#ultralow

[primepaginequotidiani]

PRIMA PAGINA Marca di Oggi mercoledì, 23 ottobre 2024

[michaelgabrill]

Breaking the Scaling Limits: New Ultralow-noise Superconducting Camera for Exoplanet Searches

When imaging faint objects such as distant stars or exoplanets, capturing every last bit of light is crucial to get the most out of a scientific mission. These cameras must be extremely low-noise, and be able to detect the smallest quantities of light—single photons.  Superconducting cameras excel in both of these criteria, but have historically […] from NASA https://ift.tt/05TRBqs

[labotronicsscientific]

Labotronics Scientific listed on ezlocal.com

Hello everyone we are on ezlocal.com please like and add a review which will be very helpful. Please find the link

[bansuvs]

phew.

[mustainegf]

hi if you're uncomfortable with this please feel free to ignore

any era james with a reader with scars on her arms? shes really self conscious about them and cries because of how they look and how people see her, maybe someone made a comment about them earlier and shes extra upset about it and james holds her and reassures her she's beautiful and that her scars dont define her and whatnot? just comforting her and holding her close and then maybe they fall asleep cuddled up?

thank you <3

Totally comfortable with this! I have struggled in the past with this sorta stuff and I want to bring people any sort of comfort

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: mention of self harm, scars

𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐋 𝐌𝐄 ¹⁹⁸⁵

The evening was very late, and the house dead silent. James had been out with the guys no doubt talking music and downing beer after beer. I sat on his bed, my head running with thoughts and feelings that seemed to eat me alive.

The next thing I knew, the first drops of tears had already fallen, and then just dissolved into my hands, sobbing.

I didn't hear the door open, but the change in the air told me James had just walked in. He took heavy footsteps. He saw me instantly, and without a word, he shut the door and locked it. The click of the lock echoed in the room.

He sat beside me on the bed and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. His scent, leather, smoke, and something so… him, swallowed me, and I felt like for a moment, I could breathe again.

"Hey, hey, what's wrong?" he whispered in my ear, his voice ultralow. I nodded, shaking my head and trying to get a hold on myself, but the tears just wouldn't stop. "Come on, talk to me. Please, babe."

"I'm fine," I choked out, but even I didn't believe myself. James wasn't having it either. He pulled me tighter, his hand rubbing my back in slow.

"You're not okay," he said gently. "You’re crying, and I hate seeing you cry, baby, you know that. Please tell me what's going on."

I wanted to say, but somehow the words didn't leave my throat. How to explain, the hurt, the embarrassment? I couldn't stand that look of disappointment in his eyes.

James kept rocking me, murmuring sweet words. "You can tell me anything, you know that."

He finally cracked my walls. I took a deep, shaky breath, trying to steady myself. "It's… it's something Lars said."

James's body stressed a little. "What did he say?"

I swallowed again, the lump in my throat swelling. "It's nothing, really. He was just… teasing me."

"What about?" he pressed. I could sense him getting frustrated, not with me, but the situation. All he wanted was to understand, to help.

I began to cry again, and I knew I needed to be honest with him. I loved him too much to withhold this from him now. I pulled back a little, looking down to my lap. "He was making fun of my scars."

James was silent a sec, his confusion palpable to me. "What scars? What do you mean?"

I took a deeper breath, almost painful with how far I reached into my lungs. I rolled up my pant leg, revealing the crisscrossing lines of healed white and pink scars that covered the area from my leg down to my ankle. I couldn't bring myself to look at James, I was terrified of the heartbreak I might see in his eyes.

His reaction was immediate, and he gasped, not loud, not dramatic, but every ounce of air left his body in the second.

"Oh my God," he whispered, his fingers delicately drew along the scars. "Why… why didn't you tell me?"

I looked away, shame raining down on me. "I didn't want you to think that I'm… weak, o-or ugly…”

He cupped my face in his hands, forcing me to look into his eyes. In them, I saw the pain but also the love.

"You're not weak. God, and these,” he pointed a finger down on my scarred leg. “These make you strong. And THAT is beautiful…” he watched me with almost teary eyes. “I'm just. I'm scared for you. I don't want you to hurt yourself..."

"I'm sorry," I whispered, the tears falling harder now and soaking my shirt and falling to his blanket. "I didn't mean for you to find out like this.”

James pulled me right back into his arms. This time, he held me even closer, and I could feel just how fast his heart was going. "Don't be sorry… I just wish I'd known sooner."

