A tiny neuro controller developed by researchers at the University of Connecticut could provide more precise operation of micro biorobots, such as those being tested on ‘cyborg’ cockroaches for possible use in search and rescue missions inside collapsed buildings.
Credit: Image courtesy of Abhishek Dutta/UConn

Scientists’ neuro-controller could improve performance of micro biobots. A tiny neuro-controller created by researchers at the University of Connecticut could provide more precise control of futuristic biobots, such as cyborg cockroaches that are already being tested for use in search and rescue missions inside collapsed buildings.

Scientists have spent the better part of the past decade exploring ways to tether live insects to miniaturized computer hardware so they can manipulate an ...

Saturn’s northern polar hexagon.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton University

The long-lived international Cassini mission has revealed a surprising feature emerging at Saturn’s northern pole as it nears summertime: a warming, high-altitude vortex with a hexagonal shape, akin to the famous hexagon seen deeper down in Saturn’s clouds. This suggests that the lower-altitude hexagon may influence what happens up above, and that it could be a towering structure spanning hundreds of kilometres in height.

When Cassini arrived at the Saturnian system in 2004, the southern hemisphere was enjoying summertime, while the northern was in the midst of winter. The spacecraft spied a broad, warm, high-altitude vortex at Saturn’s southern pole, but none at the planet’s northern pole.

A new long-term stud...

This is network overview of the modular quantum architecture demonstrated in the new study.
Credit: Yale University

Yale University researchers have demonstrated one of the key steps in building the architecture for modular quantum computers: the “teleportation” of a quantum gate between two qubits, on demand.

The key principle behind this new work is quantum teleportation, a unique feature of quantum mechanics that has previously been used to transmit unknown quantum states between two parties without physically sending the state itself. Using a theoretical protocol developed in the 1990s, Yale researchers experimentally demonstrated a quantum operation, or “gate,” without relying on any direct interaction...

We can estimate the age of heavy elements in the primordial Solar System by measuring the traces left in meteorites by specific radioactive nuclei synthesized in certain types of supernovae.
Credit: NAOJ

An international team has proposed a new method to investigate the inner workings of supernovae explosions. This new method uses meteorites and is unique in that it can determine the contribution from electron anti-neutrinos, enigmatic particles which can’t be tracked through other means.

Supernovae are important events in the evolution of stars and galaxies, but the details of how the explosions occur are still unknown...