Using targeted gamma radiation, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces have revealed the appearance and the specific role of non-crystalline phases during the formation of mesocrystals – crystals consisting of aligned nanoparticles. Their findings provide fundamental insights for the controlled development and design of new mesocrystalline. Wouldn’t it be practical if the bricks of a house assembled all by themselves? This has been happening in nature for millions of years in the form of mesocrystals. These…
Equal rights in the brain? A new ESI paper shows that the call for equal rights also affects one of the smallest components of the brain: the dendrites. These are the sections of nerve cells that receive and transmit stimuli. The findings have been published in the scientific journal Neuron. We know that neurons of different shapes perform different computations. But do the different shapes also help to make their functions more similar? Hermann Cuntz, a researcher at the Ernst…
Miniaturization of optical components is a challenge in photonics. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Friedrich Schiller University Jena have now succeeded in developing a diffuser, a disk that scatters light, based on silicon nanoparticles. It can be used to specifically control the direction, color, and polarization of light. This novel technology may be used in transparent screens or augmented reality. The results are reported in Advanced Materials (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202105868). Photonics, the science of generating, spreading, and detecting…
The transmission electron microscope (TEM) can image molecular structures at the atomic scale by using electrons instead of light, and has revolutionized materials science and structural biology. The past decade has seen a lot of interest in combining electron microscopy with optical excitations, trying, for example, to control and manipulate the electron beam by light. But a major challenge has been the rather weak interaction of propagating electrons with photons. In a new study, researchers have successfully demonstrated extremely efficient…
Human microbiome encodes resistance to acarbose. Acarbose is a commonly prescribed antidiabetic drug that helps control blood sugar levels by inhibiting human enzymes that break down complex carbohydrates. Now, new research from the laboratory of Princeton researcher Mohamed Donia demonstrates that some bacteria in the mouth and gut can inactivate acarbose and potentially affect the clinical performance of the drug and its impact on bacterial members of the human microbiome. The paper appeared online and in the December 2, 2021…
Successful spin-off: 3D printing offers completely new design and application possibilities in many areas. Scientists at the University of Stuttgart have been exploring and developing this flexible method for producing complex, miniaturized imaging systems using 3D multiphoton lithography. The inventors now want to use their knowledge to start-up an enterprise: Printoptix GmbH i.G. is currently being set up in order to grow its business as an independent limited liability company (GmbH) from next year onwards. 3D printing offers completely new…
An adaptive optimization protocol engineers arbitrary high-dimensional states to enable quantum information tasks that require finding optimal values of experimental parameters under noisy conditions. The adoption of high-dimensional quantum states in quantum information protocols enables better performances in applications ranging from secure quantum communications to fault-tolerant quantum computation. Development of universal protocols able to engineer arbitrary high-dimensional quantum states would be a significant achievement. Several strategies and platforms have been proposed and developed to this end. Quantum-walk (QW) dynamics have…
Flexible tentaclelike manipulators driven by air pressure can be designed to grasp, manipulate soft objects. Traditional robots can have difficulty grasping and manipulating soft objects if their manipulators are not flexible in the way elephant trunks, octopus tentacles, or human fingers can be. In Applied Physics Reviews, by AIP Publishing, investigators from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China developed a type of multiple-segment soft manipulator inspired by these biological systems. The soft manipulators are based on pneu-nets, which are pneumatically…
Results to provide data for NASA’s upcoming Psyche mission. An asteroid impact can be enough to ruin anyone’s day, but several small factors can make the difference between an out-of-this-world story and total annihilation. In AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing, a researcher from the National Institute of Natural Hazards in China developed a computer simulation of asteroid collisions to better understand these factors. The computer simulation initially sought to replicate model asteroid strikes performed in a laboratory. After verifying the…
Mathematical simulations show the new approach may offer faster, cheaper, and more accurate detection, including identifying new variants. A novel approach to testing for the presence of the virus that causes Covid-19 may lead to tests that are faster, less expensive, and potentially less prone to erroneous results than existing detection methods. Though the work, based on quantum effects, is still theoretical, these detectors could potentially be adapted to detect virtually any virus, the researchers say. The new approach is…
Despite damaged equipment, supply chain delays, COVID restrictions and event a blizzard, LaserSETI successfully installed its second observatory at Haleakala Observatory. Last summer the SETI Institute began installing a second LaserSETI Observatory, this time 10,000 feet above sea level at Haleakala Observatory, thanks to the University of Hawai’i’s Institute of Astronomy (IfA). As a result of challenges involving equipment damaged during shipping, supply chain delays for replacement parts, equipment malfunctions and even a blizzard in Hawai’i, the installation was delayed…
WEHI researchers have discovered how dormant Toxoplasma parasites in the brain manipulate their host cells to ensure their own survival. The researchers showed that the parasites were able to lay dormant and undetected inside neurons (brain cells) and muscle cells by releasing proteins that switch off the cells’ ability to alert the immune system. With expertise and technologies from WEHI’s Advanced Genomics facility and Centre for Dynamic Imaging, they were able to visualise the parasites in real-time. The discovery provides…
A novel algorithm allows for efficient and accurate verification of quantum devices. Technologies that take advantage of novel quantum mechanical behaviors are likely to become commonplace in the near future. These may include devices that use quantum information as input and output data, which require careful verification due to inherent uncertainties. The verification is more challenging if the device is time dependent when the output depends on past inputs. For the first time, researchers using machine learning dramatically improved the…
DAILI successfully launched aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 5:07 a.m. EST on Dec. 21, 2021 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Daily Atmospheric Ionospheric Limb Imager (DAILI) CubeSat is scheduled to launch aboard SpaceX’s CRS-24, the 24th cargo resupply mission for NASA to the International Space Station (ISS). Launching no earlier than Dec. 21 at 5:06 a.m. EST on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, DAILI, a 6U CubeSat…
Scientists at Sandia National Labs invent new yardstick for benchmarking performance. What does a quantum computer have in common with a top draft pick in sports? Both have attracted lots of attention from talent scouts. Quantum computers, experimental machines that can perform some tasks faster than supercomputers, are constantly evaluated, much like young athletes, for their potential to someday become game-changing technology. Now, scientist-scouts have their first tool to rank a prospective technology’s ability to run realistic tasks, revealing its…
Glacial erosion likely caused atmospheric oxygen levels to dip over past 800,000 years. An unknown culprit has been removing oxygen from our atmosphere for at least 800,000 years, and an analysis of air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice for up to 1.5 million years has revealed the likely suspect. “We know atmospheric oxygen levels began declining slightly in the late Pleistocene, and it looks like glaciers might have something to do with that,” said Rice University’s Yuzhen Yan, corresponding author…
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