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Examining the influence of defects on 2D integrated electronic circuits

For decades, transistors—the heart of computer chips—have been getting smaller and smaller. As a result, the electronic components in many devices can be made even more compact, faster and also more powerful. But is this development coming to a natural halt? The smaller the components, the greater the danger that individual defects in the atomic structure will significantly change the behavior of the component. This applies to the established silicon technology and novel nanotechnologies based on 2D materials.

At Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), intensive work has been done on the physical description of this problem at the transistor level. Now the researchers are going a step further and looking at the influence of defects at the level of electronic circuits, which sometimes consist of several—sometimes even billions—of transistors. In some cases, individual transistors can operate outside the desired specification, but still perform well as part of a circuit consisting of several transistors. With this new approach at the circuit level, significant advances in miniaturization are still possible.

The study is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Michael Greve | Longevity Investing @ Vision Weekend France 2022

This video was recorded at the Foresight Vision Weekend 2022 at Château du Feÿ in France.

Michael Greve | Longevity Investing.

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Uploading and Branching Identity

If a brain is uploaded into a computer, will consciousness continue in digital form or will it end forever when the brain is destroyed? Philosophers have long debated such dilemmas and classify them as questions about personal identity. There are currently three main theories of personal identity: biological, psychological, and closest continuer theories. None of these theories can successfully address the questions posed by the possibility of uploading. I will argue that uploading requires us to adopt a new theory of identity, psychological branching identity. Psychological branching identity states that consciousness will continue as long as there is continuity in psychological structure. What differentiates this from psychological identity is that it allows identity to continue in multiple selves.

Paralyzed patients effectively control computer in a historic trial

All four participants were able to send out neural signals.

Medical technology company Synchron published in a press release on Monday the results of a clinical study that saw paralyzed patients effectively send out neural signals via an implantable brain-computer interface.

The study highlighted the long-term safety results from a clinical study in which four patients with severe paralysis implanted with Synchron’s first-generation Stentrode, a neuroprosthesis device, were able to control a computer.

Using cosmic rays to generate and distribute random numbers and boost security for local devices and networks

State-of-the-art methods of information security are likely to be compromised by emerging technologies such as quantum computers. One of the reasons they are vulnerable is that both encrypted messages and the keys to decrypt them must be sent from sender to receiver.

A new method—called COSMOCAT—is proposed and demonstrated, which removes the need to send a since cosmic rays transport it for us, meaning that even if messages are intercepted, they could not be read using any theorized approach. COSMOCAT could be useful in localized various bandwidth applications, as there are limitations to the effective distance between sender and receiver.

In the field of information communication technology, there is a perpetual arms race to find ever more secure ways to transfer data, and ever more sophisticated ways to break them. Even the first modern computers were essentially code-breaking machines used by the U.S. and European Allies during World War II. And this is about to enter a new regime with the advent of quantum computers, capable of breaking current forms of security with ease. Even security methods which use quantum computers themselves might be susceptible to other quantum attacks.

Critical zero day vulnerability in Linux Kernel Allows DoS Attack

This flaw, which has been identified that affects the ksmbd NTLMv2 authentication in the Linux kernel, is known to quickly cause the operating system on Linux-based computers to crash. Namjae Jeon is the developer of KSMBD, which is an open-source In-kernel CIFS/SMB3 server designed for the Linux Kernel. It is an implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol in the kernel space that allows for the sharing of IPC services and files over a network.

In order to take advantage of the vulnerability, you will need to transmit corrupted packets to the server, personal computer, tablet, or smartphone that you are targeting. The attack causes what is known as “a memory overflow flaw in ksmbd decodentlmssp auth blob,” which states that nt len may be less than CIFS ENCPWD SIZE in some circumstances. Because of this, the blen parameter that is sent to ksmbd authntlmv2, which runs memcpy using blen on memory that was allocated by kmalloc(blen + CIFS CRYPTO KEY SIZE), is now negative. It is important to take note that the CIFS ENCPWD SIZE value is 16, and the CIFS CRYPTO KEY SIZE value is 8. As the heap overflow happens when blen is in the range [-8,-1], we think that the only possible outcome of this problem is a remote denial of service and not a privilege escalation or a remote code execution.

The vulnerability is caused by the way that the Linux kernel handles NTLMv2 authentication in versions 5.15-rc1 and later. The developers of the Linux kernel have not made a fix available.

LED Smart Lighting System Based on Quantum Dots More Accurately Reproduces Daylight

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Researchers have designed smart, color-controllable white light devices from quantum dots – tiny semiconductors just a few billionths of a meter in size – which are more efficient and have better color saturation than standard LEDs, and can dynamically reproduce daylight conditions in a single light.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, designed the next-generation smart lighting system using a combination of nanotechnology, color science, advanced computational methods, electronics, and a unique fabrication process.

“This research opens the way for a wide variety of new human-responsive lighting environments.” —

New spin control method brings billion-qubit quantum chips closer

Australian engineers have discovered a new way of precisely controlling single electrons nestled in quantum dots that run logic gates. What’s more, the new mechanism is less bulky and requires fewer parts, which could prove essential to making large-scale silicon quantum computers a reality.

The serendipitous discovery, made by engineers at the quantum computing start-up Diraq and UNSW Sydney, is detailed in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“This was a completely new effect we’d never seen before, which we didn’t quite understand at first,” said lead author Dr. Will Gilbert, a quantum processor engineer at Diraq, a UNSW spin-off company based at its Sydney campus. “But it quickly became clear that this was a powerful new way of controlling spins in a quantum dot. And that was super exciting.”

A method to reliably fabricate transition metal dichalcogenide field-effect transistors on a wafer-scale

Electronics engineers are continuously trying to develop thinner, more efficient and better performing transistors, the semiconductor devices at the core of most modern electronics. To do this, they have been evaluating the potential of a broad range of materials.

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), compounds based on and chalcogen elements, have very attractive electronic and that make them promising candidates for the development of future generations of transistors. Most notably, they have an atomically thin structure with no dangling bonds and a bandgap similar to that of silicon.

Despite their advantageous characteristics, TMDs have not yet been used to create transistors on a large scale. The main reason for this is the weak adhesion energy at the interface between these materials and substrates, which makes their widespread fabrication challenging.

China’s new quantum code-breaking algorithm raises concerns in the US

The new algorithm could render mainstream encryption powerless within years.

Chinese researchers claim to have introduced a new code-breaking algorithm that, if successful, could render mainstream encryption powerless within years rather than decades.

The team, led by Professor Long Guilu of Tsinghua University, proclaimed that a modest quantum computer constructed with currently available technology could run their algorithm, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Wednesday.

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