Category: new technology

According to the article on Auganix, a team of engineers at MIT has developed a new technology for use in AR and VR devices. The technology involves the creation of vertical, full-color microscopic LEDs.

The new LEDs are said to be smaller and more efficient than traditional LEDs. They are also able to produce a wider range of colors, making them ideal for use in AR and VR displays.

According to the lead author of the study, Prof. Michael Strano, “The key innovation is a new design for the LEDs that allows them to be much smaller and more efficient than traditional LEDs. This is important for AR and VR devices, which require high pixel densities and bright, vibrant colors.”

The team at MIT has been working on the new technology for several years, and they are now in the process of commercializing it for use in AR and VR devices. The technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we experience AR and VR, making it more immersive and realistic than ever before.

Continue reading… “MIT engineers invent vertical, full-color microscopic LEDs for use in AR and VR devices”

By Hope Corrigan

Moore’s law might not be dead, just in need of a rewrite.

Get out of the way silicon, you’re not our top transistor anymore. We’ve had enough of your inability to maintain electrical properties at tiny scales. That’s right, we’re leaving you. Moving onwards and upwards onto better things that can truly grow with us. To put it simply: it’s not us, it’s you. We’re probably going to have to rename that valley, too.

We’ve had a really good run with silicon, but companies like TSMC have been seeking alternatives for a while, largely as a way of trying top keep up with Moore’s law. Moore’s law observed that the number of transistors able to be manufactured on silicon doubled approximately every two years, while the cost of computers fell. 

This remained true for a long time, but is petering out. Some companies like Nvidia consider it mostly dead, while AMD say it’s just expensive to keep pace with. Regardless of where Moore’s law is now, it’s set to come crashing to a halt in the near future due to the limitations of Silicon.

Thankfully, researchers at MIT(opens in new tab) have found what may well be our next transistor romance, and the good news is that silicon can kinda stick around to watch. To get those tiny sizes, researchers are working with substances so thin they’re called 2D materials. These delicate sheets of crystals are as thin as a single atom. The idea is to begin integrating these perfect crystal structures into current industry-standard silicon wafers.

Continue reading… “MIT grows 2D crystals on existing silicon to make new semiconductors and catch up to Moore’s law”

Google Research spinout Osmo wants to find substitutes for hard-to-source aromas. The tech could inspire new perfumes—and help combat mosquito-borne diseases.

By EMILY MULLIN

ALEX WILTSCHKO OPENS a black plastic suitcase and pulls out about 60 glass vials. Each contains a different scent. One smells starchy with soft floral notes, like jasmine rice cooking. Another brings to mind ocean air and the white rind of a watermelon. One is like saffron with hints of leather and black tea. The next is the pungent aroma of fig leaves, boxwood, and basil. The most surprising one has the tang of a Thai chili pepper without the nostril-burning heat. 

The molecules wafting into my nose are nothing like I’ve ever smelled before. In fact, I’m one of only a handful of people who have ever smelled them. And yet, before any person had sniffed them, a computer model predicted how they’d smell to us. 

Wiltschko has been obsessed with scents since he was a teenager, and for the past several years he has been developing software at Google Research to predict the scent of molecules based on their structure alone. The vials he’s invited me to smell are the basis of his new startup, Osmo, a spinout of Google Research based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With $60 million in an initial funding round led by New York-based Lux Capital and GV (Google Ventures), Osmo aims to create the next generation of aroma molecules for perfumes, shampoos, lotions, candles, and other everyday products. 

The $30 billion global fragrance industry relies on raw ingredients that are becoming increasingly difficult or controversial to source. Supplies of flowers popular in perfumery are dwindling because of extreme weather driven by climate change. Species like sandalwood trees are endangered from overharvesting. Other ingredients, like saffron or vetiver, are vulnerable to supply chain disruptions due to geopolitical turmoil. Some brands still use musk and other odors sourced from animals, which presents ethical issues, since it means they must be captured or killed. Meanwhile, some synthetic alternatives, such as lilial, which smells like lily of the valley, are facing regulatory bans for safety reasons. 

Continue reading… “This Startup Is Using AI to Unearth New Smells”

“The challenges with water around the world are dramatic.”

By Rachel McGlasson

Clean, renewable drinking water made straight out of thin air almost sounds too wild to be true.

But “hydropanels,” created by the Arizona-based company SOURCE, can do just that. The high-tech panels use the sun to extract moisture from the air, providing safe drinking water for many of the places around the world that need it most. 

The technology is fairly straightforward. Fans on each panel draw in ambient air and push it through a water-absorbing material, trapping the vapor from the air. The vapor is then condensed into a liquid using energy from the sun, after which it’s collected in a reservoir. The water is then mineralized with magnesium and calcium to maintain quality and achieve a better taste. 

While condensing air into water is not a new idea, the energy used to do it — all coming from the sun — makes these panels more sustainable than other, traditional methods.  

Each panel, coming in at $2,000 each, produces about 1.3 gallons of water a day and can operate completely independently of other existing infrastructure, meaning the hydropanels can provide safe drinking water virtually anywhere. 

“The challenges with water around the world are dramatic,” Cody Friesen, CEO of SOURCE, told CNN. “We aim to make safe water an unlimited resource around the world.” 

