When listening to music, we don’t just hear the notes produced by the instruments, we are also immersed in its echoes from our surroundings. Sound waves bounce back off the walls and objects around us, forming a characteristic sound effect – a specific acoustic field. This explains why the same piece of music sounds very different when played in an old church or a modern concrete building. Architects have long been capitalising on this fact when building, say, concert halls….

“Loss is ubiquitous in nature, and by better understanding it, we make it more useful”. Natural and manmade physical structures all lose energy, and scientists work hard to eliminate that loss or compensate for it. Optical and photonic devices lose energy through light scattering, radiation or material absorption. In some situations, however, intentionally yet carefully designing loss in open optical devices and systems can lead to unconventional physical phenomena which inspires novel methods for optical control and engineering. Lan Yang,…

Ohm’s law is well-known from physics class. It states that the resistance of a conductor and the voltage applied to it determine how much current will flow through the conductor. The electrons in the material – the negatively charged carriers – move in a disordered fashion and largely independently of each other. Physicists find it far more interesting, however, when the charge carriers influence one another strongly enough for that simple picture not to be correct anymore. This is the…

Scientists have spent decades searching for faster, more energy-efficient memory technologies for everything from large data centers to mobile sensors and other flexible electronics. Among the most promising data storage technologies is phase-change memory, which is thousands of times faster than conventional hard drives but uses a lot of electricity. Now, Stanford University engineers have overcome a key obstacle that has limited widespread adoption of phase-change memory. The results are published in a Sept. 10 study in Science. “People have…

International team of researchers develops algorithm that accelerates super-resolution microscopy. Scientists use super-resolution microscopy to study previously undiscovered cellular worlds, revealing nanometer-scale details inside cells. This method revolutionized light microscopy and earned its inventors the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In an international collaboration, AI researchers from Tübingen have now developed an algorithm that significantly accelerates this technology. Single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) is a type of super-resolution microscopy. It involves labelling proteins of interest with fluorescent molecules and using light…

The chemically controlled chains reveal an ultrastrong attraction between electrons that may help cuprate superconductors carry electrical current with no loss at relatively high temperatures. When scientists study unconventional superconductors – complex materials that conduct electricity with zero loss at relatively high temperatures – they often rely on simplified models to get an understanding of what’s going on. Researchers know these quantum materials get their abilities from electrons that join forces to form a sort of electron soup. But modeling…

An international team has developed, assembled, and integrated a new set of receivers for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the Band 1 receivers, which have now been installed for the first time in ALMA antennas and successfully achieved the first light. With ALMA’s lowest frequency receivers, astronomers can view the cool Universe as never before. ALMA, located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile at an altitude of 5,000m above sea level, is comprised of 66 antennas working as…

University of Warwick convenes researchers to investigate challenges of monitoring objects in Earth orbit in new Centre for Space Domain Awareness Research into sustainable use of space aims to support UK aim to become a responsible spacefaring nation Projects will investigate new methods to track debris in orbit and space weather that threaten spacecraft Established as congestion of near-Earth space through new satellites and mega-constellations is anticipated to expand rapidly in coming years New ways of tackling the threat that…

New superconducting magnet breaks magnetic field strength records, paving the way for practical, commercial, carbon-free power. It was a moment three years in the making, based on intensive research and design work: On Sept. 5, for the first time, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet was ramped up to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth. That successful demonstration helps resolve the greatest uncertainty in the quest to build the…

Astronomers from the UNIGE have observed the composition of the gases in our galaxy and have shown that, contrary to the models established until now, they are not homogeneously mixed. In order to better understand the history and evolution of the Milky Way, astronomers are studying the composition of the gases and metals that make up an important part of our galaxy. Three main elements stand out: the initial gas coming from outside our galaxy, the gas between the stars…

Scientists awarded $6 million to plan brain-inspired computer that runs on probability. If you’ve ever asked a car mechanic how long a part will last until it breaks, odds are they shrugged their shoulders. They know how long parts last on average, and they can see when one is close to breaking. But knowing how many miles are left is extremely difficult, even using a supercomputer, because the exact moment a belt snaps or a battery dies is to some…

Breakthrough in stabilizing nanocrystals introduces a low-cost, energy-efficient light source for consumer electronic devices, detectors and medical imaging. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are an unsung hero of the lighting industry. They run efficiently, give off little heat and last for a long time.  Now scientists are looking at new materials to make more efficient and longer-lived LEDs with applications in consumer electronics, medicine and security. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Los Alamos…

Without rapid point-of-care testing, the pandemic will likely continue to evolve. Without the prospect of herd immunity on the immediate horizon, speedy detection for COVID-19 remains imperative for helping to curb the pandemic. Point-of-care testing that can provide immediate results is an urgent need. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and Omega Optics Inc. investigated the opportunities and challenges in developing rapid COVID-19 sensing techniques. They discuss the prospects of optical biosensors for point-of-care COVID-19 testing in the…

Risk from solar flares to planes is real but not worth costly mitigation. “Don’t fly too close to the sun,” said Daedalus to Icarus. Flying too high would melt the wax in his wings, while going too low would cause the sea’s moisture to create drag. Commercial flight crews do not usually appear in Greek mythology, but they have to work with the occupational hazard of aviation radiation exposure. Aviation guidelines aim to mitigate the effects of radiation, mainly caused…

The prevalent view of white dwarfs as inert, slowly cooling stars has been challenged by observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. An international group of astronomers have discovered the first evidence that white dwarfs can slow down their rate of ageing by burning hydrogen on their surface. “We have found the first observational evidence that white dwarfs can still undergo stable thermonuclear activity,” explained Jianxing Chen of the Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna and the Italian National Institute…

Reconfigurable device can simplify semiconductor circuit design and enhance computational power and speed. Many electronic devices today are dependent on semiconductor logic circuits based on switches hard-wired to perform predefined logic functions. Physicists from the National University of Singapore (NUS), together with an international team of researchers, have developed a novel molecular memristor, or an electronic memory device, that has exceptional memory reconfigurability. Unlike hard-wired standard circuits, the molecular device can be reconfigured using voltage to embed different computational tasks….