Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have invented a new way to align 3D semiconductor chips by shining a laser through concentric metalenses patterned on the chips to produce a hologram. Their work, published in Nature Communications, can help to lower the cost of producing 2D semiconductor chips, enable 3D photonic and electronic chips, and may pave the way for other low-cost, compact sensors.

A historical supernova documented by Chinese and Japanese astronomers in 1181 has been lost for centuries, until very recently. Yet, the newly found remnant shows some stunning characteristics that are puzzling astronomers. Now, it surrenders its secrets. A team led by Tim Cunningham from the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, and Ilaria Caiazzo, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), provides the first detailed study of the supernova’s structure and speed of expansion in 3D. The study is now published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Using the SOLenoid Spectrometer Apparatus for ReactIon Studies (SOLARIS), a research team created a reaction that added a neutron to silicon-32—a long-lived isotope—creating silicon-33 and comparing the experimental results with shell model calculations. Ben Kay, experimental nuclear-structure physicist at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), and Daniel Bazin, research professor at FRIB, led the team. The first findings from SOLARIS experiments have been published in Physics Letters B.

University of Washington researchers created MobiPrint, a mobile 3D printer that can automatically measure a room and print objects onto the floor. The team’s graphic interface lets users design objects in a space that the robot has mapped out. The prototype, which the team built on a modified consumer vacuum robot, can add a range of objects to rooms.