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Category: computing – Page 658

Still baffled by quantum computing? How about turning to comic books (graphic novels for the well-read among you) for some clarity and a little humor on QC. The National Science Foundation has done just as part of its EPiQC (Enabling Practical-scale Quantum Computing) program. So far eight €˜Zines €™ have been created with more to come.

€œComic books offer approachable ways to convey both humor and information. One might think that comic books would not be able to convey complex information like the ideas behind QC. In this case, one would be wrong, at least for one as creative as the University of Chicago €™s Diana Franklin, as part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded https://www.epiqc.cs.uchicago.edu/”>EPIQC Expedition in Computing, € wrote Mark Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a recent blog for Computing Community Consortium, run by NSF.

€œIn particular, Diana and colleagues have developed eight, with more coming, €œ https://www.epiqc.cs.uchicago.edu/zines”>zines € that are comic-book-like pamphlets obtained by printing and folding a single sheet of paper. The topics include quantum notation, superposition, and history. In my humble opinion, these are great examples of the synergy possible with research and education done together. Enjoy! €.

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Have humans become an indoor species? Given that Americans spend, on average, 93 percent of their time indoors, it would seem that we are indeed suffering from what some call “nature deficit disorder.”

We don’t need a fancy term to realize we might benefit from spending more time outdoors. Getting out for a gentle walk or a vigorous hike is likely to reduce stress, improve health, and increase emotional well-being.

If you spend much time on a computer, you probably reach a time in the day when you have so many browser tabs and programs open that your computer slows considerably. It’s time for a reset.

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If your PC is running on any modern #Intel CPU built before Oct 2018, it’s likely vulnerable to a new hardware issue, dubbed CacheOut (CVE-2020–0549), that could let attackers leak sensitive data from OS kernel, VMs and even from SGX enclave. :-o.

Researchers demonstrated a new speculative execution vulnerability, dubbed ‘CacheOut’ assigned CVE-2020–0549, in Intel processors that could allow attackers to leak targeted sensitive data from OS kernel, co-resident virtual machines, and even stored within Intel’s secured SGX enclave.

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In 1946 the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or the ENIAC, was introduced. The world’s first commercial computer was intended to be used by the military to project the trajectory of missiles, doing in a few seconds what it would otherwise take a human mathematician about three days. It’s 20,000 vacuum tubes (the glowing glass light bulb-like predecessors to the transistor) connected by 500,000 hand soldered wires were a marvel of human ingenuity and technology.

Imagine if it were possible to go back to the developers and users of that early marvel and make the case that in 70 years there would be ten billion computers worldwide and half of the world’s population would be walking around with computers 100,000,000 times as powerful as the ENIAC in their pants’ pockets.

You’d have been considered a lunatic!

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IBM and the University of Tokyo will form the Japan – IBM Quantum Partnership, a broad national partnership framework in which other universities, industry, and government can engage. The partnership will have three tracks of engagement: one focused on the development of quantum applications with industry; another on quantum computing system technology development; and the third focused on advancing the state of quantum science and education.

Under the agreement, an IBM Q System One, owned and operated by IBM, will be installed in an IBM facility in Japan. It will be the first installation of its kind in the region and only the third in the world following the United States and Germany. The Q System One will be used to advance research in quantum algorithms, applications and software, with the goal of developing the first practical applications of quantum computing.

IBM and the University of Tokyo will also create a first-of-a-kind quantum system technology center for the development of hardware components and technologies that will be used in next generation quantum computers. The center will include a laboratory facility to develop and test novel hardware components for quantum computing, including advanced cryogenic and microwave test capabilities.

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Editor’s note: Geoff Woollacott is Senior Strategy Consultant and Principal Analyst at Technology Business Research. IBM and NC State are coperating on quantum computing development.

HAMPTON, N.H. – JPMorgan Chase announced on Jan. 22 the hiring of Marco Pistoia from IBM. A 24-year IBM employee with numerous patents to his credit, Pistoia most recently led an IBM team responsible for quantum computing algorithms. Algorithm development will be key to developing soundly engineered quantum computing systems that can deliver the business outcomes enterprises seek at a faster and more accurate pace than current classical computing systems.

A senior hire into a flagship enterprise in the financial services industry is the proverbial canary in the coal mine, as TBR believes such actions suggest our prediction of quantum achieving economic advantage by 2021 remains on target. Quantum executives discuss the three pillars of quantum commercialization as being:

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Drug development is an extremely arduous and costly process, and failure rates in clinical trials that test new drugs for their safety and efficacy in humans remain very high. According to current estimates, only 13.8% of all tested drugs demonstrate ultimate clinical success and obtain approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). There are also increasing ethical concerns relating to the use of animal studies. As a result, there has been a world-wide search to find replacements for animal models.

To help address this bottleneck in drug development, Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., and his team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, developed the first human “Organ-on-a-Chip” (Organ Chip) model of the lung that recapitulates human organ level physiology and pathophysiology with high fidelity, which was reported in Science in 2010. Organ Chips are microfluidic culture devices composed of a clear flexible polymer the size of a computer memory stick, which contains two parallel hollow channels that are separated by a porous membrane. Organ-specific cells are cultured on one side of the membrane in one of the channels, and vascular endothelial cells recapitulating a blood vessel line the other, while each channel is independently perfused with cell type-specific medium.

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University of California, Berkeley, scientists have created a blue light-emitting diode (LED) from a trendy new semiconductor material, halide perovskite, overcoming a major barrier to employing these cheap, easy-to-make materials in electronic devices.

In the process, however, the researchers discovered a fundamental property of perovskites that may prove a barrier to their widespread use as solar cells and transistors.

Alternatively, this unique property may open up a whole new world for perovskites far beyond that of today’s standard semiconductors.

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