He soothed my bruised heart. We talked for hours, James asking me tender questions, really trying to understand what I had gone through. James made me feel safer than anyone ever had.

"I'll talk to Lars," he promised, planting a kiss on my forehead. "He didn't have the right to say that to you. I'll let him know that."

I nodded. "Thank you, Jamie."

James kissed the top of my head again and his lips seemed to rest there. "I love you," he whispered.

“Even the sc—“

I couldn’t even get my words out before he was shushing me again.

“Even your scars, baby.”

[cipheramnesia]

I'm fascinated that a movie called Killer Piñata can both underwhelm so much while exceeding my expectations. It's very clearly a microbudget movie but managing its resources so well that everything looks and feels several orders of magnitude better quality than most microbudget films. It takes its time building up to the murderous piñata rage and developing characters, competently sets up the premise without it feeling like stiff actors delivering explainer dialog. Thanks to a little bit of careful camera angles the practical effects look, well not great, but passable and significantly better than budget CGI. It's even got some decent writing ("You'd be the pretties person in the room, if I wasn't here") so overall very interesting to watch in terms of seeing what can be made with an ultralow budget.

That said it also falls into some of the shittier tendencies of horror movies with the black guy dying first, the Nice Guy character, and a tiny little dash of homophobia and transphobia. So, that's disappointing.

Overall interesting for study regardless.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

A simple crystal with ultralow thermal conductivity has applications in thermal insulation and thermoelectrics

An engineering research team led by Professor Yue Chen from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has achieved a remarkable milestone in the realm of thermal transport in crystals. The research highlights the potential of simple crystal structures to achieve low thermal conductivity. This discovery not only underscores the importance of exploring new materials for applications in thermal insulation and thermoelectrics but also calls for further experimental investigations to expand the repertoire of materials with ultralow thermal conductivity. The work is published in the journal Nature Communications. Traditionally, efforts to lower the lattice thermal conductivity of materials have focused on complex material systems, where lower thermal conductivity is typically observed. However, the pursuit of simple crystals with ultralow thermal conductivity has proven to be a challenging task.

Read more.

[jcmarchi]

New transistor’s superlative properties could have broad electronics applications

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/new-transistors-superlative-properties-could-have-broad-electronics-applications/

New transistor’s superlative properties could have broad electronics applications

In 2021, a team led by MIT physicists reported creating a new ultrathin ferroelectric material, or one where positive and negative charges separate into different layers. At the time they noted the material’s potential for applications in computer memory and much more. Now the same core team and colleagues — including two from the lab next door — have built a transistor with that material and shown that its properties are so useful that it could change the world of electronics.

Although the team’s results are based on a single transistor in the lab, “in several aspects its properties already meet or exceed industry standards” for the ferroelectric transistors produced today, says Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics, who led the work with professor of physics Raymond Ashoori. Both are also affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory.

“In my lab we primarily do fundamental physics. This is one of the first, and perhaps most dramatic, examples of how very basic science has led to something that could have a major impact on applications,” Jarillo-Herrero says.

Says Ashoori, “When I think of my whole career in physics, this is the work that I think 10 to 20 years from now could change the world.”

Among the new transistor’s superlative properties:

It can switch between positive and negative charges — essentially the ones and zeros of digital information — at very high speeds, on nanosecond time scales. (A nanosecond is a billionth of a second.)

It is extremely tough. After 100 billion switches it still worked with no signs of degradation.

The material behind the magic is only billionths of a meter thick, one of the thinnest of its kind in the world. That, in turn, could allow for much denser computer memory storage. It could also lead to much more energy-efficient transistors because the voltage required for switching scales with material thickness. (Ultrathin equals ultralow voltages.)

The work is reported in a recent issue of Science. The co-first authors of the paper are Kenji Yasuda, now an assistant professor at Cornell University, and Evan Zalys-Geller, now at Atom Computing. Additional authors are Xirui Wang, an MIT graduate student in physics; Daniel Bennett and Efthimios Kaxiras of Harvard University; Suraj S. Cheema, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and an affiliate of the Research Laboratory of Electronics; and Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.

What they did

In a ferroelectric material, positive and negative charges spontaneously head to different sides, or poles. Upon the application of an external electric field, those charges switch sides, reversing the polarization. Switching the polarization can be used to encode digital information, and that information will be nonvolatile, or stable over time. It won’t change unless an electric field is applied. For a ferroelectric to have broad application to electronics, all of this needs to happen at room temperature.

