Machine learning takes the hassle out of cold-atom experiments

31 Jan 2024 Margaret Harris

Automatic adjustments: A view into the vacuum chamber containing the Tübingen group's rubidium magneto-optical trap (MOT). The frequency of the MOT lasers is controlled by a reinforcement learning agent. (Courtesy: Malte Reinschmidt)

Cold atoms solve many problems in quantum technology. Want a quantum computer? You can make one from an array of ultracold atoms. Need a quantum repeater for a secure communications network? Cold atoms have you covered. How about a quantum simulator for complicated condensed-matter problems? Yep, cold atoms can do that, too.

 

AI tools for materials research and nanotechnology

30 Jan 2024 Sponsored by IOP Publishing

Join the audience for a live webinar at 9 p.m. GMT/4 p.m. EST on 27 February 2024, sponsored by the IOP Publishing journal, Nano Futures, to explore the rapidly progressing field of intelligent nanotechnology

(Courtesy: iStock/koto_feja)

In recent years there have been several technological and scientific developments made possible due to the convergence between machine learning and physics at the nanoscale. This webinar examines this rapidly progressing field of ‘intelligent nanotechnology’ and brings together four leading researchers from within it.

During the webinar, hosted by Nano Futures, we will learn about some of the most recent developments and breakthroughs that are taking place, the projected direction that the field may take into the future, and the most critical challenges currently posed.

 

A snapshot of noble gas atoms emerges from within a graphene sandwich

29 Jan 2024 Isabelle Dumé

Trapped clusters: Xenon nanoclusters between two graphene layers, with sizes between two and ten atoms. (Courtesy: Manuel Längle)

Scientists at the Universities of Vienna, Austria and Helsinki, Finland have captured the first direct images of clusters of room-temperature noble gas atoms by confining them in a “sandwich” made from two layers of graphene. Taken using a transmission electron microscope, the images could aid fundamental condensed-matter physics research and might have applications in quantum technology.

 

FLASH irradiation spares immune cells during proton therapy

30 Jan 2024 Tami Freeman

Modelling blood flow in the brain The spatiotemporal propagation of blood (violet) through the vessels (yellow) in the reconstructed brain model. Left to right: the distribution at the start (0.2 s), after 1.5 s and at equilibrium (longer then 7s). (Courtesy: CC BY 4.0/Phys. Med. Biol. 10.1088/1361-6560/ad144e)

Treating cancer with radiation can stimulate the body’s immune response and inhibit tumour growth, but it can also reduce the level of lymphocytes, the white blood cells associated with immune response, resulting in impaired tumor control and poor prognosis. The severity of this radiation-induced lymphopenia correlates with the dose delivered to circulating blood cells and lymphocytes.

 

Quantum innovation: how strategic focus can turbocharge the technology roadmap

26 Jan 2024

The mission of the US Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) is to enable and grow a robust quantum-based industry and supply chain. Executive director Celia Merzbacher tells Hamish Johnston how QED-C addresses gaps in quantum-related technologies and workforce capacity by encouraging collaboration between government, research and industry

Network leader Celia Merzbacher is executive director of QED-C, an industry-driven consortium managed by SRI International. With a diverse membership representing industry, academia, government and other stakeholders, QED-C is seeking to accelerate quantum R&D, technology innovation and commercial opportunities. (Courtesy: QED-C)

Why is it important for the US and other countries to have a national strategy for quantum science and technology?

 

A graphene-based semiconductor has a useful bandgap and high electron mobility

26 Jan 2024

Epigraphene on a chip: the team's graphene device was grown on a silicon carbide substrate. (Courtesy: Georgia Institute of Technology)

Researchers in China and the US have created a functional semiconductor made from graphene, a feat that they describe as a first. By expanding on existing fabrication techniques, Walter de Heer and colleagues at Tianjin University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a develop a bandgap in the 2D material, while retaining graphene’s robust and easily tuneable properties.

 

Lots of oxygen existed in the early universe, JWST reveals

06 Dec 2023

Cutting edge: NIRSpec being readied for the launch of the JWST. (Courtesy: Astrium/NIRSpec)

Using a cutting-edge spectrograph on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have found evidence that interstellar oxygen was far more abundant in many ancient galaxies than previously thought. Led by Kimihiko Nakajima at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the team hopes that their observations could improve our understanding of the early universe.

