The sounds of 30 impacts are heard, some slightly louder than others, said NASA in its press release. SuperCam, equipped with a microphone, is using the laser to interrogate the composition of rock on the red planet. The variations in the zapping sound picked up the equipment would help the scientists in understanding the physical structure of the rocks and is a key component in probing the signs of ancient life.
“Variation in the intensity of the zapping sounds will provide information on the physical structure of the targets, such as its relative hardness or the presence of weathering coatings,” said NASA.
“If we tap on a surface that is hard, we will not hear the same sound as when we fire on a surface that is soft,” explained Naomi Murdoch, from the National Higher French Institute of Aeronautics and Space, in Toulouse. “Take for example chalk and marble. These two materials have an identical chemical composition (calcium carbonate), but very different physical properties.”
University of Chicago researchers hunt for proposed particles that could explain quirks of the universe.
A team of researchers at the University of Chicago recently embarked on the search of a lifetime—or rather, a search for the lifetime of long-lived supersymmetric particles.
Supersymmetry is a proposed theory to expand the Standard Model of particle physics. Akin to the periodic table of elements, the Standard Model is the best description we have for subatomic particles in nature and the forces acting on them.
When it comes to microelectronics, there is one chemical element like no other: silicon, the workhorse of the transistor technology that drives our information society. The countless electronic devices we use in everyday life are a testament to how today very high volumes of silicon-based components can be produced at very low cost. It seems natural, then, to use silicon also in other areas where the properties of semiconductors—as silicon is one—are exploited technologically, and to explore ways to integrate different functionalities. Of particular interest in this context are diode lasers, such as those employed in barcode scanners or laser pointers, which are typically based on gallium arsenide (GaAs). Unfortunately though, the physical processes that create light in GaAs do not work so well in silicon. It therefore remains an outstanding, and long-standing, goal to find an alternative route to realizing a ‘laser on silicon.’
Writing today in Applied Physics Letters, an international team led by Professors Giacomo Scalari and Jérôme Faist from the Institute for Quantum Electronics present an important step towards such a device. They report electroluminescence—electrical light generation—from a semiconductor structure based on silicon-germanium (SiGe), a material that is compatible with standard fabrication processes used for silicon devices. Moreover, the emission they observed is in the terahertz frequency band, which sits between those of microwave electronics and infrared optics, and is of high current interest with a view to a variety of applications.
Envisioning an animal-free drug supply, scientists have — for the first time — reprogrammed a common bacterium to make a designer polysaccharide molecule used in pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. Published on March 22021, in Nature Communications, the researchers modified E. coli to produce chondroitin sulfate, a drug best known as a dietary supplement to treat arthritis that is currently sourced from cow trachea.
Genetically engineered E. coli is used to make a long list of medicinal proteins, but it took years to coax the bacteria into producing even the simplest in this class of linked sugar molecules — called sulfated glycosaminoglycans — that are often used as drugs and nutraceuticals…
“It’s a challenge to engineer E. coli to produce these molecules, and we had to make many changes and balance those changes so that the bacteria will grow well,” said Mattheos Koffas, lead researcher and a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “But this work shows that it is possible to produce these polysaccharides using E. coli in animal-free fashion, and the procedure can be extended to produce other sulfated glycosaminoglycans.”
Columbia researchers engineer first technique to exploit the tunable symmetry of 2D materials for nonlinear optical applications, including laser, optical spectroscopy, imaging, and metrology systems, as well as next-generation optical quantum information processing and computing.
Nonlinear optics, a study of how light interacts with matter, is critical to many photonic applications, from the green laser pointers we’re all familiar with to intense broadband (white) light sources for quantum photonics that enable optical quantum computing, super-resolution imaging, optical sensing and ranging, and more. Through nonlinear optics, researchers are discovering new ways to use light, from getting a closer look at ultrafast processes in physics, biology, and chemistry to enhancing communication and navigation, solar energy harvesting, medical testing, and cybersecurity.
