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Category: computing – Page 5

Hygroscopic salts pull lithium from mining waste using only moisture from air

The world cannot have enough of the third element on the periodic table. From smartphones and laptops to state-of-the-art EVs, all are powered by lithium batteries. The demand for metal is only going to rise, and projected values suggest nearly a triple increase in demand by 2030. The traditional process of lithium mining is both water and energy-hungry. One such step is the dissolution of lithium salts from other competing minerals during the separation process.

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers present a clever way to harness the deliquescence of lithium chloride hydrate (LHT)—a unique ability to naturally pull moisture from the air to dissolve itself—to extract and concentrate lithium from mining waste while leaving behind unwanted minerals.

The method achieved up to 97% lithium recovery with an increase in the lithium purity by 1,500 times, producing a liquid concentrate with lithium levels reaching 97,000 parts per million, which was more than twice as concentrated as the standard solutions used in battery processing.

Photonic chip packaging can withstand extreme environments

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new way to package photonic integrated circuits—tiny chips that convey information using light instead of electricity—so they can survive and operate in extreme environments, from scorchingly hot industrial settings to ultracold vacuum chambers and the depths of outer space.

“Our study marks a major step toward bringing the speed and efficiency of photonics into environments where conventional semiconductor chips powered by electric current and photonics chips packaged using traditional methods have not been able to operate,” said NIST physicist Nikolai Klimov, who led the project. The results were just published in Photonics Research.

Finding the ‘quantum needle’ in a haystack: New filtering method can isolate photons

In quantum technologies, everything depends on the ability to detect the properties carried by a single photon. But in the real world, that photon of interest is often buried in a sea of unwanted light—a true “needle in a haystack” challenge that currently limits the deployment of many applications, including secure quantum communication, quantum sensors used in telescope networks, as well as the interconnection of quantum computers to accelerate the development of new drugs and materials.

At the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), the team of Professor José Azaña, in collaboration with Professor Roberto Morandotti’s group, has developed a surprisingly simple and energy-efficient way to overcome this obstacle. The work was carried out by Benjamin Crockett during his Ph.D. at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre. He recently completed his degree and is now a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Their method not only reduces noise but, more importantly, recovers essential quantum properties that would otherwise be lost in bright environments where current technologies fail.

Novel protocol reconstructs quantum states in large-scale experiments up to 96 qubits

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could outperform classical computers on some computationally demanding tasks. Despite their potential, as the size of quantum computers increases, reliably describing and measuring the states driving their functioning becomes increasingly difficult.

One mathematical approach to simplify the description of quantum systems entails the use of matrix-product operators (MPOs). These are mathematical representations that allow researchers to break down very large systems into a long chain of connected smaller pieces.

Researchers at Université Grenoble Alpes, Technical University of Munich, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, University of Innsbruck and University of Bologna recently developed a new protocol that could be used to learn the MPO representations of quantum states in real, large-scale quantum experiments. Their protocol, presented in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, has so far been found to reliably reconstruct states in quantum systems including up to 96 qubits.

Aerosol jet printing creates durable, low-power transistors for next-generation tech

Tiny electronic devices, called microelectronics, may one day be printed as easily as words on a page, thanks to new research from scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. Building on years of progress in printed electronics, the team has shown how to create durable, low-power electronic switches, called transistors, by combining custom inks and a specialized printing process.

These switches, which control the flow of electrical current to turn circuits on and off, use very little power, are built to last and show new behaviors not seen in earlier printed devices. This research could help create flexible sensors, smart windows and other new technologies that need reliable, energy-saving electronics. The work is published in Advanced Materials Technologies.

How aerosol jet printing works The scientists used a method called aerosol jet printing, which works like an inkjet printer. But instead of regular ink, it uses specially formulated ink made from nanoparticles. The printer turns the ink into a fine mist and sprays it onto a surface, building up layers to form electronic parts.

Holographic storage approach packs more data into the same space by encoding three properties of light

Researchers have developed a holographic data storage approach that stores and retrieves information in three dimensions by combining three properties of light—amplitude, phase and polarization. By allowing more data to be stored in the same space, the new approach could help advance efforts to meet the growing global demand for data storage.

Holographic data storage uses laser light to store digital information inside a material. Instead of recording data only on a surface, like a hard drive or optical disk, it stores many overlapping light patterns throughout the volume of the material, allowing much higher storage density and faster data transmission.

“In conventional holographic data storage, data encoding typically uses one light dimension such as amplitude or phase alone, or, at most, combines two of these dimensions,” said research team leader Xiaodi Tan from Fujian Normal University in China.

Natural competition between brain circuits may boost information processing

Over the past decades, neuroscience studies have painted an increasingly detailed picture of the human brain, its organization and how it supports various functions. To plan and execute desired behaviors in changing circumstances, networks of neurons in the brain can either work together or suppress each other, thus employing both cooperative and competitive interaction strategies.

Researchers at University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, McGill University, University of Aarhus and Pompeu Fabra University recently set out to better understand the mammalian brain’s underlying dynamics, specifically how its underlying architecture balances cooperative and competitive interactions between neural circuits. Their paper, published in Nature Neuroscience, offers new insight that could both improve the understanding of the brain and inform the development of brain-inspired computational models.

“Building models of the brain is an important part of modern neuroscience,” Andrea Luppi, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “As Nobel winner Reichard Feynman said, ‘what I cannot create, I do not understand.’ Most current models, however, share a limitation. Everyday experience, from focusing attention or switching between tasks, also reveals that brain systems must compete for limited resources.

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