Lifeboat Foundation

Two University of Hawaii at Manoa researchers have identified and corrected a subtle error that was made when applying Einstein’s equations to model the growth of the universe.

Physicists usually assume that a cosmologically large system, such as the universe, is insensitive to details of the small systems contained within it. Kevin Croker, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Joel Weiner, a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics, have shown that this assumption can fail for the compact objects that remain after the collapse and explosion of very large stars.

“For 80 years, we’ve generally operated under the assumption that the universe, in broad strokes, was not affected by the particular details of any small region,” said Croker. “It is now clear that general relativity can observably connect collapsed stars—regions the size of Honolulu—to the behavior of the universe as a whole, over a thousand billion billion times larger.”

Experimenting at 4.1 million degrees Fahrenheit, physicists at Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine have found that an astronomical model—used for 40 years to predict the sun’s behavior as well as the life and death of stars—underestimates the energy blockage caused by free-floating iron atoms, a major player in those processes.

The blockage effect, called opacity, is an element’s natural resistance to energy passing through it, similar to an opaque window’s resistance to the passage of light.

“By observing real-world discrepancies between theory and our experiments at Z, we were able to identify weaknesses in opacity figures inserted into solar models,” said Taisuke Nagayama, lead author on the Sandia groups’ latest publication in Physical Review Letters.

The growing popularity of lithium-ion batteries in recent years has put a strain on the world’s supply of cobalt and nickel—two metals integral to current battery designs—and sent prices surging.

In a bid to develop alternative designs for lithium-based batteries with less reliance on those scarce metals, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a promising new cathode and electrolyte system that replaces expensive metals and traditional liquid electrolyte with lower cost transition metal fluorides and a solid polymer electrolyte.

“Electrodes made from transition metal fluorides have long shown stability problems and rapid failure, leading to significant skepticism about their ability to be used in next generation batteries,” said Gleb Yushin, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Materials Science and Engineering. “But we’ve shown that when used with a solid polymer electrolyte, the metal fluorides show remarkable stability—even at higher temperatures—which could eventually lead to safer, lighter and cheaper lithium-ion batteries.”

Semiconductors are substances that have a conductivity between that of conductors and insulators. Due to their unique properties of conducting current only in specific conditions, they can be controlled or modified to suit our needs. Nowhere is the application of semiconductors more extensive or important than in electrical and electronic devices, such as diodes, transistors, solar cells, and integrated circuits.

Semiconductors can be made of either organic (carbon-based) or inorganic materials. Recent trends in research show that scientists are opting to develop more organic semiconductors, as they have some clear advantages over inorganic semiconductors. Now, scientists, led by Prof Makoto Tadokoro of the Tokyo University of Science, report on the synthesis of a novel organic substance with potential applications as an n-type semiconductor. This study is published in the journal Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry. According to Prof Makoto Tadokoro, “organic semiconductor devices, unlike hard inorganic semiconductor devices, are very soft and are useful for creating adhesive portable devices that can easily fit on a person.” However, despite the advantages of organic semiconductors, there are very few known stable molecules that bear the physical properties of n-type semiconductors, compared to inorganic n-type semiconductors.

N-heteroheptacenequinone is a well-known potential candidate for n-type semiconductor materials. However, it has some drawbacks: it is unstable in air and UV-visible light, and it is insoluble in organic solvents. These disadvantages obstruct the practical applications of this substance as a semiconductor.

Quantum Xchange uses quantum technology to guard encryption keys.

Q-CTRL, an Australian-based quantum computing software company that makes “quantum firmware,” on Tuesday announced a $15 million series A funding round led by Square Peg Capital. Sierra Ventures also participated in the round, joining existing investors Horizons Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.

The primary purpose of the round, says founder and CEO Michael Biercuk, is to expand and grow the company. It currently has 25 employees and aims to double that number in the next 12 to 18 months. It’s also opening an office in Los Angeles where it hopes to add more employees and will expand its product offerings in the field of quantum sensing.

Biercuk is a professor at the University of Sydney and has been conducting research in quantum computing for over a decade. He’s particularly interested in combining the principles of control engineering to quantum computing and other systems such as quantum sensing.

Sept. 10 (UPI) — McDonald’s on Tuesday announced the acquisition of a company that will assist in automating its drive-through process.

The fast-food chain agreed to a deal to acquire Apprente, a California-based company that was founded in 2017 with a focus on creating voice-based platforms for “complex, multilingual, multi-accent and multi-item conversational ordering.”

McDonald’s said Apprente’s technology will be used to allow for faster, simpler and more accurate order taking at its drive-throughs and may later be incorporated into mobile ordering and kiosks.

Maybe of interest to this group.

The AI lab has also released a report to explain why it is releasing the model in increments.

Some lobsters aren’t meant for a roll.

That was the case for a rare two-toned lobster that was plucked recently from the icy waters off Stonington, Me., and which scientists say is a one-in-50 million find. The lobster, split from head to tail into halves of black and orange, was found in Penobscot Bay by Capt. Daryl Dunham when he was fishing in the coastal waters there, according to Patrick Shepard, a fishing scientist at the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.

The fisherman donated the male crustacean to the center, where it will live in rarefied company for a few weeks. The center already has three other unusual lobsters in its tanks, including a blue lobster, a one-in-two million find, and two calico lobsters, whose shells resemble a constellation of orange and black and which people who fish have a one-in-30 million chance of catching.