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Showing posts with the label SCIENCE

Chip upgrade helps bee-size drones navigate

Low-power design will allow devices as small as a honeybee to determine their location while flying Date: July 11, 2018 Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Summary: The same researchers, who last year designed a tiny computer chip tailored to help honeybee-sized drones navigate, have now shrunk their chip design even further, in both size and power consumption. A new computer chip, smaller than a U.S. dime and shown here with a quarter for scale, helps miniature drones navigate in flight. Credit: Image courtesy of the researchers Researchers at MIT, who last year designed a tiny computer chip tailored to help honeybee-sized drones navigate, have now shrunk their chip design even further, in both size and power consumption. The team, co-led by Vivienne Sze, associate professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and Sertac Karaman, the Class of 1948 Career Development Associate Professor of Aeronautics and ...

Interaction of paired and lined-up electrons can be manipulated in semiconductors

Date: July 11, 2018 Source: Purdue University Summary: The way that electrons paired as composite particles or arranged in lines interact with each other within a semiconductor provides new design opportunities for electronics, according to recent findings. Two different kinds of electron arrangements in a semiconductor, paired as composite particles or lined-up, can interact with and tweak each other in the presence of hydrostatic pressure. Credit: Purdue University image/Gábor Csáthy The way that electrons paired as composite particles or arranged in lines interact with each other within a semiconductor provides new design opportunities for electronics, according to recent findings in  Nature Communications . What this means for semiconductor components, such as those that send information throughout electronic devices, is not yet clear, but hydrostatic pressure can be used to tune the interaction so that electrons paired as composite particles switch b...

Ultimate precision for sensor technology using qubits and machine learning

Date: July 11, 2018 Source: Aalto University Summary: Extracting information quickly from quantum states is necessary for future quantum processors and super-sensitive detectors in existing technologies. Researchers demonstrate a new method that combines quantum phenomena and machine learning to realise a magnetometer with precision beyond the standard quantum limit. There are limits to how accurately you can measure things. Think of an X-ray image: it is likely quite blurry and something only an expert physician can interpret properly. The contrast between different tissues is rather poor but could be improved by longer exposure times, higher intensity, or by taking several images and overlapping them. But there are considerable limitations: humans can safely be exposed to only so much radiation, and imaging takes time and resources. A well-established rule of thumb is the so-called standard quantum limit: the precision of the measurement scales inversely with the square ...

Crop-counting robot

Date: July 10, 2018 Source: Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Summary: Today's crop breeders are trying to boost yields while also preparing crops to withstand severe weather and changing climates. To succeed, they must locate genes for high-yielding, hardy traits in crop plants' DNA. A robot can now find these proverbial needles in the haystack Developed by the University of Illinois, the TerraSentia robot that autonomously monitors crops earned the best systems paper award at Robotics: Science and Systems, the preeminent robotics conference held in Pittsburgh. Credit: TERRA-MEPP Project Today's crop breeders are trying to boost yields while also preparing crops to withstand severe weather and changing climates. To succeed, they must locate genes for high-yielding, hardy traits in crop plants' DNA. A robot developed by the University of Illinois to find these proverbial needles in the haystack...

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INNOVATIVE RESEARCH AND ADVANCED STUDIES

Call for Paper – July Issue 2018 Click here for more Details International Journal of Innovative Research and Advanced Studies (IJIRAS)(ISSN: 2394-4404)   is a brisk multidisciplinary educational research platform providing those individuals an ideal intricate opportunity to accomplish their desires who long for a refined betterment in their respective arenas. Designed to usher the sublimity around the globe we engage our noble efforts for the enlightenment of multidisciplinary issues contemplatively. We bring forth this electronic journal monthly and promote the vivid research entries with precise and apt touches and by bridging the gulf between perception and the inception.Join us to sail beyond horizons or to ride beyond stars for bring off contouring destinies. Description: Area of concentration: Multidisciplinary Frequency of publishing: Monthly Mode of publishing: online (e-journal) Language of publication: English Double Blinded Review Process Ze...

