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For the first time, researchers have created a metasurface lens that uses a piezoelectric thin film to change focal length when a small voltage is applied. Because it is extremely compact and lightweight, the new lens could be useful for portable medical diagnostic instruments, drone-based 3D mapping and other applications where miniaturization can open new possibilities.

“This type of low-power, ultra-compact varifocal lens could be used in a wide range of sensor and imaging technologies where system size, weight and cost are important,” said research project leader Christopher Dirdal from SINTEF Smart Sensors and Microsystems in Norway. “In addition, introducing precision tunability to metasurfaces opens up completely new ways to manipulate light.”

Dirdal and colleagues describe the new technology in the journal Optics Letters. To change focal length, a voltage is applied over lead zirconate titanate (PZT) membranes causing them to deform. This, in turn, shifts the distance between two metasurface lenses.

Stunning.

For its first science image, the NASA IXPE observatory zoomed in on the remains of a star that exploded in the 17th century, revealing the intensity of X-Ray light coming from the blast.

Equipping ROSALIND, a cell-free biosensing platform, with information processing circuits based on toehold-mediated DNA strand displacement enhances sensor performance and enables logic gate computation.

The most valuable science prizes courtesy of Yuri Milner et al; check it out and poss apply?

Knowledge is humanity’s greatest asset. It defines our nature, and it will shape our future. The body of knowledge is assembled over centuries.

SpaceX readies Starship.

Tesla needs a major change.

Continue reading “Tesla hit with disturbing racial discrimination allegations… again” »

After its successful launch last Dec. 9, 2021, the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) of the National Aeronatics and Space Administration (NASA) finally shared its first captured photo from space.

Specifically, the subject of the photo is the Cassiopeia A.

Continue reading “NASA IXPE Captured Cassiopeia A in Its First Photo From Space” »

AI may be “slightly conscious”

The Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of OpenAI, one of the leading research labs for artificial intelligence, has suggested that the latest generation of neural networks are large enough to be “slightly conscious”.

Ilya Sutskever has made several major contributions to the field of deep learning. This includes beta testing of GPT-3 prior to its release. In a 2020 paper, he and his team concluded that the language model, featuring 175 billion parameters, “can generate samples of news articles which human evaluators have difficulty distinguishing from articles written by humans.”

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A revolutionary pacemaker that re-establishes the heart’s naturally irregular beat is set to be trialed in New Zealand heart patients this year, following successful animal trials.

“Currently, all pacemakers pace the heart metronomically, which means a very steady, even pace. But when you record heart rate in a healthy individual, you see it is constantly on the move,” says Professor Julian Paton, a lead researcher and director of Manaaki Manawa, the Centre for Heart Research at the University of Auckland.

Continue reading “Bionic Pacemaker Reverses Heart Failure” »