Lifeboat Foundation

When some materials are cooled to a certain temperature, they lose electric resistance, becoming superconductors.

In this state, an electric charge can course through the material indefinitely, making superconductors a valuable resource for transmitting high volumes of electricity and other applications. Superconductors ferry electricity between Long Island and Manhattan. They’re used in medical imaging devices such as MRI machines, in particle accelerators and in magnets such as those used in maglev trains. Even unexpected materials, such as certain ceramic materials, can become superconductors when cooled sufficiently.

But scientists previously have not understood what occurs in a material to make it a superconductor. Specifically, how high-temperature superconductivity, which occurs in some copper-oxide materials, works hasn’t been previously understood. A 1966 theory examining a different type of superconductors posited that electrons which spin in opposite directions bind together to form what’s called a Cooper pair and allow electric current to pass through the material freely.

It doesn’t involve magic but mirrors and lenses.

Energy can be trapped in the form of electric charge and heat, but until now, it has been impossible to absorb it in the form of light using traditional methods. Now a team of researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) claims to have developed the perfect setup to trap light, according to a press release published by EurekAlert.

Although this isn’t the first time scientists have come up with a way to absorb light energy, it is probably the only “light trap” method using which light energy can be absorbed even by very thin and weak mediums.

Continue reading “A perfect trap for light” »

Recent developments like DALLE-2 and LaMDA are impressive and seem ready for impact. Is AI ready to change the world?

Whether you love, fear, or have mixed feelings about the future of artificial intelligence, the cultural fixation on the subject over the past decade has made it feel like the technology’s meteoric impact is just around the corner. The problem is that it is always just around the corner, yet never seems to arrive. Many hype-filled years have passed us by since the releases of Ex Machina (2014) and Westworld (2016), but it feels like we are still waiting on AI’s big splash. However, a handful of recent developments—specifically, OpenAI’s unveiling of GPT-3 and DALLE-2, and Google’s LaMDA controversy—have unleashed a new wave of excitement—and terror—around the possibility that AI’s game-changing moment is finally here.

There are several reasons why it feels it has taken a long time for AI projects to bear fruit. One is that pop culture seems almost exclusively focused on the possible endgames of the technology, rather than its broader journey. This isn’t much of a surprise. When we stream the latest sci-fi movie or binge Black Mirror episodes, we want to see killer robots and computer chip brain implants. No one is buying a ticket to see a movie about the slow, incremental rollout of existing technology—not unless it mutates and starts killing within the first 30 minutes. But while AI’s more futuristic forms are naturally the most entertaining, and provide an endless source of material for screenwriters, anyone who based their expectations for AI off of Bladerunner has got to be feeling disappointed by now.

The Independent 2d.

The Independent’s journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission. Discovery could enhance capacity, speed and ultimately lead to the miniaturisation of electronics Article bookmarked Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile.

Tunart/IStock.

Vanadium dioxide marks the first material EPFL researchers have discovered that identified as possessing this property.

It can also solve the carbon intensity problem in the construction industry.

Researchers at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have invented an invisible coating that can be applied to wood to make it fireproof.

Continue reading “A fireproof wood achieves the highest class in burning test thanks to an invisible coating” »

Researchers from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have discovered that vanadium dioxide (VO2) is capable of “remembering” the entire history of previous external stimuli.

Vanadium dioxide marks the first material EPFL researchers have discovered that identified as possessing this property.

Continue reading “Could this material have a brain?” »

EPFL researchers have discovered that Vanadium Dioxide (VO₂), a compound used in electronics, is capable of “remembering” the entire history of previous external stimuli. This is the first material to be identified as possessing this property, although there could be others.

Mohammad Samizadeh Nikoo, a Ph.D. student at EPFL’s Power and Wide-band-gap Electronics Research Laboratory (POWERlab), made a chance discovery during his research on phase transitions in Vanadium Dioxide (VO₂). VO₂ has an insulating phase when relaxed at room temperature, and undergoes a steep insulator-to-metal transition at 68 °C, where its lattice structure changes. Classically, VO₂ exhibits a volatile memory: “the material reverts back to the insulating state right after removing the excitation” says Samizadeh Nikoo. For his thesis, he set out to discover how long it takes for VO₂ to transition from one state to another. But his research led him down a different path: after taking hundreds of measurements, he observed a memory effect in the material’s structure.

Who’s doing what in next-gen chips, and when they expect to do it.

Chipmakers are gearing up for fundamental changes in architectures, materials, and basic structures like transistors and interconnects. The net result will be more process steps, increased complexity for each of those steps, and rising costs across the board.

At the leading-edge, finFETs will run out of steam somewhere after the 3nm (30 angstrom) node. The three foundries still working at those nodes — TSMC, Samsung, and Intel, as well as industry research house imec — are looking to some form of gate-all-around transistors as the next transistor structure in order to gain tighter control over gate leakage.