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Category: computing – Page 265

Low-cost, flexible displays that use very little energy could be a step closer, thanks to an innovation from the University of Surrey that solves a problem that has plagued source-gated transistors (SGT). The study has been published by IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

Dr. Radu Sporea, project lead from the University of Surrey, said, We used a rapidly emerging semiconductor material called IGZO or indium-gallium-zinc oxide to create the next generation of source-gated transistors. Through nanoscale contact engineering, we obtained transistors that are much more stable with temperature than previous attempts. Device simulations allowed us to understand this effect.

This new design adds to SGTs and retains usual benefits like using low power, producing high signal amplification, and being more reliable under different conditions. While source-gated transistors are not mainstream because of a handful of performance limitations, we are steadily chipping away at their shortcomings.

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Immunotherapy is a fast-growing field designed to stimulate the immune system and target different diseases, including cancer. Some immunotherapies include immune cell activation therapies such as checkpoint inhibitors that block the interaction of cell markers which in turn allows the cell to kill the bound tumor cell. One example of a checkpoint inhibitor is anti-programmed cell death-1 (Anti-PD-1). Programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) is expressed on immune cells, specifically T cells. On responsibility of T cells include killing infected cells, such as cancer. The PD-1 marker is bound to PD-L1 on the infected cell and blocks the T cell’s ability to kill the tumor. Checkpoint inhibitors are effective in some subsets of cancer patients, but in more aggressive cancers such as liver cancer, immunotherapy is limited. Interestingly, a recent study in Nature Medicine by Dr. Miriam Merad and colleagues from the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai recently reported a new strategy to improve immunotherapy in liver cancer.

Merad and colleagues have uncovered a “trio of immune cells” within the tumor that helps improve immunotherapy. Researchers discovered this cohort of cells specifically in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), an aggressive and deadly liver cancer. It was demonstrated that specific populations in the tumor would be needed to activate T cells with immunotherapy, specifically anti-PD-1. Increased activation of T cells in HCC is critical because it demonstrates that an aggressive tumor has become sensitized to the immune system.

Researchers studied this phenomenon in patients to determine why some immune cells present in the tumor allow improved immunotherapy response, while others do not. The research team analyzed patient samples before and after checkpoint inhibitor treatment. Analysis was performed through computational methods, which allowed Merad and others to determine the immune cells necessary that help patients improve with immunotherapy. Through this computational cell analysis researchers are able to improve patient outcomes by determining if the “trio of cells” is present in the tumor.

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An international team of researchers, led by University of Toronto Engineering Professor Yu Zou, is using electric fields to control the motion of material defects. This work has important implications for improving the properties and manufacturing processes of typically brittle ionic and covalent crystals, including semiconductors—a crystalline material that is a central component of electronic chips used for computers and other modern devices.

In a new study published in Nature Materials, researchers from University of Toronto Engineering, Dalhousie University, Iowa State University and Peking University, present real-time observations of dislocation motion in a single-crystalline that was controlled using an external electric field.

“This research opens the possibility of regulating dislocation-related properties, such as mechanical, electrical, thermal and phase-transition properties, through using an electric field, rather than conventional methods” says Ph.D. candidate Mingqiang Li, the first author of the new paper.

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That’s the ordinary matter of everyday life: your hair and clothes, your atoms and organs, the food you eat and the dogs that kiss you, the air and the sea, the Sun and the Moon. Everything we know — everything we see — is just 5% of everything in the Universe.

The remaining 95% of the Universe is stuff that we can’t see, don’t yet understand. An extraordinarily vast portion of the cosmos is still unknown. Despite the technological advancements of the last century, even with computers at our fingertips and the worldwide internet and space-based observatories mapping the far reaches of our Universe, there is still so much that we don’t understand.

We have grown leaps and bounds since the days of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, even since Copernicus and Kepler. But in many ways, we are still novices playing with toy models seeking to understand the stars.

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Lot’s of science news, stay till the end for the climate stuff.

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Today we’ll talk about plants that use quantum mechanics, the first data from a new galaxy survey, quantum utility, online hate groups, photonic computing, the most sensitive power measurement ever, how to map a tunnel with muons, bad climate news that I don’t want to talk about, and you don’t want to hear, but that we need to talk about anyway. And of course, the telephone will ring.

Continue reading “Record Temperatures in the North Atlantic” | >

Disregarding an ever-increasing number of modalities and approaches and indifferent to the intense competition from savvy startups and techno giants, Lego could enter the race to build a quantum computer.

Well, at least one Lego fan designer is readying the Denmark-based toy company for the quantum era.

In a product suggestion, a Lego user pitched creating IBM Quantum Computer System in Lego Ideas, a site that allows users to submit suggestions for future logo sets.

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Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel who died earlier this year, is famous for forecasting a continuous rise in the density of transistors that we can pack onto semiconductor chips. James McKenzie looks at how “Moore’s law” is still going strong after almost six decades, but warns that further progress is becoming harder and ever more expensive to sustain.

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A quartet of chemists at the University of Oxford has, for the first time, found a way to get two beryllium atoms to bond with one another. In their paper published in the journal Science, Josef Boronski, Agamemnon Crumpton, Lewis Wales and Simon Aldridge, describe their process and how they managed to do it in a safe way—and at room temperature. Jason Dutton with La Trobe University, has published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue, outlining the work done by the team in England.

Beryllium is a strong but lightweight, alkaline earth metal. It is also brittle.

Beryllium only ever occurs naturally when mixed with other elements, forming minerals. It is often found in gemstones such as emeralds. And it is used in a variety of applications, from telecommunications equipment to computers and cell phones. It is also mixed with other metals to create alloys used in applications such as gyroscopes and electrical contacts.

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