Heaven is in the Cloud in this new tome. Paul McEuen watches in wonder. © 2019, Nature.

This article describes a highly parallel event driven interface between a Pixel Array Detector (PAD) and its processing electronics. The method used was originally developed for the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) X-ray Pixel Array detector to allow for real-time processing of X-ray image data on its processing FPGA. This interface potentially allows for entirely asynchronous data transfer off the detector at rates exceeding 110Gbps and operates without the need for a constantly running clock.

For centuries, the scientific discovery process has been based on systematic human observation and analysis of natural phenomena1. Today, however, automated instrumentation and large-scale data acquisition are generating datasets of such large volume and complexity as to defy conventional scientific methodology. Radically different scientific approaches are needed, and machine learning (ML) shows great promise for research fields such as materials science2–5.

Motivated by recent experiments, we model the dynamics of bright solitons formed by cold gases in quasi-1D traps. A dynamical variational Ansatz captures the far-from-equilibrium excitations of these solitons. Due to a separation of scales, the radial and axial modes decouple, allowing for closed-form approximations for the dynamics. We explore how soliton dynamics influence atom loss and find that the time-averaged loss is largely insensitive to the degree of excitation.

We report that atomic-layer alloying (intermixing) at a Pt/Co interface can increase, by approximately 30%, rather than degrade the interfacial spin transparency, and thereby strengthen the efficiency of the dampinglike spin-orbit torque arising from the spin Hall effect in the Pt. At the same time, this interfacial alloying substantially reduces fieldlike spin-orbit torque.

Particle storage rings are a rich application domain for online optimization algorithms. The Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) has hundreds of independently powered magnets, making it a high-dimensional test-problem for algorithmic tuning. We investigate algorithms that restrict the search space to a small number of linear combinations of parameters ("knobs") which contain most of the effect on our chosen objective (the vertical emittance), thus enabling efficient tuning.

In terrestrial instruments for X-ray emission analysis (e.g. X-ray fluorescence, electron microprobe) the angle of excitation and the angle of characteristic X-ray emission by samples are typically well-defined. This is not the case for the Mars rovers’ alpha particle X-ray spectrometers, necessitating use of “effective” angles in any fundamental parameters approach to spectrum fitting and derivation of element concentrations.

Swing in a crew boat, a good jazz riff, a fluid conversation: these tasks require extracting sensory information about how others flow in order to mimic and respond. To determine what factors influence coordination, we build an environment to manipulate incoming sensory information by combining virtual reality and motion capture. We study how people mirror the motion of a human avatar’s arm as we occlude the avatar. We efficiently map the transition from successful mirroring to failure using Gaussian process regression.

In cuprates, the strong correlations in proximity to the antiferromagnetic Mott insulating state give rise to an array of unconventional phenomena beyond high-temperature superconductivity. Developing a complete description of the ground-state evolution is crucial to decoding the complex phase diagram. Here we use the structure of broken translational symmetry, namely, d-form factor charge modulations in (Bi,Pb)2(Sr,La)2CuO6+δ as a probe of the ground-state reorganization that occurs at the transition from truncated Fermi arcs to a large Fermi surface.

The routine atomic resolution structure determination of single particles is expected to have profound implications for probing structure-function relationships in systems ranging from energy-storage materials to biological molecules. Extremely bright ultrashort-pulse X-ray sources - X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) - provide X-rays that can be used to probe ensembles of nearly identical nanoscale particles.