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Jan 31, 2022

Carbon nanomaterials for future quantum technologies

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, quantum physics

An exceptionally large grant will allow a team of Empa researchers to work on an ambitious project over the next ten years: The Werner Siemens Foundation (WSS) is supporting Empa’s CarboQuant project with 15 million Swiss francs. The project aims to lay the foundations for novel quantum technologies that may even operate at room temperature – in contrast to current technologies, most of which require cooling to near absolute zero.

“With this project we are taking a big step into the unknown,” says Oliver Gröning who coordinates the project. “Thanks to the partnership with the Werner Siemens Foundation, we can now move much further away from the safe shore of existing knowledge than would be possible in our ‘normal’ day-to-day research. We feel a little like Christopher Columbus and are now looking beyond the horizon for something completely new.”

The expedition into the unknown now being undertaken by Empa researchers Pascal Ruffieux, Oliver Gröning and Gabriela Borin-Barin under the lead of Roman Fasel was preceded by twelve years of intensive research activity. The researchers from Empa’s [email protected] laboratory, headed by Fasel, regularly published their work in renowned journals such as Nature, Science and Angewandte Chemie.

Jan 31, 2022

NVIDIA GPUs Enable Simulation of a Living Cell

Posted by in categories: chemistry, computing, genetics, particle physics

Researchers from the University of Illinois developed GPU-accelerated software to simulate a cell that metabolizes and grows like a living cell.


Every living cell contains its own bustling microcosm, with thousands of components responsible for energy production, protein building, gene transcription and more.

Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have built a 3D simulation that replicates these physical and chemical characteristics at a particle scale — creating a fully dynamic model that mimics the behavior of a living cell.

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Jan 31, 2022

Wearable Synthetic Skin for Virtual Reality

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transhumanism, virtual reality, wearables

Parents Use AI To See One Last Message From Their Deceased Son ‘…what’s to keep me from showing face, Man?’

Feel Virtual Reality In Mid-Air! ‘…a pressure on the lips — warm and soft, moist and sweet.’ — Frederick Pohl, 1965.

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Jan 31, 2022

Is interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua a spaceship? This probe could find out

Posted by in category: space

New technology could let us study the interstellar object and determine what it is and where it came from.


In October 2017, the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua passed through our Solar System, leaving a lot of questions in its wake.

Jan 31, 2022

Scientists Successfully Turned Used Masks into Lithium-Ion Density Batteries

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

And they’re low-cost and disposable.

With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, humans have become reliant on personal protection equipment, or PPE, more and more with each wave of infection. While single-use face masks make up a large portion of PPE around the world, not much thought has been given to the proper disposal of these products.

While these products are crucial in our fight against COVID-19, they undoubtedly take a toll on the environment, ending up in landfills and oceans, giving off toxic gases. In only 2020, 52 billion face masks were made and 1.56 billion of them ended up in our oceans. they’re low-cost and disposable.

Jan 31, 2022

DARPA Is Building a Portable Atomic Clock With Trillionth of a Second Accuracy

Posted by in category: government

Jan 31, 2022

Pew Pew: The US Navy is Really Getting into Directed-Energy Weapons

Posted by in category: energy

It plays a significant role in our lives.

From enabling us to walk around and not bump into things to developing highly advanced directed energy weapons, the electromagnetic spectrum is vitally important to many aspects of our modern lives. But, life as we know it would also not be possible if electromagnetic radiation, notably visible light, did not exist.

For most of human history we have only known (but not fully understood) a very small portion of the spectrum — namely visible light and “heat” in the form of infrared light. But, since the scientific enlightenment our knowledge of the spectrum, and applications using it, have literally revolutionized the way we live and perceive the world and the cosmos around us.

Jan 31, 2022

Could humans be the dominant species in the Universe, and we just don’t know it yet?

Posted by in category: futurism

Jan 31, 2022

Space Collisions: Can We Avoid A Catastrophe?

Posted by in category: satellites

Called ‘e. Deorbit’, it could change everything.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), there are 128 million objects the size of 1 mm to 1 cm, 900,000 objects the size of 1 cm to 10 cm, and 34,000 objects greater than 10 cm currently whizzing around our planet.

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Jan 31, 2022

The Future Of Medicine: Fighting Deadly Diseases With Smart Devices And Digital Biomarkers

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, health, mobile phones, neuroscience

What are biomarkers? They are medical signals that can measure health in an accurate and reproducible way. Common examples include blood pressure readings, heart rate, and even genetic test results.

Modern digital devices measure several health parameters. Fitbit trackers use sensors such as accelerometers to tell how many steps we’ve taken in a day or how fast we’ve been walking. When can such novel health measures function as medical biomarkers?

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