A team of engineers at Apple has developed an AI-based model called Depth Pro that can map the depth of a 2D image. The team has written a paper describing the app and its capabilities and has posted it on the arXiv preprint server. They have also posted an announcement regarding the app on the company’s Machine Learning Research page.
Humans and other animals are able to perceive depth because the brain is able to take two images, one from each eye, and use the differences between them to figure out which parts of the images are closer and which are more distant. Some video cameras have done something similar to create 3D videos.
Smartphones, because they rely on just one camera for picture taking and video creation, have various hardware and software additions that allow for adding some degree of depth. In this new effort, the engineers at Apple have created an entire depth map using data from the original image without resorting to use of metadata such as camera intrinsics.
A depth map is a map that is created using all the pixels in an original image. Each data-point on the map represents a single pixel and corresponds to the distance between the part of the picture represented by the pixel and the corresponding part of the object that was imaged.
Such a map allows for the addition of another dimension to a flat picture, giving it 3D effects. Creating a depth map, the team suggests, can generate 3D effects that are sharper than those made using standard smartphone techniques.
Overview of the network architecture. Credit: arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2410.02073
In their announcement, the team at Apple claims that apps using the model are capable of producing a depth map in just 0.3 seconds when run on a computer with a standard GPU—and it can do so without the types of camera data that are usually needed to generate 3D effects.
By creating a model that operates so speedily, Apple has opened the door to creating 3D imagery from a single lens camera in real time. And this, the team notes, could have major implications for robots and other real-time mapping applications, such as those used on autonomous vehicles.
More information:
Aleksei Bochkovskii et al, Depth Pro: Sharp Monocular Metric Depth in Less Than a Second, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2410.02073
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Apple unveils Depth Pro, an AI app that can map the depth of a 2D image (2024, October 10)
retrieved 10 October 2024
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Team members pose in the clean room (left). Thermal image of the 10.4 kW uranium-238 beam on the target (top right). Three never-before-seen isotopes, shown to the right of the red line on the particle identification plot (bottom right). Credit: Facility for Rare Isotope Beams
Scientists and engineers at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) have reached a new milestone in isotope studies. They accelerated a high-power beam of uranium ions and delivered a record 10.4 kilowatts of continuous beam power to a target. The work is published in the journal Physical Review Accelerators and Beams.
Uranium is the most difficult element to accelerate. However, it is extremely important to scientific research. Of the more than 17 highest-priority scientific programs with rare isotope beams identified by the National Academy of Sciences and the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, more than half require a uranium primary beam.
Researchers value uranium because it can produce a large variety of isotopes after fragmentation or fission.
Establishing the acceleration of a uranium beam with unprecedented power is a crucial milestone for FRIB. The achievement opens a new avenue of research with rare isotopes. Within the first eight hours of operation, the high-power uranium beam enabled FRIB scientists to produce and identify three new isotopes, gallium-88, arsenic-93, and selenium-96.
The high-power uranium beam required the stable operation of all accelerator devices at the highest accelerating gradients. This achievement creates a foundation for providing the heaviest ion beams for creating rare isotopes. It extends scientific reach into unexplored regions of the nuclear landscape.
According to the study, the accelerator facility at FRIB was able to produce the highest-power accelerated continuous wave uranium beam ever seen, leading to the separation and identification of three previously unknown isotopes.
This achievement was possible thanks to the successful operation of FRIB, including a new superconducting linear accelerator composed of 324 resonators in 46 cryomodules, a newly developed liquid-lithium stripper, and novel technologies such as uranium production in the Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) ion source, the unique heavy-ion Radio-Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ), the high-power target and beam dump.
Researchers developed new techniques to set up the simultaneous acceleration of three charge states of uranium after stripping with liquid-lithium film.
