systems

A Rice University laboratory has adapted its laser-induced graphene technique to make high-resolution, micron-scale patterns of the conductive material for consumer electronics and other applications. Laser-induced graphene (LIG), introduced in 2014 by Rice chemist James Tour, involves burning away everything that isn't carbon from polymers or other materials, leaving the … [Read more...] about In graphene process, resistance is useful

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, health officials seized on contact tracing as the most effective way to anticipate the virus's migration from the initial, densely populated hot spots and try to curb its spread. Months later, infections were nonetheless recorded in similar patterns in nearly every region of the country, both urban and rural. A team of environmental engineers, … [Read more...] about Mathematical model predicting disease spread patterns

Anesthestic drugs act on the brain but most anesthesiologists rely on heart rate, respiratory rate, and movement to infer whether surgery patients remain unconscious to the desired degree. In a new study, a research team based at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital shows that a straightforward artificial intelligence approach, attuned to the kind of anesthetic being used, … [Read more...] about Algorithms show accuracy in gauging unconsciousness under general anesthesia

They may be tiny weapons, but Brigham Young University's holography research group has figured out how to create lightsabers -- green for Yoda and red for Darth Vader, naturally -- with actual luminous beams rising from them. Inspired by the displays of science fiction, the researchers have also engineered battles between equally small versions of the Starship Enterprise and a … [Read more...] about Hologram experts can now create real-life images that move in the air: Using lasers to create the displays of science fiction, inspired by Star Wars and Star Trek

The uncertainty principle, first introduced by Werner Heisenberg in the late 1920's, is a fundamental concept of quantum mechanics. In the quantum world, particles like the electrons that power all electrical product can also behave like waves. As a result, particles cannot have a well-defined position and momentum simultaneously. For instance, measuring the momentum of a … [Read more...] about Evading the uncertainty principle in quantum physics: New technique gets around 100-year-old rule of quantum physics for the first time

Researchers from University of Texas-Austin and Copenhagen Business School published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that offers actionable guidance to managers on the deployment of algorithms in marketing contexts. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "When Algorithms Fail: Consumers' Responses to Brand Harm Crises Caused by Algorithm Errors" … [Read more...] about When algorithms go bad: How consumers respond

The rapid advancement of Autonomous Vehicles (AV) technology in recent years has changed transport systems and consumer habits globally. As countries worldwide see a surge in AV usage, the rise of shared Autonomous Mobility on Demand (AMoD) service is likely to be next on the cards. Public Transit (PT), a critical component of urban transportation, will inevitably be impacted … [Read more...] about SMART evaluates impact of competition between autonomous vehicles and public transit

Coded messages in invisible ink sound like something only found in espionage books, but in real life, they can have important security purposes. Yet, they can be cracked if their encryption is predictable. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have printed complexly encoded data with normal ink and a carbon nanoparticle-based invisible ink, … [Read more...] about An uncrackable combination of invisible ink and artificial intelligence

When you save an image to your smartphone, those data are written onto tiny transistors that are electrically switched on or off in a pattern of "bits" to represent and encode that image. Most transistors today are made from silicon, an element that scientists have managed to switch at ever-smaller scales, enabling billions of bits, and therefore large libraries of images and … [Read more...] about Physicists find a novel way to switch antiferromagnetism on and off: The findings could lead to faster, more secure memory storage, in the form of antiferromagnetic bits