UC Research and Innovation

UC researchers and administrators in research policy

Engineering + Technology

Century-old problem solved with first-ever 3D atomic imaging of an amorphous solid

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By Wayne Lewis, UC Los Angeles | March 31, 2021 Glass, rubber and plastics all belong to a class of matter called amorphous solids. And in spite of how common they are in our everyday lives, amorphous solids have long posed a challenge to scientists. Since the 1910s, scientists have been able to map in 3D the atomic structures of crystals, the other major class of solids, ... Continue Reading »

Freshwater outflow from Beaufort Sea could alter global climate patterns

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Nancy Ambrosiano, Los Alamos National Laboratory | February 24, 2021 The Beaufort Sea, the Arctic Ocean’s largest freshwater reservoir, has increased its freshwater content by 40 percent over the last two decades, putting global climate patterns at risk. A rapid release of this freshwater into the Atlantic Ocean could wreak havoc on the delicate climate balance that dictates ... Continue Reading »

Light unbound: Data limits could vanish with new optical antennas

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Sarah Yang, UC Berkeley | February 25, 2021 Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a new way to harness properties of light waves that can radically increase the amount of data they carry. They demonstrated the emission of discrete twisting laser beams from antennas made up of concentric rings roughly equal to the diameter of a human hair, small ... Continue Reading »

Doubling creation of antimatter using same laser energy

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By Anne M. Stark, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | March 3, 2021 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have achieved a near-100 percent increase in the amount of antimatter created in the laboratory. Using targets with micro-structures on the laser interface, the team shot a high-intensity laser through them and saw a 100 percent increase in the ... Continue Reading »

‘Self-trained’ deep learning to improve disease diagnosis

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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | March 4, 2021 Work by computer scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and IBM Research on deep learning models to accurately diagnose diseases from X-ray images with less labeled data won the Best Paper award for Computer-Aided Diagnosis at the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference on Feb. 19. The technique, which ... Continue Reading »

Computer analyses of cough sounds reveal infection by COVID

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By Doug Ramsey, Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego | February 5, 2021 Millions of people already use Fitbit and other devices to monitor and track a variety of personal health metrics. Now, a researcher at the University of California San Diego has published data indicating that analyzing voice signals can detect COVID-19 infection when compared with sample audio ... Continue Reading »

Eavesdropping on cellular conversations

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By Brian Bell, UC Irvine | February 17, 2021 An interdisciplinary team of biologists and mathematicians at the University of California, Irvine has developed a new tool to help decipher the language cells use to communicate with one another. In a paper published today in Nature Communications, the researchers introduce CellChat, a computational platform that enables ... Continue Reading »

Polymer film protects from electromagnetic radiation, signal interference

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By Holly Ober, UC Riverside | February 22, 2021 As electronic devices saturate all corners of public and personal life, engineers are scrambling to find lightweight, mechanically stable, flexible, and easily manufactured materials that can shield humans from excessive electromagnetic radiation as well as prevent electronic devices from interfering with each other.  In a ... Continue Reading »