Researchers at Rice University’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) have created a unique sensor that amplifies the optical signature of molecules by about 100 billion times — accurately identifying the composition and structure of individual molecules containing fewer than 20 atoms.
The new single-molecule imaging method, described in the journal Nature Communications, uses a form of Raman spectroscopy in combination with optical amplifier, making the sensor… read more
Researchers at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics are working to bring the multiverse hypothesis — we are living in one universe of many — into the realm of testable science.
Perimeter Associate Faculty member Matthew Johnson and his team are looking for clues for the existence of multiverses (a.ka. parallel universes) in the cosmic microwave background data, assumed to be left over from… read more
MIT researchers discovered last year that when water droplets spontaneously jump away from superhydrophobic (water-repelling) surfaces during condensation, the droplets can gain electric charge in the process.
Now the same team has demonstrated that this process can generate small amounts of electricity, which could lead to devices that can charge cellphones or other electronics using just the humidity in the air. As a side benefit, the system… read more
An unusual three-dimensional porous nanostructure called pillared boron nitride (PBN) could achieve a balance of strength, toughness, and ability to transfer heat that could benefit nanoelectronics, gas storage, and composite materials that perform multiple functions, Rice University engineers have discovered.
Their findings were published online July 14 in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
The 3-D prototypes they made (using computer simulations) fuse one-dimensional boron nitride… read more
University of Basel physicists with teams from Finland and Japan were able to place 20 single bromine atoms on a fully insulated surface at room temperature to form the smallest “Swiss cross,” taking a step towards next-generation atomic-scale storage devices.
Nature Communications has published their results.
Ever since the 1990s, physicists have been able to directly control surface structures by moving and positioning single atoms to… read more
Weizmann Institute scientists have demonstrated the first photonic router — a quantum device based on a single atom that enables routing of single photons, a step toward overcoming the difficulties in building quantum computers.
A photonic switch
At the core of the device is an atom that can switch between two states. The state is set just by sending a single particle of light — or… read more
An Intel-Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) collaboration has found a new way to create smaller features for future generations of microprocessors by modifying the chemistry of photoresists, which are used to generate the patterns on a chip.
The researchers believe their results could be easily incorporated by companies that make resist, and could be incorporated into manufacturing lines as early as 2017.
The… read more
A new discovery will make it possible to create pixels just a few hundred nanometers across that could pave the way for extremely high-resolution and low-energy thin, flexible displays for applications such as smart glasses, synthetic retinas, and foldable screens.
A team led by Oxford University scientists found that by sandwiching a seven-nanometer-thick layer of a phase-change material called GST between two layers of a transparent electrode,… read more
Microsoft Research introduced “Project Adam” AI machine-learning object recognition software at its 2014 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit.
The goal of Project Adam is to enable software to visually recognize any object — an ambitious project, given the immense neural network in human brains that makes those kinds of associations possible through trillions of connections.
Project Adam generated a massive dataset of 14 million images from the Web… read more
Dubai Holding plans to build the world’s largest domed city: Mall of the World, in Dubai. The temperature-controlled city (also a first) will occupy a total area of 48 million square feet — the largest indoor theme park in the world. It will be covered by a glass dome that will be open during the winter months.
The project will also house the largest shopping mall in the world,… read more
A new Terminator T-1000 robot-style material made of wax and foam — and capable of switching between hard and soft states — could be used to build morphing surgical robots that move through the body to reach a desired location without damaging organs or vessels along the way.
Robots built from the material, described in a new paper in the journal Macromolecular Materials and Engineering, could also be used… read more
The confluence of nanotechnology and biotechnology is creating opportunities and an emerging industry, nanobiotechnology, with tremendous potential for economic and social value creation, according to an international research team at MIT, Simon Fraser University, and the University of New South Wales
The medical applications of nanobiotechnology are promising, including effectively targeted drug delivery — imagine highly efficacious cancer treatment with few side effects — and real time,… read more
Researchers from Brown University, Shanxi University and Tsinghua University in China have discovered that a cluster of 40 boron atoms forms a hollow molecular cage similar to a carbon “buckyball.”
“This is the first time that a boron cage has been observed experimentally,” said Lai-Sheng Wang, a professor of chemistry at Brown who led the team that made the discovery.… read more
High-density, next-generation computer memory that can store about one terabyte of data on a device the size of a postage stamp — more than 50 times the data density of current flash memory technology — is now a step closer to to mass production.
That’s because Rice University’s breakthrough silicon oxide technology will allow manufacturers to fabricate “resistive random-access memory” (RRAM) devices at room temperature with conventional production… read more
Scientists have discovered a split-second burst of radio waves using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, published July 10 in The Astrophysical Journal.
The finding marks the first time that a “fast radio burst” has been detected using an instrument other than the Parkes radio telescope in Australia.
Scientists using the Parkes Observatory have recorded a handful of such events, but the lack of any similar findings… read more