The new ferroelectric material reported in Science in 2021 is based on atomically thin sheets of boron nitride that are stacked parallel to each other, a configuration that doesn’t exist in nature. In bulk boron nitride, the individual layers of boron nitride are instead rotated by 180 degrees.

It turns out that when an electric field is applied to this parallel stacked configuration, one layer of the new boron nitride material slides over the other, slightly changing the positions of the boron and nitrogen atoms. For example, imagine that each of your hands is composed of only one layer of cells. The new phenomenon is akin to pressing your hands together then slightly shifting one above the other.

“So the miracle is that by sliding the two layers a few angstroms, you end up with radically different electronics,” says Ashoori. The diameter of an atom is about 1 angstrom.

Another miracle: “nothing wears out in the sliding,” Ashoori continues. That’s why the new transistor could be switched 100 billion times without degrading. Compare that to the memory in a flash drive made with conventional materials. “Each time you write and erase a flash memory, you get some degradation,” says Ashoori. “Over time, it wears out, which means that you have to use some very sophisticated methods for distributing where you’re reading and writing on the chip.” The new material could make those steps obsolete.

A collaborative effort

Yasuda, the co-first author of the current Science paper, applauds the collaborations involved in the work. Among them, “we [Jarillo-Herrero’s team] made the material and, together with Ray [Ashoori] and [co-first author] Evan [Zalys-Geller], we measured its characteristics in detail. That was very exciting.” Says Ashoori, “many of the techniques in my lab just naturally applied to work that was going on in the lab next door. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Ashoori notes that “there’s a lot of interesting physics behind this” that could be explored. For example, “if you think about the two layers sliding past each other, where does that sliding start?” In addition, says Yasuda, could the ferroelectricity be triggered with something other than electricity, like an optical pulse? And is there a fundamental limit to the amount of switches the material can make?

Challenges remain. For example, the current way of producing the new ferroelectrics is difficult and not conducive to mass manufacturing. “We made a single transistor as a demonstration. If people could grow these materials on the wafer scale, we could create many, many more,” says Yasuda. He notes that different groups are already working to that end.

Concludes Ashoori, “There are a few problems. But if you solve them, this material fits in so many ways into potential future electronics. It’s very exciting.”

This work was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office, the MIT/Microsystems Technology Laboratories Samsung Semiconductor Research Fund, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Ramon Areces Foundation, the Basic Energy Sciences program of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Extraterrestrial chemistry with earthbound possibilities

Who are we? Why are we here? As the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song suggests, we are stardust, the result of chemistry occurring throughout vast clouds of interstellar gas and dust. To better understand how that chemistry could create prebiotic molecules — the seeds of life on Earth and possibly elsewhere — researchers investigated the role of low-energy electrons created as cosmic radiation traverses through ice particles. Their findings may also inform medical and environmental applications on our home planet.

Undergraduate student Kennedy Barnes will present the team’s results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2024 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in person Aug. 18-22; it features about 10,000 presentations on a range of science topics. 

“The first detection of molecules in space was made by Wellesley College alum Annie Jump Cannon more than a hundred years ago,” says Barnes, who, with fellow undergraduate Rong Wu, led this study at Wellesley, mentored by chemistry professor Christopher Arumainayagam and physics professor James Battat. Since Cannon’s discovery, scientists have been interested in finding out how extraterrestrial molecules form. “Our goal is to explore the relative importance of low-energy electrons versus photons in instigating the chemical reactions responsible for the extraterrestrial synthesis of these prebiotic molecules,” Barnes explains.

The few studies that previously probed this question suggested that both electrons and photons can catalyze the same reactions. Studies by Barnes and colleagues, however, hint that the prebiotic molecule yield from low-energy electrons and photons could be significantly different in space. “Our calculations suggest that the number of cosmic-ray-induced electrons within cosmic ice could be much greater than the number of photons striking the ice,” Barnes explains. “Therefore, electrons likely play a more significant role than photons in the extraterrestrial synthesis of prebiotic molecules.”

Aside from cosmic ice, her research into low-energy electrons and radiation chemistry also has potential applications on Earth. Barnes and colleagues recently studied the radiolysis of water, finding evidence of electron-stimulated release of hydrogen peroxide and hydroperoxyl radicals, which destroy stratospheric ozone and act as damaging reactive oxygen species in cells.

