Vly News - Professional news Platform

MIT scientists have created the first fully digitally produced plasma sensor to orbit a spacecraft. These plasma sensors, also known as retarding potential analyzers (RPAs), are used by satellites to determine the chemical composition and energy distribution of ions in the atmosphere. The 3D printing and laser cut hardware works and the advanced semiconductor plasma sensors are manufactured in a clean room, which makes them expensive and requires weeks of complex fabrication. In contrast, 3D printed sensors can be produced for tens of dollars in a matter of days. Due to their low cost and fast production, these sensors are ideal for CubeSats. These inexpensive, low-power, and lightweight satellites are often used for communications and environmental monitoring in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The researchers developed RPA using a glass-ceramic material that is more durable than traditional sensor materials such as silicon and thin-film coatings. By using glass-ceramic in a fabricat

A set of genes that promote the sensation of sweetness are also important for protein management during fly development, according to a new study led by the University of Bristol and colleagues, published today (July 21) in the open access journal PLOS Biology. These findings broaden the understanding of key processes in successful development and suggest a link between taste-related genes and impaired protein aggregation. Protein homeostasis or proteostasis, is a set of processes that maintains cellular proteins in a functional state and removes damaged proteins that cannot be repaired. Ribosomes are multi-protein molecular machinery that synthesizes proteins and mutations in genes encoding ribosomal proteins not only impair protein synthesis but also impair proteostasis, leading to chronic proteotoxic stress. That stress, in turn, has a number of cellular consequences and results in delayed development and other irregularities. To better understand the disturbances caused by such

By David L. Chandler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 10 July 2022 Scientists at MIT have developed a method to enable such quantum sensors to detect arbitrary frequencies, without losing their ability to measure nanometer-scale features. The new method is described in a paper published in the journal Physical Review X by graduate student Guoqing Wang, professor of nuclear science and engineering and of physics Paola Cappellaro, and four others at MIT and Lincoln Laboratory. The team has already applied for patent protection for the new method. Although quantum sensors can take many forms, at their essence they’re systems in which some particles are in such a delicately balanced state that they are affected by even tiny variations in the fields they are exposed to. These can take the form of neutral atoms, trapped ions, and solid-state spins, and research using such sensors has grown rapidly. For example, physicists use them to investigate exotic states of matter, including so-