AI Weirdness: the strange side of machine learning

Tag: scanning electron microscope

Total 75 Posts
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On the right: a photonic nanostructure, used in researching new light-based ways to make computers communicate faster. On the left: a single human hair (oops). Fortunately, according to Dr. Felipe Vallini of UCSD (who made and imaged this structure): “A hair hit my device, but he is still fine!”
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A nano-lollipop?  This is a tiny glass ball on a tiny stick made of polymer, a partially-completed nano-sized chemical sensor made by then-grad-student Matthew Chen.  It’s on its way to becoming a nano-torch [http://lewisandquark.tumblr.com/post/92218390187/this-is-a-nanotorch-which-is-an-ultra-sensitive] , which can detect minute concentrations of chemicals due to
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This is a nanotorch, which is an ultra-sensitive chemical detector, thanks to its ability to concentrate light.  In the intense light fields at the torch’s top, a normally-weak light-based chemical fingerprinting technique (Raman spectroscopy) becomes millions of times stronger.  More-sensitive Raman fingerprinting can allow us to detect trace contaminants
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When a nanolaser casts a shadow, the grad student gets 6 more weeks of fabrication. The pillar in the middle is one of the nanolasers our lab makes.  It’s supposed to be a single column all by itself, roughly cylindrical with a bit of a funky coke bottle shape,
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Oops.  When we’re making nano-devices, chaos is usually bad.  I named this spot “The Barrens”. It’s supposed to be a single straight waveguide (basically, a pipe for light) stretching off into infinity.  Instead, this spot got scratched partway through the fabrication process, leaving behind a chaotic landscape that
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The cliffs of insanity?  Rising an awe-inspiring 1.5 microns above the wave-lashed sea (about 1/100 the thickness of a sheet of printer paper), these cliffs were formed when high-energy plasma ate away a layer of semiconductor.  All that was left behind was this island, protected by a glassy
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Like a tiny shiny mountain, this nanolaser and the area around it is coated in a layer of blobby silver.  The silver serves as a mirror that keeps the laser light bouncing around inside the laser’s light-amplifying interior, generating more and more copies of itself.  A tiny percentage of
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A nanoscale landscape, peopled with little pillars.  Each of these would fit easily inside a single cell.  They were created out of semiconductor (the same sort that can be made into lasers), when a high-energy plasma ate away everything that wasn’t protected. Each little pillar has a cap on
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A Devil’s Tower-like monument rises above a sea of bubbles.  It’s just another day in the life of a nanolaser researcher. The tower is a microscopic laser in the process of being built - here, it’s shown after it was carved out of a flat sheet of
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The one on the left is a nanolaser, carved by high-energy plasma and strong acid, and invisible to the naked eye.  The one on the right is a hoodoo, carved by wind and rain, and is approximately 20 million times larger. And about 60 million times older. The reason they
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