This approach achieved a record-high power for uranium. The three previously unobserved isotopes—gallium-88, arsenic-83, and selenium-96—were produced in a 1.2 mm graphite target, separated, and identified for the first time in the Advanced Rare Isotope Separator at FRIB. This work was performed in collaboration with scientists from the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
More information:
P. N. Ostroumov et al, Acceleration of uranium beam to record power of 10.4 kW and observation of new isotopes at Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Physical Review Accelerators and Beams (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.27.060101
Citation:
Scientists accelerate uranium beam with record power (2024, October 10)
retrieved 10 October 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-10-scientists-uranium-power.html
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Paying at eftpos machine. Credit: Tracey Nearmy/ANU
Indigenous-owned businesses in Australia employ Indigenous staff at a rate 12 times higher than non-Indigenous-owned businesses, a new study from The Australian National University (ANU) has found.
According to lead researcher and Ph.D. candidate Christian Eva, the findings demonstrate that non-Indigenous-owned businesses must do more to better integrate Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices into the workplace and boost the number of Indigenous staff.
Eva said non-Indigenous-owned businesses should also acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ broader responsibilities within their communities by offering flexible working arrangements and cultural leave entitlements.
“The unique workplace practices of Indigenous businesses may explain their strong Indigenous employment rates. Our paper demonstrates it’s more likely workplace practices driving divergent Indigenous employment outcomes, rather than just local labor market conditions,” Eva said.
“This disparity is of national importance as Indigenous employment is part of Australia’s Closing the Gap framework. However, as with many Closing the Gap outcomes, the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous employment is failing to close. It’s evident we must do more.”
The researchers analyzed Supply Nation data of 2,291 Indigenous-owned businesses and compared it to a dataset of 680 non-Indigenous-owned businesses in Australia.
They asked non-Indigenous business owners whether they had a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) or if they offered cultural competence training to staff. Businesses were also asked whether they had other forms of Indigenous-focused workplace policies and practices.
“Despite an increased focus on Indigenous employment, the national Indigenous employment rate is failing to increase substantially, and many Australian businesses are still struggling to reach their Indigenous employment targets,” Eva said.
“The findings highlight the crucial need for Australian businesses to incorporate Indigenous-led approaches to things such as organizational governance, human resource management and recruitment within Australian businesses.”
The recently published paper in The Economic and Labour Relations Review, also led by Eva, found that businesses with Indigenous staff in management positions had more than three times the number of Indigenous workers compared to businesses with no Indigenous management.
“It’s therefore key for non-Indigenous-owned businesses to identify how they can create those pathways for Indigenous employees to progress into senior management roles and ensure there are equitable opportunities for progression within organizations for all employees,” Eva said.
“Managers from an Indigenous background are also better placed to understand the unique cultural and personal tendencies of their Indigenous colleagues.”
More information:
Christian Eva et al, Closing the employment gap: Estimations of Indigenous employment in Indigenous- and non-Indigenous-owned businesses in Australia, The Economic and Labour Relations Review (2024). DOI: 10.1017/elr.2024.37
Citation:
Non-Indigenous businesses struggling to boost Indigenous staff numbers (2024, October 10)
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The region of the nuclear chart 87≤Z≤97 and 112≤N≤136 shows the new isotope plutonium-227 (red star) and the 12 nuclides (blue star) that were discovered at IMP. Credit: Yang Huabin
A research team led by researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has synthesized a new plutonium isotope, plutonium-227. Their study is published in Physical Review C.
The magic numbers of protons and neutrons, such as 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, or 126, are correlated with shell closures. In past studies, systematic analyses have revealed a persistent weakening of the neutron shell closure 126 up to uranium, which makes it fascinating to continue exploring whether the shell closure would fade in the transuranium region.
“We have discovered the presence of the shell closure in neptunium isotopes through a series of experiments. However, due to the absence of experimental data, the robustness of this closure in plutonium isotopes remains unknown,” said Prof. Gan Zaiguo from IMP.
