Circa 2018
Researchers at MIT (Cambridge, MA) and at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, NY) have demonstrated a new approach to controlling magnetism in a microchip that could lead to next-generation memory and logic devices that consume drastically less power than current versions.
AMD’s flagship Ryzen Threadripper 3990X monster HEDT CPU, featuring 64 cores and 128 threads has been leaked out by MSI.
A group of scientists led by Artem Oganov of Skoltech and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and Ivan Troyan of the Institute of Crystallography of RAS has succeeded in synthesizing thorium decahydride (ThH10), a new superconducting material with the very high critical temperature of 161 kelvins. The results of their study, supported by a Russian Science Foundation grant, were published in the journal Materials Today on November 6, 2019.
A truly remarkable property of quantum materials, superconductivity is the complete loss of electrical resistance under quite specific, and sometimes very harsh, conditions. Despite the tremendous potential for quantum computers and high-sensitivity detectors, the application of superconductors is hindered by the fact that their valuable properties typically manifest themselves at very low temperatures or extremely high pressures.
Until recently, the list of superconductors was topped by a mercury-containing cuprate, which becomes superconducting at 135 kelvins, or −138 degrees Celsius. This year, lanthanum decahydride, LaH10, set a new record of −13 C, which is very close to room temperature. Unfortunately, that superconductor requires pressures approaching 2 million atmospheres, which can hardly be maintained in real-life applications. Scientists, therefore, continue their quest for a superconductor that retains its properties at standard conditions.
Our brain has 86 billion neurons connected by 3 million kilometers of nerve fibers and The Human Brain Project is mapping it all. One of the key applications is neuromorphic computing — computers inspired by brain architecture that may one day be able to learn as we do.
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Circa 2009
March 19, 2009 Researchers at the University of Miami and at the Universities of Tokyo and Tohoku, Japan, have been able to prove the existence of a “spin battery,” that could have significant applications including much faster, less expensive and use less energy consuming computer hard drives with no moving parts, and could even be developed to power cars.
A “spin battery” is “charged” by applying a large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ). Like a toy car, the spin battery is “wound up” by applying a large magnetic field — no chemistry involved.
Continue reading “Theoretical spin battery could see magnet powered cars” »
A lab-grown liver stand-in may better predict bad responses to drugs than animal testing does.
A human “liver chip” — liver cells grown on a membrane along with several types of supporting cells — formed structures reminiscent of bile ducts and reacted to drugs similarly to intact livers, researchers report November 6 in Science Translational Medicine. Similar rat and dog liver chips also processed drugs like normal livers in those species, allowing scientists to compare human liver cells’ reactions to drugs to those of the other species.
Rats, dogs and other animals are often used to test whether drugs are toxic to humans before the drugs are given to people. But a previous study found that the animal tests correctly identified only 71 percent of drug toxicities.
In 1935, physicist Erwin Schrödinger concocted a thought experiment to illustrate a pair of strange quantum physics phenomena: superposition and unpredictability.
The experiment became known as Schrödinger’s cat, and for more than 80 years, it’s served as a cornerstone of quantum physics. But in a newly published study, a team of Yale scientists essentially destroys the premise at the center of the experiment — groundbreaking work that could finally allow researchers to develop useful quantum computers.
