- Stanford researchers reported the synthesis of “amorphous diamond,” a super-hard, non-crystalline carbon phase created by compressing micrometer-scale glassy-carbon spheres to ~40 GPa; the material remains quenchable to ambient conditions (Nature Communications paper linked).  
- docl explored whether reversible pressure-induced transitions between crystalline diamond and amorphous diamond could be exploited for nanoscale mechanical memory or actuators, but noted that excessive deformation without heat may irreversibly lock the structure into the amorphous state.  
- Discussion clarified structural differences: glassy carbon is primarily sp²-hybridized with random curvature, whereas amorphous diamond is sp³-rich yet lacks long-range order; both contain distorted bond angles and dangling bonds that influence hardness and energy dissipation.  
- nmz787 highlighted open-source analog-to-digital converter (ADC) work on the Efabless platform—specifically a 10 MHz-clocked SAR ADC in the SkyWater 130 nm PDK—whose designer (Christoph Weiser) performed full FEM electrostatic modeling using a GDS-to-STL-to-STEP-to-mesh toolchain (Elmer/Paraview) and iterated from MPW-6 to MPW-7.  
- kanzure shared Baidu’s “Xueshu” academic search and its AI-assisted paper-help service, along with a Chinese-language overview of how the system parses and summarizes scholarly literature.