AI breakthrough creates images from nothing

Jan 11, 2024 (Nanowerk News) A new, potentially revolutionary artificial intelligence framework called “Blackout Diffusion” generates images from a completely empty picture, meaning that the machine-learning algorithm, unlike other generative diffusion models, does not require initiating a “random seed” to get started. Blackout Diffusion, presented at the recent International Conference...

Fingerprinting biomolecules with the help of sound

Jan 11, 2024 (Nanowerk News) A team of researchers from the Institute for Optoelectronic Systems and Microtechnology at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) have designed a biosensor capable of identifying proteins and peptides in quantities as low as a single monolayer. For that, a surface acoustic wave (SAW), a kind...

Astronomers make rare exoplanet discovery

Jan 11, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Astronomers have made the rare discovery of a small, cold exoplanet and its massive outer companion – shedding light on the formation of planets like Earth. The findings include a planet with radius and mass between that of the Earth and Neptune, with a potential...

Bridging light and electrons

Jan 11, 2024 (Nanowerk News) When light goes through a material, it often behaves in unpredictable ways. This phenomenon is the subject of an entire field of study called “nonlinear optics”, which is now integral to technological and scientific advances from laser development and optical frequency metrology, to gravitational wave...

Bulky additives could make cheaper solar cells last longer

Jan 11, 2024 (Nanowerk News) An insight into preventing perovskite semiconductors from degrading quickly, discovered at the University of Michigan, could help enable solar cells estimated to be two to four times cheaper than today's thin-film solar panels. The findings have been published in Cell ("Molecular Design of Defect Passivators...

Our surprising magnetic galaxy

Jan 11, 2024 (Nanowerk News) A team of astronomers created the first-ever map of magnetic field structures within a spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Previous studies on galactic magnetic fields only gave a very general picture, but the new study reveals that magnetic fields in the spiral arms...

AI discovers that not every fingerprint is unique

Jan 11, 2024 (Nanowerk News) From “Law and Order” to “CSI,” not to mention real life, investigators have used fingerprints as the gold standard for linking criminals to a crime. But if a perpetrator leaves prints from different fingers in two different crime scenes, these scenes are very difficult to...