“A lot of our water radiolysis research findings could be used in medical applications and medical simulations,” Barnes shares, offering the example of using high-energy radiation to treat cancer. “I once had a biochemistry professor say that humans are basically bags of water. So, other scientists are investigating how low-energy electrons produced in water affect our DNA molecules.”

She also says the team’s findings are applicable to environmental remediation efforts where wastewater is being treated with high-energy radiation, which produces large numbers of low-energy electrons that are assumed to be responsible for the destruction of hazardous chemicals.

Back to space chemistry, in attempting to better understand prebiotic molecule synthesis, the researchers didn’t limit their efforts to mathematical modeling; they also tested their hypothesis by mimicking the conditions of space in the lab. They use an ultrahigh-vacuum chamber containing an ultrapure copper substrate that they can cool to ultralow temperatures, along with an electron gun that produces low-energy electrons and a laser-driven plasma lamp that produces low-energy photons. The scientists then bombard nanoscale ice films with electrons or photons to see what molecules are produced.

“Although we have previously focused on how this research is applicable to interstellar submicron ice particles, it is also relevant to cosmic ice on a much larger scale, like that of Jupiter’s moon Europa, which has a 20-mile-thick ice shell,” says Barnes.

Thus, she suggests their research will help astronomers understand data from space exploration missions such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope as well as the Europa Clipper, initially expected to launch in October 2024. Barnes hopes that their findings will inspire other researchers to incorporate low-energy electrons into their astrochemistry models that simulate what happens within cosmic ices.

Barnes and colleagues are also varying the molecular composition of ice films and exploring atom addition reactions to see if low-energy electrons can produce other prebiotic chemistries. This work is being performed in collaboration with researchers at the Laboratory for the Study of Radiation and Matter in Astrophysics and Atmospheres in France.

“There’s a lot that we're on the cusp of learning, which I think is really exciting and interesting,” says Barnes, touting what she describes as a new Space Age.

IMAGE: Researchers simulate the conditions of interstellar space with this ultrahigh-vacuum, low-temperature chamber containing an electron source to recreate the seeds of life. Credit Kennedy Barnes

[beardedmrbean]

Georgia, once a self-proclaimed leader in criminal justice reform, is sliding a little further toward its old lock-'em-up ways.

State senators voted 30-17 on Thursday to require cash bail for 30 additional crimes, including 18 that are always or often misdemeanors, leaving Senate Bill 63 only one House vote from passage.

The measure also seeks to limit charitable bail funds or even individuals from bailing multiple people out of jail, reserving that ability only to those who meet legal requirements to be bail bond companies.

ZERO CASH BAIL TO BLAME FOR 'BRAZEN' SMASH AND GRAB ROBBERIES IN LA, POLICE UNION SAYS

The move could strand poor defendants in jail when accused of crimes for which they’re unlikely to ever go to prison. It could also aggravate overcrowding in Georgia's county lockups. It erodes changes that passed nearly unanimously in 2018 under Republican Gov. Nathan Deal that allowed judges to release most people accused of misdemeanors without bail.

It's part of a push by Republicans nationwide to increase reliance on cash bail, even as some Democratic-led jurisdictions end cash bail entirely or dramatically restrict its use. That split was exemplified last year when a court upheld Illinois' plan to abolish cash bail, while voters in Wisconsin approved an amendment to the constitution letting judges consider someone's past convictions for violent crimes before setting bail.

Republican Sen. Randy Robertson of Cataula, a longtime sheriff’s deputy and former state president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said Thursday that the measure is about "making our communities safer." He's argued in pushing the bill since last year that victims feel the justice system doesn’t care about them when suspects are released without cash bail.

But Roy Copeland, a Valdosta lawyer who served on Deal’s Criminal Justice Reform Council, said the measure will cause people accused of misdemeanors to lose their jobs, homes and custody of their children when they get stuck in jail and can't afford bail.

"You're literally taking food out of the mouths of children and adults," Copeland said.

It's not the first time Republicans lengthened the list of crimes in Georgia where the accused is required to post cash or property bail. That list, already at 24, would be expanded further. Bail would be required for a second or later misdemeanor offense of reckless driving or criminal trespass, as well as for any misdemeanor battery.

People would also be required to post bail for failing to appear in court for a traffic ticket if it's their second or later offense. The maximum penalty for failing to appear for a traffic ticket is three days in jail. That's also how long authorities have to bring someone before a judge after they're arrested on a warrant for failing to appear.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has said he wants more restrictive bail conditions. With state lawmakers, but not Kemp, facing voters this year, it could be a sign that Republicans intend to bash their Democratic opponents as soft on crime as they did in 2022. Kemp has also backed other anti-crime proposals, including longer sentences for some criminals.

