Category Physics

A Vision-based Robotic System for 3D Ultrasound Imaging

A vision-based robotic system for 3D ultrasound imaging
System workflow. (a) Three types of inputs from the depth camera (b) the sweep trajectory extraction module (c) the robotic movement module following a planned trajectory (d) the object movement monitoring module. Credit: Jiang et al.

Ultrasound imaging techniques have proved to be highly valuable tools for diagnosing a variety of health conditions, including peripheral artery disease (PAD). PAD, one of the most common diseases among the elderly, entails the blocking or narrowing of peripheral blood vessels, which limits the supply of blood to specific areas of the body.

In fact, unlike other imaging methods, such as computed tomography angiography and magnetic resonance angiography, ultrasound imaging is non-invasive, low-cost and radiation-free.

Most existing ultrasound imaging...

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A Peculiar State of Matter in Layers of Semiconductors

A cube with stripes representing layers of semiconductors, with clusters of gold spheres representing nanodots
The setup for the milli-electronvolt inelastic X-ray scattering that probes the many-body localization in the disordered superlattice system
Credits:Image courtesy of the researchers

Scientists around the world are developing new hardware for quantum computers, a new type of device that could accelerate drug design, financial modeling, and weather prediction. These computers rely on qubits but these are fickle, degrading into regular bits when interactions with surrounding matter interfere. But new research at MIT suggests a way to protect their states, using a phenomenon called many-body localization (MBL).

MBL is a peculiar phase of matter, proposed decades ago, that is unlike solid or liquid. Typically, matter comes to thermal equilibrium with its environment...

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Woven Nanotube Fibers turn Heat Energy into Electrical Energy

Carbon nanotubes woven into thread-like fibers and sewn into fabrics become a thermoelectric generator that can turn heat from the sun or other sources into energy. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Flexible thermoelectric generators could be useful way to make carbon ‘green’. Invisibly small carbon nanotubes aligned as fibers and sewn into fabrics become a thermoelectric generator that can turn heat from the sun or other sources into other forms of energy.

The Rice University lab of physicist Junichiro Kono led an effort with scientists at Tokyo Metropolitan University and the Rice-based Carbon Hub to make custom nanotube fibers and test their potential for large-scale applications.

Their small-scale experiments led to a fiber-enhanced, flexible cotton fabric that turned heat energy into...

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Engineers make Critical Advance in Quantum Computer Design

Dr Jarryd Pla and Prof. Andrew Dzurak look from behind a transparent screen showing mathematical workings
Dr Jarryd Pla and Professor Andrew Dzurak have solved the problem of how to reliably control not just a few, but millions of qubits. Photo: UNSW

Quantum engineers from UNSW Sydney have removed a major obstacle that has stood in the way of quantum computers becoming a reality. They discovered a new technique they say will be capable of controlling millions of spin qubits—the basic units of information in a silicon quantum processor.

Until now, quantum computer engineers and scientists have worked with a proof-of-concept model of quantum processors by demonstrating the control of only a handful of qubits.

But with their latest research, published today in Science Advances, the team have found what they consider “the missing jigsaw piece” in the quantum computer architecture that ...

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