Lifeboat Foundation

Why aren’t holograms or related optical devices part of our everyday lives yet? The technologies can be created by using magnetic fields to alter the path of light, but the materials that can do that are expensive, brittle and opaque. Some only work in temperatures as cold as the vacuum of space.

Minjeong Cha, MSE PhD Student, applies a gel made up of chiromagnetic nanoparticles that are a conduit for modulating light to a laser apparatus. Image credit: Joseph Xu, Michigan Engineering

Continue reading “Nanoparticle gel could make mass-market low-cost Holography, LIDAR” »

MIT researchers have developed hardware that uses electric fields to move droplets of chemical or biological solutions around a surface, mixing them in ways that could be used to test thousands of reactions in parallel.

The researchers view their system as an alternative to the microfluidic devices now commonly used in biological research, in which biological solutions are pumped through microscopic channels connected by mechanical valves. The new approach, which moves solutions around in computationally prescribed patterns, could enable experiments to be conducted more efficiently, cost-effectively, and at larger scales.

Continue reading “Using electric fields to manipulate droplets on a surface could enable high-volume, low-cost biology experiments” »

Scientists have discovered an endless energy supply in the naturally occurring Brownian motion of graphene.

A DNA machine with a high-speed arm could pave the way for nanoscale factories.

You can start getting pumped about the next generation of graphics cards, as Samsung has announced that it’s building the first-ever 16-gigabit GDDR6 chips using its 10-nanometer class technology. The news isn’t a complete surprise, as Samsung previously said that GDDR6 was coming when it unveiled 8-gigabit DDR4 RAM chips last month and won a CES 2018 Innovation Award in November.

“Beginning with this early production of the industry’s first 16Gb GDDR6, we will offer a comprehensive graphics DRAM line-up, with the highest performance and densities, in a very timely manner,” said Samsung’s Senior VP Jinman Han. The company also did a minor tease, saying the chips “will play a critical role in early launches of next-generation graphics cards and systems.”

The voracious demand from bitcoin mining has pushed the GeForce GTX 1070 from a $380 suggested retail price to $890.

Continue reading “Samsung starts producing GDDR6 RAM for next-gen graphics cards” »

BMW is promising a series of new all-electric cars starting next with the first all-electric Mini, but the most anticipated one is the 2021 iNext electric vehicle, which the German automaker has been positioning as a Tesla Model 3 competitor.

They are now hinting at a major range increase for the upcoming vehicle.

You know that warning on your car’s side view mirror that says “objects may be closer than they appear”? You won’t see that on this new Mitsubishi prototype. You won’t even see mirrors on it.

That’s because Mitsubishi has ditched the mirrors and replaced them with cameras: one each on the driver’s and passengers side and another to handle rear-view duties. There’s more to the system than just cameras, of course.

As is the case with almost everything tech-related in the news these days, Mitsubishi’s mirrorless system will utilize an advanced AI to help keep drivers safe. The cameras can detect objects as far away as 100 meters, and the AI can distinguish between pedestrians and vehicles — and even figure out what kind of vehicle is approaching.

Continue reading “Mitsubishi Will Sell Cars With No Mirrors Next Year” »

A new analysis of global science and engineering competence shows that the United States is struggling to fight off an increasingly competitive China.

The numbers: According to the National Science Foundation, China published over 426,000 research papers in 2016. America pumped out almost 409,000. If you consider the number of citations for those papers, a measure of the influence they have in the scientific community, America does better—it placed third internationally, while China comes in fifth (Sweden and Switzerland took the top spots).

Strengths elsewhere: The report does, however, note that America invests the most in R&D, attracts the most venture capital, and awards the most advanced degrees compared with every other nation in the world.

Continue reading “China publishes more scientific articles than the U.S.” »

A joint China-Austria team has performed quantum key distribution between the quantum-science satellite Micius and multiple ground stations located in Xinglong (near Beijing), Nanshan (near Urumqi), and Graz (near Vienna). Such experiments demonstrate the secure satellite-to-ground exchange of cryptographic keys during the passage of the satellite Micius over a ground station. Using Micius as a trusted relay, a secret key was created between China and Europe at locations separated up to 7,600 km on the Earth.

Private and secure communications are fundamental for Internet use and e-commerce, and it is important to establish a secure network with global protection of data. Traditional public key cryptography usually relies on the computational intractability of certain mathematical functions. In contrast, quantum key distribution (QKD) uses individual light quanta (single photons) in quantum superposition states to guarantee unconditional security between distant parties. Previously, the quantum communication distance has been limited to a few hundred kilometers due to optical channel losses of fibers or terrestrial free space. A promising solution to this problem exploits satellite and space-based links, which can conveniently connect two remote points on the Earth with greatly reduced channel loss, as most of the photons’ propagation path is through empty space with negligible loss and decoherence.

A cross-disciplinary multi-institutional team of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Professor Jian-Wei Pan, has spent more than 10 years developing a sophisticated satellite, Micius, dedicated to quantum science experiments, which was launched on August 2016 and orbits at an altitude of ~500 km. Five ground stations in China coordinate with the Micius satellite. These are located in Xinglong (near Beijing), Nanshan (near Urumqi), Delingha (37°22’44.43’‘N, 97°43’37.01” E), Lijiang (26°41’38.15’‘N, 100°1’45.55’‘E), and Ngari in Tibet (32°19’30.07’‘N, 80°1’34.18’‘E).

Continue reading “Real-world intercontinental quantum communications enabled by the Micius satellite” »