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The rare earths (REs) are a family of 17 elements that exhibit pronounced chemical similarities as a group, while individually expressing distinctive and varied electronic properties. These atomistic electronic properties are extraordinarily useful and motivate the application of REs in many technologies and devices. From their discovery to the present day, a major challenge faced by chemists has been the separation of RE elements, which has evolved from tedious crystallization to highly engineered solvent extraction schemes. The increasing incorporation and dependence of REs in technology have raised concerns about their sustainability and motivated recent studies for improved separations to achieve a circular RE economy.

Digital communicational technologies, such as WhatsApp, have been part of schools both before and during the pandemic. This article explores the normative emergence of being a student, a parent, and a teacher in the use of parents’ WhatsApp groups. In Chile, this digital application is widely used by the population, and it is particularly important for school communities. Based on interviews conducted with teachers and parents, and a theoretical approach based on science and technology studies, the results show that students are constantly labeled as “good” or “bad” without nuance, which produces stereotypes, and parents are also labeled in a binary way, with one group of alarmists and one of relaxed parents, where counter criticisms emerge, while teachers are seen as an extension of the schools and are expected to be constantly present. Digital communication technologies mediate these interactions and open up a new level of interaction, with standards and meanings enabled by the features of the application. We discuss these results, emphasizing that the normativities of these becomings are intertwined in the digital sphere, and using a mapping visualization of the analysis, we show how normativity acts ubiquitously and produces constantly changing expectations of how one should be for those in the group. The mapping exercise shows that the main relationship between the three becomings is emotion, so we conclude that, on the understanding that affect exceeds individuality and represents intensities online, normativities are also incorporated as affective responses in the parents’ WhatsApp group.

The recent development of hybrid systems based on superconducting circuits provides the possibility of engineering quantum sensors that exploit different degrees of freedom. Quantum magnonics, which aims to control and read out quanta of collective spin excitations in magnetically ordered systems, provides opportunities for advances in both the study of magnetism and the development of quantum technologies. Using a superconducting qubit as a quantum sensor, we report the detection of a single magnon in a millimeter-sized ferrimagnetic crystal with a quantum efficiency of up to 0.71. The detection is based on the entanglement between a magnetostatic mode and the qubit, followed by a single-shot measurement of the qubit state. This proof-of-principle experiment establishes the single-photon detector counterpart for magnonics.

Operating across a wide temperature range is a priority for thermoelectric materials Thermoelectric technology can directly and reversibly convert heat to electrical energy. Although thermoelectric energy conversion will never be as efficient as a steam engine ( 1 ), improving thermoelectric performance can potentially make a technology commercially competitive. Thermoelectric conversion efficiency is estimated by the so-called dimensionless figure of merit, ZT = S 2 σ T /κ, where S , σ, T , and κ denote the Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity, working temperature, and thermal conductivity, respectfully . These parameters are strongly coupled, and improving the final ZT is challenging as a result. Strategies for boosting thermoelectric performance include nanostructuring, band engineering, nanomagnetic compositing, high-throughput screening, and others ( 2 ). Many of these strategies create a high ZT in a narrow range of temperatures, limiting the overall energy conversion. Finding materials with wider operating temperature ranges may require rethinking development strategies.

Feedback is the act that aims to transmit to students a set of considerations and evaluations on the development of academic activities. There are several types of feedback according to the pedagogical intentionality of this and in a virtual learning context, teachers have to use technological tools to transmit feedback. This research aims to: 1) describe the type of feedback that teachers develop, and 2) explore the technological tools they use and recommend. À descriptive-explanatory quantitative research was designed, applying an instrument to 28 teachers which consisted of 25 items distributed in 4 dimensions: 1) information about the participants, 2) the feedback developed by the teachers, 3) technological tools used to transmit feedback and 4) the tools recommended to transmit feedback. Among the results, the following stand out: a) the predominant type of feedback is that of failures and successes for the achievement of learning objectives b) e-mail and discussion forum are the main tools used and recommended, с) the more technological training, the more teachers will diversify the technological tools. The conclusions confirm the hypotheses put forward: teachers give feedback to transmit failures and successes, basically use the discussion forum and e-mail, and tend to recommend the same technological tools while claiming to need more technological training.

