Lifeboat Foundation

It can identify hidden objects with 96 percent accuracy.

MIT scientists have engineered an X-ray vision augmented reality headset that combines computer vision and wireless perception to automatically locate items that are hidden from view.

There is one catch though: the hidden items have to have been labeled with RFID tags.

Continue reading “Augmented reality headset enables users to see hidden objects” »

Prof. Ding Junfeng and his team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Science, together with Prof. Zhang Genqiang from the University of Science and Technology of China, have achieved band gap optimization and photoelectric response enhancement of carbon nitride in the nitrogen vacancy graphite phase under high pressure.

Their results were published in the journal Physical Review Applied.

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) has performed well in many fields, such as high-efficiency photocatalytic hydrogen production and water oxidation. However, the wide band gap of 2.7 eV of the original g-C₃N₄ limits its light absorption in the visible region. High pressure technology is an effective strategy to change the properties while remaining composition. Therefore, band gap engineering of g-C₃N₄ by high-pressure technology can significantly enhance its photocatalytic activity and improve its application potential.

Scientists at Georgia Tech have discovered a new quantum state in a quirky material. In a phenomenon never before seen in anything else, the team found that applying a magnetic field increased the material’s electrical conductivity by a billion percent.

Some materials are known to change their conductivity in response to a changing magnetic field, a property called magnetoresistance. But in the new study, the material does so to an incredible degree, exhibiting colossal magnetoresistance.

The material is an alloy of manganese, silicon and tellurium, which takes the form of octagonal cells arranged in a honeycomb pattern, and stacked in sheets. Electrons move around the outside of those octagons, but when there’s no magnetic field applied they travel in random directions, causing a traffic jam. That effectively makes the material act like an insulator.

Calcium carbonate is an impressive material, in that it combines strength, light weight and porosity. Scientists have devised a new bacteria-based method of 3D-printing the substance, for use in applications such as bone repair and coral reef restoration.

First of all, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the 3D-printing of calcium carbonate objects.

Earlier approaches have involved extruding a gel containing mineral particles, which subsequently dries and hardens. Some of the resulting items have been rather soft and fragile, however, or they’ve shrunk as they dried, creating cracks and causing their shape to change.

Several studies have predicted that the water splitting reaction could be catalyzed by certain groups of 2D materials—each measuring just a few atoms thick. One particularly promising group are named 2D Janus materials, whose two sides each feature a different molecular composition.

Through new calculations detailed in The European Physical Journal B, Junfeng Ren and colleagues at Shandong Normal University in China present a new group of four 2D Janus materials, which could be especially well suited to the task.

Since hydrogen releases an abundance of energy when combusted, with only water as a byproduct, it is now widely seen as an excellent alternative to fossil fuels. Splitting water molecules involves a redox reaction, where electrons and holes participate in reduction and oxidation reactions.

Superconductivity can be switched on and off in “magic-angle” graphene using a short electrical pulse, according to new work by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Until now, such switching could only be achieved by sweeping a continuous electric field across the material. The new finding could help in the development of novel superconducting electronics such as memory elements for use in two-dimensional (2D) materials-based circuits.

Graphene is a 2D crystal of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. Even on its own, this so-called “wonder material” boasts many exceptional properties, including high electrical conductivity as charge carriers (electrons and holes) zoom through the carbon lattice at very high speeds.

In 2018, researchers led by Pablo Jarillo-Herrero of MIT found that when two such sheets are placed on top of each other with a small angle misalignment, things become even more fascinating. In this twisted bilayer configuration, the sheets form a structure known as a moiré superlattice, and when the twist angle between them reaches the (theoretically predicted) “magic angle” of 1.08°, the material begins to show properties such as superconductivity at low temperatures – that is, it conducts electricity without any resistance.

The fungus has been traditionally used as a fire starter.

A fungus called tinder fungus that grows on the bark of rotting beech and birch trees has been used as a fire starter for a long time, but it may just have a new use: the creation of plastics.

Researchers at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland proceeded to analyze the internal structure of the fungus, formally called Fomes fomentarius, to understand its strong yet lightweight consistency.

Continue reading “Old fungus could soon be used to make new plastics” »

Researchers at Harvard University, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Arizona State University, and other institutes in the United States have recently observed an antiferromagnetic metal phase in electron-doped NdNiO₃ a material known to be a non-collinear antiferromagnet (i.e., exhibiting an onset of antiferromagnetic ordering that is concomitant with a transition into an insulating state).

“Previous works on the rare-earth nickelates (RNiO₃) have found them to host a rather exotic phase of magnetism known as a ‘noncollinear antiferromagnet,’” Qi Song, Spencer Doyle, Luca Moreschini and Julia A. Mundy, Four of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org.

“This type of magnet has unique potential applications in the field of spintronics, yet rare-earth nickelates famously change spontaneously from being metallic to insulating at the exact same temperature that this noncollinear antiferromagnet phase turns on. We wanted to see if we could somehow modify one of these materials in a way so that it remained metallic, but still had this interesting magnetic phase.”

Excerpt from album: Leviathan Device. Label: Cyclic Law. Release date: 2011. Country: Canada.

http://www.cycliclaw.com/

Continue reading “Triangular Ascension — Dimensional Warp” »