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Opinion The scientific community celebrated April 14 as World Quantum Day to raise awareness of quantum science’s impact across diverse fields The world of science is on the cusp of a transformative era driven by the burgeoning field of quantum technology. Quantum science is founded on several key principles that underpin the behaviour of particles and systems at the quantum scale. The term “quantum scale” refers to the realm of physics that deals with phenomena occurring at very small scales, typically at the level of atoms, subatomic particles and fundamental particles. It encompasses the principles of quantum mechanics, which govern...

The generative AI will change the way economy functions and businesses are run; it will be a game changer for in many verticals In a world driven by unprecedented technological advancements, there emerges a groundbreaking force that promises to reshape the very fabric of innovation: generative artificial intelligence. With its awe-inspiring ability to create, compose, and imagine, generative AI has surged to the forefront of scientific exploration, capturing the imaginations of researchers, entrepreneurs, and artists alike. From generating realistic images and synthesising music to aiding in drug discovery and revolutionising customer experiences, this cutting-edge technology possesses the potential to revolutionise...

WASHINGTON — The first space-based hyperspectral imaging sensor built by San Francisco startup Orbital Sidekick, founded in 2016, literally went from the garage of CEO and co-founder Dan Katz to the International Space Station as an experiment for Air Force Research Laboratory. “That was a kick ass little sensor we … integrated in my garage in San Francisco, and then handed it off to SpaceX, which launched it. And then NASA, the astronauts, took it from the Dragon capsule and installed it,” Katz told Breaking Defense in an interview. Hyperspectral cameras break down pixels into hundreds of frequency bands and...

Upon an arrival to the emergency department for abdominal pain of unknown cause, most non-pregnant adult patients receive a CT scan with IV contrast to diagnose the source of the pain. However, IV contrast can be a risk in patients with severe kidney disease or at risk for an allergic reaction from the dye. When scans are performed without IV contrast, though, they are usually less accurate, which can lead to misdiagnosis. And recent research from the University of Michigan now confirms this: a study found choosing to withhold IV contrast from certain types of abdominal CT scans can decrease...

Paradoxical maybe, but it's what often happens in the health services: When you ask for an MRI to be on the safe side, your uncertainty increases, says Bjørn Hoffman, a professor at the Department of Health Sciences at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik. Imagine that you contact your GP because you have back pain. You want to have your back examined and so you request an MRI. The GP knows that if the pain has lasted less than four to six weeks and you are not experiencing certain warning symptoms, then sending you for an MRI will...

When a massive star collapsed in the Cassiopeia constellation, it generated a supernova explosion with some of the fastest shockwaves in the Milky Way. These speedy shock waves are one of the reasons the Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova remnant was chosen to be our Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer’s (IXPE) first observed object. This composite image, made of data from IXPE, the Chandra Observatory, and the Hubble Telescope, shows Cas A. IXPE’s investigation of Cas A from Jan. 11 to Jan. 29, 2022, added crucial information about the behavior of exploded stars’ magnetic fields: scientists found that the magnetic fields...

China’s Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns have led to a shortage of a dye widely used in medical scans, prompting U.S. hospitals including the Mayo Clinic to ration supplies, postpone procedures or switch to less optimal imaging. The shortage arose in recent weeks for iodinated contrast media products including Omnipaque, made by General Electric Co.’s GE Healthcare unit at a plant in Shanghai. Omnipaque is given by intravenous injection to patients before imaging procedures to make internal organs, blood and vessels more visible in procedures such as CT scans.

Columbia Engineering researchers have created the first flat lens capable of correctly focusing a large range of colors of any polarization to the same focal spot without the need for any additional elements. Only a micron thick, their revolutionary "flat" lens is much thinner than a sheet of paper and offers performance comparable to top-of-the-line compound lens systems. The findings of the team, led by Nanfang Yu, associate professor of applied physics , are outlined in a new study, published today by Light: Science & Applications. A conventional lens works by routing all the light falling upon it through different...

A Tel-Aviv based start-up company says it has developed a program to identify personality types such as terrorists, pedophiles, white collar offenders and even great poker players from facial analysis that takes just a fraction of a second. Faception claims it has signed a contract with a homeland security agency to help identify terrorists, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. Furthermore, it says it successfully identified nine of the terrorists involved in November’s terror attacks in Paris, according to the Daily Mail. And it asserts that its technology was able to accurately classify 25 out of 27 facial images of poker...

A US trial of hi-tech goggles could reduce the need for secondary operations for cancer patients. Surgeons are not always able to tell if they have removed all the cancerous tissues and many patients face a follow-up operation to remove more. The goggles create an augmented reality, showing cancerous cells as glowing.

