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Physical Sciences

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INSIDER: Semiconductors & ICs
The mechanism holding new ferroelectric semiconductors together produces a conductive pathway that could enable high power transistors. A new class of...
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Blog: Physical Sciences
Inspired by the movements of a tiny parasitic worm, Georgia Tech engineers have created a five-inch soft robot that can jump as high as a basketball hoop.
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White Papers: Physical Sciences
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Lightweight, Non-Magnetic UHV Suitcases Feature Atlas Technologies Aluminum Vacuum Chambers and Titanium/Aluminum Bimetal Flanges
Atlas Technologies’ customer, VolkVac Instruments, needed a UHV chamber small enough and light enough to easily...

Application Briefs: Physical Sciences
Exploiting the “spatial” degree of freedom of light can mean many things. Read on to learn what they are and what the process can lead to.
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Residents of the Manu’a Islands in American Samoa were feeling the earth shake, raising concerns of an imminent volcanic eruption or tsunami. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey used machine learning and a technique called template matching on shaking data recorded from a single seismic sensor located 250 kilometers away to locate the source of the shaking. Read on to learn more.
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Researchers have developed a groundbreaking near-infrared fluorescent nanosensor capable of simultaneously detecting and differentiating between iron forms — Fe(II) and Fe(III) — in living plants. Read on to learn more about it.
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Briefs: Semiconductors & ICs
A joint research effort led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has shown how coal can play a vital role in next-generation electronic devices. Read on to learn more about it.
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INSIDER: Motion Control
Inspired by the movements of a tiny parasitic worm, Georgia Tech engineers have created a 5-inch soft robot that can jump as high as a basketball hoop. Their device, a silicone...
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INSIDER: Motion Control
The Harvard RoboBee has long shown it can fly, dive, and hover like a real insect. But what good is the miracle of flight without a safe way to land? A storied engineering achievement by the Harvard...
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Blog: Physical Sciences
The hopping robot, which is smaller than a human thumb and weighs less than a paperclip, has a springy leg that propels it off the ground and four flapping-wing modules that give it lift and control its orientation.
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Blog: Physical Sciences
The work addresses the outfielder problem, which refers to the baseball player who stands in the outfield to catch the ball after it is hit. It is a classic challenge in physics and the neuroscience of movement, used to explore how humans and animals predict movements in a dynamic environment and how automated systems can be designed to mimic them.
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INSIDER: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a new thermometer using atoms boosted to such high energy levels that they are a thousand...
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Products: Electronics & Computers
See what's new on the market, including Endress+Hauser's FMR63B 80 GHz radar level sensor; the TP-108 Series, the smallest of all test points from Components Corporation; Sumida America's family of Resin-Shielded Surface-Mount Power Inductors; Coilcraft's XGL3020 series of ultra-low loss power inductors; Yokogawa Electric Corporation's OpreX™ Intelligent Manufacturing Hub; and much more.
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
An innovator at NASA Langley Research Center has developed a novel method for making thin, lightweight radiation shielding that can be sprayed or melted onto common textiles used in clothing such as cotton, nylon, polyester, Nomex, and Kevlar. Read on to learn more about it.
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INSIDER: Information Technology
As more satellites, telescopes, and other spacecraft are built to be repairable, it will take reliable trajectories for service spacecraft to...
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INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
An electrospray engine applies an electric field to a conductive liquid, generating a high-speed jet of tiny droplets that can propel a spacecraft. These miniature engines are...
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Blog: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A team has developed a method to grow artificial muscle tissue that twitches and flexes in multiple coordinated directions. As a demonstration, they grew an artificial, muscle-powered structure that pulls both concentrically and radially.
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Quiz: Electronics & Computers
How much do you know about animal-inspired technology? Test your knowledge with this quiz.
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Blog: Green Design & Manufacturing
This device works to suppress flames using the power of conductive aerosols, small particles that can direct electricity.
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INSIDER: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Oxide-ion conductors enable oxide ions (O2-) to be transported in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), which can run on diverse fuels beyond hydrogen, including natural gas,...
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INSIDER: Power
As population growth and extreme temperatures strain the United States power grid, utilities and equipment manufacturers are looking for ways to increase the amount of...
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INSIDER: Electronics & Computers
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have achieved a new material that will be pivotal in making the next generation of high-power electronics...
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Briefs: Wearables
Jamie Paik and colleagues in the Reconfigurable Robotics Lab in EPFL’s School of Engineering have developed a sensor that can perceive combinations of bending, stretching, compression, and temperature changes, all using a robust system that boils down to a simple concept: color. Read on to learn more about it.
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Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
In creating a pair of new robots, Cornell researchers cultivated an unlikely component: fungal mycelia. By harnessing mycelia’s innate electrical signals, the researchers discovered a new way of controlling “biohybrid” robots that can potentially react to their environment better than their purely synthetic counterparts. Read on to learn more.
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INSIDER: Motion Control
DNA-nanoparticle motors are exactly as they sound — tiny artificial motors that use the structures of DNA and RNA to propel motion by enzymatic RNA degradation. Essentially,...
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Blog: Design
Researchers have uncovered a way of transporting electricity through air by ultrasonic waves. The level of control of electric sparks enables them to be guided around obstacles, or to hit specific spots, even into non-conductive materials.
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INSIDER: Nanotechnology
The electronics industry is approaching a limit to the number of transistors that can be packed onto the surface of a computer chip. So, chip manufacturers are looking to build up rather than out.
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Researchers have designed a way to levitate and propel objects using only light by creating specific nanoscale patterning on the objects' surfaces. The work could be a step toward developing a spacecraft that could reach the nearest planet outside of our solar system in 20 years, powered and accelerated only by light. Read on to learn more.
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Briefs: Materials
NASA Kennedy Space Center engineers developed a Cryogenic Oxygen Storage Module to store oxygen in solid-state form and deliver it as a gas to an end-use environmental control and/or life support system. Read on to learn more about it.
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