Semiconductor experiments reveal a surprising new source of conductivity from oxygen atoms trapped inside the material. Scott Chambers, a materials scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, reported the team’s discovery at the Spring 2022 meeting of the American Physical Society. The research finding is described in detail in the journal Physical…

Scientists develop cHAT to simplify the reduction of alkenes to more useful intermediate molecules for drugs and other useful chemical compounds. Rice University scientists have developed a method to reduce alkenes, molecules used to simplify synthesis, to more useful intermediates for drugs and other compounds via a dual-catalyst technique known as cooperative hydrogen atom transfer,…

Manned space missions in spacecraft made of aluminium that is light yet resistant to radiation could be a step nearer. Spacecraft launched from Earth need to be light, but still have the right amount of fuel to see them achieve orbit. If too heavy, the amount of fuel required would be prohibitive. Once outside of…

A simulation system invented to train driverless cars creates a photorealistic world with infinite steering possibilities, helping the cars learn to navigate a host of worse-case scenarios before cruising down real streets. Control systems, or «controllers,» for autonomous vehicles largely rely on real-world datasets of driving trajectories from human drivers. From these data, they learn…

With the insertion of a little math, researchers have shown that neuromorphic computers, which synthetically replicate the brain’s logic, can solve more complex problems than those posed by artificial intelligence and may even earn a place in high-performance computing. Neuromorphic simulations employing random walks can track X-rays passing through bone and soft tissue, disease passing…

Protective coatings are common for many things in daily life that see a lot of use: we coat wood floors with finish; apply Teflon to the paint on cars; even use diamond coatings on medical devices. Protective coatings are also essential in many demanding research and industrial applications. Now, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory…

Researchers have developed a method that uses a gaming graphics card to control plasma formation in their prototype fusion reactor. This process, which also occurs in the sun, involves plasmas, fluids composed of charged particles, being heated to extremely high temperatures so that the atoms fuse together, releasing abundant energy. One challenge to performing this…

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft unfurled its robotic arm Tuesday, and in a first for the agency, briefly touched an asteroid to collect dust and pebbles from the surface for delivery to Earth in 2023. This well-preserved, ancient asteroid, known as Bennu, is currently more than 200 million miles…

While the number of qubits and the stability of quantum states are still limiting current quantum computing devices, there are questions where these processors are already able to leverage their enormous computing power. Scientists used a quantum processor to simulate the ground state of a so-called toric code Hamiltonian — an archetypical model system in…

Graphene is not magnetic — a shortcoming that has stunted its usefulness in spintronics, an emerging field that could rewrite the rules of electronics, leading to more powerful semiconductors and computers. Researchers report an advancement to overcome this obstacle. They describe pairing a magnet with graphene, and inducing what they call ‘artificial magnetic texture’ in…