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Researchers with the CERN-based ALPHA collaboration have announced the world’s first laser-based manipulation of antimatter, leveraging a made-in-Canada laser system to cool a sample of antimatter down to near absolute zero. The achievement, detailed in an article published today and featured on the cover of the journal Nature, will significantly alter the landscape of antimatter research and advance the next generation of experiments.

Antimatter is the otherworldly counterpart to matter; it exhibits near-identical characteristics and behaviors but has opposite charge. Because they annihilate upon contact with matter, are exceptionally difficult to create and control in our world and had never before been manipulated with a laser.

“Today’s results are the culmination of a years-long program of research and engineering, conducted at UBC but supported by partners from across the country,” said Takamasa Momose, the University of British Columbia (UBC) researcher with ALPHA’s Canadian team (ALPHA-Canada) who led the development of the laser. “With this technique, we can address long-standing mysteries like: ‘How does antimatter respond to gravity? Can antimatter help us understand symmetries in physics?’. These answers may fundamentally alter our understanding of our Universe.”

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New concept delivers continuous electricity with an approach that reduces cost and risk

San Diego, March 29, 2021 – Fusion energy is heating up. In the past few months, both the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released reports calling for aggressive development of fusion energy in the U.S.

Now, scientists at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility have released a new design for a compact fusion reactor that can generate electricity and help define the technology necessary for commercial fusion power. The approach is based on the “Advanced Tokamak” concept pioneered by the DIII-D program, which enables a higher-performance, self-sustaining configuration that holds energy more efficiently than in typical pulsed configurations, allowing it to be built at a reduced scale and cost.

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ENERGY!!! — Jose Luis Cordeiro, Engineer, Economist, Futurist, Transhumanist, Author, “The Death Of Death”

Dr. José Luis Cordeiro is an engineer, economist, futurist, transhumanist and author.

José Luis is a member of the World Academy of Art and Science, vice president of Humanity +, director of the Millennium Project and founding executive director of the Red Iberoamericana de Prospectiva (RIBER).

Previously, he was director of the Club of Rome (Venezuela Chapter), the World Transhumanist Association and the Extropy Institute.

He has also been a visiting professor at various universities around the world and he has studied, visited and worked in over one-hundred and thirty countries on five continents.

He has published more than a dozen books, from economics to technology, including The Great Taboo — A True Nationalization of the Venezuelan Petroleum, Constitutions Around the World: A Comparative View from Latin America, and (in Spanish) El Desafio Latinoamericano (“The Latin American challenge”) and La Muerte de la Muerte (“The death of death”), and has contributed to various international media such as CNN, Discovery Channel and History Channel, among others.

Jose got his M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was an intern at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) at Georgetown University, has an MBA from INSEAD, and his PhD, in Interdisciplinary Science from Universidad Simón Bolívar — started at MIT, USA, and continued at IDE-JETRO, Japan JETRO — Institute of Developing Economies.

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Circa 2013

One of the greatest aspirations of the human mind has been to realize machines that surpass its cognitive intelligence. The rapid expansion in computing power, about to exceed the equivalent of the human brain, has yet to produce such a machine. The article by Neftci et al. in PNAS (1) offers a refreshing and humbling reminder that the brain’s cognition does not arise from exacting digital precision in high-performance computing, but rather emerges from an extremely efficient and resilient collective form of computation extending over very large ensembles of sluggish, imprecise, and unreliable analog components. This observation, first made by John von Neumann in his final opus (2), continues to challenge scientists and engineers several decades later in figuring and reproducing the mechanisms underlying brain-like forms of cognitive computing.

Related developments are currently unfolding in collaborative initiatives engaging scientists and engineers, on a grander scale, in advancing neuroscience toward understanding the brain. In parallel with the Human Brain Project in Europe, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative promises groundbreaking advances in enabling tools for revolutionizing neuroscience by developing nanotechnology to probe brain function at greatly increased spatial and temporal detail. Engineers are poised to contribute even further in revolutionizing such developments in neuroscience. In this regard it is helpful to relate the inquisitive nature of science—analysis—to the constructive power of engineering, synthesis.

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The two companies, along with Westinghouse Government Services, were each given preliminary contracts of less than $15 million in March 2020 to begin design work. The final design is due to the Strategic Capabilities Office in 2022, at which point the Defense Department will make a decision on whether to move forward with testing the systems.

“We are thrilled with the progress our industrial partners have made on their designs,” Jeff Waksman, Project Pele’s program manager, said in a statement. “We are confident that by early 2022 we will have two engineering designs matured to a sufficient state that we will be able to determine suitability for possible construction and testing.”

The Pentagon has long eyed nuclear power as a potential way to reduce both its energy cost and its vulnerability in its dependence on local energy grids. According to a news release, the Defense Department uses “approximately 30 Terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons of fuel per day.”