Chemical advances are increasing the proportion of polymer waste that can be recycled The environmental consequences of plastic solid waste are visible in the ever-increasing levels of global plastic pollution both on land and in the oceans. But although there are important economic and environmental incentives for plastics recycling, end-of-life treatment options for plastic solid waste are in practice quite limited. Presorting of plastics before recycling is costly and time-intensive, recycling requires large amounts of energy and often leads to low-quality polymers, and current technologies cannot be applied to many polymeric materials. Recent research points the way toward chemical recycling methods with lower energy requirements, compatibilization of mixed plastic wastes to avoid the need for sorting, and expanding recycling technologies to traditionally nonrecyclable polymers.

Academia, agencies, and industry will work together Although quantum information science and technology (QIST) is based on fundamental physical tenets familiar to many in the academic world, it remains alien to much of the industrial and engineering workforce that will actually build reliable quantum devices. Industrial investment in QIST has grown considerably in recent years, but the field is at an embryonic stage, and formidable technical challenges to building quantum technologies remain. This confluence of opportunity, need, and challenge suggests that governments will have a substantial role in developing QIST and its ecosystem and in translating the corresponding science and technology for the benefit of society. We outline one such initiative, the U.S. National Quantum Initiative (NQI), and discuss how it can play a vital role in advancing QIST.

Digital technologies have brought changes to the nature and scope of education and led education systems worldwide to adopt strategies and policies for ICT integration. The latter brought about issues regarding the quality of teaching and learning with ICTs, especially concerning the understanding, adaptation, and design of the education systems in accordance with current technological trends. These issues were emphasized during the recent COVID-19 pandemic that accelerated the use of digital technologies in education, generating questions regarding digitalization in schools. Specifically, many schools demonstrated a lack of experience and low digital capacity, which resulted in widening gaps, inequalities, and learning losses. Such results have engendered the need for schools to learn and build upon the experience to enhance their digital capacity and preparedness, increase their digitalization levels, and achieve a successful digital transformation. Given that the integration of digital technologies is a complex and continuous process that impacts different actors within the school ecosystem, there is a need to show how these impacts are interconnected and identify the factors that can encourage an effective and efficient change in the school environments. For this purpose, we conducted a non-systematic literature review. The results of the literature review were organized thematically based on the evidence presented about the impact of digital technology on education and the factors that affect the schools’ digital capacity and digital transformation. The findings suggest that ICT integration in schools impacts more than just students’ performance; it affects several other school-related aspects and stakeholders, too. Furthermore, various factors affect the impact of digital technologies on education. These factors are interconnected and play a vital role in the digital transformation process. The study results shed light on how ICTs can positively contribute to the digital transformation of schools and which factors should be considered for schools to achieve effective and efficient change.

The increasing digitalization of economies has highlighted the importance of digital transformation and how it can help businesses stay competitive in the market. However, disruptive changes not only occur at the company level; they also have environmental, societal, and institutional implications. This is the reason why during the past two decades the research on digital transformation has received growing attention, with a wide range of topics investigated in the literature. The following aims to provide insight regarding the current state of the literature on digital transformation (DT) by conducting a systematic literature review. An analysis of co-occurrence using the software VOSviewer was conducted to graphically visualize the literature’s node network. Approached this way, the systematic literature review displays major research avenues of digital transformation that consider technology as the main driver of these changes. This paper qualitatively classifies the literature on digital business transformation into three different clusters based on technological, business, and societal impacts. Several research gaps identified in the literature on DT are proposed as futures lines of research which could provide useful insights to the government and private sectors in order to adapt to the disruptive changes found in business as a result of this phenomenon, as well as to reduce its negative impacts on society and the environment.

Plasmonics provides a possible route to overcome both the speed limitations of electronics and the critical dimensions of photonics. We present an all-plasmonic 116–gigabits per second electro-optical modulator in which all the elements—the vertical grating couplers, splitters, polarization rotators, and active section with phase shifters—are included in a single metal layer. The device can be realized on any smooth substrate surface and operates with low energy consumption. Our results show that plasmonics is indeed a viable path to an ultracompact, highest-speed, and low-cost technology that might find many applications in a wide range of fields of sensing and communications because it is compatible with and can be placed on a wide variety of materials.