Lifeboat Foundation

Calcium oxide is a cheap, chalky chemical compound commonly used in the manufacturing of cement, plaster, paper, and steel. But the material may soon have a more high-tech application.

UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering researchers and their collaborator in Sweden have used theoretical and computational approaches to discover how tiny, lone atoms of bismuth embedded within solid calcium oxide can act as qubits — the building blocks of quantum computers and quantum communication devices.

These qubits are described in Nature Communications (“Discovery of atomic clock-like spin defects in simple oxides from first principles”).

Making Humanity A Multi-Planetary Species — Dr. Eliah Overbey, Ph.D. — Assistant Professor, Bioastronautics, University of Austin; CSO, BioAstra.

Dr. Eliah Overbey, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Bioastronautics at The University of Austin (UATX — https://www.uaustin.org/people/eliah–…) where she is involved in pioneering research in the field of astronaut health, specializing in spaceflight-induced genomic changes. Her work focuses on mapping changes in the human body during spaceflight and developing Earth-independent laboratories to make humans a multi-planetary species (https://www.eliahoverbey.com/).

Continue reading “Dr. Eliah Overbey, Ph.D. — Assistant Prof., Bioastronautics, UATX — Making Humanity Multi-Planetary” »

Researchers in China have demonstrated how entanglement might potentially power future generations of computers, according to a story in the South China Morning Post. This advance, achieved by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Innovation Academy of Precision Measurement Science and Technology, points toward how quantum engines can use their own entangled states as a form of fuel.

Entanglement is a quantum phenomenon where a pair of separated photons seem to be intimately linked, regardless of the distance between them. Scientists have long theorized that this characteristic, once robustly managed, could hold vast potential for quantum computing, and this study adds further evidence to its viability in practical applications, the researchers suggest.

“Our study’s highlight is the first experimental realization of a quantum engine with entangled characteristics. [It] quantitatively verified that entanglement can serve as a type of ‘fuel’,” said Zhou Fei, one of the corresponding authors, as reported in the SCMP.

Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have developed a new computational method for linking molecular marks on our DNA to gene activity. Their work may help researchers connect genes to the molecular “switches” that turn them on or off.

ICTP lectures “Topology and dynamics of higher-order networks”

- Network topology: 1 https://youtube.com/watch?v=mbmsv9RS3Pc

Continue reading “CMSP series of lectures on ‘Topology and dynamics of higher-order networks’: lecture 3” »

In support of the development of large-scale superconducting quantum computers, researchers with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), one of the largest public research organizations in Japan, in collaboration with Yokohama National University, Tohoku University, and NEC Corporation, proposed and successfully demonstrated a superconducting circuit that can control many qubits at low temperature.

A collaborative study by researchers at Lancaster and Radboud universities has pioneered a method to generate and control spin waves at the nanoscale, offering a new, energy-efficient approach to quantum computing.

Researchers at Lancaster University and Radboud University Nijmegen have successfully produced propagating spin waves on the nanoscale, unveiling a new method to modulate and amplify these waves.

Their discovery, published in Nature, could pave the way for the development of dissipation-free quantum information technologies. As the spin waves do not involve electric currents these chips will be free from associated losses of energy.

To reliably perform complex, large-scale calculations, computing systems rely on so-called error correction schemes, techniques designed to protect information against errors. These techniques are perhaps even more essential when it comes to quantum computers, devices that perform computations leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics.

Boeing and NASA said on Sunday that their teams are preparing to launch the new Starliner space capsule on June 5 after scrubbing its inaugural test flight launch attempt on Saturday.

The Starliner capsule had stood ready for blast-off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday before a ground system computer triggered an automatic abort command that shut down the launch sequence.

NASA said its teams worked overnight to assess the ground support equipment at the launch pad that encountered issues during the countdown and identified an issue with a ground power supply within one of the chassis which provides power to a subset of computer cards controlling various system functions.