Radar system can recognize and track people and objects in room. Recognizing when senior citizens are at risk in the home or helping them find misplaced objects they presumed lost: The technology developed in the successful OMNICONNECT project can help people lead independent lives for longer. The researchers of Fraunhofer IZM have integrated a miniature radar system into an LED ceiling light that can track and recognize movement patterns and locate people or objects in a room. Four radar modules…

The MINERvA experiment in the NuMI beam at Fermilab has made the first accurate image of the proton using neutrinos instead of light as the probe. The Science Protons and neutrons, the building blocks of atomic nuclei, are themselves made up of strongly interacting quarks and gluons“>quarks and gluons. Because the interactions are so strong, the structure of protons and neutrons is difficult to calculate from theory. Instead, scientists must measure it experimentally. Neutrino experiments use targets that are nuclei made of many protons and neutrons…

Samples from the asteroid Ryugu collected by the Hayabusa2 mission contain nitrogenous organic compounds, including the nucleobase uracil, which is a part of RNA. Researchers have analyzed samples of asteroid Ryugu collected by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft and found uracil—one of the informational units that make up RNA, the molecules that contain the instructions for how to build and operate living organisms. Nicotinic acid, also known as Vitamin B3 or niacin, which is an important cofactor for metabolism…

… compatible with semiconductor manufacturing. Could enable more efficient fiber-optical telecommunications, datacentres and future quantum computers. A team of researchers led by the University of Sydney’s Associate Professor Niels Quack has developed a new technology to combine optics and micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) in a microchip, paving the way for the creation of devices like micro-3D cameras and gas sensors for precision air quality measurement, including their use in mobile phones. Published today in Nature: Microsystems and NanoEngineering, the new microfabrication process…

Security gaps exist not only in software, but also directly in hardware. Attackers might deliberately have them built in in order to attack technical applications on a large scale. Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, and the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) in Bochum are exploring methods of detecting such so-called hardware Trojans. They compared construction plans for chips with electron microscope images of real chips and had an algorithm search for differences. This is how they…

A team including physicists of the University of Bern has for the first time detected subatomic particles called neutrinos created by a particle collider, namely at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A team including physicists of the University of Bern has for the first time detected subatomic particles called neutrinos created by a particle collider, namely at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The discovery promises to deepen scientists’ understanding of the nature of neutrinos, which are among the most abundant…

Tamed light offers new possibilities. In a major breakthrough in the fields of nanophotonics and ultrafast optics, a Sandia National Laboratories research team has demonstrated the ability to dynamically steer light pulses from conventional, so-called incoherent light sources. This ability to control light using a semiconductor device could allow low-power, relatively inexpensive sources like LEDs or flashlight bulbs to replace more powerful laser beams in new technologies such as holograms, remote sensing, self-driving cars and high-speed communication. “What we’ve done…

… blowing bubbles in the central region of the Teacup Galaxy. When matter falls into supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, it unleashes enormous amounts of energy and is called an active galactic nuclei (or AGN). A fraction of AGN release part of this energy as jets that are detectable in radio wavelengths that travel at velocities close to light speed. While the jet travels across the galaxy, it collides with the clouds and gas around it and in some…

Using previously developed theoretical and mathematical models, researchers used information on the speed of the process of DNA unzipping through a nanopore to accurately retrieve the thermodynamics of double helix formation and breaking. Reconstructing accurately how the parts of a complex molecular are held together knowing only how the molecule distorts and breaks up. This was the challenge taken on by a research team led by SISSA’s Cristian Micheletti and recently published on Physical Review Letters. In particular, the scientists…

The Atmospheric Waves Experiment, led by USU’s SDL and College of Science, is set for a December launch. NASA has announced that the launch of the Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory and College of Science-led Atmospheric Waves Experiment, or AWE, is scheduled for December 2023. The NASA-funded instrument will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to the International Space Station. AWE Principal Investigator Michael Taylor from USU’s College of Science leads a team of scientists that will provide new…

As part of a newly funded NASA Quantum Pathways Institute consisting of a multi-university research team, UC Santa Barbara professor of electrical and computer engineering Daniel Blumenthal will help to build technology and tools to improve measurement of important climate factors by observing atoms in outer space. “We are peering into a universe that we’ve never peered into before,” he said. Led by colleagues at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, Blumenthal and the other researchers will focus on quantum sensing, which involves observing how atoms react to small…

The future of wireless communications is set to take a giant leap with the advent of sixth-generation (6G) wireless technology. A research team at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) invented a groundbreaking tunable terahertz (THz) meta-device that can control the radiation direction and coverage area of THz beams. By rotating its metasurface, the device can promptly direct the 6G signal only to a designated recipient, minimizing power leakage and enhancing privacy. It is expected to provide a highly adjustable,…

Researchers have shown how energy disappears in quantum turbulence, paving the way for a better understanding of turbulence in scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary. Dr Samuli Autti from Lancaster University is one of the authors of a new study of quantum wave turbulence together with researchers at Aalto University. The team’s findings, published in Nature Physics, demonstrate a new understanding of how wave-like motion transfers energy from macroscopic to microscopic length scales, and their results confirm a theoretical…

Cosmic fireworks, invisible to our eyes, fill the night sky. We can get a glimpse of this elusive light show thanks to the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which observes the sky in gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. This animation shows the gamma-ray sky’s frenzied activity during a year of observations from February 2022 to February 2023. The pulsing circles represent just a subset of more than 1,500 light curves – records of how…

When we think of crystals, we think of ice, kitchen salt, quartz, and so on – hard solids whose shapes show a regular pattern. Research performed in the group of UvA-IoP physicist Noushine Shahidzadeh shows that crystals can be quite different: they can be soft and deformable shapes without the familiar facets. The paper where these results were reported was featured as an Editor’s Highlight by the journal Nature Communications. Floppy crystals Crystals are generically hard solids, and are usually…

Scientists at EPFL and IBM have developed a new type of laser that could have a significant impact on optical ranging technology. The laser is based on a material called lithium niobate, often used in the field of optical modulators, which controls the frequency or intensity of light that is transmitted through a device. Lithium niobate is particularly useful because it can handle a lot of optical power and has a high “Pockels coefficient”, which means that it can change…