Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 4


China’s powerful laser The Shanghai Superintense-Ultrafast Lasers Facility (SULF) in China claims to have demonstrated the world’s most powerful laser. The ultra-intense, ultra-fast laser is said to have delivered a peak power of more than five petawatts. This is supposedly the largest peak-power laser pulse ever measured on record. A petawatt is equivalent to one quadrillion watts. ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 5


World’s largest telescope China stunned the industry last month, when the nation rolled out the world’s fastest supercomputer. The system, dubbed the Sunway TaihuLight, is based on processors made in China, not Intel or other U.S. chipmakers. Now, China has nearly finished the construction of the world’s largest radio telescope. The system, dubbed the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Sphe... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 1


Extracting the right information in large data sets When solving complex scientific problems, researchers sometimes encounter what is called the curse of dimensionality, that is, they have so much data that they cannot efficiently analyze it. Large data sets can also be expensive and time consuming to acquire, so it is critical to gather only what is necessary. To this end, University of Il... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 10


Etching superconducting materials Superconductors are devices that have zero electrical resistance, making them attractive for a range of applications. But superconductors must be cooled down to temperatures at or near absolute zero on the Kelvin scale to work. This, in turn, limits their applications. Absolute zero equates to −273.15° on the Celsius scale and −459.67° on the Fahrenheit ... » read more

SITRI: Startup Funding And Support


Describing exactly what the Shanghai Industrial μTechnology Research Institute is like trying to read the fine print on a moving object. The organization is constantly in motion, shifting from one set of services to another, depending upon the recipient's needs, and redefining itself as it goes. The central theme is to promote and further the interest of startups working on "More Than Moore" a... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 24


Simulating ultrafast phenomena Interesting phenomena can happen when electronic states in materials are excited during dynamic processes. As an example, electrical charge transfer can take place on quadrillionth-of-a-second, or femtosecond, timescales. Numerical simulations in real-time provide the best way to study these processes. Such simulations, however, can be extremely expensive. R... » read more

System Bits: August 5


A better conductor There are now new clues about one of the baffling electronic properties of the iron-based high-temperature superconductor barium iron nickel arsenide, according to a Rice University-led team of U.S., German and Chinese physicists that has discovered, based on sophisticated neutron measurements, of a link between magnetic properties and the material’s tendency, at sufficien... » read more

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