 

Macrophage-adhering micro patches enable MRI to detect brain inflammation

23 Jan 2024

Comparing the contrast Representative MRI maps of control pigs and pigs with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) injected with M-GLAMs or the commercial contrast agent Gadavist. The dotted square indicates the lateral ventricle and choroid plexus, which form the region of interest

 

Light fever: bringing disco to astronomy

23 Jan 2024 Laura Hiscott

As well as bringing sparkle to the dance floor, could disco balls become a new educational tool in astronomy? Laura Hiscott investigates

Reflecting the universe The tiny mirrors on a disco ball act like pinhead mirrors, allowing us to view multiple reflected images of the Sun. (iStock/Liubov Motavschuk

Flared trousers, light-up dance floors and John Travolta’s infamous dance moves.

What else could we be talking about but disco – a dance genre and subculture that emerged in the 1970s, and has made comeback after comeback ever since.

 

Caution required: anesthesia with supplemental oxygen can impact proton therapy

22 Jan 2024

Protecting the brain A preclinical study has demonstrated the need to optimize anaesthesia and supplemental oxygen protocols when using conventional or FLASH proton therapy to treat brain tumours. (Courtesy: iStock/herjua)

Many children who receive proton therapy for brain tumours do so under general anaesthesia or sedation, an approach that guarantees reproducible positioning and targeted delivery of radiation. They may also receive supplemental oxygen, which reduces the risk of adverse effects related to the use of general anaesthesia.

Yet, until recently there were no studies assessing the impact of this supplemental oxygen – which changes oxygen saturation in the blood during irradiation – in conventional or FLASH (ultrahigh dose rate) proton therapy.

 

Focused ultrasound plus plaque-reducing drugs could slow Alzheimer’s progression

24 Jan 2024

Deliver the drugs Researchers at the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, shown in the MRI suite’s control area, plan the focused ultrasound treatment for blood–brain barrier opening. (Courtesy: WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute)

Non-invasive low-frequency focused ultrasound (FUS), delivered in combination with intravenously administered microbubbles, can temporarily open the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and enable drugs that combat Alzheimer’s disease to enter the brain and reach their therapeutic targets. The combination of an amyloid-beta plaque-reducing drug followed by FUS is proving to be safe and more effective in reducing plaque deposits in the brain than drug therapy alone. While not curing Alzheimer’s disease, reduction of plaque can reduce the disease’s cognitive impact and slow its progression.

 

Arno Penzias: Nobel laureate who co-discovered ‘echo of Big Bang’ dies aged 90

23 Jan 2024 Michael Banks

Cosmic pioneers: Arno Penzias (left) and Robert Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background in the 1960s (Courtesy: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection)

The cosmologist Arno Penzias, who discovered the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with Robert Wilson, died on 22 January at the age of 90. He shared a half of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics with Wilson, with the other half awarded to Pyotr Kapitsa for his work in low-temperature physics.

Penzias was born in Munich, Germany, on 26 April 1933. At the age of six, Penzias and his family fled Nazi Germany, first to England before settling in New York in 1940. In 1954 Penzias graduated in physics from the City College of New York before serving as a radar officer in the US Army Signal Corps until 1956.

 

Japan’s lunar lander falls head over heels for the Moon

25 Jan 2024 Michael Banks

Touch down: an image of the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon taken by the Lunar Excursion Vehicle-2 shows the craft landed on its nose (Courtesy: JAXA)

The Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, has today announced a possible explanation for why its lunar lander is unable to generate power from its solar panels – the craft landed upside down.

While the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) successfully landed softly on the Moon on 20 January, engineers soon discovered that the craft was unable to generate power. It was then put in safe mode until further investigations were carried out. Today, JAXA released an image taken by a small lunar rover, ejected by the craft before it landed, which shows SLIM on its nose.

 

A molecular measuring stick could advance super-resolution microscopy

25 Jan 2024 Isabelle Dumé

The PicoRuler: Protein-based molecular rulers make it possible to test the optical resolution of the latest super-resolution microscopy methods on biomolecules in the sub-10-nanometre range under realistic conditions. (Courtesy: Gerti Beliu, DALL-E 3 / University of Würzburg)

If you want to measure an everyday object, you might use a ruler – a piece of material with a fixed length and regularly-marked divisions. Thanks to a new device called a PicoRuler, the same measurement principle can now be applied to tiny objects such as cells and molecules. Developed by researchers at Julius-Maximilians Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Germany, the miniscule measuring stick works in biological environments and could be used to test the ability of super-resolution microscopy techniques to image objects less than 10 nm long.

