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In another step forward for laser weapons that brings to mind the Death Star's superlaser, Lockheed Martin has demonstrated a 30-kilowatt fiber laser produced by combining many lasers into a single beam of light. According to the company, this is the highest power laser yet that was still able to maintain beam quality and electrical efficiency, paving the way for a laser weapon system suitable, if not for a Death Star, for a wide range of air, land and sea military platforms.
The test was the culmination of an internally-funded research and development program based around a process that the company calls Spectrum Beam Combining. Though laser weapons have been successfully tested in the past, Lockheed says that even though such systems could acquire, track, and destroy targets, they lack practicality as a tactical weapon because the inefficient nature of the lasers resulted in them being too large, needing too much power, and being difficult to cool.
Spectrum Beam Combining seeks to overcome these deficiencies by means of fiber laser modules. Fiber lasers are lasers where the active gain medium consists of an optical fiber doped with a rare-earth element, such as erbium, ytterbium, neodymium, or others. The optical fibers are flexible, so the laser can be thousands of meters long for greater gain, yet takes up very little space because it can be coiled like a rope, and the large surface to volume ratio means that it's easy to cool. In addition, fiber laser are very durable and project a high-quality beam.
First graphene radio broadcast is a wireless wonder
22:55 30 January 2014 by Paul Marks
First graphene radio broadcast is a wireless wonder - tech - 30 January 2014 - New Scientist
Three letters beamed across a lab bench may spark a revolution in wireless communication. The seemingly simple transmission of "IBM" was received by the first working radio chip to be made from the modern wonder material, graphene sheets of carbon, each just one atom thick.
Graphene, with its flat, hexagonal lattice, was first isolated a decade ago. It won its discoverers a Nobel prize in physics, in part because its high electrical and thermal conductivity led to broad predictions that it would completely replace silicon transistors, the key component in many electronics. This latest achievement shows that analogue circuits such as radios can indeed make use of the material, potentially leading to cheaper, more efficient wireless devices.
For the first time ever, physicists have created and photographed synthetic magnetic monopoles by engineering an environment that mimics a monopole’s magnetic field in a cloud of rubidium atoms.
In 1931, the English theoretical physicist Prof Paul Dirac predicted that the north and south poles of a magnet could exist independently and behave like electric charges.
Despite experimental searches since then no observation of a naturally-occurring magnetic monopole – a magnetic particle possessing only a single, isolated pole – has yet been confirmed.
In 2009, Finnish researchers published theoretical results demonstrating a method to create Dirac monopoles in a Bose–Einstein condensate, an extremely cold atomic gas tens of billionths of a degree warmer than absolute zero.
Experts say it may lead to a better understanding of how the thousands of genes contained in these packages of genetic material work together in everything from yeast to humans. And it may make it easier to make designer yeast, creating living factories that churn out everything from antibiotics to biofuels. Geneticist Jef Boeke says it started with a coffee shop conversation with a colleague. I mentioned casually to him that, of course we could make the yeast chromosome if we wanted to, but why on Earth would we want to do that? And he practically literally started jumping up and down with excitement when I told him that, he said. So Boeke, the colleague, Srinivasan Chandrasegaran and a third partner, Joel Bader, spent the next year discussing how they could engineer the chromosome to make it worth the enormous investment of time and money it would take. Working at Johns Hopkins University, they decided to create an artificial version of chromosome III, one of the smallest of yeasts 16 chromosomes. It carries about 100 genes. Boeke says scientists have studied it for years, adding It is the sentimental favorite of yeast geneticists.
Block by block
Boeke and his colleagues recreated their favorite chromosome, gene by gene, with synthetic chemical building blocks. They included molecular seams, so they could cut the chromosome apart, take some genes out, add others, rearrange them and stitch it back together in ways that would help them understand how different combinations of genes work together. Since yeast genes are a lot like ours, Boeke says the research could lead to a better understanding of human genetics. And perhaps most interesting of all, we think it will be useful for actually improving the strain under certain conditions of growth or production of some useful product, he said. Different strains of yeast are already used to produce antibiotics, antimalarial drugs, vaccines, biofuels and much more. The ability to custom-tailor chromosomes could give the biotech industry a boost. And Boeke says the same process his group used to build a new yeast chromosome could be used in plants and animals and even humans as well.
The 46 human chromosomes, where DNA resides and does its work.
Ethical issues
Boeke, now at New York University, says they are all aware of the ethical issues that possibility raises. We have a card-carrying bioethicist who is part of our team, he pointed out, adding, And we think a lot about these things. In fact, our whole field is infused with a passion for doing the right thing. He says every member working on the project has to sign an agreement not to do what he calls bad things with it. Experts note that this is not the first time researchers have built a big chunk of genome from scratch. A group at the J. Craig Venter Institute synthesized an entire bacterial genome in 2008.