Columbia Engineering researchers report that they developed a new, efficient way to modulate and enhance an important type of nonlinear optical process: optical second harmonic generation — where two input photons are combined in the material to produce one photon with twice the energy — from hexagonal boron nitride through micromechanical rotation and multilayer stacking. The study was published online on March 32021, by Science Advances.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) have developed a wearable health monitor that may bring us one step closer to the dream of Star Trek’s famous tricorder.
The monitor, a stretchy skin patch, can do it all: measuring blood pressure and heart rate, your glucose levels, as well as one of alcohol, caffeine, or lactate levels.
According to UCSD’s press release, the patch is the first device to demonstrate measuring multiple biochemical and cardiovascular signals at the same time.
An innovative study has confirmed that quantum mechanics plays a role in biological processes and causes mutations in DNA.
Quantum biology is an emerging field of science, established in the 1920s, which looks at whether the subatomic world of quantum mechanics plays a role in living cells. Quantum mechanics is an interdisciplinary field by nature, bringing together nuclear physicists, biochemists and molecular biologists.
In a research paper published by the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, a team from Surrey’s Leverhulme Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre used state-of-the-art computer simulations and quantum mechanical methods to determine the role proton tunneling, a purely quantum phenomenon, plays in spontaneous mutations inside DNA.
The Future Of Food And Beverage Innovation And Venturing — Dr. Ellen De Brabander, Ph.D. — Senior Vice President, R&D, PepsiCo
Dr. Ellen de Brabander, is Senior Vice President, Research and Development, at PepsiCo, the American multinational food, snack, and beverage company.
Dr. de Brabander has broad set of responsibilities at Pepsico and currently leads their global R&D functions including the Food Safety, Quality, Strategy & Portfolio Management, and their Sensory and Regulatory Affairs teams. She also leads their R&D Digital Transformation initiatives to transform the innovation process to bring new, innovative products to the market.
Dr. de Brabander is also a member of the board of governors at the New York Academy of Sciences and has served as Treasurer and board member International Life Science Institute of North America, an organization that brings together scientists from government, academia and industry to uphold the scientific integrity and objectivity of nutrition and food safety science in order to ethically improve food systems for the betterment of public health.
Additionally, Dr. de Brabander has also served as the interim and founding CEO of EIT Food (part of the EU’s European Institute of Innovation and Technology), which is a unique $1.5 Billion Euro innovation consortium with more than 50 partners from industry and academia, focused on transforming the food sector by designing and delivering unique and high impact research, innovation, business creation and education programs.
Dr. de Brabander has worked in a variety of industries, including pharmaceuticals, health/nutrition, coatings and chemicals.
Prior to joining PepsiCo, Dr. de Brabander was chief scientific officer and global head of research, development and regulatory affairs for Merial Limited, where she led a global team to discover and develop innovative animal health products for companion and production animals. Prior to her role at Merial, she held executive R&D, regulatory, business strategy and program management positions at Intervet, and specialty chemical company DSM.
Dr. de Brabander earned her PhD cum laude in bio-organic chemistry from Leiden University in The Netherlands and completed post-doctoral work in molecular biology at MIT with Nobel Laureate H.G. Khorana. Her PhD was awarded as best PhD for natural sciences from Leiden University (1990; Kock award); she has also been awarded a Golden Medal from the Royal Dutch Chemical Society. In 2020 she was given the US Power 50 award.
A large international team of scientists from various research organizations, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has developed a method that dramatically improves the already ultrafast time resolution achievable with X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). It could lead to breakthroughs on how to design new materials and more efficient chemical processes.
The Wyss Institute’s eRapid electrochemical sensor technology now enables sensitive, specific and multiplexed detection of blood biomarkers at low cost with potential for many clinical applications.
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature’s design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing that are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and formation of new startups. The Wyss Institute creates transformative technological breakthroughs by engaging in high risk research, and crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers, working as an alliance that includes Harvard’s Schools of Medicine, Engineering, Arts & Sciences and Design, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University, Tufts University, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, University of Zurich and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
