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Category: computing – Page 21

University at Albany researchers at the RNA Institute are pioneering new methods for designing and assembling DNA nanostructures, enhancing their potential for real-world applications in medicine, materials science and data storage.

Their latest findings demonstrate a novel ability to assemble these structures without the need for and controlled cooling. They also demonstrate successful assembly of unconventional “buffer” substances including nickel. These developments, published in the journal Science Advances, unlock new possibilities in DNA nanotechnology.

DNA is most commonly recognized for its role in storing genetic information. Composed of base pairs that can easily be manipulated, DNA is also an excellent material for constructing nanoscale objects. By “programming” the base pairs that make up DNA molecules, scientists can create precise structures as small as a few nanometers that can be engineered into shapes with intricate architectures.

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With today’s data rates of only a few hundred megabytes per second, access to digital information remains relatively slow. Initial experiments have already shown a promising new strategy: Magnetic states can be read out by short current pulses, whereby recently discovered spintronic effects in purpose-built material systems could remove previous speed restrictions.

Researchers at HZDR and TU Dortmund University are now providing proof of the feasibility of such ultrafast data sources. Instead of , they use ultrashort , thereby enabling the read-out of magnetic structures within picoseconds, as they report in the journal Nature Communications.

“We now can determine the magnetic orientation of a material much quicker with light-induced current pulses,” explains Dr. Jan-Christoph Deinert of HZDR’s Institute of Radiation Physics. For their experiments, the physicist and his team employed light that is invisible to the human eye—so-called terahertz radiation.

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A small team of computational and evolutionary biologists from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhongshan Hospital and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, reports that unique lactase genes carried by about 25% of East Asian people may have been inherited from Neanderthals.

In their study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group compared the of thousands of people of African, East Asian and European descent against one another and then against Neanderthal genes.

Prior research has shown that many people of European descent carry genes that allow them to easily digest the sugars (lactose) present in milk, in sharp contrast to people of East Asian descent, who tend to have a high percentage of . However, in this new effort, the research team found unique versions of the lactase gene in some East Asian people along with evidence that they may have come from interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals thousands of years ago.

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Like engineers who design high-performance Formula One race cars, scientists want to create high-performance plasmas in twisty fusion systems known as stellarators. Achieving this performance means that the plasma must retain much of its heat and stay within its confining magnetic fields.

To ease the creation of these plasmas, physicists have created a new computer code that could speed up the design of the complicated magnets that shape the plasma, making stellarators simpler and more affordable to build.

Known as QUADCOIL, the code helps scientists rule out plasma shapes that are stable but require magnets with overly complicated shapes. With this information, scientists can instead devote their efforts to designing stellarators that can be built affordably.

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Quantum Internet Alliance (QIA) researchers at TU Delft, QuTech, University of Innsbruck, INRIA and CNRS recently announced the creation of the first operating system designed for quantum networks: QNodeOS. The research, published in Nature, marks a major step forward in transforming quantum networking from a theoretical concept to a practical technology that could revolutionize the future of the internet.

“The goal of our research is to bring quantum network technology to all. With QNodeOS we’re taking a big step forward. We’re making it possible—for the first time—to program and execute applications on a quantum network easily,” says Prof. Dr. Stephanie Wehner, Professor of Quantum Computer Science at TU Delft’s quantum technology research institute QuTech, who led the study. “Our work also creates a framework opening entirely new areas of quantum computer science research.”

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Simulations of quantum many-body systems are an important goal for nuclear and high-energy physics. Many-body problems involve systems that consist of many microscopic particles interacting at the level of quantum mechanics. They are much more difficult to describe than simple systems with just two particles. This means that even the most powerful conventional computers cannot simulate these problems.

Quantum computing has the potential to address this challenge using an approach called quantum simulation. To succeed, these simulations need theoretical approximations of how quantum computers represent many-body systems. In research on this topic, at the University of Washington developed a new framework to systematically analyze the interplay of these approximations. They showed that the impact of such approximations can be minimized by tuning simulation parameters.

The study is published in the journal Physical Review A.

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Quantum systems don’t just transition between phases—they do so in ways that defy classical intuition.

A new experiment has directly observed these “dissipative phase transitions” (DPTs), revealing how quantum states shift under carefully controlled conditions. This breakthrough could unlock powerful new techniques for stabilizing quantum computers and sensors, making them more resilient and precise than ever before.

Quantum phase transitions: a new frontier.

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Glen Anderson’s created an analog computer that uses water to demonstrate digital logic

A computer that uses water instead of electricity? That’s what Glen Anderson and his daughter, Dale, are demonstrating at Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend. He invites kids to fill buckets and dump them into one of four water tanks. On Friday, I asked him how it was going. “I am adding 1 and 1 but getting 1,” he said. Something was wrong and he was working to fix it.

Glen said his goal for the project was to demystify how computers “think”

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Quantum entanglement is a fundamental phenomenon in nature and one of the most intriguing aspects of quantum mechanics. It describes a correlation between two particles, such that measuring the properties of one instantly reveals those of the other, no matter how far apart they are. This unique property has been harnessed in applications such as quantum computing and quantum communication.

A common method for generating entanglement is through a , which produces with entangled polarizations via spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC): if one photon is measured to be horizontally polarized, the other will always be vertically polarized, and vice versa.

Meanwhile, metasurfaces—ultrathin optical devices—are known for their ability to encode vast amounts of information, allowing the creation of high-resolution holograms. By combining metasurfaces with nonlinear crystals, researchers can explore a promising approach to enhancing the generation and control of entangled photon states.

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Histone proteins provide essential structural support for DNA in chromosomes, acting as spools around which DNA strands wrap. These proteins have been well studied, but most current tools to study gene expression rely on RNA sequencing. Histone RNA is unique in that its structure prevents the RNA molecules from being detected by current methods.

Thus, the expression of histone genes may be significantly underestimated in tumor samples. The researchers hypothesized that the increased proliferation of cancer cells leads to a very elevated expression, or hypertranscription, of histones to meet the added demands of cell replication and division.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers used CUTAC profiling to examine and map RNAPII, which transcribes DNA into precursors of messenger RNA. They studied 36 FFPE samples from patients with meningioma – a common and benign brain tumor – and used a novel computational approach to integrate this data with nearly 1,300 publicly available clinical data samples and corresponding clinical outcomes.

In tumor samples, the RNAPII enzyme signals found on histone genes were reliably able to distinguish between cancer and normal samples.

RNAPII signals on histone genes also correlated with clinical grades in meningiomas, accurately predicting rapid recurrence as well as the tendency of whole-arm chromosome losses. Using this technology on breast tumor FFPE samples from 13 patients with invasive breast cancer also predicted cancer aggressiveness.

Using a new technology and computational method, researchers have uncovered a biomarker capable of accurately predicting outcomes in meningioma brain tumors and breast cancers.

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