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Category: computing – Page 329

Saturn ’s giant moon, Titan, is due to launch in 2027. When it arrives in the mid-2030s, it will begin a journey of discovery that could bring about a new understanding of the development of life in the universe. This mission, called Dragonfly, will carry an instrument called the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), designed to help scientists hone in on the chemistry at work on Titan. It may also shed light on the kinds of chemical steps that occurred on Earth that ultimately led to the formation of life, called prebiotic chemistry.

Titan’s abundant complex carbon-rich chemistry, interior ocean, and past presence of liquid water on the surface make it an ideal destination to study prebiotic chemical processes and the potential habitability of an extraterrestrial environment.

DraMS will allow scientists back on Earth to remotely study the chemical makeup of the Titanian surface. “We want to know if the type of chemistry that could be important for early pre-biochemical systems on Earth is taking place on Titan,” explains Dr. Melissa Trainer of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

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Research using a quantum computer as the physical platform for quantum experiments has found a way to design and characterize tailor-made magnetic objects using quantum bits, or qubits. That opens up a new approach to develop new materials and robust quantum computing.

“With the help of a quantum annealer, we demonstrated a new way to pattern ,” said Alejandro Lopez-Bezanilla, a virtual experimentalist in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lopez-Bezanilla is the corresponding author of a paper about the research in Science Advances.

“We showed that a magnetic quasicrystal lattice can host states that go beyond the zero and one bit states of classical information technology,” Lopez-Bezanilla said. “By applying a to a finite set of spins, we can morph the magnetic landscape of a quasicrystal object.”

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Quantum cloud computing makes quantum computing resources available to organizations, academics and other users through cloud technology.

Cloud-based quantum computers function at greater speeds, with higher computing power than conventional computers, because they employ the principles of quantum physics when solving complex computational problems.

Different types of quantum computers exist, such as quantum annealers, analog quantum simulators and universal quantum computers. Quantum annealers are considered the least powerful among quantum computers but work well to solve optimization problems. Analog quantum simulators, on the other hand, are powerful systems that can solve physics and biochemistry problems.

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The physicists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments that proved the profoundly strange quantum nature of reality. Their experiments collectively established the existence of a bizarre quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, where two widely separated particles appear to share information despite having no conceivable way of communicating.

Entanglement lay at the heart of a fiery clash in the 1930s between physics titans Albert Einstein on the one hand and Niels Bohr and Erwin Schrödinger on the other about how the universe operates at a fundamental level. Einstein believed all aspects of reality should have a concrete and fully knowable existence. All objects — from the moon to a photon of light — should have precisely defined properties that can be discovered through measurement. Bohr, Schrödinger and other proponents of the nascent quantum mechanics, however, were finding that reality appeared to be fundamentally uncertain; a particle does not possess certain properties until the moment of measurement.

Entanglement emerged as a decisive way to distinguish between these two possible versions of reality. The physicist John Bell proposed a decisive thought experiment that was later realized in various experimental forms by Aspect and Clauser. The work proved Schrödinger right. Quantum mechanics was the operating system of the universe.

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Quantum computing systems have the potential to outperform classical computers on some tasks, helping to solve complex real-world problems in shorter times. Research teams worldwide have thus been trying to realize this quantum advantage over traditional computers, by creating and testing different quantum systems.

Researchers at Tsinghua University recently developed a new programmable quantum phononic processor with trapped ions. This processor, introduced in a paper in Nature Physics, could be easier to scale up in size than other previously proposed photonic quantum processors, which could ultimately enable better performances on complex problems.

“Originally, we were interested in the proposal of Scott Aaronson and others about Boson sampling, which might show the quantum advantages of simple linear optics and photons,” Kihwan Kim, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “We were wondering if it is possible to realize it with the in a trapped ion system.”

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Human Cyborg — We’ve all seen Cyborgs in Hollywood blockbusters. But it turns out these fictional beings aren’t so far-fetched.

