Research & Development

Magnets to Control Prosthetic Limbs

For people with amputation who have prosthetic limbs, one of the greatest challenges is controlling the prosthesis so that it moves the same way a natural limb would. Most prosthetic limbs are controlled using electromyography, a way of recording electrical activity from the muscles, but this approach provides only limited control of the prosthesis. […]

News

CFS Blazes Path to Fusion Power with Powerful Magnet and $1.8 Billion Funding 

With more than $1.8 billion in blue-ribbon investor funding and successful demonstrations of the practicality of a record-powerful magnet, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a spinoff from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is trailblazing a path toward commercializing fusion energy. It plans to reach the long-coveted destination in the early 2030s. Two big steps were accomplished recently – one involves money, the other technology using high-temperature superconducting tape. […]

Research & Development

Lighting Up Ultrafast Magnetism in a Metal Oxide

What happens when very short pulses of laser light strike a magnetic material? A large international collaboration led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory set out to answer this very question. As they just reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the laser suppressed magnetic order across the entire material for several picoseconds, or trillionths of a second […]

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Peer into the Future of Magnetics for Energy at ARPA-E Summit 

Magnetics technology plays a key role in much of today’s energy research – looking for breakthroughs in electric propulsion for aviation, high-temperature superconductors, fusion energy, machine modeling for power magnetics, new embedded cooling and winding topologies for improving permanent-magnet motors, even magnetic resonance imaging of crop roots. Visitors to the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit & Technology Showcase can explore a fascinating array of these and meet the scientists behind them, as well as many other aspects of energy R&D. It will be held in Denver in May. This article highlights some of the magnetic-related projects. […]