Extremely large magnetoresistance in few-layer graphene/boron–nitride heterostructures

Extremely large magnetoresistance in few-layer graphene/boron–nitride heterostructures

 Kalon Gopinadhan, Young Jun Shin, Rashid Jalil, Thirumalai Venkatesan, Andre K. Geim, Antonio H. Castro Neto & Hyunsoo Yan

 Nature Communications 6, Article number: 8337 doi:10.1038/ncomms9337

Received 19 December 2014 Accepted 11 August 2015 Published 21 September 2015

Researchers from the prestigious National University of Singapore (NUS) have successfully invented a new hybrid magnetic sensor, more sensitive than most commercially available sensors to date.

Understanding magnetoresistance, the change in electrical resistance under an external magnetic field, at the atomic level is of great interest both fundamentally and technologically. Graphene and other two-dimensional layered materials provide an unprecedented opportunity to explore magnetoresistance at its nascent stage of structural formation. Here we report an extremely large local magnetoresistance of~2,000% at 400 K and a non-local magnetoresistance of >90,000% in an applied magnetic field of 9 T at 300 K in few-layer graphene/boron–nitride heterostructures. The local magnetoresistance is understood to arise from large differential transport parameters, such as the carrier mobility, across various layers of few-layer graphene upon a normal magnetic field, whereas the non-local magnetoresistance is due to the magnetic field induced Ettingshausen–Nernst effect. Non-local magnetoresistance suggests the possibility of a graphene-based gate tunable thermal switch. In addition, our results demonstrate that graphene heterostructures may be promising for magnetic field sensing applications.

You can grow new brain cells

You Can Grow New Brain Cells. Here's How

Can we, as adults, grow new neurons? Neuroscientist Sandrine Thuret says that we can, and she offers research and practical advice on how we can help our brains better perform neurogenesis—improving mood, increasing memory formation and preventing the decline associated with aging along the way.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at http://www.ted.com/translate

 

Head transplant

Terrified, petrified, horrified, frightened, scared
Weird as it sounds. 
It is all over the internet sweeping like a mist around.  
This week, 30-year-old Russian man, Valery Spiridonov, announced that he will become the subject of the first human head transplant ever

Head transplant

Although sounds quite mind boggling, I found a video on brain transplant.

 First brain transplant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FV5pOO5Mt64
There is already an outcry on the issue of ethics and religion on this matter. I believe it is not too long before these would become reality, but i seriously doubt if it would be so soon within this decade. 
Successful desirable head transplants will be an inevitable frontier in next decade.

 http://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-first-head-transplant-volunteer-could-experience-something-worse-than-death

Images of Science March

Climate change turns mummies into black ooze

Vivien Standen

Mummies in Chile and Peru are disturbed for the first time in thousands of years due to climate change.  Sounds like sauna did not help. The mummies will now enjoy humidity controlled enclosures from now on, for free. Sounds nice hmm. You cant get that luxury since you are alive and not thousands of years old....

A live look at the AIDS virus

Philip Santangelo

AIDS virus, the incurable, (almost) looks like a small rodent.Though it is really dangerous and lethal. Stay away, far far away....
Fossil pushes back human origins 400,000 years

Kaye Reed

We keep getting older and older, I am not talking about our age, i am talking about the claim of crowning the first or oldest human jawbone. Grad students working in Ethiopia made an exciting discovery: when they found a 2.8-million-year-old jawbone of a hominin in the sand. The partial lower jaw is the oldest known member of the genus Homo and pushes back our origins 400,000 years.
NASA opts for boulder-snatch concept in its asteroid redirect mission

NASA

NASA gives out funds to look for a new ranger to scout the space beyond our horizon.They will snatch a small boulder off an asteroid, as illustrated above, rather than bag up an entire asteroid. The goal of the $1.25 billion mission is to test an idea for protecting Earth from a potentially catastrophic asteroid impact.
Polar bears turn to seabirds for sustenance

Jouke Prop

Polar bears, AKA poor bears are endangered and they are endangering others around them.
Polar bears are being forced to change their diets, scouring dry land for seabird eggs rather than enjoying their typical staple: seals. The disappearing sea ice is bad news for both bears and seabirds, as hungry bears are raiding nests, and the increasing predation on seabirds will likely diminish their numbers.