Paying for research
Ventners group was funded entirely with private money. Boekes group relied on a single, relatively small government grant. Virginia Tech professor Jean Peccoud notes that undergraduate students did much of the actual work. There is a lot of significance in terms of engaging students and using a research project like this as a training opportunity," he said. "But in terms of the kind of infrastructure and the kind of intensity you need for a project like this, is it really something that is fundable through public sources, or is it something that is going to be in the hands of commercial interests? Peccoud notes that Craig Venter also used private money to sequence the human genome faster than the publically-funded project. Meanwhile, researchers have 15 more chromosomes to build in order to reach their goal of constructing an entirely custom-made yeast genome. The work appears in the journal Science.
Scientists Build Artificial Chromosome
RESEARCHERS IN DUBLIN have achieved a breakthrough in the production of wonder material graphene.
Scientists at the AMBER, a materials science centre at Trinity College Dublin and funded by Science Foundation Ireland, have discovered a way to produce the material in industrial quantities.
The substance is one the strongest known with a section 1mm thick being 200 times stronger than steel and a superconductor of electricity more than 1000 times more effective than copper.
Its also 97.3 per cent transparent and extremely bendable.
PORTLAND, Ore. -- China has taken the lead in carbon nanotube and graphene research and manufacturing, according to Lux Research of Boston, by adding to a global glut market, driving down prices, eroding margins, and likely causing an early shakeout in the fledgling industry.
Lux Research Analyst Zhun Ma, lead author of the recently released report entitled "Fishing for Carbon Gems in a Vast Sea of Oversupply: Assessing China's Carbon Nanotube and Graphene Landscape," tells EE Times:
Lux forecasts that the global graphene nanoplatlet and carbon nanotube demand in 2018 stands at 1,520 tons and 2,016 tons, respectively. However, China alone will be enough to feed total global graphene nanoplatlet demand until 2016. Similarly, aggregate current capacity of Chinese carbon nanotube suppliers can meet forecasted global demand until 2015. We believe the prices of graphene nanoplatlets and carbon nanotubes will continue to drop down once capacity and utilization climb, and the aggressive capacity expansion of Chinese companies will squeeze the profit margins of both nanomaterials.
The Neanderthal extinction may have led to the rise of early humans, but it was not a lack of wits that lead to the change.
In a new study, published in the journal PLOS One, two researchers found that Neanderthals likely had the same mental aptitude for hunting, language and culture as did the early humans that followed them.
Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera the study disproves a common stereotype that Neanderthals were not intelligent compared to humans that came later.
Graphene may be talked about as the future wonder material (and for that matter, the present one), but it has one critical deficiency. It lacks a natural bandgap, the physical trait that puts the “semi” in “semiconductor," so it has to be doped to become effective. Enter Ni3(2,3,6,7,10,11-hexaiminotriphenylene)2 ... well, you can refer to it as a metal-organic graphene analogue for now. In addition to having a natural band gap, it’s able to self-assemble and represents a whole family of compounds that’s exciting to researchers for its novel properties.
Nickel (the metal) and HITP (the organic compound) are represented in the diagram at the top of the page, with nickel colored in green, amino groups in purple, and carbon rings in grey. The amino groups in the carbon rings are attracted to the nickel, and because of the symmetry and geometry in HITP, the overall organometallic complex almost has a fractal nature that allows this new semiconductor to self-organize perfectly. A band gap is created in the “hole” where electrons aren’t, a space that's just about 2 nm across.
Scientists at Germany's GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research have successfully recreated a new type of element, paving the way for its admission into the periodic table.
"This is an important scientific result and a compelling example of international cooperation in science, advancing superheavy element research by leveraging the special capabilities of national laboratories in Germany and the US," said Oak Ridge National Laboratory director Thom Mason in a statement.
(Phys.org) —Scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have shown for the first time how high-temperature superconductivity emerges out of magnetism in an iron pnictide, a class of materials with great potential for making devices that conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency
Nearly 90 years after Werner Heisenberg pioneered his uncertainty principle, a group of researchers from three countries has provided substantial new insight into this fundamental tenet of quantum physics with the first rigorous formulation supporting the uncertainty principle as Heisenberg envisioned it.
Read more at: Physics students devise concept for Star Wars-style deflector shieldsIf you have often imagined yourself piloting your X-Wing fighter on an attack run on the Death Star, you'll be reassured that University of Leicester students have demonstrated that your shields could take whatever the Imperial fleet can throw at you.
(Phys.org) —In an atom laser, millions of individual atoms propagate through space with minimal spreading, just like photons propagate in a coherent photon laser beam. Although both types of lasers are similar, atom lasers are still in the early stages of research with much work to be done before they can be used for applications, which may include atom lithography, atom interferometry, and magnetometry (measuring magnetic fields).
The idea that a beam emitted from a starship can draw in another object is one of sci-fi's oldest and wildest concepts. It's also slowly becoming a reality. Since 2010, nano-scale tractor beams made up of light particles have been capable of drawing in their tiny nanoparticle prey. A new, acoustic method developed by an international team of scientists has effectively supercharged the nascent technology.
Beams of light and sound function in similar ways, both existing as waves of varying frequency. Imagining them like ocean waves, you might be a bit bewildered as to how waves can tug at you instead of crashing and pushing you away. By making sonic waves strike a target object at just the right angle, however, the research team has found that they can actually create a low pressure zone in front of it, effectively coaxing the object closer with every wavelength. Think of it like manufacturing a sonic undertow.