To probe the unknown plutonium isotopes, the researchers at IMP and their collaborators carried out an experiment at the gas-filled recoil separator, Spectrometer for Heavy Atoms and Nuclear Structure, at the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL) in China.
Using the fusion evaporation reaction, the researchers synthesized plutonium-227, a very neutron-deficient plutonium isotope, for the first time. Plutonium-227 is the 39th new isotope discovered by IMP, and it is also the first plutonium isotope discovered by Chinese scientists.
From the nine observed decay chains, the researchers then measured the 𝛼-particle energy and half-life of plutonium-227 to be about 8191 keV and 0.78 s, respectively. The data fit quite well into the systematics of known plutonium isotopes.
The research team plans to investigate more plutonium isotopes, aiming to gain a deeper understanding of the shell evolution in plutonium.
“The newly discovered plutonium-227 is still seven neutrons away from the magic number of 126. To study the robustness of the shell closure in plutonium, it is necessary to continue research of even lighter plutonium isotopes, including plutonium-221 to plutonium-226,” said Dr. Yang Huabin from IMP, the first author of this study.
More information:
H. B. Yang et al, α decay of the new isotope Pu227, Physical Review C (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.110.044302
Citation:
Researchers discover new isotope plutonium-227 (2024, October 10)
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The semiconductor CuIn5Se8 is processed into large sheets by solution deposition, in which the material is dissolved in solution then spread over a large area. The process is far more efficient and scalable than standard vapor deposition techniques. Credit: University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering
Standard manufacturing techniques for semiconductor devices—the technologies that make electronics possible—involve processing raw materials at high temperatures in vacuum vessels. This fundamentally limits manufacturing efficiency and scalability.
Processes based on deposition from chemical solutions at lower temperatures and ambient pressure have long been pursued as a more efficient and scalable alternative, but such processes usually result in materials with large numbers of structural defects leading to inferior device performance.
The laboratory of Qing Cao, professor of materials science & engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has developed a process yielding the highest performing transistors from solution-deposited semiconductors to date. However, the research team was surprised to learn that the best semiconductor for this process has higher defect concentrations than its parent material.
“It’s remarkable that even though there are more defects, their organization into ordered defect pairs are the reason our materials have the record-high performances for those made with a solution deposition process,” Cao said.
“We went further than fundamental materials science and showed that functional circuits and systems like displays can be constructed, paving the road toward their adoption in many emerging applications requiring high-performance electronics covering large areas.”
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, outlines a procedure for fabricating devices from the ordered defect compound semiconductor CuIn5Se8 prepared by solution deposition.
They were used to form high-speed logic circuits operating in megahertz and a micro-display with a resolution of 508 pixels per inch. The transistors in the display drove inorganic micro-LEDs, a brighter and more durable alternative to the current standard of organic LEDs but requiring much more powerful transistors to drive each pixel.
Cao believes that the new material and process could scale to support next-generation inorganic micro-LED displays and high-speed printable electronics for health care, smart packaging, and internet of things.
The promise of solution deposition
The extreme conditions required for standard semiconductor manufacturing limit the surface areas of the processed materials. While this is acceptable for chips and microelectronics, it is economically prohibitive for applications requiring many devices coordinated and distributed over a large area, such as electronic displays.
Solution deposition, in which the semiconductors are dissolved in liquid and spread over a target substrate, would not only enable large-area applications but could also make processing more efficient.
“The fact that solution deposition can occur at atmospheric pressure and much lower temperatures alone makes it a desirable alternative to standard vapor deposition in terms of manufacturing throughput, cost and substrate compatibility,” Cao said.
However, vapor deposition techniques have been developed to the point where the processed materials have very few defects, leading to high-performance devices. Before solution deposition is used in commercial processing, it must be developed to the point where the materials it creates have the same performance levels.
