To demonstrate a new system for rapidly rearranging thousands of atoms, researchers produced an animation featuring Schrödinger’s famous feline.
Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.
Robotic drummer gradually acquires human-like behaviors
Humanoid robots, robots with a human-like body structure, have so far been primarily tested on manual tasks that entail supporting humans in their daily activities, such as carrying objects, collecting samples in hazardous environments, supporting older adults or acting as physical therapy assistants. In contrast, their potential for completing expressive physical tasks rooted in creative disciplines, such as playing an instrument or participating in performance arts, remains largely unexplored.
Researchers at SUPSI, IDSIA and Politecnico di Milano recently introduced Robot Drummer, a new humanoid robot that can play the drums both accurately and expressively, supported by a reinforcement learning algorithm. This robot, presented in a paper published on the arXiv preprint server, was found to gradually acquire human-like behaviors, including movements that are often performed by drummers.
“The idea for Robot Drummer actually emerged from a spontaneous conversation over coffee with my co-author, Loris Roveda,” Asad Ali Shahid, first author of the paper, told Tech Xplore. “We were discussing how humanoid robots have become increasingly capable at a wide range of tasks, but rarely engage in creative and expressive domains. That raised a fascinating question: what if a humanoid robot could take on a creative role, like performing music? Drumming seemed like a perfect frontier, as it’s rhythmic, physical, and requires rapid coordination across limbs.”
New insights into how the visual system synchronizes visual information
The human brain builds mental representations of the world based on the signals and information detected via the human senses. While we perceive simultaneously occurring sensory stimuli as being synchronized, the generation and transmission speeds of individual sensory signals can vary greatly.
Researchers at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB), University of Basel and Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding how the human visual system achieves this synchronization, regardless of the speed at which visual signals travel. Their paper, published in Nature Neuroscience, reports a previously unknown mechanism through which the retina synchronizes the arrival times of different visual signals.
“We can see because photoreceptors in the retina at the back of our eyes detect light and encode information about the visual world in the form of electrical signals,” Felix Franke and Annalisa Bucci, senior author and first author of the paper, respectively, told Medical Xpress.
Surfaces, not confinement, rule until the thinnest limits
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have upended assumptions about how water behaves when squeezed into atom-scale spaces. By applying spectroscopic tools together with the machine learning simulation technique to water confined in a space of only a few molecules thick, the team, led by Mischa Bonn, found that water’s structure remains strikingly “normal” until confined to below a nanometer, far thinner than previously believed.
The research, “Interfaces Govern the Structure of Angstrom-Scale Confined Water Solutions,” was published in Nature Communications.
Peering into the structure of a layer of water molecules that is only a few molecules thick is a formidable scientific challenge. The team fabricated a nanoscale capillary device by trapping water between a single layer of graphene and a calcium fluoride (CaF₂) substrate. They then wielded cutting-edge vibrational surface-specific spectroscopy—capable of detecting the microscopic structure of confined water, including the orientation and hydrogen-bonding of water molecules—to “see” the elusive few layers of water.
New theory may solve quantum ‘jigsaw puzzle’ for controlling chemical reactions
In the past, chemists have used temperature, pressure, light, and other chemical ways to speed up or slow down chemical reactions. Now, researchers at the University of Rochester have developed a theory that explains a different way to control chemical reactions—one that doesn’t rely on heat or light but instead on the quantum environment surrounding the molecules.
In a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers—including Frank Huo, the Dean and Laura Marvin Endowed Professor in Physical Chemistry in Rochester’s Department of Chemistry and graduate students Sebastian Montillo and Wenxiang Ying—argue that traditional theories used to predict how fast chemical reactions occur may not fully capture what happens under certain quantum light-matter interaction conditions.
To address this, they developed a new theory showing how quantum effects —specifically, an effect called vibrational strong coupling (VSC)—can influence chemical reactions.
New physical model aims to boost energy storage research
Engineers rely on computational tools to develop new energy storage technologies, which are critical for capitalizing on sustainable energy sources and powering electric vehicles and other devices. Researchers have now developed a new classical physics model that captures one of the most complex aspects of energy storage research—the dynamic nonequilibrium processes that throw chemical, mechanical and physical aspects of energy storage materials out of balance when they are charging or discharging energy.
The new Chen-Huang Nonequilibrium Phasex Transformation (NExT) Model was developed by Hongjiang Chen, a former Ph.D. student at NC State, in conjunction with his advisor, Hsiao-Ying Shadow Huang, who is an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the university. A paper on the work, “Energy Change Pathways in Electrodes during Nonequilibrium Processes,” is published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
But what are “nonequilibrium processes”? Why are they important? And why would you want to translate those processes into mathematical formulae? We talked with Huang to learn more.
Mobile phone app reduces suicidal behavior among high-risk patients, new study shows
A mobile phone app designed to deliver suicide-specific therapy reduced suicidal behavior among high-risk psychiatric inpatients, according to a new study by scientists at Yale School of Medicine and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open, found that the app, OTX-202, reduced the recurrence of post-discharge suicide attempts by 58.3% among patients who had previously attempted suicide. This reduction is a critical achievement for a group that is particularly vulnerable to repeated suicidal behaviors, the researchers said.
Users of the app also experienced sustained reductions in suicidal thoughts for up to 24 weeks after psychiatric hospitalization, according to the study. In contrast, patients who used an active control app in addition to treatment as usual showed early improvement, but suicidal thoughts rebounded by week 24.
Ultrathin metal and semiconductor films emit multicolor light, paving way for new optical sensing devices
A new breakthrough in the field of physics led by doctoral student Yueming Yan could allow for the creation of small, thin, low-power optical devices to be used in both medical imaging and environmental sensing.
In a study published in Science Advances, Yan and his colleagues, including Associate Professor of Chemistry Janet Macdonald and Stevenson Professor of Physics Richard Haglund, examined tiny nanoparticles of metals and semiconductors, specifically gold and copper.
The team laid down two ultrathin layers of gold and semiconducting copper sulfide nanoparticles, creating a “sandwich” 100 times thinner than a human hair. They then zapped this sandwich with a flash of light shorter than a trillionth of a second. Doing so caused the particles to “chat” back and forth, exchanging energy so efficiently that they re-emitted light in multiple different colors.
The US just got a new X-ray laser toolkit to study nature’s mysteries
With a suite of reimagined instruments at SLAC’s LCLS facility, researchers see massive improvement in data quality and take up scientific inquiries that were out of reach just one year ago.
Some of science’s biggest mysteries unfold at the smallest scales. Researchers investigating super small phenomena—from the quantum nature of superconductivity to the mechanics that drive photosynthesis—come to the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to use the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS).
Like a giant microscope, LCLS sends pulses of ultrabright X-rays to a suite of specialized scientific instruments. With these tools, scientists take crisp pictures of atomic motions, watch chemical reactions unfold, probe the properties of materials and explore fundamental processes in living things.