Lifeboat Foundation

Integrated circuits traditionally have been a domain reserved for electrons, which course through exquisitely tiny transistors, wires and other microscopic structures where the digital calculations and data processing that underlie so much of modern technology unfold. Increasingly, however, chip designers have been acting on a long-ripening vision of enlisting photons instead of, or in tandem with, electrons in the operation of microprocessors. Photons, for one, can serve as fast-as-light carriers of information between chips, overcoming digital traffic jams that at times put the brakes on electrons. Recently, DARPA-funded scientists designed and crafted a breakthrough microprocessor that combines many of the best traits of electrons and photons on a single chip. The result is a remarkable and elegant hybrid microtechnology that boggles the mind for the intricate complexity of its sub-Lilliputian architecture. To appreciate the engineering acumen involved in the development of this chip and its tens of millions of resident electronic and photonic components, DARPA has produced an annotated, graphical tour of the new chip’s innards. Check it out, and lose yourself in a world of highways, toll gates and traffic circles populated by some of the physical world’s smallest commuters.

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Even though it’s looking increasingly likely that humanity will find a way to wipe itself off the face of the Earth, there’s a chance that our creative output may live on. Servers, hard drives, flash drives, and disks will degrade (as will our libraries of paper books, of course), but a group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have found a way to encode data onto DNA—the very same stuff that all living beings’ genetic information is stored on—that could survive for millennia.

One gram of DNA can potentially hold up to 455 exabytes of data, according to the New Scientist. For reference: There are one billion gigabytes in an exabyte, and 1,000 exabytes in a zettabyte. The cloud computing company EMC estimated that there were 1.8 zettabytes of data in the world in 2011, which means we would need only about 4 grams (about a teaspoon) of DNA to hold everything from Plato through the complete works of Shakespeare to Beyonce’s latest album (not to mention every brunch photo ever posted on Instagram).

There are four types of molecules that make up DNA, which form pairs. To encode information on DNA, scientists program the pairs into 1s and os—the same binary language that encodes digital data. This is not a new concept—scientists at Harvard University encoded a book onto DNA in 2012—but up to now, it had been difficult to retrieve the information stored on the DNA.

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At Vanderbilt University scientists are building an artificial kidney that they envision will one day will be a standard of care over dialysis. The device consists of a silicon nanotechnology filter chip and embedded living kidney cells that would work together to mimic the functionality of a healthy kidney. The end result is expected to be about the size of a natural kidney, small enough to be implantable and powered by the body’s own blood flow.

The filter component has tiny pores that can be individually shaped to perform a specific task. These filters would sit in a series, each one performing a different filtration step. Between the filter slices there would be living kidney cells that perform tasks that the man made components are not very good at, including reabsorption of nutrients and getting rid of accumulated waste.

Here’s video with Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Dr. William Fissell, the lead scientist on the research:

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This time, there is a very serious news about virtual reality as Google Inc. is said to be getting ready to unveil a new-fangled smartphone headset.

According to The Financial Times, the new headset will succeed Cardboard, and would be featuring much better sensors, lenses, and a more solid plastic skin.

It’s said the product is the like of Samsung’s Gear VR since it will use a smartphone to display as well as most of its processing power. The only difference is that the current Cardboard VR headset is just a cardboard headset like its name with an inserted smartphone, while the new one will be coming with an extra motion sensor for adding whatever the phone places out.

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MIT has developed a quantum computer design featuring an array of superconducting islands on the surface of a topological insulator that they’re experimenting with to process 0’s & 1’s — if they are successful; this could possibly get us within a 5 yr window for QC platforms.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a quantum computer design featuring an array of superconducting islands on the surface of a topological insulator.

The researchers propose basing both quantum computation and error correction on the peculiar behavior of electrons at neighboring corners of these islands and their ability to interact across islands at a distance.

Continue reading “Crunching Quantum Code” »

VR experience with SCM, CRM, etc. Imagine the improved connected customer experiences with VR.

Envelop VR, a software company that is leading businesses to immersive computing, announced today that it has hired Jeff Hansen as Vice President of Business Development. Jeff’s primary role will be to engage with enterprise customers wanting to solve for real business challenges by utilizing a virtual reality environment, including improving their work flow processes and efficiencies, visualizing data, or collaborating on engineering or product development. Envelop VR solutions enable enterprise customers to unlock the tremendous benefits and advantages of working and collaborating in a three-dimensional virtual environment.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160218005289/en/

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Really a sad fact.

Los Angeles hospital pays $17,000 ransom to get its computer system unlocked. Expert says hackers find medical institutions as easy, profitable targets.

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So, we’re now adding possible murder to the charges of hackers?.

The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles paid a ransom of 17,000 U.S. dollars to hackers after two weeks of being shut out of their computer network. We talk to cyber security expert Jay Radcliffe about medical cyber vulnerabilities.

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(Phys.org)—Researchers have designed and implemented an algorithm that solves computing problems using a strategy inspired by the way that an amoeba branches out to obtain resources. The new algorithm, called AmoebaSAT, can solve the satisfiability (SAT) problem—a difficult optimization problem with many practical applications—using orders of magnitude fewer steps than the number of steps required by one of the fastest conventional algorithms.

The researchers predict that the amoeba-inspired computing system may offer several benefits, such as high efficiency, miniaturization, and low energy consumption, that could lead to a new computing paradigm for nanoscale high-speed problem solving.

Led by Masashi Aono, Associate Principal Investigator at the Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and at PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency, the researchers have published a paper on the amoeba-inspired system in a recent issue of Nanotechnology.

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