Category Physics

Left: A simplified representation of a small part of the brain: neurons receive, process and transmit signals through synapses. Right: a crossbar array, which is a possible architecture of how this could be realized with devices. The memristors, like synapses in the brain, can change their conductivity so that connections can be weakened and strengthened.
Credit: Spintronics of Functional Materials group, University of Groningen

Computer bits are binary, with a value of 0 or 1. By contrast, neurons in the brain can have all kinds of different internal states, depending on the input that they received. This allows the brain to process information in a more energy-efficient manner than a computer...

A recent development would make electricity generation from the sun’s heat more efficient, by using ceramic-metal plates for heat transfer at higher temperatures and at elevated pressures.
Credit: Purdue University illustration/Raymond Hassan

Scientists have developed a new material and manufacturing process that would make one way to use solar power – as heat energy – more efficient in generating electricity. Solar power accounts for less than 2% of U.S. electricity but could make up more than that if the cost of electricity generation and energy storage for use on cloudy days and at nighttime were cheaper.

A Purdue University-led team developed a new material and manufacturing process that would make one way to use solar power – as heat energy – more efficient in generating electricity...

A single silicon beam (red), along with its drive (yellow) and readout (green and blue) electrodes, implements a MEMS capable of nontrivial computations.
Credit: Guillaume Dion

A group of researchers reports the construction of the first reservoir computing device built with a microelectromechanical system. The neural network exploits the nonlinear dynamics of a microscale silicon beam to perform its calculations. The group’s work looks to create devices that can act simultaneously as a sensor and a computer using a fraction of the energy a normal computer would use.

As artificial intelligence has become increasingly sophisticated, it has inspired renewed efforts to develop computers whose physical architecture mimics the human brain...

Dr. Gianluca Memoli, Mohd Adili Norasikin and Dr. Diego Martinez Plasencia with SoundBender.
Credit: University of Sussex

Researchers at the University of Sussex have become the first in the world to develop technology which can bend sound waves around an obstacle and levitate an object above it. SoundBender, developed by Professor Sriram Subramanian, Dr Gianluca Memoli and Dr Diego Martinez Plasencia at the University of Sussex, is an interface capable of producing dynamic self-bending beams that enable both levitation of small objects and tactile feedback around an obstacle.

The technology, to be presented at the 31st ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium in Berlin this Monday [October 15], overcomes two key limitations of previous ultrasound levitation set-ups, which were ...