Thomas Kuhn: new insights into a revolutionary philosopher of science

17 Jan 2024

Gino Elia reviews The Last Writings of Thomas S Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science edited by Bojana Mladenovic

A theory of meaning Editor Bojana Mladenovic brings us the posthumous final work of science philosopher Thomas S Kuhn. (Courtesy: iStock/Jackie Niam)

In 1962 the philosopher Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a book that shook the history of science and laid important groundwork for an entirely new field – the sociology of science. In this contentious volume, Kuhn portrayed scientific revolutions as extended periods of intellectual conflict that he called “extraordinary science”. Older theories, during such times, can no longer account for new phenomena.

 

Whizzing whirligig beetles, the sound of pouring water, shuttlecock mechanics

12 Jan 2024 Michael Banks

Tea-traffic: a jet of water that breaks into droplets before hitting the surface produces a loud sound. (Courtesy: Ho-Young Kim et al./APS 2023)

Whirligig beetles can reach speeds of up to one meter per second – or 100 body lengths per second – as they skirt across the water. Scientists thought the animals did this using their oar-like hind legs to generate “drag-based” thrust, a bit like a rodent swims.

To do so, however, the beetle would need to move its legs faster than its swimming speed, requiring pushing against the water at unrealistic speeds.

 

Metalens images dim nebula, galaxies shaped like pool noodles and surfboards

19 Jan 2024 Hamish Johnston

Metalens telescope: image of the North America Nebula taken by the metalens on the roof of the Science Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Courtesy: Capasso Lab/Harvard SEAS)

To describe Federico Capasso at Harvard University as a prolific researcher is an understatement and I have been following his work in photonics for many years. He is an expert in the development of optical metalenses – devices that use flat arrays of microscopic structures to manipulate light. A key benefit is that optical systems made up of such lenses take up much less volume that conventional optics, making them ideal for a wide range of applications where space is tight – including mobile phones.

 

Light evaporates water without heating it.

05 Jan 2024 Isabelle Dumé

Photomolecular effect: At the water-air interface, light can, under certain conditions, induce evaporation without the need for heat, according to a new study by researchers at MIT. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Valenty)

Under certain conditions, light can cause water to evaporate directly, without heating it first. The process works by cleaving water clusters from the water-air interface, and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US have dubbed it the “photomolecular effect” in analogy with the well-known photoelectric effect.

“The conventional wisdom is that evaporation requires heat, but our work shows that another evaporation mechanism exists,” explains MIT nanotechnologist and mechanical engineer Gang Chen, who led the research. Chen adds that the new effect may be more efficient than heat and might therefore be useful in solar desalination systems and other technologies that use light to evaporate water.

 

The new type of magnetism appears in a layered semiconductor.

15 Jan 2024 Isabelle Dumé

Doublon formation: In the moiré material produced at ETH Zurich, the electron spins are disordered if there is exactly one electron per lattice site (left). As soon as there are more electrons than lattice sites (right) and pairs of electrons can form doublons (red), the spins align ferromagnetically as this minimizes the electrons’ kinetic energy. (Courtesy: ETH Zurich)

The magnetic properties of materials usually originate from exchange interactions between their electrons, but researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have now discovered a new type of magnetism that disobeys this rule.

 

Moiré material makes a synaptic transistor for neuromorphic computing.

16 Jan 2024 Isabelle Dumé

The new device consists of an asymmetric structure made up of two layers of graphene and a layer of hexagonal boron nitride. (Courtesy: Xiaodong Yan, Northwestern University)

Researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), all in the US, have developed a new type of transistor for use in neuromorphic computing. The device, which works at room temperatures, can be trained to recognize similar patterns of inputs – a property known as associative learning that goes beyond standard machine-learning tasks.

 

Simple metasurfaces offer control over friction at material interfaces

18 Jan 2024

Frictional experiment: artist’s impression of the metainterface between a rigid piece of glass (top) and a metasurface (bottom). The textured regions are where the glass and metasurface are in contact. (Courtesy: Nazario Morgado)

A new technique for fine-tuning frictional forces at the interfaces between different materials has been developed by researchers in France. Julien Scheibert and colleagues at the University of Lyon used simple and easily-adjustable metasurfaces to create specific coefficients of friction at the interface between glass and elastomer samples.

 

Spiraling phonons turn a paramagnetic material into a magnet.

