If you haven’t heard of a tardigrade before, prepare to be wowed. These clumsy, eight-legged creatures, nicknamed water bears, are about half a millimeter long and can survive practically anything: freezing temperatures, near starvation, high pressure, radiation exposure, outer space and more. Researchers reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters took advantage of the tardigrade’s nearly indestructible […]
MIT engineers have developed a technique to grow and peel ultrathin “skins” of electronic material. The method could pave the way for new classes of electronic devices, such as ultrathin wearable sensors, flexible transistors and computing elements, and highly sensitive and compact imaging devices. As a demonstration, the team fabricated a thin membrane of pyroelectric
1. Measurement: Understanding mobility patterns Accurately evaluating the current state of the transportation network and mobility patterns is the first step to improving mobility. This involves gathering and analyzing real-time and historical data from various sources to understand both current and historical conditions and trends. We need to track the effects of changes as we
Cornell University researchers have developed a new robotic framework powered by artificial intelligence — called RHyME (Retrieval for Hybrid Imitation under Mismatched Execution) — that allows robots to learn tasks by watching a single how-to video. Robots can be finicky learners. Historically, they’ve required precise, step-by-step directions to complete basic tasks and tend to call
Simulating a quantum magnet in the hybrid approach Having demonstrated accurate analog evolution, we then combined it with our more traditional specialty, high-precision digital gates, to study new physical phenomena. Leveraging our hybrid approach, we simulated a magnet, the behavior of which is very closely mimicked by the natural dynamics on our hardware. Each qubit
Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization
Today we are rolling out an early version of Gemini 2.5 Flash in preview through the Gemini API via Google AI Studio and Vertex AI. Building upon the popular foundation of 2.0 Flash, this new version delivers a major upgrade in reasoning capabilities, while still prioritizing speed and cost. Gemini 2.5 Flash is our first
Thermoelectric materials enable the direct conversion of heat into electrical energy. This makes them particularly attractive for the emerging “Internet of Things,” for example for the autonomous energy supply of microsensors and other tiny electronic components. In order to make the materials more efficient, at the same time heat transport via the lattice vibrations must
The compound — Tiâ‚„MnBiâ‚‚ — becomes only the second known metallic system with confirmed one-dimensional magnetism. A study by researchers from the University of British Columbia’s Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (UBC Blusson QMI) has found a rare form of one-dimensional quantum magnetism in the metallic compound Tiâ‚„MnBiâ‚‚, offering evidence into a phase space that has
The exponential miniaturization of electronic chips over time, described by Moore’s law, has played a key role in our digital age. However, the operating power of small electronic devices is significantly limited by the lack of advanced cooling technologies available. Aiming to tackle this problem, a study published in Cell Reports Physical Science, led by