A better semiconductor
Cao recalls that copper-indium-selenium materials first drew the attention of his lab for their tunability. Changing the exact proportions of each element in the material allowed a vast material design space for them to realize effective solar cells with a copper-indium-selenium ratio of 0.9:1:2.
“The thought was, ‘We have control over the material proportions, so can we adjust them to make good semiconductors for electronics instead of good solar cells?'” Cao said.
“We developed a solution deposition process for these materials, and we experimented with the proportions until we found a material good for electronics purposes, which has a copper-indium-selenium ratio of 1:5:8. In fact, the combination we found outperformed not only other solution processable semiconductors, but also most semiconductors currently used in displays.”
Semiconductor performance is often quantified with charge mobility, a measure of how easily electrons move through the material when voltage is applied. Compared to amorphous silicon semiconductors used in large LCD displays, the researchers’ material CuIn5Se8 has a mobility 500-times greater. Compared to metal oxide semiconductors used in state-of-the-art organic LED displays, the new material’s mobility is four times greater.
The mobility of CuIn5Se8 is comparable to low-temperature polycrystalline silicon which is used in smartphone displays. However, polycrystalline silicon processing requires laser annealing, making it difficult to scale up and include in larger devices. Solution-deposited CuIn5Se8 could facilitate larger high-performance displays.
More defects, surprisingly
The researchers’ next step was figuring out why CuIn5Se8 performs so well. They consulted Jian-Min Zuo, professor of materials science & engineering in Grainger Engineering and an expert in material characterization.
“Generally, as material scientists, we think that better performing materials have fewer defects, and that’s what we expected initially,” Cao said.
“But then, professor Zuo got back to us after using transmission electron microscopy to observe the microscopic structure. It turned out that there were not only more defects than the parent compound, but likely two types of defects co-existing.”
To resolve the apparent contradiction, the researchers turned to theorist André Schleife, professor of materials science & engineering in Grainger Engineering.
By simulating the new copper-indium-selenium material, Schleife’s group found that the two types of defects in CuIn5Se8 can combine to form a material system called an ordered defect compound. In such systems, different types of material defects organize into a regular pattern and “cancel out,” leading to an improved charge mobility.
A path to printing high-speed electronics and higher-performance displays
The researchers demonstrated the capabilities of their process by using their new defect-tolerant copper-indium-selenium semiconductors to construct a display together with gallium nitride-based micro-LEDs. The CuIn5Se8 material formed the basis of high-performance transistors which operated 8-by-8-micron LED pixels, closely packed to a resolution of 508 pixels per inch.
“While Organic LEDs are the standard in high-performance displays, LEDs based on inorganic substances such as gallium nitride are emerging as a faster, higher-brightness, and more energy efficient alternative,” Cao explained.
“However, since they are brighter, they require high-power electronics to operate and it is especially challenging if we would like to squeeze them within a smaller footprint for high resolution. We demonstrated that our new semiconductor is up to the task, and we’ve shown that it can be efficiently manufactured with solution deposition.”
In addition to driving LEDs, these transistors can be integrated to form logic circuits, again offering much better performance compared to what is constructed on other solution processable semiconductors. These circuits can operate at megahertz with delay down to 75 nanoseconds.
The compatibility with low-cost solution deposition processes without sacrificing performance is promising for future printable electronics. They could find use in continuous wellness monitoring, smart packing with integrated sensing and computing, and affordable internet of things devices.
Cao notes that while the process is sufficiently developed that it could be commercialized, they are holding off until it can be made more environmentally friendly.
“The process is currently based on hydrazine, which is used as rocket fuel,” he said. “It could be used in an industrial setting, but we first want to modify the process to use chemicals that are safer to work with and leave a smaller environmental footprint.”
More information:
Hsien-Nung Wang et al, Solution-processable ordered defect compound semiconductors for high-performance electronics, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adr8636
Citation:
Ordered defects enhance solution-deposited semiconductors enabling larger high-performance displays (2024, October 10)
retrieved 10 October 2024
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