15 Jan 2024 Isabelle Dumé

Spin effects: Chiral phonons excited by the circularly polarized terahertz light pulses generate ultrafast magnetization in cerium fluoride. Fluorine ions (red, fuchsia) are set into motion by circularly polarized terahertz light pulses (yellow spiral), where red denotes the ions with the largest motion in the chiral phonon mode. The cerium ion is represented in teal. The compass needle represents the magnetization induced by the rotating atoms. (Courtesy: Mario Norton and Jiaming Luo/Rice University)

 

Simulations of time travel send quantum metrology back to the future

12 Jan 2024 Unnati Akhouri

Where's my DeLorean? Backward time travel is still in the realm of science fiction, but manipulating quantum entanglement allows scientists to design experiments that simulate it. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/FlashMovie)

Have you ever wished you could go back in time and change your decisions? If only knowledge from today could travel back in time with us, we could alter our actions to our advantage. For now, such time travel is the stuff of fiction, but a trio of researchers have shown that by manipulating quantum entanglement, one can, at least, design experiments that simulate it.

 

The cost of excellence: top scientists on the brutality of the academic system

29 Nov 2023

Emma Chapman reviews Fascination of Science: 60 Encounters with Pioneering Researchers of Our Time by Herlinde Koelbl (translated by Lois Hoyal)

Role models? For her series of portraits, Herlinde Koelbl asked 60 scientists to draw or write the essence of their research on one of their own hands. Her subjects include biochemist Frances Arnold (left) and quantum physicist Jian-Wei Pan (right). The accompanying interviews explore each person’s scientific research but also the high demands of an academic career. (Courtesy: Herlinde Koelbl)

I always carry a notebook with me, in case I should happen upon an interesting fact or idea for an article. You might argue that a notetaking app on my smartphone would be more efficient for creating a permanent record and you’d be right, when it comes to digital memory.

 

Neutral-atom quantum computers are having a moment

09 Nov 2023

All systems go: A beam of laser light in Jeff Thompson's lab at Princeton University, where he and his colleagues recently demonstrated a new way of erasing errors in a neutral-atom quantum computer. (Courtesy: Frank Wojciechowski)

In the race for the quantum computing platform of the future, neutral atoms have been a bit of an underdog. While quantum bits (qubits) based on neutral atoms have several attractive characteristics, including the ease of scaling up qubit numbers and performing operations on them in parallel, most attention has focused on rival platforms. Many of the largest machines are built with superconducting qubits, including those developed at IBM, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Other companies have opted for ions, like Honeywell and IonQ, or photons, like Xanadu.

 

CERN QTI: harnessing big science to accelerate quantum innovation

16 Jan 2024

CERN’s Quantum Technology Initiative (QTI) is designed to enhance collaboration between the high-energy physics and quantum technology communities. Joe McEntee talks to Benjamin Frisch, a member of the CERN QTI management team and CERN’s Knowledge Transfer group, about achievements to date and the priorities for the next phase of the initiative, which started in January 2024

Big science, big quantum Phase II of CERN QTI will seek to identify applications of quantum computing and quantum sensing to deliver “quantum advantage” within CERN’s high-energy physics programme. The image shows the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a general-purpose detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). (Courtesy: Samuel Joseph Hertzog, Julien Marius Ordan/CERN)

What are the long-term objectives for CERN QTI?

 

The handheld device uses eye-safe retinal spectroscopy to diagnose brain injury

12 Dec 2023 Tami Freeman

Rapid TBI diagnostics (A) EyeD technology concept; (B) design of the EyeD with a 3D-printed phantom mimicking the optical properties of the eye and allowing acquisition of Raman spectra through an eye-like lens. (Courtesy: CC BY 4.0/Sci. Advances 10.1126/sciadv.adg5431)

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), caused by a sudden jolt or impact to the head, requires diagnosis as quickly as possible. To prevent irreversible damage, life-critical treatment decisions must be made within the “golden hour” after trauma. Diagnosing TBI at the point-of-care is difficult, however, relying on observations by ambulance crews followed by radiological investigations such as MRI or CT scans upon arrival at a hospital.

 

Next-generation 7 T scanner ramps the resolution of brain MR imaging

17 Jan 2024

Optimized design The NexGen 7 T scanner, showing the new Impulse head-only gradient coil (green) and receiver–transmit coil (white) resting on a movable bed (brown) and connected to an electronic interface (blue) with nearly 1000 wires that extend out of the magnet. (Courtesy: Bernhard Gruber, MGH Harvard)

An ultrahigh-resolution 7 tesla (T) MRI scanner seven years in development can generate functional brain images with 10 times better spatial resolution than current 7 T scanners, and over 180 times more detail than conventional 3 T systems. As reported in Nature Methods, this improved spatial resolution reveals functional MRI (fMRI) features as small as 0.35 mm, compared with the typical 2–3 mm of standard 3 T fMRI.