Do you have a sweet tooth? If so, your dietary habits could be significantly adding to your risk of developing cancer. New research published in the journal Nature Medicine has confirmed that processed sugar is one of the primary driving forces behind the growth and spread of cancer tumors, so much so that the future of cancer screening could rely on scanning the body for sugar accumulation. Scientists from University College London (UCL) in the U.K. made this discovery after experimenting with a new cancer detection method that involves utilizing a unique form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). After sensitizing an MRI scanner to...

Physical limits mean that electron microscopy may be nearing highest possible resolution. Plans for the next generation of electron microscopes have been dealt a blow by the discovery of an unexpected source of noise that could frustrate efforts to improve resolution to well below the size of an atom. Researchers working for a leading manufacturer of advanced optics describe the noise source in a paper1 now in press. They think that they can find a way to mitigate it, but electron microscopists admit that the finding is the latest sign that their costly quest to capture ever more detailed images...

UCL scientists have developed a new technique for detecting the uptake of sugar in tumors, using magnetic resonance imaging. A new technique for detecting cancer by imaging the consumption of sugar with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been unveiled by UCL scientists. The breakthrough could provide a safer and simpler alternative to standard radioactive techniques and enable radiologists to image tumours in greater detail. The new technique, called 'glucose chemical exchange saturation transfer' (glucoCEST), is based on the fact that tumours consume much more glucose (a type of sugar) than normal, healthy tissues in order to sustain their growth. The...

Two-photon microscopy: New research may help drastically reduce cost of powerful microscope technique Enlarge The same section of a mouse brain imaged with a femtosecond laser (above) and a much weaker laser but the new dye (below). (Phys.org) —A dye-based imaging technique known as two-photon microscopy can produce pictures of active neural structures in much finer detail than functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, but it requires powerful and expensive lasers. Now, a research team at the University of Pennsylvania has developed a new kind of dye that could reduce the cost of the technique by several orders of magnitude....

The brain works like a complex machine, sending electrical signals that allow us to perceive and understand the world around us. Now, scientists have discovered a new system in this brain that acts as a "garbage truck," removing waste that might affect the brain. The findings could have large implications for treating neurological disorders like Alzheimer's disease. The body defends the brain like a fortress, ringing it with a complex system of gateways that control which molecules can enter and exit. This "blood-brain barrier" was known to exist for quite some time, but it's only now that researchers are beginning...

Some scientists question the existence of self-assembling stripes on nanoparticles © NPGA prickly controversy has erupted in the rarefied world of nanoscience revolving around the strength of the evidence that molecules can assemble themselves into discrete stripes around gold nanoparticles. The issue highlights the difficulty of interpreting images of nanoscale objects.For many years researchers have been decorating gold nanoparticles with thiolated ligands to imbue the nanoparticles with a range of properties. In 2004, a group led by Francesco Stellacci, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, published a paper in Nature Materials demonstrating that if two different...

Atomic structures for three-fold and four-fold coordinated silicon impurities in monolayer graphene © APSA combination of scanning transmission electron microscopy and atomic-resolution spectroscopic techniques has allowed US researchers to pick out individual silicon atoms in a doped graphene sheet. The technique reveals that the silicon atoms can exist in a planar hybridised ‘sp2d’ like form when bonded to four carbon atoms, as well as the anticipated sp3 form when triply coordinated. The experimental observations mesh with simulations of two-dimensional solids and point the way to a method for exploring single impurities in graphene and related materials.Stephen Pennycook and colleagues at...

We knew liberals were different, but just how different is revealed in a new study of the human brain indicating that not only do liberals and conservatives share different moral sentiments, but that markedly differing brain structures underlie those sentiments. The study’s “findings demonstrate that variation in moral sentiment corresponds to individual differences in brain structure and suggest that moral values possess deep-rooted biological bases distributed across distinct brain regions,” say University of California, Santa Barbara, post-doctoral researcher Gary J. Lewis and three research collaborators in the August 2012 issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (JCN). “People differ in...

The assembly includes a cell-stretching device, an atomic force microscopy head and an objective of the inverted microscopeAn analytical platform that imposes controlled mechanical strain onto live cells whilst monitoring changes in cell morphology and molecular signalling has been developed by scientists in Germany. Cellular processes induced by mechanical forces are crucial for bone healing and lung function. Understanding these processes could help to prevent and aid the development of therapies for mechanically induced lung and cardiovascular diseases and injuries.Christine Kranz and colleagues from the University of Ulm combined fluorescence microscopy with atomic force microscopy to analyse the cells. They...

A pioneering team from IBM in Zurich has published single-molecule images so detailed that the type of atomic bonds between their atoms can be discerned. The same team took the first-ever single-molecule image in 2009 and more recently published images of a molecule shaped like the Olympic rings. The new work opens up the prospect of studying imperfections in the "wonder material" graphene or plotting where electrons go during chemical reactions. The images are published in Science. The team, which included French and Spanish collaborators, used a variant of a technique called atomic force microscopy, or AFM. AFM uses a...