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Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and US Army Research Lab (ARL) have taken a critical step on the path to high energy batteries by improving their water-in-salt battery with a new type of chemical transformation of the cathode that creates a reversible solid salt layer, a phenomenon yet unknown in the field of water-based batteries.

Building on their previous discoveries of the water-in-salt electrolytes reported in Science in 2015, the researchers added a new cathode. This new cathode material, lacking transition metal, operates at an average potential of 4.2 volts with excellent cycling stability, and delivers an unprecedented energy density comparable, or perhaps higher than, non-aqueous Li-ion batteries. The authors report their work on May 9 in the journal Nature.

“The University of Maryland and ARL research has produced the most creative new battery chemistry I have seen in at least 10 years,” said Prof. Jeffrey Dahn of Dalhousie University in Canada, an expert in the field not affiliated with the research. “However, it remains to be seen if a practical device with long lifetime can be created.”

Continue reading “Reversible chemistry clears path for safer batteries” »

Flow batteries, an emerging technology, could be more durable and hardy than the most popular grid-scale batteries in use today. Now, California’s independent system operator has hooked one up.

A minor change to interferometer parameters might reveal the Earth is not alone. Andrew Masterson reports.

Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have succeeded in developing a key constituent of a novel unconventional computing concept. This constituent employs the same magnetic structures that are being researched in connection with storing electronic data on shift registers known as racetracks. In this, researchers investigate so-called skyrmions, which are magnetic vortex-like structures, as potential bit units for data storage. However, the recently announced new approach has a particular relevance to probabilistic computing. This is an alternative concept for electronic data processing where information is transferred in the form of probabilities rather than in the conventional binary form of 1 and 0. The number 2/3, for instance, could be expressed as a long sequence of 1 and 0 digits, with 2/3 being ones and 1/3 being zeros. The key element lacking in this approach was a functioning bit reshuffler, i.e., a device that randomly rearranges a sequence of digits without changing the total number of 1s and 0s in the sequence. That is exactly what the skyrmions are intended to achieve. The results of this research have been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The researchers used thin magnetic metallic films for their investigations. These were examined in Mainz under a special microscope that made the magnetic alignments in the metallic films visible. The films have the special characteristic of being magnetized in vertical alignment to the film plane, which makes stabilization of the magnetic skyrmions possible in the first place. Skyrmions can basically be imagined as small magnetic vortices, similar to hair whorls. These structures exhibit a so-called topological stabilization that protects them from collapsing too easily – as a hair whorl resists being easily straightened. It is precisely this characteristic that makes skyrmions very promising when it comes to use in technical applications such as, in this particular case, information storage. The advantage is that the increased stability reduces the probability of unintentional data loss and ensures the overall quantity of bits is maintained.

That’s just the beginning: A.I. brain implants might be next.

A PROCESS taking more than one trillion times the age of the universe to complete has finally been measured by scientists hunting for dark matter.

Most antibiotics work by interfering with critical functions such as DNA replication or construction of the bacterial cell wall. However, these mechanisms represent only part of the full picture of how antibiotics act.

In a new study of antibiotic action, MIT researchers developed a new machine-learning approach to discover an additional mechanism that helps some antibiotics kill bacteria. This secondary mechanism involves activating the bacterial metabolism of nucleotides that the cells need to replicate their DNA.

“There are dramatic energy demands placed on the cell as a result of the drug stress. These energy demands require a metabolic response, and some of the metabolic byproducts are toxic and help contribute to killing the cells,” says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering, and the senior author of the study.

Continue reading “Machine learning reveals metabolic pathways disrupted by the drugs, offering new targets to combat resistance” »

In a recent study now published in Light: Science & Applications, Ming Zhang, Lan-Tian Feng and an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the departments of quantum information, quantum physics and modern optical instrumentation in China, detailed a new technique to generate photon-pairs for use in quantum devices. In the study, they used a method known as four-wave mixing to allow three electromagnetic fields to interact and produce a fourth field. The team created the quantum states in a silicon nanophotonic spiral waveguide to produce bright, tunable, stable and scalable multiphoton quantum states. The technology is comparable with the existing fiber and integrated circuit manufacturing processes to pave the way to engineer a range of new generation photonic quantum technologies for applications in quantum communication, computation and imaging. The multiphoton quantum sources detailed in the work will play a critical role to improve the existing understanding of quantum information.

The scientists generated multiphoton quantum states using a single-silicon nanophotonic waveguide and detected four-photon states with a low pump power of 600 µW to achieve experimental multiphoton quantum interference verified with quantum state tomography. Zhang and Feng et al. recorded the quantum interference visibilities at a value greater than 95 percent with high fidelity. The multiphoton quantum source is fully compatible with on-chip processes of quantum manipulation and quantum detection to form large-scale quantum photonic integrated circuits (QPICs). The work has significant potential for multiphoton quantum research.

Multiphoton quantum sources are critical to build several practical platforms for quantum communication, computation, simulation and metrology. Physicists have made great efforts to realize high quality, bright and scalable multiphoton quantum states in previous work, to activate powerful quantum technologies by multiplexing several biphoton sources to generate eight-photon and 10-photon entanglement. However, the efficacy of such multiplexing systems decreased with the number of entangled photons. At present, quantum photonic integrated circuits (QPCIs) and silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology remain promising to realize high quality photon-pair sources.

Continue reading “Generating multiphoton quantum states on silicon” »

Newly identified subsets of cell types present in joint tissue in people with rheumatoid arthritis and how they interact may explain why only some people respond to existing medications, according to two studies by co-senior author Laura Donlin, Ph.D., Co-Director of the Derfner Foundation Precision Medicine Laboratory at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) and collaborating colleagues. The findings suggest exciting new targets for developing precision medicine strategies in the future.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that affects the joints. The immune system mistakenly perceives joint tissue as a harmful invader, like a bacteria or virus, and attacks it, causing inflammation, pain and swelling. RA affects an estimated 1.3 million Americans, about 1% of the population. Critical unmet needs in RA treatment are medications that effectively treat all people with RA, especially those who do not respond to disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) or biologics.

RA involves a complex interplay between many different types of cells—including T cells, B cells, monocytes and fibroblasts—but the specific subtypes that drive disease progression are largely undefined. Understanding these cell types more precisely may hold valuable information in developing new treatments.

Continue reading “Researchers advance understandings of the cellular mechanisms driving rheumatoid arthritis” »