Some Republican supporters of Deal's push say it's not a betrayal of those years worth of efforts, noting that a Deal-backed provision requiring judges to take account of a person's ability to pay in setting bail remains in law.

"So much of what criminal justice reform was about was trying not to do a one-size-fits-all for every person," said Sen. Brian Strickland, a McDonough Republican. "This preserves the discretion."

But Sen. Josh McLaurin, an Atlanta Democrat, rejected the idea that judges would set ultralow bail amounts, or that bonding companies would be willing to take that business.

"When we says as a matter of law that jail is where we want people to be, and we create structural incentives for people to end up there, then those funnels are going to funnel people there," McLaurin said.

Several Democrats suggested the move to restrict bail funds is related to ongoing prosecutions of protesters against the police and fire training center that Atlanta is building. Those protesters deride the project as "Cop City." Among 61 indictments that Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr won against protesters in September were charges against three people who operated a bail fund.

The Bail Project, a fund which says it has bailed more than 1,500 Georgians out of jail since 2019, questioned the decision to limit groups and people who don't meet the requirements to be bondsmen to bailing out only three people a year in any city or county.

"This is like placing restrictions on a food pantry while claiming to solve hunger," spokesperson Lizzie Tribone said in a statement.

[jasoncanty01]

Engineers teach their 1-milliwatt neural chip to play Doom, say this is serious work yo, everyone nods

By Rich Stanton

"It unloads the clip, but then it figures out that’s not a good strategy." The NDP200 is an ultralow power chip that was not designed for your gaming rig. This thing is designed to essentially monitor video via neural networks while using barely any power and, when it spots something of interest like a person walking past, wake up beefier systems to do the 'real' monitoring. AI boffins being AI boffins, of course, they decided to show off its capabilities by teaching it to play Doom.

Ok this is cool and scary because you could eventually lateral program it to be a machine gun sentry to liquefy anything that farts the wrong way.

[thelonesgroup]

The Election is Over - What's Next for Housing?

It has been an interesting few days, weeks, months, and even years leading up to the election this week. Depending on whether you have been cheering for team red or blue, you may be celebrating, welcoming in a new era, a bit bewildered, or even accepting and looking ahead.

As a real estate professional and steward of homebuilders in this country, my first inclination when anyone is running for any office that has an impact on housing is to determine what their mission is pertaining to it. Housing is currently flirting with a shortage of 5 million homes nationally and is one of our biggest issues that affects cost of living, the economy (as people have less to spend on purchases when there is so much tied up in a house payment), homelessness, security for seniors, and prosperity.

When it looked like it would be a Harris-Trump matchup, I took a hard look at their proposed housing policies. Both agreed that increasing the supply of housing is at a critical point and have ideas for how to ease the burden on housing supply.

I am going to briefly summarize their plans and provide my thoughts regarding what I think needs to be done in the years ahead.

Harris's Policies

Harris focused on increasing the supply of housing by encouraging the building of 3 million housing units. This would help reduce the deficit of 5 million homes that don't currently exist that we need. To do that, her primary method was to expand existing tax credits to make it easier for builders to build affordable and rental housing.

She also proposed a $40 billion fund for innovations in housing construction, affordable home design, and creative financing.

Another goal of hers was to take a look at existing regulation that is limiting construction, although most zoning, permits, and regulation is at the state and local level. That being said, there are currently limitations in terms of financing that is determined at the federal level that can be reconfigured to allow for more middle housing construction. She has indicated that some of her targets would have been reducing red tape for transit-oriented development and office-to-residential conversions.

She also proposed $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers. Although this doesn't actually increase supply - it may make housing more affordable. But without the additional supply of housing, this increased demand may actually cause prices to rise in excess of that $25,000.

Trump's Policies

One of the ways Trump has proposed to reallocate housing supply is to decrease demand by limiting immigration or deporting illegal aliens who are here now. The impact of this policy is not yet clear, and there is concern regarding how a massive deportation will affect the building industry which is already suffering from labor and skill shortages. According to REALTOR.com, a third of the housing market labor force is foreign-born.

Another way he may achieve this is by limiting mortgage access for undocumented immigrants.