Engineers create most efficient red light-activated optogenetic switch for mammalian cells

Source: University of California - San Diego Summary: Researchers have developed a light-activated switch that can turn genes on and off in mammalian cells. This is the most efficient so-called 'optogenetic switch' activated by red and far-red light that has been successfully designed and tested in animal cells -- and it doesn't require the addition of sensing molecules from outside the cells. A team of researchers has developed a light-activated switch that can turn genes on and off in mammalian cells. This is the most efficient so-called "optogenetic switch" activated by red and far-red light that has been successfully designed and tested in animal cells -- and it doesn't require the addition of sensing molecules from outside the cells. The light-activated genetic switch could be used to turn genes on and off in gene therapies; to turn off gene expression in future cancer therapies; and to help track and understand gene function in specific locat...

Researchers Discover How to Inject Instructions into the Premotor Cortex

Thanks to our brain’s complex network of connections, we are able to effortlessly move through and react to the world around us. But for people with strokes or traumatic brain injuries, these connections are disrupted making some basic functions challenging. Kevin Mazurek and his mentor Marc Schieber at the University of Rochester have made a discovery with the potential to help restore neural connections in patients. They have found a way to  “inject” information  directly into the premotor cortex of two rhesus monkeys, bypassing the visual centres.   At the start of the two-year experiment, the monkeys were conditioned to play a game of sorts. They sat in front of a board with a button, a sphere-shaped knob, and two handles in different orientations. Each time the lights around the objects lit up, the animals had to perform a corresponding action (either pushing, turning, or pulling). Once the monkeys learned to use these light instructions to perform the task, Kevi...

Researchers Discover How to Inject Instructions into the Premotor Cortex

Thanks to our brain’s complex network of connections, we are able to effortlessly move through and react to the world around us. But for people with strokes or traumatic brain injuries, these connections are disrupted making some basic functions challenging. Kevin Mazurek and his mentor Marc Schieber at the University of Rochester have made a discovery with the potential to help restore neural connections in patients. They have found a way to  “inject” information  directly into the premotor cortex of two rhesus monkeys, bypassing the visual centres.   At the start of the two-year experiment, the monkeys were conditioned to play a game of sorts. They sat in front of a board with a button, a sphere-shaped knob, and two handles in different orientations. Each time the lights around the objects lit up, the animals had to perform a corresponding action (either pushing, turning, or pulling). Once the monkeys learned to use these light instructions to perform the task, Kevi...

Researchers Discover How to Inject Instructions into the Premotor Cortex

Thanks to our brain’s complex network of connections, we are able to effortlessly move through and react to the world around us. But for people with strokes or traumatic brain injuries, these connections are disrupted making some basic functions challenging. Kevin Mazurek and his mentor Marc Schieber at the University of Rochester have made a discovery with the potential to help restore neural connections in patients. They have found a way to  “inject” information  directly into the premotor cortex of two rhesus monkeys, bypassing the visual centres.   At the start of the two-year experiment, the monkeys were conditioned to play a game of sorts. They sat in front of a board with a button, a sphere-shaped knob, and two handles in different orientations. Each time the lights around the objects lit up, the animals had to perform a corresponding action (either pushing, turning, or pulling). Once the monkeys learned to use these light instructions to perform the task, Kevi...

Songs in the key of life: The linguistic universals of adapting sound to artistic expression

Source: Linguistic Society of America Summary: A new study of how tone languages are sung has implications for the way humans manipulate and adapt the sounds of their language to artistic expression. A new study of how tone languages are sung has implications for the way humans manipulate and adapt the sounds of their language to artistic expression. The study, "Tone-tune association in Tommo So (Dogon) folk songs," by Laura McPherson (Dartmouth College) and Kevin Ryan (Harvard University), will be published in the March 2018 issue of the scholarly journal  Language . The article explores a singular aspect of tone languages, which are defined as those which use tone, or pitch, to distinguish the meaning of a word. While this may seem unusual to speakers of most European languages, tone is actually a feature of at least half of the world's 7000 or so languages. If pitch makes such a big difference in meaning, then how can anyone sing in a tone language? This pap...