Human Cyborg (2020)
Director: Jacquelyn Marker.
Writers: Kyle McCabe, Christopher Webb Young.
Stars: Justin Abernethy, Robert Armiger, John Donoghue.
Genre: Documentary.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Also Known As: Cyborg Revolution.
Release Date: 2020 (United States)

Synopsis:
We’ve all seen Cyborgs in Hollywood blockbusters. But it turns out these fictional beings aren’t so far-fetched. In fact, this episode features a true-to-life cyborg, who at four months of age, was the youngest American to be outfitted with a myoelectric hand. And at one ground-breaking engineering facility, engineers are developing biotechnologies that can even further enhance high-tech like this by giving mechanical prosthetics something incredible: the physical sensation of touch!

Other engineering firms are gearing up powerful exoskeletons that both rehabilitate and enhance the power of the human body… improving the lives of those with paralysis and transforming the work force.

But the real pivot is getting machines inside the body. An out-of-the-box ‘transhumanist’ featured in the episode installs a chip inside a person’s hand. It works as a key that unlocks doors, literally and figuratively.

However, brain-machine integration poses the biggest challenges, and the biggest rewards. Cutting-edge neuroscientists and technologists reveal how computer chips can directly interface with the human brain in ways that not only rehabilitate, but which can also ‘read thoughts’ in real-time.

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Polarons are localized quasiparticles that result from the interaction between fermionic particles and bosonic fields. Specifically, polarons are formed when individual electrons in crystals distort their surrounding atomic lattice, producing composite objects that behave more like a massive particles than electron waves.

Feliciano Giustino and Weng Hong Sio, two researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, recently carried out a study investigating the processes underpinning the formation of polarons in 2D materials. Their paper, published in Nature Physics, outlines some fundamental mechanisms associated with these particles’ formation that had not been identified in previous works.

“Back in 2019, we developed a new theoretical and computational framework to study polarons,” Feliciano Giustino, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “One thing that caught our attention is that many experimental papers discuss polarons in 3D bulk materials, but we could find only a couple of papers reporting observations of these particles in 2D. So, we were wondering whether this is just a coincidence, or else polarons in 2D are more rare or more elusive than in 3D, and our recent paper addresses this question.”

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Of all the advanced technologies currently under development, one of the most fascinating and frightening is brain-computer interfaces. They’re fascinating because we still have so much to learn about the human brain, yet scientists are already able to tap into certain parts of it. And they’re frightening because of the sinister possibilities that come with being able to influence, read, or hijack peoples’ thoughts.

But the worst-case scenarios that have been played out in science fiction are just one side of the coin, and brain-computer interfaces could also be a tremendous boon to humanity—if we create, manage, and regulate them correctly. In a panel discussion at South by Southwest this week, four experts in the neuroscience and computing field discussed how to do this.

Panelists included Ben Hersh, a staff interaction designer at Google; Anna Wexler, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania; Afshin Mehin, the founder of a creative studio that helps companies give form to the future called Card79; and Jacob Robinson, an associate professor in electrical and computer engineering at Rice University and co-founder of Motif Neurotech, a company creating minimally invasive electronic therapies for mental health.

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A study of the electron excitation response of DNA to proton radiation has elucidated mechanisms of damage incurred during proton radiotherapy.

Radiobiology studies on the effects of ionizing radiation on human health focus on the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule as the primary target for deleterious outcomes. The interaction of ionizing radiation with tissue and organs can lead to localized energy deposition large enough to instigate double strand breaks in DNA, which can lead to mutations, chromosomal aberrations, and changes in gene expression. Understanding the mechanisms behind these interactions is critical for developing radiation therapies and improving radiation protection strategies. Christopher Shepard of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his colleagues now use powerful computer simulations to show exactly what part of the DNA molecule receives damaging levels of energy when exposed to charged-particle radiation (Fig. 1) [1]. Their findings could eventually help to minimize the long-term radiation effects from cancer treatments and human spaceflight.

The interaction of radiation with DNA’s electronic structure is a complex process [2, 3]. The numerical models currently used in radiobiology and clinical radiotherapy do not capture the detailed dynamics of these interactions at the atomic level. Rather, these models use geometric cross-sections to predict whether a particle of radiation, such as a photon or an ion, crossing the cell volume will transfer sufficient energy to cause a break in one or both of the DNA strands [4– 6]. The models do not describe the atomic-level interactions but simply provide the probability that some dose of radiation will cause a population of cells to lose their ability to reproduce.

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