He also supports opening more federal lands for housing - both he and Harris supported the idea of utilizing public lands for this purpose. Trump's plan calls for “ultralow tax and ultralow regulation” in order to support large scale housing construction. Trying to match up available public lands with areas of demand is something I foresee as a challenge. According to REALTOR.com, “the federal government owns about 27% of the total land area, but much of that land is located in the Western U.S.” Much of this land is in remote areas. However, I have high hopes that there are areas where this could have a good impact on our housing supply although not quickly as both politicians implied. Infrastructure may take a long time to install. Furthermore, in Washington State, we are hampered by Growth Management Act which curtails density. Even if federal and public lands were opened up, if they were not in areas that each county had slated for development, development would only occur at rural levels. This is a good long-range plan, but not something that will affect us now and even in the next few years.

In addition, he supports removing regulations and permit requirements that drive up the cost of housing, including environmental and safety regulations. The National Association of Homebuilders indicate that nationally, site and building permit fees account for approximately 7.4% of an average new-home cost. However, this will be limited for the same reasons Harris' plan would be - much of permitting and regulation exists at the state and local levels.

In Trump's previous term in office, he created an executive order to create the White House Council on Eliminating Barriers to Affordable Housing Development - the results from this Council could impact future policy. Two points from this have emerged which include changing the affordable housing environmental review process and changes to manufactured home regulations.

Bringing down mortgage rates is another focus of his. Although it is not yet clear how this will be manipulated, this would assist with both general housing costs with resale and in making it more affordable to build.

Trump's platform also calls for tax incentives and support for first-time buyers. It may include tax deductions for mortgage interest, mortgage insurance, or tax credits. But similar to Harris' plan, this may actually result in driving up demand, increasing prices, and essentially erasing this benefit.

Denise's Soapbox (My Top 5)

I was very glad to see that both candidates made housing a priority and I hope the new Trump administration will continue to do so. We have such a deficit of housing which impacts so many other facets of the economy that we need a focused, multi-faceted approach. There are elements of both plans that I believe will help fix what is broken with our housing supply. If I could sit down with President Trump and lay out a plan for fixing the housing shortage, these would be my Top 5:

#1 Remove Barriers that Cause Delays to Getting Initial Approval

There is too much policy and regulation red tape that exists at the state and local levels. This is a national problem and therefore needs a national solution. We don't need to pay a non-profit firm or an internal watch crew to figure this out. There needs to be a state mandate - with consequences - on permitting and processing timelines. Most delays are caused by one or more of these three things:

Lack of permit technicians, planners, and people in the building department OR existing personnel have not dedicated enough time to processing permits (existing personnel are wearing too many hats).

Permit approval process is too segmented and each segment takes too much time - need to streamline.

Too many special reports or studies are needed on properties.

Local government needs to understand how much delays cost every step of the way. This is just one of the reasons the cost of building has gone up - builder carrying costs. Now with interest rates higher, these costs are going to hamper how much risk our builders are willing to take on unless these can be limited.

#2 Remove Costly and Excessive Regulation Causing Barriers to Housing

We live in an exciting time when it comes to housing product innovations. When I am at the International Building Show, I am wowed by all the ways people in other countries are developing products that will help in the construction process or result in a better product for the consumer. However, regulation and red tape keep some of those innovations from coming to the US. We have to get out of our own way.

Additionally, regulation caused by the new energy code, tree ordinances, critical areas ordinances, and more, are driving up the cost of housing - and causing delays that drive up housing costs. We can't keep adding to the Builder Burden - we have to get these under control or perhaps put a pause on some of them - people are in the streets and suffering while we are out measuring tree trunks. Come on, people!

#3 Analyze ALL Government-Mandated Fees Around Housing

My permitting fees have increased an astounding 25% over the last couple of years WITHOUT the benefit of a more-predictable, more-expedient processing timeline. In fact, it has gotten exponentially WORSE. Builders need relief! We can't keep passing these exorbitant fees along to buyers, but we don't have a choice.

According to the Building Industry Association of Washington, it costs approximately $200,000 more to build a home in Washington State than elsewhere due to #1, #2, and #3. Those are costs that builders either have to eat or that get passed along to the buyer. No wonder we can't get enough housing built!

#4 Pre-Approved Plans for Infill Lots

This includes ADUs, DADUs, and small Single Family Residential plans. If a buyer or a builder knows they don't have to wade through the permitting process for the build, there is a lot more certainty in terms of build costs, carrying costs, and build timelines. We must do what we can to eliminate uncertainty and one way we can do that is through pre-approved plans. These plans may be altered for décor like a gingerbread house - the structure is the same, but perhaps the siding and colors can change.

