in the UK, have published a new design theory in ACS Nano on how to control the length of self-assembling nanobots in the absence of a mould, or template.

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Light-activated molecular nanomachines (MNMs) can be used to drill holes into prokaryotic (bacterial) cell walls and the membrane of eukaryotic cells, including mammalian cancer cells, by their fast rotational movement, leading to cell death. We examined how these MNMs function in multicellular organisms and investigated their use for treatment and eradication of specific diseases by causing damage to certain tissues and small organisms. Three model eukaryotic species, Caenorhabditis elegans, Daphnia pulex, and Mus musculus (mouse), were evaluated. These organisms were exposed to light-activated fast-rotating MNMs and their physiological and pathological changes were studied in detail. Slow rotating MNMs were used to control for the effects of rotation rate. We demonstrate that fast-rotating MNMs caused depigmentation and 70% mortality in C.

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