Science| DOI: 10.1126/science.aab2433

A stack of four identical spacecraft will study Earth’s magnetosphere – the comet-shaped magnetic shield that protects us from “space weather.”

http://earthsky.org/space/magnetospheric-mission-mms-launch-2015-magnetic-reconnection

Top 5 out of 20 wellcome image award 2015

Wellcome Images award held in March declared 20 photos as the best from around the world for the originality and the work of the person behind the lens. I chose these five for you to enjoy

Your Cat's tongue

Pregnant pony uterus

Chemical reactions in the kidney

Mouse brain

Mapping brain wiring

 Other pictures can be seen at http://www.wellcomeimageawards.org/2015/

The March 11 Solar Flare

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2015/03/31/the-march-11-solar-flare/

The Solar Impulse-2 takes off from Ahmadabad, India on March 18, 2015, beginning the third leg of its’ historic round-the-world trip. The sun-powered aircraft began its voyage on March 9, 2015 in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where it is scheduled to return in August of this year. (AP/Press Trust of India)

Sunset falls over antennae at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array, on March 3, 2015. The radio astronomy antenna array is located in Socorro County, New Mexico. (AP)

A mosaic of images taken by the panoramic camera aboard NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows part of the Red Planet’s “Marathon Valley.” The images that make up this mosaic were taken on March 13, 2015 during the 3,958th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity’s work on Mars. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University/Arizona State University)

This photo of Ceres was taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on March 1, 2015, a few days before the mission achieved orbit around the previously unexplored dwarf planet to begin a 16-month exploration. The Dawn spacecraft was about 48,000 kilometers away from Ceres when this photo was taken. (NASA)

This 3/11/15 file photo shows an array of some of the 2,000 pressure vessels used to convert seawater into fresh water in the Carlsbad (California) Desalination Project’s plant. Considered to be the largest desalination facility in the western hemisphere, it is scheduled to start operations some time later this year and is expected to provide 50 million gallons of fresh drinking water a day. (AP)

In a study released on March 13, 2015, researchers successfully identified what they call a “treasure chest” of ancient galaxy clusters. This map of the entire sky was captured by the European Space Agency’s Planck mission. The band running through the middle corresponds to dust in our Milky Way galaxy. The black dots indicate the location of galaxy cluster candidates identified by Planck and subsequently observed by the European Space Agency’s Herschel mission. (ESA/Planck Collaboration/ H. Dole, D. Guéry & G. Hurier, IAS/University Paris-Sud/CNRS/CNES)

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, blasts off from Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on March 28, 2015. The Russian rocket carries U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly, Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka, and Mikhail Korniyenko. (AP)

An aerial photo, taken on March 31, 2015, shows some of the solar panels that make up a photovoltaic park in southern France. Considered to be the country’s biggest solar farm, this facility consists of 112,780 solar modules covering an area of 200 hectares of land and representing 100 MW of power. (Reuters)

A total solar eclipse is seen through the clouds from Vagar on the Faeroe Islands on March 30, 2015. The Faeroe Islands is an archipelago located halfway between Norway and Iceland. (AP)

A robot installation is pictured at the booth of Deutsche Telekom at the CeBIT technology on 3/15/15. The German technology exposition was held in Hanover from 3/16/15-3/20/15 (AFP)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Physically dynamic surfaces, Going after the mist of 2014

Imagine the impossible, to make it possible
Thats exactly what some humans have been doing to keep us way ahead of other living organisms. This ability makes our race unique, survivable, as well as destroy and devour other living beings around us in whole new ways.
Apple's iPad heralded a new era of flat panel interactive devices five years ago. It was not the first of its kind but it captured us all anyway, back then.
Now kids would often come to a wall and try to feel for the interactibility. I saw a kid who did not yet go to a school, make choices of prefering a touch panel device over a laptop. I feel it is about time now to move to the next level, the 3D interactive displays.
Last year it was the mist that captured me. It was like watching something as result of video editing. Something never seen before.
You can watch video here
Sneak a peek through the mist to technology of the future (w/ video)