For example, in Washington State, modular and manufactured homes are approved at the state level which essentially means they can be placed anywhere. There is no local permitting that needs to be done on the build, just the land. This same principle can be applied at each state level with federal funding.

NOTE: The above four issues are state and local in nature. But the federal government can provide a mandate and funds to address the issue. For example, the federal government could roll out a program with funding attached, tax incentives, or a combination thereof with stipulations that the fees be used to implement the above objectives. Harris had proposed $40 billion to look at ways to cut costs and improve processes. Something like this could work to achieve the above.

Also, we need to expand tax credits and incentives. All types of housing are needed - permanent supportive housing, partially-supported housing, workforce housing, and luxury homes. It makes sense to provide some sort of sliding scale depending on the type of housing needed per area. For example, King County needs over 300,000 housing units built over the next 20 years and the Washington State Department of Commerce has indicated how much of each economic category is needed. It wouldn't be difficult to create a system of tracking these and once we hit the numbers, that tax credit or incentive goes away.

#5 Institute a Government-Funded Builder Loan Program

Builders have to fight to get money for their projects at market which drives up costs. However, if a lower-interest and lower-fee program were available, builders could build more and housing would be less-expensive.

I have plenty more to say on how the federal government can prioritize housing supply, but the publication timeline is getting too close. So, it will have to wait. But no worries! I have plenty more to say at my upcoming State of the Market class which I am pleased to announce!

Sources

[NPR] Trump-Harris Housing Costs Plan

[Realtor] Donald Trump Will Return to the White House: What His Presidency Means for the Housing Market

[Bi-Partisan Policy] Comparing the Housing Proposals of the 2024 Presidential Campaigns

[NowBam.com] What a Trump Presidency Means for Housing

ANNOUNCING!

REGISTER NOW

The impact of elections is just one of many more important things impacting our industry that I will be covering in more detail at my upcoming 2025 State of the Market. Here are a few other topics I will be covering:

How will a new administration handle our housing shortage?

How will mortgage rates contend with the economy?

What changes can we expect to see with inventory and buyer demand?

How will our comprehensive plans and new housing legislation shape our markets?

How will availability of rentals, a hot legislative topic, impact our market?

What must agents know about second-home and other opportunity markets?

What opportunities are ahead for brokers, builders, and developers?

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By Denise Lones CSP, CMP, M.I.R.M. The founding partner of The Lones Group, Denise Lones has over three decades of experience in the real estate industry. With agent/broker coaching, expertise in branding, lead generation, strategic marketing, business analysis, new home project planning, product development and more, Denise is nationally recognized as the source for all things real estate. With a passion for improvement, Denise has helped thousands of real estate agents, brokers, and managers build their business to unprecedented levels of success, while helping them maintain balance and quality of life.

[labotronicsscientific]

Labotronics listed on hotfrog.com

Hello everyone we are on n49 please like and add a review which will be very helpful. Please find the link

[drcare4u]

FDA Grants Priority Review to Enhertu for HER2-Low and -Ultralow Breast Cancer

The FDA has granted priority review to Enhertu for the potential treatment of HER2-low and HER2-ultralow breast cancer. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted and granted priority review to a supplemental biologics license application for Enhertu (trastuzumab deruxtecan) to treat patients with unresectable or metastatic HER2-low or -ultralow breast cancer treated with at least one…

[materialsscienceandengineering]

High-pressure structure of a unique 2D ferromagnet clarified in recent study

According to research published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, Prof. Ding Junfeng from Institute of Solid State Physics (ISSP), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, together with Prof. Wang Weihua from Nankai University, clarified the high-pressure structure of CrSiTe3, and highlighted the ultralow-frequency Raman spectroscopy when detecting the interlayer coupling on two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals materials.

2D magnetic materials have attracted significant attention owing to their highly tunable physical properties and potential applications in novel spintronics. Some of them can still exhibit intrinsic long-range magnetic order when they are exfoliated even into a few layers, such as ferromagnetic semiconductor CrSiTe3 with a centrosymmetric layered structure.

Both superconductivity and enhancement of ferromagnetism, usually competing for orders, have been observed in CrSiTe3 at high pressure. However, the high-pressure structure of CrSiTe3 is still unclear, setting obstacles in understanding pressure-induced novel physics.

Read more.

