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IMAGE: When a person sings, the vibrations create waves in the tissue near the vocal tract called shear waves. If a tumor is present in the thyroid, the elasticity of its. view more
Credit: Steve Beuve
WASHINGTON, January 12, 2021 Singing may be the next-generation, noninvasive approach to determining the health of a patient s thyroid.
Typically, a fine needle is used to detect the presence of a tumor in the thyroid, which most commonly affects children and younger women. However, this method can only detect about 5% of thyroid cancers.
Researchers from Université de Tours, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Dijon-Bourgogne, and Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté suggest a simpler approach: singing. They demonstrate the technique in the journal
Muqing Yu
PITTSBURGH, PA It has long been a dream to invent new materials from the top down choosing which atoms go where to engineer properties of interest. A technique created by researchers out of the Department of Physics and Astronomy enables them to sketch patterns of electrons into a programmable quantum material lanthanum aluminate/strontium titanate or LAO/STO. Using this approach, they can create quantum devices and with feature sizes comparable to the spacing between electrons, and even sketch artificial lattices for electrons to traverse, with extremely high precision.
To develop this capability, the researchers repurposed an electron beam lithography instrument, which is ordinarily used to create nanostructures by exposing a resist that hardens into a mask, enabling layers of material to be subsequently added or removed. Instead of operating the instrument at its usual value of 20,000 volts, the researchers dialed it down to only a few hundred volts, where th
Tuneable white-emitting LED needs no phosphor
Researchers in Saudi Arabia have demonstrated white light emission from a phosphor-less LED.
Generally, ‘white’ LEDs have a blue-emitting die topped with phosphors that convert some of that blue to broad-spectrum amber – which combined with the residual blue is seen by humans as cool white. Adding a red-emitting phosphor in the mix produces warm white LEDs.
Daisuke Iida, Kazuhiro Ohkawa, and their team at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have created at phosphor-free monolithic white-light LEDs using indium gallium nitride – the same combination normally used for blue LEDs.
The emission wavelength of InGaN depends on the relative content of the indium and gallium: Gallium nitride emits ultraviolet light, while adding indium shifts emission to longer wavelengths through the visible spectrum. However, for a number of reasons, pushing emission as far as red by adding a lot of indium is problematic.