Category Technology/Electronics

Fans hail the smooth new velo routes as the answer to urban traffic jams and air pollution, and a way to safely get nine-to-fivers outdoors

It’s every cyclist’s dream: no red lights, no trucks, just a clear, smooth lane to zoom down with the wind in your face. Welcome to Germany’s first bicycle Autobahn. Fans hail the smooth new velo routes as the answer to urban traffic jams and air pollution, and a way to safely get nine-to-fivers outdoors. As a glimpse of a greener urban transport future, Germany has just opened the first 5km stretch of a bicycle highway that is set to span over 100 kilometres.

It will connect 10 western cities including Duisburg, Bochum and Hamm and 4 universities, running largely along disused railroad tracks in the crumbling Ruhr industrial region...

Fountain interferometer. Credit: Nature (2015). DOI: 10.1038/nature16155

Scientists entangling quantum particles and even whole atoms has been in the news a lot over the past couple of years as experiments have been conducted with the goal of attempting to better understand the strange phenomenon—and much has been learned. But, as scientists figure out how to entangle two particles at ever greater distances apart there has come questions about the size of objects that can be entangled. Schrödinger’s cat has come up in several such discussions as theorists and those in the applied fields seek to figure out if it might be truly possible to cause a whole cat to actually be in two places at once...

Ferromagnetism mediated by Sb or Te atoms. Credit: Hiroshima University

A group of researchers in Japan and China identified the requirements for the development of new types of extremely low power consumption electric devices by studying Cr-doped (Sb, Bi)2Te3 thin films.

At extremely low temperatures, an electric 3current flows around the edge of the film without energy loss, and under no external magnetic field. This attractive phenomenon is due to the material’s ferromagnetic properties. For the first time, researchers have revealed the mechanism by which this occurs. “Hopefully, this achievement will lead to the creation of novel materials that operate at room temperature in the future,” said Prof Akio Kimura.

Their achievement can be traced back to the discovery of the quantum Hall ef...