[jcmarchi]

Highest-Resolution Single-Photon Superconducting Camera - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/highest-resolution-single-photon-superconducting-camera-technology-org/

Highest-Resolution Single-Photon Superconducting Camera - Technology Org

Having more pixels in a superconducting camera could advance everything from biomedical imaging to astronomical observations.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have built a superconducting camera containing 400,000 pixels — 400 times more than any other device of its type.

With planned improvements, NIST’s new 400,000 single-wire superconducting camera, the highest resolution camera of its type, will have the capability to capture astronomical images under extremely low-light-level conditions. Credit: Image incorporates elements from Pixabay and S. Kelley/NIST.

Superconducting cameras allow scientists to capture very weak light signals, whether from distant objects in space or parts of the human brain. Having more pixels could open up many new applications in science and biomedical research.

The NIST camera is made up of grids of ultrathin electrical wires, cooled to near absolute zero, in which current moves with no resistance until a wire is struck by a photon. In these superconducting-nanowire cameras, the energy imparted by even a single photon can be detected because it shuts down the superconductivity at a particular location (pixel) on the grid. Combining all the locations and intensities of all the photons makes up an image.

The first superconducting cameras capable of detecting single photons were developed more than 20 years ago. Since then, the devices have contained no more than a few thousand pixels — too limited for most applications.

Creating a superconducting camera with a much greater number of pixels has posed a serious challenge because it would become all but impossible to connect every single chilled pixel among many thousands to its own readout wire. The challenge stems from the fact that each of the camera’s superconducting components must be cooled to ultralow temperatures to function properly, and individually connecting every pixel among hundreds of thousands to the cooling system would be virtually impossible.

NIST researchers Adam McCaughan and Bakhrom Oripov and their collaborators at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the University of Colorado Boulder overcame that obstacle by combining the signals from many pixels onto just a few room-temperature readout wires.

A general property of any superconducting wire is that it allows current to flow freely up to a certain maximum “critical” current. To take advantage of that behavior, the researchers applied a current just below the maximum to the sensors.

Under that condition, if even a single photon strikes a pixel, it destroys the superconductivity. The current is no longer able to flow without resistance through the nanowire and is instead shunted to a small resistive heating element connected to each pixel. The shunted current creates an electrical signal that can rapidly be detected.

Borrowing from existing technology, the NIST team constructed the camera to have intersecting arrays of superconducting nanowires that form multiple rows and columns, like those in a tic-tac-toe game. Each pixel — a tiny region centered on the point where individual vertical and horizontal nanowires cross — is uniquely defined by the row and column in which it lies.

That arrangement enabled the team to measure the signals coming from an entire row or column of pixels at a time rather than recording data from each individual pixel, drastically reducing the number of readout wires. To do so, the researchers placed a superconducting readout wire parallel to but not touching the rows of pixels, and another wire parallel to but not touching the columns.

Consider just the superconducting readout wire parallel to the rows. When a photon strikes a pixel, the current shunted into the resistive heating element warms a small part of the readout wire, creating a tiny hotspot. The hotspot, in turn, generates two voltage pulses traveling in opposite directions along the readout wire, which are recorded by detectors at either end.

The difference in time it takes for the pulses to arrive at the end detectors reveals the column in which the pixel resides. A second superconducting readout wire that lies parallel to the columns serves a similar function.

The detectors can discern differences in arrival time of signals as short as 50 trillionths of a second. They can also count up to 100,000 photons a second striking the grid.

Once the team adopted the new readout architecture, Oripov made rapid progress in increasing the number of pixels. Over a matter of weeks, the number jumped from 20,000 to 400,000 pixels. The readout technology can easily be scaled up for even larger cameras, said McCaughan, and a superconducting single-photon camera with tens or hundreds of millions of pixels could soon be available.

Over the next year, the team plans to improve the sensitivity of the prototype camera so that it can capture virtually every incoming photon. That will enable the camera to tackle such low-light endeavors as imaging faint galaxies or planets that lie beyond the solar system, measuring light in photon-based quantum computers, and contributing to biomedical studies that use near-infrared light to peer into human tissue.

The researchers reported their work in the Oct. 26 edition of Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06550-2).

Paper: B.G. Oripov, D.S. Rampini, B. Korzh, J. Allmaras, M.D. Shaw, S.W. Nam and A.N. McCaughan. A superconducting-nanowire single-photon camera with 400,000 pixels. Nature. Oct. 26, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06550-2

Source: NIST

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