Lifeboat Foundation

HUGE deal for wearables and biomed technologies.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated a new approach to modifying the light absorption and stretchability of atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials by surface topographic engineering using only mechanical strain. The highly flexible system has future potential for wearable technology and integrated biomedical optical sensing technology when combined with flexible light-emitting diodes.

“Increasing graphene’s low light absorption in visible range is an important prerequisite for its broad potential applications in photonics and sensing,” explained SungWoo Nam, an assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering at Illinois. “This is the very first stretchable photodetector based exclusively on graphene with strain-tunable photoresponsivity and wavelength selectivity.”

Continue reading “Crumpling approach enhances photodetectors’ light responsivity” »

Very nice; we’re getting closer.

But superposition is fragile, and finding ways to preserve it is one of the chief obstacles to developing large, general-purpose quantum computers. In today’s Nature, MIT researchers describe a new approach to preserving superposition in a class of quantum devices built from synthetic diamonds. The work could ultimately prove an important step toward reliable quantum computers.

In most engineering fields, the best way to maintain the stability of a physical system is feedback control. You make a measurement — the current trajectory of an airplane, or the temperature of an engine — and on that basis produce a control signal that nudges the system back toward its desired state.

Continue reading “Advance may make quantum computing more practical” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=kFEbJQY16Io

Meanwhile, Chalmers said, “We’re not going to get conclusive proof that we’re not in a simulation, because any proof would be simulated.”

Maybe we’re just blips on some cosmic computer screen.

Continue reading “Top Scientists Weigh In On Whether We All Live In A Hologram” »

Like this article highlights; we will see a day soon when all techies will need some level of bio-science and/ or medical background especially as we move closer to Singularity which is what we have seen predicted by Ray Kurzweil and others. In the coming decade/s we will no longer see tech credentials relying strictly on math/ algorithms, code, etc, Techies will need some deeper knowledge around the natural sciences.

If you are majoring in biology right now, I say to you: that was a good call. The mounting evidence suggests that you placed your bet on the right degree. With emergent genetic recombination technologies improving at breakneck speed alongside a much deepened understanding of biological circuitry in simple, “home grown” metabolic systems, this field is shaping up to be a tinkerer’s paradise.

Many compare this stage of synthetic biology to the early days of microprocessing (the precursor to computers) when Silicon Valley was a place for young entrepreneurs to go if they needed a cheap place to begin their research or tech business. One such tech entrepreneur, the founder of O’Reilly media, Tim O’Reilly — who also coined the term “open source” — made this comparison in an interview with Wired magazine., O’Reilly further commented on synthetic biology saying, “It’s still in the fun stage.”

Continue reading “Introduction: Explaining the Future of Synthetic Biology with Computer Programming’s Past” »

Stuart Russell received his B.A. with first-class honours in physics from Oxford University in 1982 and his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford in 1986. He then joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, where he is Professor (and formerly Chair) of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and holder of the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Neurological Surgery at UC San Francisco and Vice-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Council on AI and Robotics. He has published over 150 papers on a wide range of topics in artificial intelligence including machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, real-time decision making, multitarget tracking, computer vision, computational physiology, and global seismic monitoring. His books include “The Use of Knowledge in Analogy and Induction”, “Do the Right Thing: Studies in Limited Rationality” (with Eric Wefald), and “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach” (with Peter Norvig).

Abstract:

Autonomous weapons systems select and engage targets without human intervention; they become lethal when those targets include humans. LAWS might include, for example, armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate enemy combatants in a city, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions. The artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics communities face an important ethical decision: whether to support or oppose the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS).

I consider this as a nice interim step in maturing the digital platform environment for financial services. However, once Quantum Computing, Quantum Internet, etc. is available to the masses such as in China, etc. this solution will fail in protecting financial data and other PPI related information as recent research is showing us.

https://lnkd.in/bjcCJ-U

IBM is currently attempting to merge artificial intelligence and the blockchain into a single, powerful prototype.

Continue reading “IBM Watson is Working to Bring AI to the Blockchain” »

Researchers from the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) have, for the first time, converted the colour and bandwidth of ultrafast single photons using a room-temperature quantum memory in diamond.

Shifting the colour of a photon, or changing its frequency, is necessary to optimally link components in a quantum network. For example, in optical quantum communication, the best transmission through an optical fibre is near infrared, but many of the sensors that measure them work much better for visible light, which is a higher frequency. Being able to shift the colour of the photon between the fibre and the sensor enables higher performance operation, including bigger data rates.

Continue reading “Changing the color of single photons in a diamond quantum memory” »

Diodes —also known as rectifiers—allow electric current to flow in just one direction. More than 40 years ago, scientists proposed miniaturizing diodes and other electronic components down to the size of single molecules, an idea that eventually helped give birth to the field of molecular electronics, which could help push computing beyond the limits of conventional silicon devices. [See “Whatever Happened to the Molecular Computer?” IEEE Spectrum, October 2015]

Scientists at the University of Georgia and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel used DNA to fashion the new diode. The breakthroughs in genetics developed to sequence the human genome have now made it relatively easy to precisely manufacture and manipulate DNA, which makes the molecule a leading candidate for use in molecular electronics.

DNA’s double helix is made of paired strands of molecules known as bases. The new diode is only 11 base pairs long. (Typically, DNA is 0.34 nanometers long per base pair.)

Continue reading “World’s Smallest Diode Is Made of DNA” »

Researchers with the University of Cambridge say they have the first real evidence of a new state of matter, some 40 years after it was first theorized.

Known as “quantum spin liquid,” the matter states causes normally unbreakable electrons to fracture into pieces, called “Majorana fermions.” These fermions are an important discovery: Physicists believe the material is crucial to further develop quantum computing. Computers employing Majorana fermions would be able to carry out calculations beyond the scope of modern computers quickly, they say.

Quantum spin liquid explains some of the odd behaviors inside magnetic materials. In these materials, the electrons should behave like small bar magnets, all aligning towards magnetic north when a material is cooled. But not all magnetic materials do this — if the material contains quantum spin liquid, the electrons don’t all line up and become entangled.

Continue reading “Physicists just discovered a new state of matter called ‘quantum spin liquid’” »