A team of scientists has discovered the first robust example of a new type of magnet—one that holds promise for enhancing the performance of data storage technologies. This “singlet-based” magnet differs from conventional magnets, in which small magnetic constituents align with one another to create a strong magnetic field. By contrast, the newly uncovered singlet-based magnet…
Researchers Pair Robotics And Information Theory To Better Understand Predator And Prey Relationships
With help from robotic fish, researchers at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering are demonstrating how information theory can offer insight into the cause-and-effect relationships between predator and prey in the animal kingdom. In a paper published in the American Institute of Physics’ Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, the research team led…
Physicists Leapfrog Accelerators With Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
An international team of physicists has developed a pioneering approach to using Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) — the highest energy particles in nature since the Big Bang — to study particle interactions far beyond the reach of human-made accelerators. The work, outlined in the journal Physical Review Letters, makes use of UHECR measurements by the…
Tiny Transformers: Chemists Create Microscopic and Malleable Building Blocks
Taking a page from Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” a team of scientists has created malleable and microscopic self-assembling particles that can serve as the next generation of building blocks in the creation of synthetic materials. “Our work turns the tiniest of particles from inflexible, Lego-like pieces into ones that can transform themselves into a range…
Grade-School Students Teach a Robot to Help Themselves Learn Geometry
Computer technology has become integral to the learning process. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, at the end of the last decade, some 97 percent of U.S. teachers had one or more computers located in the classroom every day, and the ratio of students to computers in the classroom every day was a…
Teaching Computers to Be More Creative Than Humans
Associate Professor Julian Togelius works at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and games—a largely unexplored juncture that he has shown can be the site of visionary and mind-expanding research. Could games provide a better AI test bed than robots, which—despite the way they excite public imagination—can be slow, unwieldy and expensive? According to him,…
Examining the Inner Workings of Supercapacitors
A team of chemists from New York University and the University of Cambridge has developed a method for examining the inner workings of battery-like devices called supercapacitors, which can be charged up extremely quickly and can deliver high electrical power. Their technique, based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), establishes a means for monitoring and potentially…
NYU Researchers Take Magnetic Waves for a Spin
Researchers at New York University have developed a method for creating and directing fast moving waves in magnetic fields that have the potential to enhance communication and information processing in computer chips and other consumer products. Their method, reported in the most recent issue of the journal Nanotechnology, employs “spin waves,” which are waves that…