Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: computing – Page 752

This week we are celebrating Computer Science Education Week around the globe.

In this “age of acceleration,” in which advances in technology and the globalization of business are transforming entire industries and society itself, it’s more critical than ever for everyone to be digitally literate, especially our kids.

This is particularly true for women and girls who, while representing roughly 50 percent of the world’s population, account for less than 20 percent of computer science graduates in 34 OECD countries, according to this report.

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The US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) are at an advanced stage of with their synthetic biology research. The work could see bacteria being used to send signals and sense in a way similar to computers, the advantage being that it could potentially provide a more intuitive sensory experience to a piece of tech, and bypass some of the pitfalls unique to electrical structures. The research also has application for new 3D printing materials.

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This has been worked on since WWII using various methods that never fully worked out. However, our technology has advance; so it could be within reach this time.

An expert from Rutgers University Newark explores the proper role of neuroscience in defense and war efforts, and how technologies designed with this science can be misused to harm people.

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What could once only be imagined in science fiction is now increasingly coming to fruition: Drones can be flown by human brains’ thoughts. Pharmaceuticals can help soldiers forget traumatic experiences or produce feelings of trust to encourage confession in interrogation. DARPA-funded research is working on everything from implanting brain chips to “neural dust” in an effort to alleviate the effects of traumatic experience in war. Invisible microwave beams produced by military contractors and tested on U.S. prisoners can produce the sensation of burning at a distance.

What all these techniques and technologies have in common is that they’re recent neuroscientific breakthroughs propelled by military research within a broader context of rapid neuroscientific development, driven by massive government-funded projects in both America and the European Union. Even while much about the brain remains mysterious, this research has contributed to the rapid and startling development of neuroscientific technology.

And while we might marvel at these developments, it is also undeniably true that this state of affairs raises significant ethical questions. What is the proper role – if any – of neuroscience in national defense or war efforts? My research addresses these questions in the broader context of looking at how international relations, and specifically warfare, are shaped by scientific and medical expertise and technology.

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Around 75 years ago, Italian physicist Ettore Majorana hypothesized the existence of exotic particles that are their own antiparticles. Since then, interest in these particles, known as Majorana fermions, has grown enormously given that they could play a role in creating a quantum computer. Majoranas have already been described very well in theory. However, examining them and obtaining experimental evidence is difficult because they have to occur in pairs but are then usually bound to form one normal electron. Ingenious combinations and arrangements of various materials are therefore required to generate two Majoranas and keep them apart.

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Glad others have caught the QC Light. I told so many we’re not 10+ or even 10 years away.

Quantum computing got a big push forward this month as researchers managed to create quantum dot light-emitting diodes (LED’s) that have the ability to produce entangled photons that could be used to encode information. Previously, the highest number of photons known to be entangled at one time was 8, but as of June, that number has now risen to 10.

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