Japan's LO maglev train, currently clocked at around 311 miles per hour, has garnered news for years as the world's fastest train. By the time the LO begins service in 2027, however, another maglev project may be well on its way to shattering that speed record. At Southwest Jiaotong University, in the central Chinese province of Sichuan, Dr. Deng Zigang has been working on something called a high-temperature superconducting magnetic levitation train, or a super-maglev for short.
The single-car super-maglev prototype, sitting upon its domed test track, looks a bit like an over-sized child's plaything. But it's no plaything. In fact, the bitty little train and its enclosed track are designed to keep the maglev track at just the right temperature, ensuring the best possible test results. The tunnel also allows Dr. Zigang to remove the air, and therefore the air resistance, from the train's path.
Tests so far have progressed slowly, with simulations showing that the super-maglev will eventually be capable of speeds of at least 373 miles per hour. In itself, that top speed would be 62 miles per hour faster than Japan's best efforts, but Dr. Zigang isn't through yet. Given an ideal setting, a "perfect world" if you will, the super-maglev could eventually reach a massive top speed of 621 miles per hour.
Many of the things we’ve only previously read about in science fiction are now getting real-world applications, including, finally, cybernetics. Remember The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman? At the time those two television series aired, the technology of using bionics to repair limbs and organs was only fiction. The FDA has just approved a device that signals the beginning of the bionic revolution: a prosthetic arm that responds to commands from the brain.
Created by DEKA, a company founded by Dean Kamen (the inventor of the Segway, among many other things), this new prosthetic arm works by using electrodes in arm muscles that detect movement, as signaled by the brain. The arm translates those signals into 10 specific movements in the prosthetic arm. Unlike most prosthetics on the market, the wearer won’t have to control it via other arm movements, like from the shoulder or the elbow: this arm works like a real arm, relying on brain signals to tell the arm’s muscles, and thereby the prosthetic arm, what to do.
Stop the press! IBM Research announced this morning that it has discovered a whole new class of… plastics. This might not sound quite as sexy as, say, MIT discovering a whole new state of matter — but wait until you hear what these new plastics can do. This new class of plastics — or more accurately, polymers — are stronger than bone, have the ability to self-heal, are light-weight, and are 100% recyclable. The number of potential uses, spanning industries as disparate as aerospace and semiconductors, is dizzying. A new class of polymers hasn’t been discovered in over 20 years — and, in a rather novel twist, they weren’t discovered by chemists: they were discovered by IBM’s supercomputers.
One of the key components of modern industry and consumerism is the humble thermosetting plastic. Thermosetting plastics — which are just big lumps of gooey polymer that are shaped and then cured (baked) — are light and easy to work with, but incredibly hard and heat resistant. The problem is, once a thermoset has been cured, there’s no turning back — you can’t return it to its gooey state. This means that if you (the engineer, the designer) make a mistake, you have to start again. It also means that thermoset plastics cannot be recycled. Once you’re done with that Galaxy S5, the thermoset chassis can’t be melted down and reused; it goes straight to the dump. IBM’s new polymer retains all of a thermosetting plastic’s useful properties — but it can also be recycled.
In what could be a landmark moment in the history of science, physicists working at the Blackett Physics Laboratory in Imperial College London have designed an experiment to validate one of the most tantalizing hypotheses in quantum electrodynamics: the theory that matter could be created using nothing more than pure light.
Premised on a discussion that they had over one day and a few cups of coffee, the three physicists – two from Imperial College and one visiting from the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany – recognized that their work on fusion energy also offered possibilities in the theory of light to matter creation, suggested in a theory 80 years ago by two American physicists, Breit and Wheeler. These two physicists had premised the idea that because annihilating electron-positron pairs produce two or more photons, then colliding photons should, in turn, produce electron-positron (or “Breit-Wheeler”
In devising an experiment aimed at attempting to produce these Breit-Wheeler pairs, the physicists working at Imperial College propose a two-step process. Firstly, a high-energy electron beam accelerating electrons in a vacuum close to the speed of light would be fired into a target of pure gold several millimeters thick. Via a process called “Bremsstrahlung” (German for “Braking radiation”
DARPA’s Z-Man program has demonstrated the first known human climbing of a glass wall using climbing devices inspired by geckos. The historic ascent involved a 218-pound climber ascending and descending 25 feet of glass, while also carrying an additional 50-pound load in one trial, with no climbing equipment other than a pair of hand-held, gecko-inspired paddles. The novel polymer microstructure technology used in those paddles was developed for DARPA by Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Mass.
Historically, gaining the high ground has always been an operational advantage for warfighters, but the climbing instruments on which they’re frequently forced to rely—tools such as ropes and ladders—have not advanced significantly for millennia. Not only can the use of such tools be overt and labor intensive, they also only allow for sequential climbing whereby the first climber often takes on the highest risk.
DARPA created the Z-Man program to overcome these limitations and deliver maximum safety and flexibility for maneuver and rapid response to warfighters operating in tight urban environments. The goal of the program is to develop biologically inspired climbing aids to enable warfighters carrying a full combat load to scale vertical walls constructed from typical building materials.
