There’s been a rapid resurgence of interest in understanding the energy cost of computing. Recent advances in this ‘thermodynamics of computation’ are now summarized. These questions are not limited to the digital machines constructed by us. The human brain can be seen as a computer — one that gobbles an estimated 10 to 20 percent…

Researchers develop tool that ‘audits’ the results of studies that examine interplay between variables. Using this approach, researchers identify inconsistent findings in one-third of previous association studies of gut microbiome and disease. The software can help researchers check the reliability of their own findings before submitting them for publication. Association studies are critical in paving…

The combination of mathematical modeling and experiments identifies the difference in molecular clockworks of the master and slave clock neurons in Drosophila. This solves the long-standing mystery of the molecular mechanisms underlying how the circadian (~24h) clock can exhibit paradoxical characteristics of robustness (strong rhythms), and plasticity (flexible adaption). The discovery of the molecular mechanism…

Currently, there is little research focused on understanding mechanisms and drug discovery of lymphatic vascular diseases. However, conditions such as lymphedema, a buildup of fluid in the body when the lymph system is damaged, impact more than 200,000 people every year in the United States alone. Dr. Abhishek Jain, assistant professor in the Department of…

Thanks to their visual simplicity, bar graphs are popular tools for representing data. But do we really understand how to read them? New research has found that bar graphs are frequently misunderstood. The study demonstrates that people who view exactly the same graph often walk away with completely different understandings of the facts it represents.…

Researchers have demonstrated the use of elastic vibrations to manipulate the spin states of optically active color centers in SiC at room temperature. They show a non-trivial dependence of the acoustically induced spin transitions on the spin quantization direction, which can lead to chiral spin-acoustic resonances. These findings are important for applications in future quantum-electronic…

A team of physicists has demonstrated numerically a dynamical one-parameter scaling called ‘Family-Vicsek (FV) scaling,’ originally found in surface growth physics, in disordered quantum systems. Many-particle systems in the real world are often imbued with «disorder» or «randomness.» This, in turn, leads to the occurrence of phenomena unique to such systems. For instance, electrons in…

Scientists describe the quirky behavior of one such magnetic topological insulator. The new article includes experimental evidence that intrinsic magnetism in the bulk of manganese bismuth telluride (MnBi2Te4) also extends to the electrons on its electrically conductive surface. Such materials could be just right for making qubits, but this one doesn’t obey the rules. «Exploring…

Gaining control of the flow of electrical current through atomically thin materials is important to potential future applications in photovoltaics or computing. Physicists have discovered one way to locally add electrical charge to a graphene device. A paper published in the journal Nano Letters describes the charge transfer process in detail. Gaining control of the…

A team of researchers has discovered an exciting method for controlling spin carried by quantized spin wave excitations in antiferromagnetic insulators. Elementary particles carry an intrinsic angular momentum known as their spin. For an electron, the spin can take only two particular values relative to a quantization axis, letting us denote them as spin-up and…