ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

With feet and legs like a peregrine falcon, engineers have created a robot that can perch and carry objects like a bird.

The dusty surface of the moon -- immortalized in images of Apollo astronauts' lunar footprints -- formed as the result of asteroid impacts and the harsh environment of space breaking down rock over millions of years. An ancient layer of this material, covered by periodic lava flows and now buried under the lunar surface, could provide new insight into the Moon's deep past, according to a team of scientists.

Astronomers have discovered an unusually massive black hole at the heart of one of the Milky Way's dwarf satellite galaxies, called Leo I. Almost as massive as the black hole in our own galaxy, the finding could redefine our understanding of how all galaxies -- the building blocks of the universe -- evolve.

Data collected by the Arecibo Radio Telescope before it collapsed late last year will help astronomers better understand how our local neighbourhood of galaxies formed. Arecibo was the world's largest single-dish radio telescope until it was surpassed in 2016 by China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). At the end of 2020, Arecibo's 900-ton receiver platform suddenly and spectacularly fell onto the dish below, destroying the telescope.

Researchers used the Frontera supercomputer to explore light-induced superconductivity a pulsed laser, which is believed to be a promising route to room-temperature superconductors. They found that d-wave superconductivity can be enhanced by a pulsed laser, but the light-enhanced superconductivity may be of fluctuating nature. The project applied a recently developed exact diagonalization method which allows precise calculations of up to a trillion matrix elements, but requires large scale high performance computing.

Using artificial intelligence and deep learning, researchers have developed a neural network that 'hallucinates' the structures of new protein molecules. The scientists made up completely random protein sequences and introduced mutations into them until the neural network predicted they would fold into stable structures. The software was not guided toward a particular outcome; the proteins were just what the computer dreams up. Next step: using deep learning to try to design proteins with particular functions, such as enzymes or drugs.

Mathematicians have partnered with artificial intelligence to suggest and prove new mathematical theorems.

In a mouse study, a team led by a biomedical scientist found a phthalate -- a chemical used to make plastics more durable -- led to increased plasma cholesterol levels.

Biomedical engineers have engineered a holographic system capable of imaging and analyzing tens of thousands of cells per minute to both discover and recognize signs of disease.

Scientists describe development of a cost-effective Scotch-tape-like film that can be applied to perovskite solar cells and capture 99.9% of leaked lead in the event of solar cell damage.

New research suggests that effective wound healing may be aided by replicating a crucial component of our blood.

Lasers in conventional laser printers for paper printouts are very small. 3D laser printers for 3-dimensional microstructures and nanostructures, by contrast, have required big and expensive laser systems so far. Researchers now use another process for this purpose. Two-step absorption works with inexpensive and small, blue laser diodes. As a result, much smaller printers can be used.

The quantum world and our everyday world are very different places. Physicists now investigate how the act of measuring a quantum particle transforms it into an everyday object.