Lifeboat Foundation

Superconductivity—the ability of a material to transmit an electric current without loss—is a quantum effect that, despite years of research, is still limited to very low temperatures. Now a team of scientists at the MPSD has succeeded in creating a metastable state with vanishing electrical resistance in a molecular solid by exposing it to finely tuned pulses of intense laser light. This effect had already been demonstrated in 2016 for only a very short time, but in a new study the authors of the paper have shown a far longer lifetime, nearly 10.000 times longer than before. The long lifetimes for light-induced superconductivity hold promise for applications in integrated electronics. The research by Budden et al. has been published in Nature Physics.

Summary: A new AI system is not only able to analyze potential new variants of COVID-19, it can also vaccine design cycles within minutes, researchers report.

Source: USC

People with depression have a distinguishing feature in their brains, according to a new study.

An intelligent material that learns by physically changing itself, similar to how the human brain works, could be the foundation of a completely new generation of computers. Radboud physicists working toward this so-called “quantum brain” have made an important step. They have demonstrated that they can pattern and interconnect a network of single atoms, and mimic the autonomous behavior of neurons and synapses in a brain. They report their discovery in Nature Nanotechnology.

Considering the growing global demand for computing capacity, more and more data centers are necessary, all of which leave an ever-expanding energy footprint. “It is clear that we have to find new strategies to store and process information in an energy efficient way,” says project leader Alexander Khajetoorians, Professor of Scanning Probe Microscopy at Radboud University.

“This requires not only improvements to technology, but also fundamental research in game changing approaches. Our new idea of building a ‘quantum brain’ based on the quantum properties of materials could be the basis for a future solution for applications in artificial intelligence.”

It can keep blood pumping for years while patients with heart failure wait for donor organs.

The European Commission has approved the sale of Carmat’s total artificial heart, which is designed for patients with end-stage heart failure.

The Expanscape Aurora 7 is the 26-pound, 28-minute, seven-paneled laptop of your dreams.

Virtual reality isn’t just for gaming. Researchers can use virtual reality, or VR, to assess participants’ attention, memory and problem-solving abilities in real world settings. By using VR technology to examine how folks complete daily tasks, like making a grocery list, researchers can better help clinical populations that struggle with executive functioning to manage their everyday lives.

The pursuit of fusion as a safe, carbon-free, always-on energy source has intensified in recent years, with a number of organizations pursuing aggressive timelines for technology demonstrations and power plant designs. New-generation superconducting magnets are a critical enabler for many of these programs, which creates growing need for sensors, controls, and other infrastructure that will allow the magnets to operate reliably in the harsh conditions of a commercial fusion power plant.

The many different sensations our bodies experience are accompanied by deeply complex exchanges of information within the brain, and the feeling of pain is no exception. So far, research has shown how pain intensity can be directly related to specific patterns of oscillation in brain activity, which are altered by the activation and deactivation of the ‘interneurons’ connecting different regions of the brain. However, it remains unclear how the process is affected by ‘inhibitory’ interneurons, which prevent chemical messages from passing between these regions. Through new research published in EPJ B, researchers led by Fernando Montani at Instituto de Física La Plata, Argentina, show that inhibitory interneurons make up 20% of the circuitry in the brain required for pain processing.