Continue reading… “THESE ‘HYDROPANELS’ ATTACH TO HOMES JUST LIKE SOLAR PANELS — AND THEY CREATE HUNDREDS OF GALLONS OF FRESH DRINKING WATER”

Using ferroelectric materials, researchers have been able to create a high-power electrostatic actuator that can generate a strong force at a low driving voltage creating new opportunities for artificial muscles

Electrostatic actuators work by using elective fields, enabling them to move objects. However, until recently, their usage has been limited to moving small devices as a high voltage is needed to generate any significant force.

Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) believe they have created a simple yet lightweight device capable of emulating human muscles by generating a strong force at a low driving voltage.

A simple device capable of emulating human muscles

Consisting of two oppositely charged electrodes, the device generates a force whenever an electric field develops between them. By altering the shape of their electrodes along with filling the gap between them with flexible, soft materials, the team from Tokyo Tech have created various configurations for electrostatic actuators in which a force can emulate that of operating muscle.

Continue reading… “High-power electrostatic actuators: the future of artificial muscles”

Isro has developed a smart limb using microprocessors that are used in space exploration. 

By India Today Web Desk: The India Space Research Organisation (Isro) has developed an artificial smart limb that could help amputees in walking with a comfortable gait. The artificial limb is a spin-off from space technology that could be manufactured for commercial use soon. The smart is expected to be cheaper by about ten times.

The newly announced smart tech is called Microprocessor-Controlled Knees (MPKs), which offers extended capabilities for the amputee more than those offered by the passive limbs that do not use the microprocessors. Nearly 1.6 kilograms in weight, Isro says the smart limb under development, at the moment, enabled an amputee to walk about 100 meters in the corridor with minimum support.

These smart MPKs are being developed by Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Isro under an MoU with the National Institute for Locomotor Disabilities (NILD), Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya National Institute for Persons with Physical Disabilities, and the Artificial Limb Manufacturing Corporation of India (ALIMCO).

Continue reading… “Isro develops artificial smart limb to aid amputees”

Light shines through a diamond sensor that is the heart of a sunlight-powered quantum device that measures magnetic fields.

By James R. Riordon

TRADING POWER-HUNGRY LASERS FOR SUNLIGHT IS A FIRST STEP TOWARD SUSTAINABLE QUANTUM TECH.

Quantum tech is going green.

A new take on highly sensitive magnetic field sensors ditches the power-hungry lasers that previous devices have relied on to make their measurements and replaces them with sunlight. Lasers can gobble 100 watts or so of power — like keeping a bright lightbulb burning. The innovation potentially untethers quantum sensors from that energy need. The result is an environmentally friendly prototype on the forefront of technology, researchers report in an upcoming issue of Physical Review X Energy.

Continue reading… “This environmentally friendly quantum sensor runs on sunlight”

By Sierra Mitchell 

A few years ago researchers using the radio-based Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) performed an extraordinary observation, the likes of which remains a dream for most other astronomers. The EHT team announced in April 2019 that it had successfully imaged the shadow of a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy by combining observations from eight different radio telescopes spread across our planet. This technique, called interferometry, effectively gave the EHT the resolution, or the ability to distinguish sources in the sky, of an Earth-sized telescope. At the optical wavelengths underpinning the gorgeous pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope and many other famed facilities, today’s interferometers can only combine light from instruments that are a few hundred meters apart at most. That may be set to change as astronomers turn to quantum physicists for help to start connecting optical telescopes that are tens, even hundreds, of kilometers away from one another.

Such optical interferometers would rely on advances being made in the field of quantum communications—particularly the development of devices that store the delicate quantum states of photons collected at each telescope. Called quantum hard drives (QHDs), these devices would be physically transported to a centralized location where the data from each telescope would be retrieved and combined with the others to collectively reveal details about some distant celestial object.

This technique is reminiscent of the iconic double-slit experiment, first performed by physicist Thomas Young in 1801, in which light falls on an opaque barrier that has two slits through which it can pass. The light recombines on the other side of the barrier, creating an interference pattern of bright and dark stripes, also known as an interferogram. This works even if individual photons trickle through the slits one by one: over time, the interference pattern will still emerge.

Continue reading… “Quantum Astronomy Could Create Telescopes Hundreds of Kilometers Wide”

By Cristian Curmei

Imagine for a moment that you live in an area where water is hard to come by. What do you do? The most common occurrence is to travel endless kilometers or miles to the nearest watering hole. Or, you can consider that we live in modern times, and science and technology are now indispensable weapons against age-old problems.

Like most other things humans create, all of it is because of necessity; after all, it’s the mother of invention. Let’s take the Kumulus One as the perfect example of what can be achieved when tech and science are used to attack problems that communities around the world may be facing. In this case, that problem is a lack of drinking water.

Folks, Kumulus One is nothing more than an apparatus that has been designed by a group of people that seek to shape our eco-friendly future. In the process, giving rise to a machine that can harness the power of the Sun and the humidity in the air around it to create pure drinking water. Simple. 

Suppose you haven’t heard of this gadget yet. In that case, it’s because the Kumulus is a rather fresh contraption on the market, having only recently popped up in Tunisia and in a diverse range of fairs and exhibitions. It’s here the Kumulus team raised awareness of the lack of drinking water around the world, why it’s a right to have clean water, and how their solution works. I’m guessing that finding investors is also part of this plan.

Continue reading… “Kumulus H2O Generator Solves Problem of 1 Billion People: Threatens Bottled Water Industry”