A team of astronomers and computer scientists at the University of Hertfordshire have taught a machine to “see” astronomical images, using data from the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields set of images of distant clusters of galaxies that contain several different types of galaxies.
The technique, which uses a form of AI called unsupervised machine learning, allows galaxies to be automatically classified at high speed, something previously… read more
An unusual material called “black phosphorus” could emerge as a strong candidate for future energy-efficient transistors, new research from McGill University and Université de Montréal suggests. The material is a form of phosphorus that is similar to graphite (also known as pencil lead and the source of graphene), so it can be exfoliated (separated) easily into single atomic layers known as phosphorene.… read more
Electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a new design for a cloaking device that overcomes some of the limitations of existing “invisibility cloaks”: it’s both thin and does not alter the brightness of light around a hidden object.
The technology behind this cloak will have more applications than just invisibility, such as concentrating solar energy and increasing signal speed in optical communications.… read more
Using a single molecule attached to an atomic force microscope (AFM) as a more sensitive sensor, scientists in Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany have used a new “scanning quantum dot microscopy” method to image electric potential fields (voltages) of electron shells of single molecules and even atoms with high precision for the first time, providing contact-free information on the distribution of charges.
The breakthrough technique is… read more
Smartphones distracted students from school-related tasks in self-reported results of a one-year study of first-time smartphone users at a major research university in Texas.
“Smartphone technology is penetrating world markets and becoming abundant in most college settings,” said Philip Kortum, assistant professor of psychology at Rice and the study’s co-author. “We were interested to see how students with no prior experience using smartphones thought [smartphones] impacted their education.”
The… read more
Harvard researchers have created surface plasmons (wakes of light-like waves moving on a metallic surface) and demonstrated that they can be controlled and steered. Their demonstration was based on the Cherenkov effect, in which a charged particle moving with a velocity faster than the phase velocity of light in the medium radiates light that forms a cone with a half angle determined by the ratio of… read more
MIT spinoff Microchips Biotech has partnered with Teva Pharmaceutical, the world’s largest producer of generic drugs, to commercialize its wirelessly controlled, implantable, microchip-based devices that store and release drugs inside the body over a period of years.
Invented by Microchips Biotech co-founders Michael Cima, the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering, and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, the… read more
Astronomers have found high-energy x-ray evidence for five hidden supermassive black holes in the Universe that were previously clouded from direct view by dust and gas.
The research, led by astronomers at the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University, UK, supports the theory that potentially millions more supermassive black holes exist in the Universe, but are hidden from view, according to the astronomers.… read more
It’s the year 2030. A fleet of driverless taxis roams throughout your city, ready to pick you up and take you to your destination at a moment’s notice. As a result, greenhouse gases are now 63 to 82 percent lower than with a privately owned hybrid car and 90 percent lower than a 2014 gasoline-powered private vehicle. …
Those numbers are from a new study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory… read more
Vanderbilt University mathematicians have come up with a new theory of “cosmological viscosity” (how sticky the universe is) that challenges current theories.
For decades, cosmologists have had trouble reconciling the classic notion of viscosity based on the laws of thermodynamics with Einstein’s general theory of relativity, according the the team, which has now come up with a fundamentally new mathematical formulation of the problem that appears to… read more
A University of Texas at Arlington materials science and engineering team has developed a new “photoelectrochemical” energy cell that can efficiently store solar energy and deliver electrical power 24 hours a day. It can also be scaled up to provide large amounts of energy, limited only by the size of its chemical storage tanks, according to Fuqiang Liu, an assistant professor in the Materials… read more
A team from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science, along with collaborators from the University of Tokyo and University of Osaka, have successfully produced pairs of spin-entangled electrons and demonstrated, for the first time, that these electrons remain entangled even when they are separated from one another on a chip.
This research could allow information contained in quantum bits (qubits) to be shared between… read more
There may be far fewer galaxies further out in the universe then might be expected, according to a new study led by Michigan State University.
Over the years, the Hubble Space Telescope has allowed astronomers to look deep into the universe. The long view stirred theories of untold thousands of distant, faint galaxies. But new research appearing in the current issue of the Astrophysical Journal… read more
Engineers at Oregon State University (OSU) have invented a way to use silver at room temperature for printed electronics, with broad applications in microelectronics, sensors, energy devices, low emissivity coatings and even transparent displays.
Silver offers advantages in electronic devices because of its conductive and other properties. But the process for using it has required high heat and organic stablizers, followed by post-heating treatments that are required… read more
Physicists at the University of Sussex have frozen single ytterbium ions (charged atoms) to within a millionth of a degree of absolute zero (minus 273.15°C), using 12.6 GHz microwave radiation combined with a large static magnetic field gradient. Temperatures near absolute zero are required to hold ions stationary for quantum computing and other applications.
The physicists measured a reduction of almost two orders of magnitude in the… read more