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When optimizing catalysis in the lab, product selectivity and conversion efficiency are primary goals for materials scientists. Efficiency and selectivity are often mutually antagonistic, where high selectivity is accompanied by low efficiency and vice versa. Increasing the temperature can also change the reaction pathway. In a new report, Chao Zhan and a team of scientists in chemistry and chemical engineering at the Xiamen University in China and the University of California, Santa Barbara, U.S., constructed hierarchical plasmonic nanoreactors to show nonconfined thermal fields and electrons. The combined attributes uniquely coexisted in plasmonic nanostructures. The team regulated parallel reaction pathways for propylene partial oxidation and selectively produced acrolein during the experiments to form products that are different from thermal catalysis. The work described a strategy to optimize chemical processes and achieve high yields with high selectivity at lower temperature under visible light illumination. The work is now published on Science Advances.

Catalysts

Ideal catalytic processes can produce desired target products without undesirable side effects under cost-effective conditions, although such conditions are rarely achieved in practice. For instance, high efficiency and high selectivity are antagonistic goals, where a relatively high temperature is often necessary to overcome the large barrier of oxygen activation to achieve high reactant conversion. Increasing the functional temperature can also lead to overoxidized and therefore additional byproducts. As a result, researchers must compromise between selectivity and efficiency. For instance, a given molecule typically requires diverse catalysts to generate different products, where each catalyst has different efficiency and selectivity. To circumvent any limitations, they can use surface plasmons (SPs) to redistribute photons, electrons and heat energy in space and time.

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Sustainable and responsible lunar services and transportation — yoav landsman, co-founder, moonscape.

Yoav Landsman is the Co-founder of Moonscape (https://www.moonscape.space/), a lunar services and payload transportation company, that is focused on providing necessary services like communication relay and cutting-edge imaging, while delivering payloads to the Moon.

Moonscape’s vision is to support humankind’s effort of reaching the Moon in a sustainable and responsible manner, as humanity’s first step towards the rest of the solar system and beyond.

Yoav graduated from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, with a B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering in 2002. During his last year of studying, he began working at the Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) as a Satellite Engineer in the AMOS communication satellite command center. In this role, he helped modernize operations methods, and lead the absorption of new satellites to the fleet. Later he became the Head of the Satellite Engineering team at the Operations Center. In 2011, he became the Chief Systems Engineer of Israeli Aerospace Industrie’s then most advanced satellite, AMOS-6. At the same time, Yoav studied his master’s degree in the department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel-Aviv University.

Yoav left the industry in 2012 to put his passion and skill into education and public outreach. He became a sought-after lecturer and interviewee for science, technology, and everything involving space. In mid-2013, Yoav was recruited by SpaceIL to the role of Senior Systems Engineer of the Beresheet Lunar Lander. In 2019, Yoav was the Deputy Mission Director of the first ever privately funded lunar mission.

Yoav is also an alumnus of the International Space University (ISU) Space Studies Program 2019, where he studied in the business and management department. In December 2019 he left SpaceIL to become a space entrepreneur.

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Progress in the field of integrated circuits is measured by matching, exceeding, or falling behind the rate set forth by Gordon Moore, former CEO and co-founder of Intel, who said the number of electronic components, or transistors, per integrated circuit would double every year. That was more than 50 years ago, and surprisingly his prediction, now called Moore’s Law, came true.

In recent years, it was thought that the pace had slowed; one of the biggest challenges of putting more circuits and power on a smaller chip is managing heat.

A multidisciplinary group that includes Patrick E. Hopkins, a professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Will Dichtel, a professor in Northwestern University’s Department of Chemistry, is inventing a new class of material with the potential to keep chips cool as they keep shrinking in size—and to help Moore’s Law remain true. Their work was recently published in Nature Materials.

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We were all promised the future would be like the Jetsons, with push-button flying cars. What happened? Well, multiple firms are developing flying cars right now, but the inhibiting factor for widespread adoption may not be in the hardware or software: but due to an unlikely source: insurance. These vehicles are expected to be radically different from either helicopters or fixed wing aircraft, and as such insurance industry has little baseline data on which to assess risk. The obvious implications of vehicle falling a crowded downtown street make this a serious issue. What can be done? Jim has a definite opinion on the subject.

Manufacturing veteran James Anderton expresses his compelling and unique opinions about the state of the manufacturing sector. He shares his thoughts and insights to help engineering and manufacturing professionals navigate through the challenges of world events, the blending old with new technologies, evolving processes, gaps in skilled labour, in an effort to help maximize productivity of their daily operations.

James is a former editor of trade publications in the automotive, metalworking and plastics industries with contributions to a wide range of print and on-line publications. He also brings prior industry experience in quality and manufacturing for a Tier One automotive supplier.

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Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a “wearable microgrid” that harvests and stores energy from the human body to power small electronics. It consists of three main parts: sweat-powered biofuel cells, motion-powered devices called triboelectric generators, and energy-storing supercapacitors. All parts are flexible, washable and can be screen printed onto clothing.

The technology, reported in a paper published Mar. 9 in Nature Communications, draws inspiration from community microgrids.

“We’re applying the concept of the microgrid to create systems that are powered sustainably, reliably and independently,” said co-first author Lu Yin, a nanoengineering Ph.D. student at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. “Just like a city microgrid integrates a variety of local, renewable power sources like wind and solar, a wearable microgrid integrates devices that locally harvest energy from different parts of the body, like sweat and movement, while containing .”

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