Researchers demonstrate the first single-photon transistor using a semiconductor chip. They used a single photon, stored in a quantum memory, to toggle the state of other photons. Credit: E. Edwards/Joint Quantum Institute

Researchers have demonstrated the first single-photon transistor using a semiconductor chip. Transistors are tiny switches that form the bedrock of modern computing; billions of them route electrical signals around inside a smartphone, for instance. Quantum computers will need analogous hardware to manipulate quantum information. But the design constraints for this new technology are stringent, and today’s most advanced processors can’t be repurposed as quantum devices. That’s because qubits, have to follow different rules laid out by quantum physics.

Scientists can use ...

An artist’s conception of a radio jet spewing out fast-moving material from the newly discovered quasar. Artwork by Robin Dienel, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science.

Quasar with the brightest radio emission ever observed in the early universe. Carnegie’s Eduardo Bañados led a team that found a quasar with the brightest radio emission ever observed in the early universe, due to it spewing out a jet of extremely fast-moving material.

Bañados’ discovery was followed up by Emmanuel Momjian of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which allowed the team to see with unprecedented detail the jet shooting out of a quasar that formed within the universe’s first billion years of existence...

This is a fluorescent microscopy image showing accumulation of phosphatidylethanolamine (PE, red) in human dendritic cells treated with synthetic F. tularensis PE containing liposomes. Blue indicates the cell nucleus.
Credit: NIAID

NIH scientists see therapeutic potential against bacteria, viruses. National Institutes of Health researchers have identified a naturally occurring lipid – a waxy, fatty acid – used by a disease-causing bacterium to impair the host immune response and increase the chance of infection. Inadvertently, they also may have found a potent inflammation therapy against bacterial and viral diseases.

Lipids are known to help Francisella tularensis bacteria, the cause of tularemia, to suppress host inflammation when infecting mouse and human cells...

At left, different patterns of slices through a thin metal foil, are made by a focused ion beam. These patterns cause the metal to fold up into predetermined shapes, which can be used for such purposes as modifying a beam of light.
Credit: Courtesy of the researchers

Folding and cutting thin metal films could enable microchip-based 3D optical devices. Nanokirigami has taken off as a field of research in the last few years; the approach is based on the ancient arts of origami (making 3D shapes by folding paper) and kirigami (which allows cutting as well as folding) but applied to flat materials at the nanoscale, measured in billionths of a meter.

Now, researchers at MIT and in China have for the first time applied this approach to the creation of nanodevices to manipulate light, potentially...