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A challenge to creating fusion energy on Earth is trapping the charged gas known as plasma that fuels fusion reactions within a strong magnetic field and keeping the plasma as hot and dense as possible for as long as possible. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have […] More
Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of California, Los Angeles have made an important advance that could lead to more energy efficient magnetic memory storage components for computers and other devices. Magnets are widely used for computer memory because their “up” or “down” polarity — the magnetic state — can be “flipped” to […] More
Steering and monitoring the light-driven motion of electrons inside matter on the time-scale of a single optical cycle is a key challenge in ultrafast light wave electronics and laser-based material processing. Physicists from the Max Born Institute in Berlin and the University of Rostock have now revealed a so-far overlooked nonlinear optical mechanism that emerges […] More
Mathematicians based in Australia and China have developed a method to analyze the large amount of data accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The technique, described in the journal Chaos, by AIP Publishing, can identify anomalous countries — those that are more successful than expected at responding to the pandemic and those that are particularly unsuccessful. […] More
Standard semiconductor technology is reaching its limit in miniaturization, but the demand for smaller electrical devices with higher performance continues to grow. The research group introduced the widest graphene nanoribbon prepared by the bottom-up approach with electrical properties surpassing those of silicon semiconductors, promising a new generation of miniaturized electronic devices. With literally the thickness […] More
In a tense time when a pandemic rages, politicians wrangle for votes and protesters demand racial justice, a little politeness and courtesy go a long way. Now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed an automated method for making communications more polite. Specifically, the method takes nonpolite directives or requests — those that use either […] More
Researchers from the University of Warwick, Imperial College London, EPFL (Lausanne) and Sciteb Ltd have found a mathematical means of helping regulators and business manage and police Artificial Intelligence systems’ biases towards making unethical, and potentially very costly and damaging commercial choices — an ethical eye on AI. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly deployed in […] More
A new fundamental understanding of polymeric relaxor ferroelectric behavior could lead to advances in flexible electronics, actuators and transducers, energy storage, piezoelectric sensors and electrocaloric cooling, according to a team of researchers at Penn State and North Carolina State. Researchers have debated the theory behind the mechanism of relaxor ferroelectrics for more than 50 years, […] More
