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MIT scientists and colleagues have created a simple superconducting device that could transfer current through electronic devices much more efficiently than is possible today. As a result, the new diode, a kind of switch, could dramatically cut the amount of energy used in high-power computing systems, a major problem that is estimated to become much worse.

Even though it is in the early stages of development, the diode is more than twice as efficient as similar ones reported by others. It could even be integral to emerging quantum computing technologies. The work, which is reported in the July 13 online issue of Physical Review Letters, is also the subject of a news story in Physics Magazine.

“This paper showcases that the superconducting diode is an entirely solved problem from an engineering perspective,” says Philip Moll, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Germany. Moll was not involved in the work. “The beauty of [this] work is that [Moodera and colleagues] obtained record efficiencies without even trying [and] their structures are far from optimized yet.”

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TSMC inaugurates its Global Research and Development Center, a building it proclaimed as the ‘Bell Labs in Taiwan’ in Hsinchu on July 28. The building will house more than 7,000 R&D talents of the company to develop cutting-edge 2 nm, 1.4 nm, and even more advanced semiconductor technologies in new materials and transister architectures.

Using the full capabilities of the Quantinuum H1-1 quantum computer, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory not only demonstrated best practices for scientific computing on current quantum systems but also produced an intriguing scientific result.

By modeling singlet fission —in which absorption of a single photon of light by a molecule produces two excited states —the team confirmed that the linear H₄ molecule’s energetic levels match the fission process’s requirements. The linear H₄ molecule is, simply, a molecule made of four hydrogen atoms arranged in a linear fashion.

A molecule’s energetic levels are the energies of each quantum state involved in a phenomenon, such as singlet fission, and how they relate and compare with one another. The fact that the linear molecule’s energetic levels are conducive to singlet fission could prove to be useful knowledge in the overall effort to develop more efficient solar panels.

Researchers at Leipzig University have developed a highly efficient method to investigate systems with long-range interactions that were previously puzzling to experts. These systems can be gases or even solid materials such as magnets whose atoms interact not only with their neighbors but also far beyond.

Professor Wolfhard Janke and his team of researchers use Monte Carlo computer simulations for this purpose. This stochastic process, named after the Monte Carlo casino, generates random system states from which the desired properties of the system can be determined. In this way, Monte Carlo simulations provide deep insights into the physics of phase transitions.

The researchers have developed a new algorithm that can perform these simulations in a matter of days, which would have taken centuries using conventional methods. They have published their new findings in the journal Physical Review X.

Carbon nanotubes, large cylindrical molecules composed of hybridized carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal structure, recently attracted significant attention among electronics engineers. Due to their geometric configuration and advantageous electronic properties, these unique molecules could be used to create smaller field-effect transistors (FETs) that exhibit high energy efficiencies.

FETs based on carbon nanotubes have the potential to outperform smaller transistors based on silicon, yet their advantage in real-world implementations has yet to be conclusively demonstrated. A recent paper by researchers at Peking University and other institutes in China, published in Nature Electronics, outlines the realization of FETs based on carbon nanotubes that can be scaled to the same size of a 10 nm silicon technology node.

“Recent progress in achieving wafer-scale high density semiconducting carbon nanotube arrays brough us one step closer to the practical use of carbon nanotubes in CMOS circuits,” Zhiyong Zhang, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “However, previous research efforts have mainly focused on the scaling of channel or gate length of carbon nanotube transistors while keeping large contact dimensions, which cannot be accepted for high density CMOS circuits in practical applications.

The Quantum Insider (TQI) is the leading online resource dedicated exclusively to Quantum Computing.

Adopting a curious mindset over a high-pressure one can enhance memory, according to recent research from Duke University. The study showed that participants who envisioned themselves as a thief planning a heist in a virtual art museum demonstrated better recall of the paintings they encountered than those who imagined executing the heist on the spot while playing the same computer game.

The slight variation in motivations — the urgent need to achieve immediate goals versus the curious exploration for future objectives — could have significant implications in real-life scenarios. These include incentivizing people to receive a vaccine, prompting action against climate change, and potentially providing new treatments for psychiatric conditions.

The findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Humans have a distinctive skeleton, and are the only bipedal great apes (the great ape species are bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and humans). While the evolution of the human skeleton enabled us to walk upright, it also led to the rise of musculoskeletal disease. It’s thought that cognitive development began to accelerate in humans once we started to move around, adapt to new environments, and make use of tools. Researchers have now used advanced computational tools and a trove of human genetic data in the UK Biobank to outline the genetic changes that occurred as primates started to walk upright for the first time.

These findings, which were reported in Science, have suggested that natural selection had a strong influence on the genetic changes that altered our anatomy, and gave early humans an evolutionary leg up.