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Category: engineering

New MRI approach maps brain metabolism, revealing disease signatures

A new technology that uses clinical MRI machines to image metabolic activity in the brain could give researchers and clinicians unique insight into brain function and disease, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign report. The non-invasive, high-resolution metabolic imaging of the whole brain revealed differences in metabolic activity and neurotransmitter levels among brain regions; found metabolic alterations in brain tumors; and mapped and characterized multiple sclerosis lesions—with patients only spending minutes in an MRI scanner.

Led by Zhi-Pei Liang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I., the team reported its findings in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“Understanding the brain, how it works and what goes wrong when it is injured or diseased is considered one of the most exciting and challenging scientific endeavors of our time,” Liang said. “MRI has played major roles in unlocking the mysteries of the brain over the past four decades. Our new technology adds another dimension to MRI’s capability for brain imaging: visualization of brain metabolism and detection of metabolic alterations associated with brain diseases.”

Scientists develop stable all-perovskite tandem solar cells

A research group led by Prof. Ge Ziyi from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed an innovative strategy to alleviate NiOx corrosion, enabling more efficient and stable all-perovskite tandem solar cells (TSCs).

Scientists Crack the 500-Million-Year-Old Code That Controls Your Immune System

A collaborative team from Penn Medicine and Penn Engineering has uncovered the mathematical principles behind a 500-million-year-old protein network that determines whether foreign materials are recognized as friend or foe. How does your body tell the difference between friendly visitors, like me

Scientists demonstrate unconditional exponential quantum scaling advantage using two 127-qubit computers

Quantum computers have the potential to speed up computation, help design new medicines, break codes, and discover exotic new materials—but that’s only when they are truly functional.

One key thing that gets in the way: noise or the errors that are produced during computations on a quantum machine—which in fact makes them less powerful than —until recently.

Daniel Lidar, holder of the Viterbi Professorship in Engineering and Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, has been iterating on , and in a new study along with collaborators at USC and Johns Hopkins, has been able to demonstrate a quantum exponential scaling advantage, using two 127-qubit IBM Quantum Eagle processor-powered quantum computers, over the cloud.

Magically reducing errors in quantum computers: Researchers invent technique to decrease overhead

For decades, quantum computers that perform calculations millions of times faster than conventional computers have remained a tantalizing yet distant goal. However, a new breakthrough in quantum physics may have just sped up the timeline.

In an article titled “Efficient Magic State Distillation by Zero-Level Distillation” published in PRX Quantum, researchers from the Graduate School of Engineering Science and the Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Biology at the University of Osaka devised a method that can be used to prepare high-fidelity “magic states” for use in quantum computers with dramatically less overhead and unprecedented accuracy.

Quantum computers harness the fantastic properties of quantum mechanics such as entanglement and superposition to perform calculations much more efficiently than classical computers can. Such machines could catalyze innovations in fields as diverse as engineering, finance, and biotechnology. But before this can happen, there is a significant obstacle that must be overcome.

Three-mode smart window cut indoor temperature by 27°C and eliminate urban glare

In the building sector, which accounts for approximately 40% of global energy consumption, heat ingress through windows has been identified as a primary cause of wasted heating and cooling energy.

A KAIST research team has successfully developed a ‘pedestrian-friendly smart window’ technology capable of not only reducing heating and cooling energy in urban buildings but also resolving the persistent issue of ‘’ in urban living.

Professor Hong Chul Moon’s research team at KAIST’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering have developed a ‘smart window technology’ that allows users to control the light and entering through windows according to their intent, and effectively neutralize glare from external sources.

Permanent magnet configurations outperform classical arrangement to deliver strong and homogeneous fields

Physicists Prof. Dr. Ingo Rehberg from the University of Bayreuth and Dr. Peter Blümler from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have developed and experimentally validated an innovative approach for generating homogeneous magnetic fields using permanent magnets.

Their method outperforms the classical Halbach arrangement—which is optimal only for infinitely long and therefore unrealizable magnets—by producing higher field strengths and improved homogeneity in compact, finite-sized configurations.

The study was published in Physical Review Applied, which shows significant advances in the applied sciences at the intersection of physics with engineering, materials science, chemistry, biology, and medicine.

New all-silicon computer vision hardware advances in-sensor visual processing technology

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have pushed forward the development of computer vision with new, silicon-based hardware that can both capture and process visual data in the analog domain. Their work, described in the journal Nature Communications, could ultimately add to large-scale, data-intensive and latency-sensitive computer vision tasks.

“This is very powerful retinomorphic hardware,” says Guangyu Xu, associate professor of electrical and engineering and adjunct associate professor of biomedical engineering at UMass Amherst. “The idea of fusing the sensing unit and the processing unit at the device level, instead of physically separating them apart, is very similar to the way that process the visual world.”

Existing computer vision systems often involve exchanging redundant data between physically separated sensing and computing units.

World’s First Hybrid Betavoltaic Cell Promises Decades of Power Without Charging

Scientists have achieved a major breakthrough by creating the world’s first next-generation betavoltaic cell. This advanced power source was made by directly connecting a radioactive isotope electrode to a perovskite absorber layer, a cutting-edge material known for its efficiency.

To boost performance, the team embedded carbon-14-based quantum dots into the electrode and improved the structure of the perovskite layer. These innovations led to a highly stable power output and impressive energy conversion efficiency.

The findings were published in the journal Chemical Communications and led by Professor Su-Il In of the Department of Energy Science & Engineering at DGIST (President Kunwoo Lee).