Sneak a peek through the mist to technology of the future

 

 

Today while scorling through phys org news a new physically interacting screen came to my sight.
A physical screen you can interact of sort in 3D.
Physically dynamic surfaces
 There is a trend developing now towards this new area of interactive devices. But the best is yet to come, since we always tend to imagine better and develop even better toys for our children. Enjoy life while you have. Stay safe and keep others safe.

pple's iPad arrived five years ago. It is a device that changed the way we think about computing, marking a seismic shift from keyboard and mouse to direct manipulation with our fingers. The iPad wasn't the first tablet computer – it wasn't even Apple's first tablet computer – but it was the first to capture the world's imagination and sell tens of millions of devices.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-physically-dynamic-surfaces-herald-tablet.html#jCp

pple's iPad arrived five years ago. It is a device that changed the way we think about computing, marking a seismic shift from keyboard and mouse to direct manipulation with our fingers. The iPad wasn't the first tablet computer – it wasn't even Apple's first tablet computer – but it was the first to capture the world's imagination and sell tens of millions of devices.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-physically-dynamic-surfaces-herald-tablet.html#jCp

How to Scramble Eggs Inside Their Shell

I love to eat delicious food, try new ones. 
NightHawkInLight has shown a video on his youtube channel, it is amazing. I never imagined if we can scramble an egg inside the shell.
Enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKCkR6L85vg#t=23

Supercharging a 3-D Hybrid Supercapacitor with Graphene

By combining sheets of graphene with a traditional battery material, scientists have created hybrid supercapacitors that can store as much charge as lead acid batteries but can be recharged in seconds compared with hours for conventional batteries.

Now researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a hybrid supercapacitor that is based on graphene, which is made of single layers of carbon atoms. Graphene is flexible, transparent, strong and electrically and thermally conductive, qualities that have led to research worldwide into whether the material could find use in advanced circuitry and other devices.
The scientists combined graphene with manganese dioxide, which is widely used in alkaline batteries and is both abundant and environmentally friendly. The manganese dioxide formed microscopic flowers made of flakes only 10 to 20 nanometers thick. The supercapacitors also incorporated electrolytes that can operate at high voltages.

Significance

Batteries run just about everything portable in our lives such as smartphones, tablets, computers, etc. Although we have become accustomed to the rapid improvement of portable electronics, the slow development of batteries is holding back technological progress. Thus, it is imperative to develop new energy storage devices that are compact, reliable, and energy dense, charge quickly, and possess both long cycle life and calendar life. Here, we developed hybrid supercapacitors that can store as much charge as a lead acid battery, yet they can be recharged in seconds compared with hours for conventional batteries.

Abstract

Supercapacitors now play an important role in the progress of hybrid and electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and military and space applications. There is a growing demand in developing hybrid supercapacitor systems to overcome the energy density limitations of the current generation of carbon-based supercapacitors. Here, we demonstrate 3D high-performance hybrid supercapacitors and microsupercapacitors based on graphene and MnO₂ by rationally designing the electrode microstructure and combining active materials with electrolytes that operate at high voltages. This results in hybrid electrodes with ultrahigh volumetric capacitance of over 1,100 F/cm³. This corresponds to a specific capacitance of the constituent MnO₂ of 1,145 F/g, which is close to the theoretical value of 1,380 F/g. The energy density of the full device varies between 22 and 42 Wh/l depending on the device configuration, which is superior to those of commercially available double-layer supercapacitors, pseudocapacitors, lithium-ion capacitors, and hybrid supercapacitors tested under the same conditions and is comparable to that of lead acid batteries. These hybrid supercapacitors use aqueous electrolytes and are assembled in air without the need for expensive “dry rooms” required for building today’s supercapacitors. Furthermore, we demonstrate a simple technique for the fabrication of supercapacitor arrays for high-voltage applications. These arrays can be integrated with solar cells for efficient energy harvesting and storage systems

IEEESpectrum 2015