 

Particle physics offers new views on FLASH proton therapy

16 Jan 2024 Sponsored by Physics in Medicine & Biology

An open and collaborative research culture is essential for advances in one field to inspire and inform progress in other disciplines, argues experimental particle physicist Karol Lang

Towards image-guided FLASH A PET scanner developed by Karol Lang and his colleagues can visualize and measure the effects of proton therapy while the beam is being delivered. (Courtesy: Marek Proga, University of Texas at Austin)

Breakthrough technologies originally created for the most ambitious experiments in particle physics have often triggered innovations in medical treatment and diagnosis. Advances in accelerators and beamline engineering have aided the development of highly effective strategies for treating cancer, while detectors designed to capture the most elusive particles have offered new ways to view the inner workings of the human body.

 

Sound waves in the air deflect intense laser pulses

31 Oct 2023

Sound idea: laser light passes between a ultrasound transducer-reflector array that creates a Bragg grating of air. The laser beam interacts with this grating and is deflected without travelling through a solid medium. (Courtesy: Science Communication Lab for DESY)

Ultrasound waves in air have been used to manipulate powerful laser beams – in a first claimed by researchers in Germany. The team’s acousto-optic Bragg grating could lead to new and useful ways to manipulate light.

 

The Magellanic Clouds: astronomers make the case for a name change

18 Jan 2024 Hamish Johnston

The Magellanic Clouds are prominent features of the southern sky that are named after the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. He sailed west from Europe to the Philippines in the early 16th century and the clouds were described by a returning crew member.

Voyages such as Magellan’s set into motion the European colonization of much of the world. This involved the oppression and assimilation of indigenous peoples and led to racism and inequality that endures to this day.

 

Bright intravenous needle softens upon insertion into a blood vessel

04 Jan 2024

Safer, less painful injections Illustration of the variable stiffness P-CARE intravenous needle, whose mechanical properties can be changed by body temperature. (Courtesy: KAIST Bio-Integrated Electronics and Systems Research Group)

If a medical intravenous (IV) needle could soften upon insertion into the body, to match the softness of biological tissue, patients would experience less pain during drug injection, be more comfortable while receiving IV fluids, and have less risk of tissue damage to the blood vessel wall. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers in Korea has created just such a device.

 

A cardiac vest creates a detailed map of the heart’s electrical activity

16 Jan 2024 Tami Freeman

Cost-effective screening tool The ECGI vest developed at UCL, worn by a medical student. (Courtesy: UCL Institute of Cardiovascular Science/James Tye)

A reusable vest that generates high-resolution maps of the heart’s electrical activity could help identify people at risk of sudden cardiac death. Developed by a team headed up at University College London (UCL), the vest combines electrical data recorded by its 256 sensors with detailed MR images of heart structures to create real-time maps of cardiac activation and recovery patterns.

 

Evidence grows for deconfined quark matter in neutron-star cores

16 Jan 2024

Quark core: artist’s impression of the interior of a massive neutron star showing a quark-matter core in red. (Courtesy: Jyrki Hokkanen/CSC)

It is very likely that ultra-dense deconfined quark matter exists in the cores of the most massive neutron stars, according to a study by an international team of physicists. The team led by Aleksi Vuorinen at the University of Helsinki applied Bayesian inference to observations of neutron stars and concluded that there is a 80–90% that the exotic state of matter exists in the heaviest objects.

 

Hopfions seen in a magnetic crystal

17 Jan 2024 Isabelle Dumé

Diagram showing the directions of magnetic spins in a hopfion ring. These hopfions can form coupled states with strings of skyrmions in plates cut from a single crystal of iron germanide. (Courtesy: Philipp Rybakov)

Researchers have observed three-dimensional magnetic spin structures called hopfions in a naturally-occurring material for the first time. The result could lead to new concepts for spintronics devices – that is, those that use the spin of an electron as well as its charge.

 

A large language model predicts how to make inorganic compounds.

