All-optical multiplane QPI design eliminates the need for digital phase recovery algorithms. Light waves, as they propagate through a medium, experience a temporal delay. This delay can unveil crucial information about the underlying structural and compositional characteristics. Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) is a cutting-edge optical technique that reveals variations in optical path length as light moves through biological samples, materials, and other transparent structures. Unlike traditional imaging methods that rely on staining or labeling, QPI allows researchers to visualize and…

Mechanical Engineering professor publishes findings in Current Biology. Why do flies buzz around in circles when the air is still? And why does it matter? In a paper published online July 26, 2024 by the scientific journal Current Biology, University of Nevada, Reno Assistant Professor Floris van Breugel and Postdoctoral Researcher S. David Stupski respond to this up-until-now unanswered question. And that answer could hold a key to public safety — specifically, how to better train robotic systems to track…

How molecular interactions make it possible to overcome the energy barrier. Non-reciprocal interactions allow the design of more efficient molecular systems. In their new paper, scientists from the department “Living Matter Physics” at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) propose a mechanism on how energy barriers in complex systems can be overcome. These findings can help to engineer molecular machines and to understand the self-organization of active matter. In both physics and biology, systems aim to achieve…

In October 2022, astronomers were stunned by what was quickly dubbed the BOAT — the brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB). Now an international science team reports that data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals a feature never seen before. “A few minutes after the BOAT erupted, Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor recorded an unusual energy peak that caught our attention,” said lead researcher Maria Edvige Ravasio at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and affiliated with Brera Observatory, part of INAF (the…

… developed through international scientific collaboration. In a scientific breakthrough, an international research team from Germany’s Forschungszentrum Jülich and Korea’s IBS Center for Quantum Nanoscience (QNS) developed a quantum sensor capable of detecting minute magnetic fields at the atomic length scale. This pioneering work realizes a long-held dream of scientists: an MRI-like tool for quantum materials. The research team utilized the expertise of bottom up single-molecule fabrication from the Jülich group while conducting experiments at QNS, utilizing the Korean team’s…

Linguist from Chemnitz University of Technology and computer science graduate from LMU Munich have developed a free web application that enables colourful, intuitive text analyses for research, for teaching or just for fun. Prof. Dr. Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer, Chair of English and Digital Linguistics at Chemnitz University of Technology, and Johannes Tochtermann (computer science graduate from LMU Munich) have developed a free web application that provides a completely new perspective on texts according to its developers. WordValue (www.wordvalue.gwi.uni-muenchen.de) counts how often…

Researchers at QuTech developed somersaulting spin qubits for universal quantum logic. Researchers at QuTech developed somersaulting spin qubits for universal quantum logic. This achievement may enable efficient control of large semiconductor qubit arrays. The research group published their demonstration of hopping spins in Nature Communications and their work on somersaulting spins in Science.  In 1998, Loss and DiVincenzo published the seminal work ‘quantum computation with quantum dots’. In their original work, hopping of spins was proposed as a basis for…

UVA researchers sharpen machine vision by mimicking nature and taking advanced computing to the edge. Self-driving cars occasionally crash because their visual systems can’t always process static or slow-moving objects in 3D space. In that regard, they’re like the monocular vision of many insects, whose compound eyes provide great motion-tracking and a wide field of view but poor depth perception. Except for the praying mantis. A praying mantis’ field of view also overlaps between its left and right eyes, creating…

A research team led by Prof Ursula Wurstbauer from the Institute of Physics at the University of Münster has investigated how electrons in two-dimensional crystals can be collectively excited and controlled. The study is pioneering for understanding the electronic properties of crystal structures and specifically influencing them. If you make a material thinner and thinner, at a certain point it undergoes a seemingly miraculous transformation: A two-dimensional material that consists of only one or two layers of molecules sometimes has…

Federal funding will allow University of Rochester scientists and their European collaborators to study the feasibility of coherent light sources beyond x-rays. Since the laser was invented in the 1960s, scientists have been working to increase lasers’ peak power and to design machines producing coherent light at progressively shorter wavelengths that can improve image resolution and enable probing of quantum nuclear states. Progress has been made with regard to peak power, most notably with the invention of chirped pulse amplification…

– magnetrons show promise as radiofrequency source. The small but mighty gadget could help make massive research machines more efficient and enable future industrial applications. It has a pretty fascinating past, as well. A pocket-size gizmo that puts the “pop” in microwave popcorn could soon fuel particle accelerators of the future. The small but mighty device is a magnetron – a mashup of the words “magnetic” and “electron.” The term was coined in 1921, and the technology was once a…

A new platform lets PME researchers combine atom array processors with photonic and semiconductor chips. Quantum information systems offer faster, more powerful computing methods than standard computers to help solve many of the world’s toughest problems. Yet fulfilling this ultimate promise will require bigger and more interconnected quantum computers than scientists have yet built. Scaling quantum systems up to larger sizes, and connecting multiple systems, has proved challenging. Now, researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering…

Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron successfully made superheavy element 116 using a beam of titanium-50. That milestone sets the team up to attempt making the heaviest element yet: 120. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are credited in the discovery of 16 of the 118 known elements. Now they’ve completed the crucial first step to potentially create yet another: element 120. Today, an international team of researchers led by Berkeley Lab’s Heavy Element…

An international collaboration seeks to innovate the future of how a mechanical man’s best friend interacts with its owner, using a combination of AI and edge computing called edge intelligence. The project is sponsored through a one-year seed grant from the Institute for Future Technologies (IFT), a partnership between New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). Assistant Professor Kasthuri Jayarajah in NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing is researching how to design a socially assistive model…

Working together, the University of Innsbruck and the spin-off AQT have integrated a quantum computer into a high-performance computing (HPC) environment for the first time in Austria. This hybrid infrastructure of supercomputer and quantum computer can now be used to solve complex problems in various fields such as chemistry, materials science or optimization. This approach will rely on a future, community-driven adaptation to address the growing understanding on how to best benefit from quantum computers. The respective interfaces are therefore…

How can a chatbot support students in lectures and with assigned exercises? Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed the chatbot Iris, which offers informatics students personalized assistance with programming assignments. A study has now confirmed the chatbot’s success: Iris improves the understanding of programming concepts and represents a valuable complement to human tutors. A packed auditorium with over 1000 students. This is not a rare sight in introductory informatics lectures. To meet the needs of each…