The development of stimuli-responsive polymers has brought about a wealth of material-related opportunities for next-generation small-scale, wirelessly controlled soft-bodied robots. For some time now, engineers have known how to use these materials to make small robots that can walk, swim and jump. So far, no one has been able to make them fly. Researchers of the Light Robots group at Tampere University are now researching how to make smart material fly. Hao Zeng, Academy Research Fellow and the group leader,…

TUD startup teaches robots to feel. Robotics has evolved at an unprecedented rate over the past several decades. Yet many robots remain inflexible, cumbersome and noisy. Now, the TU Dresden spin-off PowerON seeks to change that. It aims to break down the barrier between humans and robots. The next generation of robotics will feature sensory skins, fabricated muscles and artificial neurons printed on flexible materials, opening up new fields of application. “We’re observing a drastic upward trend in automation across…

In a new breakthrough, researchers at the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with Ruhr University Bochum, have solved a problem that has caused quantum researchers headaches for years. The researchers can now control two quantum light sources rather than one. Trivial as it may seem to those uninitiated in quantum, this colossal breakthrough allows researchers to create a phenomenon known as quantum mechanical entanglement. This in turn, opens new doors for companies and others to exploit the technology commercially. Going…

Researchers find ways to improve the storage time of quantum information in a spin rich material. An international team of scientists have demonstrated a leap in preserving the quantum coherence of quantum dot spin qubits as part of the global push for practical quantum networks and quantum computers. These technologies will be transformative to a broad range of industries and research efforts: from the security of information transfer, through the search for materials and chemicals with novel properties, to measurements…

Boston College-led team develops new quantum sensor technique to image and understand the origin of photocurrent flow in Weyl semimetals. Quantum sensors can be used to reveal a surprising new mechanism for converting light into electricity in Weyl semimetals, Boston College Assistant Professor of Physics Brian Zhou and colleagues report in the journal Nature Physics. A number of modern technologies, such as cameras, fiber optic networks, and solar cells rely on the conversion of light into electrical signals. But with…

Nine millisecond pulsars, most of them in rare and sometimes unusual binary systems: that is the first result of a targeted survey with MeerKAT in South Africa. An international team with significant contributions from AEI (Hannover) und MPIfR (Bonn) selected 79 unidentified pulsar-like sources from observations of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and observed them at radio frequencies with MeerKAT. Using this tried-and-tested method with a next-generation telescope array has significant advantages over previous surveys. The team discovered nine rapidly…

By using ultrafast laser flashes, scientists at the University of Rostock in collaboration with researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart have generated and measured the shortest electron pulse to date. The electron pulse was created by using lasers to remove electrons from a tiny metal tip and lasted only 53 attoseconds, that is, 53 billionths of a billionth of a second. This study is setting a new speed record in man-made control of electric…

The structure of two-dimensional titanium oxide brakes-up at high temperatures by adding barium; instead of regular hexagons, rings of four, seven and ten atoms are created that order aperiodically. A team at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) made this discovery in colaboration with researchers from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Microstructure Physics, the Université Grenoble Alpes and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Gaithersburg, USA), thereby solving the riddle of two-dimensional quasicrystal formation from metal oxides. Their findings…

New error-detection method takes advantage of the way quantum information is scrambled. In quantum computers and other experimental quantum systems, information spreads around the devices and quickly becomes scrambled like dice in a game of Boggle. This scrambling process happens as the basic units of the system, called qubits (like computer bits only quantum) become entangled with one another; entanglement is a phenomenon in quantum physics where particles link up with each other and remain connected even though they are not in…

New electron diffraction equipment is about to revolutionize how we understand crystal structures. A new centre based jointly at the University of Southampton and the University of Warwick will draw on expertise from two world class universities and become a game changer for chemical industries, including manufacturing, pharma and electronics. The National Electron Diffraction Facility, part of the National Crystallography Service (NCS), will be the first in the UK and the first national facility in the world. Using electrons, instead…

Microchip fab plants in the United States can cram billions of data processing transistors onto a tiny silicon chip, but a critical device, in essence a “clock,” to time the operation of those transistors must be made separately – creating a weak point in chip security and the supply line. A new approach uses commercial chip fab materials and techniques to fabricate specialized transistors that serve as the building block of this timing device, addressing the weak point and enabling…

… can create unique two-dimensional (2D) periodic surface nanostructures: Scientists working on laser application at the RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics (RAP) have demonstrated that GHz burst mode femtosecond laser pulses can create unique two-dimensional (2D) laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on silicon substrates. Previously, the team led by the researchers from the Advanced Laser Processing Research Team has reported that the GHz burst mode femtosecond laser pulses consisting of a series of trains of ultrashort laser pulses with a…

Civil aviation is committed to making progress on the road towards a climate-neutral future. To make current and future aircrafts more energy-efficient and use less jet fuel, the industry needs reliable data about the durability of materials and aerodynamics in actual flight. Researchers at Fraunhofer IZM are working on behalf of Airbus Central C&T to show how sensors could be integrated in the outer shell of aircraft fuselage to achieve robust and reliable measurements even in the tough conditions in…

Researchers utilized the James Webb Space Telescope to look at primordial interstellar ices. An international team including Southwest Research Institute, Leiden University and NASA used observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to achieve the darkest ever view of a dense interstellar cloud. These observations have revealed the composition of a virtual treasure chest of ices from the early universe, providing new insights into the chemical processes of one of the coldest, darkest places in the universe as well…

Findings may point to a previously unknown influence of the strong force—and a way to measure its local fluctuations. Given the choice of three different “spin” orientations, certain particles emerging from collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), an atom smasher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, appear to have a preference. As described in a paper just published in Nature by RHIC’s STAR collaboration, the results reveal a preference in global spin alignment of particles called phi mesons….

Method offers approach to shift laser colors for applications in science, industry, and medicine. Lasers are intense beams of colored light. Depending on their color and other properties, they can scan your groceries, cut through metal, eradicate tumors, and even trigger nuclear fusion. But not every laser color is available with the right properties for a specific job. To fix that, scientists have found a variety of ways to convert one color of laser light into another. In a study just…