05 Jan 2024 Isabelle Dumé

The team trained the new model using chemical synthesis protocols extracted from 13 878 inorganic compounds, which they sourced from a collection of over four million scientific publications. Courtesy: Chinese Physics B

Researchers in China have fine-tuned an existing large language model (LLM) to create a system that can predict the steps required to synthesize an inorganic compound. Although the new model, dubbed MatChat, needs further refinement before it can be employed in the laboratory, its developers say it represents an important early endeavour in applying generative artificial intelligence in a scientific context.

 

No-heat quantum engine makes its debut

04 Oct 2023

In and out: An illustration of the quantum engine as a piston, showing the piston compressed when the particles in the gas exist as bosonic molecules and expanded when they are individual fermionic atoms. (Courtesy: Miriam Neve)

Most regular engines convert thermal energy into mechanical work, but an international team of researchers has now designed and implemented an entirely different, quantum engine. Instead of heat, this proof-of-principle microscopic engine runs on the energy difference associated with the statistical properties of quantum matter. And rather than powering the next generation of cars, this type of engine may one day be used to charge quantum batteries or power quantum computers and sensors.

 

Ultra-low refrigeration from Bluefors supports the quantum ecosystem

24 Apr 2023 Sponsored by Bluefors

Bluefors at APS March Meeting

This video with Helsinki-based company Bluefors was filmed at the 2023 March Meeting of the American Physical Society in Las Vegas. It features the firm’s vice president and general manager Sauli Sinisalo along with director of services Sami Nyman. Together, they outline how Bluefors’ ultra-low temperature cryogen-free dilution refrigerators support quantum research and development.

 

Total-body PET imaging reveals immune response in COVID-19 patients

07 Nov 2023 Tami Freeman

Total-body PET Standardized uptake value (SUV) images of the baseline scans of COVID-19 convalescent patients and healthy control subjects at two imaging time points. Subjects 1 and 3 skipped dynamic imaging. (Courtesy: CC BY 4.0/N Omidvari et al Sci. Advances 10.1126/sciadv.adh7968)

Understanding how the body’s immune system responds to viral infections is essential for developing new vaccines and improved treatments. The recent pandemic reiterated this need, prompting particular interest in the role of T cell response to COVID-19 infection.

 

Cardiac PET scans could predict the onset of neurodegenerative disease in at-risk individuals

03 Jan 2024

Early detection Heart and brain PET scans from a study participant who developed Parkinson’s disease support a “body first” progression. The top scans show low 18F-dopamine-derived radioactivity in the heart (right) and a normal 13N-ammonia PET scan (left), which preceded a loss of dopamine-producing neurons and symptom onset. (Courtesy: David S Goldstein lab/NINDS)

Researchers have been trying to answer questions about Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia – including where these neurodegenerative diseases start – for decades.

 

OncoRay launches world’s first whole-body MRI-guided proton therapy system

12 Jan 2024 Tami Freeman

Launch ceremony Research leader Aswin Hoffmann (right) presents the MRI-guided proton therapy prototype to Michael Kretschmer, the Minister-President of the Free State of Saxony (center), and Sebastian Gemkow, the Saxon State Minister for Science (left). (Courtesy: UKD/Michael Kretzschmar)

This week, the world’s first research prototype for whole-body MRI-guided proton therapy was officially inaugurated. The launch ceremony at OncoRay – the National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology in Dresden- marked the start of scientific operation using the prototype designed to enable real-time MRI tracking of moving tumors during proton therapy.

 

Will AI chatbots replace physicists?

09 Jun 2023 James Dacey

When discussing the capabilities of the latest AI chatbots, a physicist may argue: “Okay, they’re impressive at regurgitating texts that sound increasingly human. But we physicists don’t have much to worry about. It will be ages before the bots learn to grapple with physical concepts and the creativity required to do real physics!”

Such a view is almost certainly misguided. In a recent paper uploaded to arXiv, Colin West from the University of Colorado Boulder reported that the latest version of ChatGPT (built on GPT-4) scored 28 out of 30 on a test designed to assess students’ grasp of fundamental Newtonian mechanics.

 

The company uses quantum optics to generate sequences of truly random numbers

04 Jan 2024 Hamish Johnston

Random numbers are used in several critical technologies, including cryptography and numerical simulation. However, large sequences of genuinely random numbers are notoriously difficult to generate – and correlations lurking within sequences can have dire consequences.

Quantum systems are inherently random, so they offer a way to generate random numbers. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, our guest is Ramy Shelbaya, the chief executive officer of Quantum Dice. This UK-based start-up uses quantum optics to generate random numbers.