World’s first non-silicon 2D computer developed

World's first non-silicon 2D computer developed
This conceptual illustration of a computer based on 2D molecules displays an actual scanning electron microscope image of the computer fabricated by a team by researchers at Penn State. The keyboard features highlighted keys labeled with the abbreviations for molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide, representing the two 2D materials used to develop the transistors in the computer. Credit: Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay/Penn State

Silicon is king in the semiconductor technology that underpins smartphones, computers, electric vehicles and more, but its crown may be slipping, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State.

In a world first, they used two-dimensional (2D) materials, which are only an atom thick and retain their properties at that scale, unlike silicon, to develop a ...

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From the andes to the beginning of time: Telescopes detect 13-billion-year-old signal

Small telescopes in Chile are first on Earth to cut through the cosmic noise. For the first time, scientists have used Earth-based telescopes to look back over 13 billion years to see how the first stars in the universe affect light emitted from the Big Bang.

Using telescopes high in the Andes mountains of northern Chile, astrophysicists have measured this polarized microwave light to create a clearer picture of one of the least understood epochs in the history of the universe, the Cosmic Dawn.

“People thought this couldn’t be done from the ground. Astronomy is a technology-limited field, and microwave signals from the Cosmic Dawn are famously difficult to measure,” said Tobias Marriage, project leader and a Johns Hopkins professor of physics and astronomy...

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Brain training game offers new hope for drug-free pain management

PainWaive in action
The headset transmits the player’s brain activity data to the app, which responds by changing the color of the water around the jellyfish, providing the player with real-time feedback on their mental state.Image: Elva Darnell

A trial of an interactive game that trains people to alter their brain waves has shown promise as a treatment for nerve pain — offering hope for a new generation of drug-free treatments.

The PainWaive technology, developed by UNSW Sydney researchers, teaches users how to regulate abnormal brain activity linked to chronic nerve pain, offering a potential in-home, non-invasive alternative to opioids.

A recent trial of the technology, led by Professor Sylvia Gustin and Dr Negin Hesam-Shariati from UNSW Sydney’s NeuroRecovery Research Hub, has delivered promisin...

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Photons collide in the void: Quantum simulation creates light out of nothing

Illustration of photon-photon scattering in the laboratory. Two green petawatt lasers beams collide at the focus with a third red beam to polarise the quantum vacuum. This allows a fourth blue laser beam to be generated, with a unique direction and colour, which conserves momemtum and energy.

Using advanced computational modelling, a research team led by the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the Instituto Superior Técnico in the University of Lisbon, has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the ‘quantum vacuum’ — a state once assumed to be empty, but which quantum physics predicts is full of virtual electron-positron pairs.

The results have been published in Communications Physics.
Using advanced computational modelling, a research team led by the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the Instituto Superior Técnico in the University of Lisbon, has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the ‘quantum vacuum’ — a state once ass...

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