Category Technology/Electronics

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and collaborators have developed an organic photovoltaic film that is both waterproof and flexible, allowing a solar cell to be put onto slothes and still function correctly after being rained on or even washed.

One of the potential uses of organic photovoltaics is to create wearable electronics — devices that can be attached to clothing that can monitor medical devices, for example, without requiring battery changes.

However, researchers have found it challenging to achieve waterproofing without the use of extra layers that end up decreasing the flexibility of the film.

Now, in work published in Nature Communications, a group of scientists ha...

Aston University researchers have sent data at a speed that is 4.5 million times faster than the average home broadband. The rate is the fastest ever sent by opening up specific new wavelength bands that are not yet used in fiber optic systems.

As part of an international collaboration, the academics transferred data at a rate of 301 terabits or 301,000,000 megabits per second, using a single, standard optical fiber.

That’s compared to Ofcom’s UK home broadband performance report published in September 2023, which stated that the average broadband speed is just 69.4 Mbit/s megabits per second.

Professor Wladek Forysiak from Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies and Dr...

In a new Nature study, Columbia Engineering researchers have built a photonic chip that is able to produce high-quality, ultra-low-noise microwave signals using only a single laser. The compact device—a chip so small, it could fit on a sharp pencil point—results in the lowest microwave noise ever observed in an integrated photonics platform.

The achievement provides a promising pathway towards small-footprint ultra-low-noise microwave generation for applications such as high-speed communication, atomic clocks, and autonomous vehicles.

Performing a new task based solely on verbal or written instructions, and then describing it to others so that they can reproduce it, is a cornerstone of human communication that still resists artificial intelligence (AI).

A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has succeeded in modeling an artificial neural network capable of this cognitive prowess. After learning and performing a series of basic tasks, this AI was able to provide a linguistic description of them to a “sister” AI, which in turn performed them. These promising results, especially for robotics, are published in Nature Neuroscience.

Performing a new task without prior training, on the sole basis of verbal or written instruc...