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India has edged past the United Kingdom by delivering more cutting-edge critical technology research during the period between 2019 and 2023, data published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on Wednesday (August 28) showed.

The institute updated its critical technology tracker this week by focusing on high-impact research or 10 per cent of the most highly cited papers, as a “leading indicator of a country’s research performance, strategic intent, and potential future science and technology capability”

The tracker covers 64 critical technologies and crucial fields spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials, and key quantum technology areas.

A Stanford University psychologist named Michal Kosinski claims that AI he’s built can detect your intelligence, sexual preferences, and political leanings with a great degree of accuracy just by scanning your face, Business Insider reports.

Needless to say, Kosinski’s work raises many ethical questions. Is this type of facial recognition research just a high-tech version of phrenology, a pseudoscience popular in the 18th and 19th centuries that sought to find links between facial features and their mental traits?

Absolutely not, Kosinski told Business Insider. If anything, he says his work on facial recognition is a warning to policymakers about the potential dangers of his research and similar work by others.

Scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory are pioneering the use of liquid lithium in spherical tokamaks to enhance fusion performance.

Recent computer simulations suggest the optimal placement of lithium vapor to protect the tokamak’s interior from intense plasma heat. Innovative configurations, such as the lithium “cave” and porous plasma-facing walls, aim to simplify the design and improve heat dissipation, contributing to the future of fusion energy.

Continue reading “Fusion’s New Hero: The Liquid Metal That Beats the Heat” »

It’s not easy making green. For years, scientists have fabricated small, high-quality lasers that generate red and blue light. However, the method they typically employ—injecting electric current into semiconductors—hasn’t worked as well in building tiny lasers that emit light at yellow and green wavelengths.

In a paper published recently in the Journal of Applied Physics, an international team of scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Argonne National Laboratory and Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron have developed a new sample configuration that improves the reliability of equation of state measurements in a pressure regime not previously achievable in the diamond anvil cell.

A unique quantum effect in biology could be the key to understanding a common marker of Alzheimer’s, raising questions about current assumptions of the disease and informing the search for a cure.

Optical fiber, as a physical medium for information transmission, is the “highway” of modern economic and social development. However, with the continuous emergence of high-speed and high-capacity communication scenarios such as virtual reality, 5G, intelligent driving, and the Internet of Things (IoT), there is an upper limit to the communication capacity (traffic flow) of the traditional single-mode fiber-optic communication system (highway).

A team of researchers has developed a novel computational imaging system designed to address the challenges of real-time monitoring in ultrafast laser material processing. The new system, known as Dual-Path Snapshot Compressive Microscopy (DP-SCM), represents a significant advancement in the field, offering unprecedented capabilities for high-speed, high-resolution imaging. The team was led by Yuan Xin from Westlake University and Shi Liping from Xidian University.

Magnetic field sensing plays a pivotal role in numerous fields of medical, transportation and aerospace. The optical fiber-based magnetic field sensor possesses outstanding characteristics of compactness, long-distance interrogation, low cost and high sensitivity, which has attracted intensive interest. However, the fiber-based magnetic field sensor is generally affected by the temperature perturbation.