Vanadium dioxyde: A revolutionary material for tomorrow's electronics. First came the switch. Then the transistor. Now another innovation stands to revolutionize the way we control the flow of electrons through a circuit: vanadium dioxide (VO2). A key characteristic of this compound is that it behaves as an insulator at room temperature but as a conductor at temperatures above 68°C. This behavior - also known as metal-insulator transition - is being studied in an ambitious EU Horizon 2020 project called Phase-Change Switch. In addition to space communications, other fields of application could include neuromorphic computing and high-frequency radars for self-driving cars.
New use for telecommunications networks – peering into deep space. The ability to send stable frequency references over the telecommunications network could be particularly useful for radio telescope arrays such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope using arrays in Australia and South Africa. When complete, SKA will detect faint radio waves from deep space with a sensitivity about 50 times greater than that of the Hubble telescope. Individual radio telescopes will be linked to create a total collecting area of about 1 million square meters.
Edible QR code – medicine of the future? The researchers hope that in the future a regular printer will be able to apply the medical drug in the pattern of a QR code, while the edible material will have to be produced in advance to allow on-demand production of medical drug near end-users.
Online tool speeds up evolution education. The new Avida is digital evolution software used by biologists and engineers in which digital organisms replicate, mutate and compete with other digital organisms for resources in their virtual environment. It’s goal is to provide a true instance of evolution, not a simulation, in a classroom setting.
Meditation doesn’t make you a better person. The researchers said meditation made people feel moderately more compassionate or empathic, compared to if they had done no other new emotionally-engaging activity. However further analysis revealed that it played no significant role in reducing aggression or prejudice or improving how socially-connected someone was.
