Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Chirality is a property of objects that exist in different forms that are mirror images of each other but cannot be superimposed, like left hand and right hand. It is a common phenomenon in the universe and has many practical applications, especially in creating special...
Webb spots swirling, gritty clouds on remote planet
Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers observing with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed silicate cloud features in a distant planet’s atmosphere. The atmosphere is constantly rising, mixing, and moving during its 22-hour day, bringing hotter material up and pushing colder material down. The resulting brightness changes are so...
computing fast enough for next-gen AI
Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Artificial intelligence (AI) models are essential for sophisticated image classification, the most important part of digital analysis. The researchers who recently published “Universal Linear Optics Revisited: New Perspectives for Neuromorphic Computing with Silicon Photonics” have moved the needle for image classification. The speeds they’ve achieved...
New microchip links two Nobel Prize-winning techniques
Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Physicists at Delft University of Technology have built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques for the first time. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision, for example underwater or for medical imaging. Because the technology uses...
Turning crab shell into optics
Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers have developed a process to turn crab shells into a bioplastic that can be used to make optical components known as diffraction gratings. The resulting lightweight, inexpensive gratings are biodegradable and could enable portable spectrometers that are also disposable. “The Philippines is known for...
Is ‘Oumuamua’s odd propulsion a hydrogen fart?
Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk News) In 2017, a mysterious comet dubbed 'Oumuamua fired the imaginations of scientists and the public alike. It was the first known visitor from outside our solar system, it had no bright coma or dust tail, like most comets, and a peculiar shape — something between...
Semiconductor lattice marries electrons and magnetic moments
Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A model system created by stacking a pair of monolayer semiconductors is giving physicists a simpler way to study confounding quantum behavior, from heavy fermions to exotic quantum phase transitions. The group’s paper published in Nature ("Gate-Tunable Heavy Fermions in a Moiré Kondo Lattice"). The...
Photosynthesis ‘hack’ could lead to new ways of generating renewable energy
Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers have ‘hacked’ the earliest stages of photosynthesis, the natural machine that powers the vast majority of life on Earth, and discovered new ways to extract energy from the process, a finding that could lead to new ways of generating clean fuel and renewable energy....
Physicists investigate the dynamics of active protein droplets in cells
Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The phase separation of oil and water is a classic example of a process ubiquitous in nature, in which mixtures separate into their constituent parts. Scientists have also repeatedly identified biomolecular droplets in cells that originate from the phase-separation of proteins and nucleic acids. These...
Detection of methanol using a soft photonic crystal robot
Mar 22, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Robots are currently employed in industrial sites and fields, including disaster rescue, medicine, security, and national defense. Conventional metal-based robots exert strong operating power due to rigid body construction with joints connected to actuators such as motors. However, they may have difficulty with flexible movements...