Might nature’s bottomless pits actually be ultra-efficient quantum computers? That could explain why data never dies.
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Category: computing – Page 783
Nantero, Fujitsu Semiconductor and Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor today announced an agreement for Fujitsu and Mie Fujtisu to license that Nantero’s technology for NRAM, non-volatile RAM using carbon nanotubes, and to conduct joint development towards releasing a product based on 55-nm process technology.
Three companies are aiming to develop a product using NRAM non-volatile RAM that achieves several 1000 times faster rewrites and many thousands of times more rewrite cycles than embedded flash memory, making it potentially capable of replacing DRAM with non-volatile memory.
Fujitsu Semiconductor plans to develop an NRAM-embedded custom LSI product by the end of 2018, with the goal of expanding the product line-up into stand-alone NRAM product after that. Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor, which is a pure-play foundry, plans to offer NRAM-based technology to its foundry customers.
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Let’s face it: Tablets are on the brink of death, and it’s difficult to get excited about a new slate these days. And even though tablet-laptop hybrids are taking off, that market is cornered by Surfaces and iPad Pros. So I wasn’t prepared to be as thrilled as I was by Lenovo’s latest offering. The Yoga Book, based on my experience with a preview unit, is not merely a mimicry of Microsoft’s Surface Book; it has impressively innovative features and a well-thought-out interface that make it a solid hybrid in its own right.
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Excellent opportunity.
Dolomite microfluidic chips are helping researchers from the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University (ASU) to develop novel enzymes capable of polymerising synthetic nucleotides.
Using these chips, the team has created a droplet-based optical polymerase sorting (DrOPS) technique allowing rapid screening for novel polymerase activities in uniform water-in-oil microcompartments. The team’s leader, Professor John C. Chaput – formerly at ASU and currently at the University of California, Irvine – explained: “The creation of synthetic nucleic acids is of great interest to synthetic biologists but, because they are not found in nature, wild type polymerases struggle to process them. To overcome this issue, we are developing novel polymerases using directed evolution in water-in-oil microcompartments. The DrOPS methodology has significant advantages over traditional methods, which are both labour intensive and impractical to perform on a large scale due to the amount of precious artificial nucleotide reagents required for screening.”
The Biodesign Institute turned to microfluidics to allow rapid sorting and screening of novel polymerases, taking advantage of the technique’s single-cell encapsulation capabilities and picolitre reaction volumes. Dr Andrew Larsen commented: “We needed very reproducible microfluidics, and so using commercially available chips was preferable. We already had experience with Dolomite’s chips for a variety of applications within the institute, and they have always been very consistent, so the choice was obvious. These chips give us the ability to consistently generate uniform droplets – both single and double emulsion droplets – offering spatial separation between cells and allowing fluorescence-based sorting using conventional FACS technologies. Dolomite has also been very supportive of our efforts, helping to accelerate this area of research.”
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Another approach to QC; the title of the article is misleading because you still are using quantum properties in the approach.
Researchers at Aalto University have demonstrated the suitability of microwave signals in the coding of information for quantum computing. Previous development of the field has been focusing on optical systems. Researchers used a microwave resonator based on extremely sensitive measurement devices known as superconductive quantum interference devices (SQUIDs). In their studies, the resonator was cooled down and kept near absolute zero, where any thermal motion freezes. This state corresponds to perfect darkness where no photon — a real particle of electromagnetic radiation such as visible light or microwaves — is present.
However, in this state (called quantum vacuum) there exist fluctuations that bring photons in and out of existence for a very short time. The researchers have now managed to convert these fluctuations into real photons of microwave radiation with different frequencies, showing that, in a sense, darkness is more than just absence of light.
They also found out that these photons are correlated with each other, as if a magic connection exists between them.
Making a more ultrafast optical switch and can be used to control or address individual spin states, which is needed for spin-based quantum computing.
August 31, 2016.
NREL scientists Ye Yang and Matt Beard stand in front of a transient absorption spectrometer in their laser lab.
Scientists at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) discovered a use for perovskites that runs counter to the intended usage of the hybrid organic-inorganic material.
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Experts may reassure us that artificial intelligence won’t take over the world anytime soon – but they just might invade the multiplex.
At least that’s the plot developing at IBM, where the Watson artificial-intelligence team programmed a computer to come up with a scary trailer for “Morgan,” a thriller about a genetically modified, AI-enhanced super-human.
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