It seems the rise of hydrogen as the clean fuel for the future is coming closer to reality.
A viable substitute for fossil fuels, hydrogen has been struggling to gain traction for years — but thanks to Europe, that could soon change.
Current state-of-the-art techniques have clear limitations when it comes to imaging the smallest nanoparticles, making it difficult for researchers to study viruses and other structures at the molecular level.
Scientists from the University of Houston and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have reported in Nature Communications a new optical imaging technology for nanoscale objects, relying upon unscattered light to detect nanoparticles as small as 25 nanometers in diameter. The technology, known as PANORAMA, uses a glass slide covered with gold nanodiscs, allowing scientists to monitor changes in the transmission of light and determine the target’s characteristics.
PANORAMA takes its name from Plasmonic Nano-aperture Label-free Imaging (PlAsmonic NanO-apeRture lAbel-free iMAging), signifying the key characteristics of the technology. PANORAMA can be used to detect, count and determine the size of individual dielectric nanoparticles.
China faces an additional geopolitical challenge in chip fabrication and assembly. Just a handful of Japanese companies dominate the global market in silicon wafers, photoresists, and essential packaging chemicals. These companies are well-regarded for their high-quality production capabilities and their products are not easily replaceable even by a manufacturing heavyweight such as China. In a changing world where strategic concerns are guiding technology flows, China’s chip ambitions can be foiled not just by the US but also by Japan and Taiwan.
China’s state-backed funds may well spur private investment, even producing a few champions, but are unlikely to result in a self-sufficient Chinese chip industry any time soon.
O,.o.
Physicists from MIPT and Vladimir State University, Russia, have converted light energy into surface waves on graphene with nearly 90% efficiency. They relied on a laser-like energy conversion scheme and collective resonances. The paper was published in Laser & Photonics Reviews.
Manipulating light at the nanoscale is a task crucial for being able to create ultracompact devices for optical energy conversion and storage. To localize light on such a small scale, researchers convert optical radiation into so-called surface plasmon-polaritons. These SPPs are oscillations propagating along the interface between two materials with drastically different refractive indices—specifically, a metal and a dielectric or air. Depending on the materials chosen, the degree of surface wave localization varies. It is the strongest for light localized on a material only one atomic layer thick, because such 2-D materials have high refractive indices.
Continue reading “No losses: Scientists stuff graphene with light” »
2021 may not turn out well.
He’s hoping the world’s billionaires will donate their pandemic profits.
The use of artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning (ML), technologies that help people and organizations handle customer personalization and communication, data analytics and processing, and a host of other applications continues to grow.
An IDC report found three-quarters of commercial enterprise applications could lean on A.I. by next year alone, while an Analytics Insight report projects more than 20 million available jobs in artificial intelligence by 2023.
Due to A.I. and ML’s transformational reach, specialists with the right skills could find themselves with job opportunities across a wide range of industries. A global skills gap in the technologies means qualified applicants can expect good salaries and a strong bargaining position.
Donning an augmented reality headset in the cockpit, a veteran F-22 pilot just had a dogfight with a projection of a Chinese J-20 fighter.
Magnets are to be found everywhere in our daily lives, whether in satellites, telephones or on fridge doors. However, they are made up of heavy inorganic materials whose component elements are, in some cases, of limited availability.
Now, researchers from the CNRS, the University of Bordeaux and the ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble)[1] have developed a new lightweight molecule-based magnet, produced at low temperatures, and exhibiting unprecedented magnetic properties.
This compound, derived from coordination chemistry[2], contains chromium, an abundant metal, and inexpensive organic molecules. This is the first molecule-based magnet that exhibits a ‘memory effect’ (i.e. it is capable of maintaining one of its two magnetic states) up to a temperature of 240 °C. This effect is measured by what is known as a coercive field, which is 25 times higher at room temperature for this novel material than for the most efficient of its molecule-based predecessors. This property therefore compares well with that of certain purely inorganic commercial magnets.
The Marine Corps has put a lot of emphasis on countering China, but tens of thousands of East Coast leathernecks have their sights set on another part of the world.
Members of II Marine Expeditionary Force wrapped up a training exercise last week that ran from North Carolina to New York. The Marines were tasked with taking back territory in a friendly country that was invaded by a near-peer adversary.
It’s a scenario not unlike Russia’s effective annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
Cambridge/Jena (16.11.2020) Linkages between organic and inorganic materials are a common phenomenon in nature, e.g., in the construction of bones and skeletal structures. They often enable combinations of properties that could not be achieved with just one type of material. In technological material development, however, these so-called hybrid materials still represent a major challenge today.
A new class of hybrid glass materials
Researchers from the Universities of Jena (Germany) and Cambridge (GB) have now succeeded in creating a new class of hybrid glass materials that combine organic and inorganic components. To do this, the scientists use special material combinations in which chemical bonds between organometallic and inorganic glasses can be generated. They included materials composed of organometallic networks—so-called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)—which have recently been experiencing rapidly increasing research interest. This is primarily because their framework structures can be created in a targeted manner, from the length scale of individual molecules up to a few nanometers. This achieves a control of porosity which can be adapted to a large number of applications, both in terms of the size of the pores and their permeability, and in terms of the chemical properties prevailing on the pore surfaces.
