Category Physics

In 2018, one-half of the Nobel Prize was awarded to Arthur Ashkin, the physicist who developed optical tweezers, the use of a tightly focused laser beam to isolate and move micron-scale objects (the size of red blood cells). Now Justus Ndukaife, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Vanderbilt University, has developed the first-ever opto-thermo-electrohydrodynamic tweezers, optical nanotweezers that can trap and manipulate objects on an even smaller scale.

The article, “Stand-off trapping and manipulation of sub-10 nm objects and biomolecules using opto-thermo-electrohydrodynamic tweezers” was published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on August 31.

The article was authored by Ndukaife and graduate students Chuchuan Hong and Se...

New tool might aid the adoption of technologies such as autonomous vehicles. One of the biggest impediments to adoption of new technologies is trust in AI.

Now, a new tool developed by USC Viterbi Engineering researchers generates automatic indicators if data and predictions generated by AI algorithms are trustworthy. Their research paper, “There Is Hope After All: Quantifying Opinion and Trustworthiness in Neural Networks” by Mingxi Cheng, Shahin Nazarian and Paul Bogdan of the USC Cyber Physical Systems Group, was featured in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence.

Neural networks are a type of artificial intelligence that are modeled after the brain and generate predictions...

A team of researchers with Google’s AI Quantum team (working with unspecified collaborators) has conducted the largest chemical simulation on a quantum computer to date. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their work and why they believe it was a step forward in quantum computing. Xiao Yuan of Stanford University has written a Perspective piece outlining the potential benefits of quantum computer use to conduct chemical simulations and the work by the team at AI Quantum, published in the same journal issue.

Developing an ability to predict chemical processes by si...

Organ model could improve surgical outcomes for thousands of patients worldwide. Researchers from the University of Minnesota, with support from Medtronic, have developed a groundbreaking process for multi-material 3D printing of lifelike models of the heart’s aortic valve and the surrounding structures that mimic the exact look and feel of a real patient.

These patient-specific organ models, which include 3D-printed soft sensor arrays integrated in...