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Category: computing – Page 849

Dotz Nano reveals proof of concept for a new type of flash memory

New Graphene based flash memory card coming.

Dotz Nano (ASX: DTZ) has successfully completed a proof of concept research study into the use of Graphene Quantum Dots (GQDs) in flash memory devices with the Kyung Hee University in South Korea.

GQDs are being developed for use in various applications including medical imaging, sensing, consumer electronics, energy storage, solar cells and computer storage.

Dotz Nano is in advanced negotiations to sign a full licensing agreement with Kyung Hee University related to this technology.

Primitive Quantum Computing Helps Test Theoretical Physics

In Brief:

Physicists were able to simulate high-energy experimens thanks to this primitive quantum computer. Prediction of theoretical physics may soon be tested.

Our current computers are not capable of running simulations of high-energy physics experiments. However, quite recently, scientists were able to use a primitive quantum computer in the simulation of the spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairs. This makes it easier for physicists to further investigate the fundamental particles. A research team published their findings in the journal, Nature.

Wave of the future: Terahertz chips a new way of seeing through matter

Electromagnetic pulses lasting one millionth of a millionth of a second may hold the key to advances in medical imaging, communications and drug development. But the pulses, called terahertz waves, have long required elaborate and expensive equipment to use.

Now, researchers at Princeton University have drastically shrunk much of that equipment: moving from a tabletop setup with lasers and mirrors to a pair of microchips small enough to fit on a fingertip.

In two articles recently published in the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, the researchers describe one microchip that can generate terahertz waves, and a second chip that can capture and read intricate details of these waves.

Implanted Biosensors Track Vital Signs

With the work we are doing on cell circuitry technology and Quantum; these implants will become more and more seamless in all living things.

A biosensor developed in Clemson University, South Carolina, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, will be able to transmit information regarding blood lactate and glucose levels of a wounded soldier or of other injured patients. The biochip will be implanted in the patient’s body for a short time and will wirelessly transmit the levels of lactate and glucose to the medical staff.

The biochip, sized 2mm x 4mm x 0.5mm, is a dual sensing element coated with hydrogels to prevent it from being rejected by human tissue. The sensor has the ability to transmit life saving readings to the medical personnel. The implantation of the chip will only be temporary, although long term biochip implants are also being tested and may be used as a precaution in some cases.

Blood glucose and lactate levels are very important for medical staff in the first stages of dealing with a trauma patient. These measurements can imply what the oxygen level in the patients’ blood is and can indicate the overall metabolic state of the patient. The blood lactate level is sometimes used to determine whether or not a trauma patient can survive surgery. Getting these measurements in real time can help the medics in a hospital or out in the field make decisions much faster and by doing so will help save lives.

Faraday Rotation Spectroscopy for Speedy Medical Testing

Nice.

Researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in the US are combining nanoscience with the principle of Faraday rotation, a magnetic phenomenon discovered in 1845, in a new method for speedy medical tests.

The team applied the magneto-optical technique, called frequency-domain Faraday rotation spectroscopy—or fd-FRS, to characterize proteins, using antibody-functionalized magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs).

“Fd-FRS is a new way of looking at the interaction between light and magnetized material,” says Shawn Putnam, assistant professor UFC’s College of Engineering & Computer Science. “We covered the surfaces of magnetic nanoparticles with a layer of biological sensors and measured their movement after exposure to their corresponding biological targets for detection.”

Large groups of photons on demand — an equivalent of photonic ‘integrated circuit’

Our story on QC just keeps advancing as I cannot wait to see this technology on our smart devices.

Holographic atomic memory, invented and constructed by physicists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, is the first device able to generate single photons on demand in groups of several dozen or more. The device, successfully demonstrated in practice, overcomes one of the fundamental obstacles towards the construction of some type of quantum computer.

Completely secure, high-speed quantum communication, or even a model of quantum computer, may be among the possible applications for the new source of single photons recently built at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw (UW Physics), Poland. An unprecedented feature of this new device is that for the first time it enables the on-demand production of a precisely controlled group of photons, as opposed to just a single one.

Microsoft helps science, open sources their cloud-based tool for biological research

Off to the races again; hope folks are onboard. Quantum Bio will grow in importance; and you were warned.

Microsoft today announced that they have open sourced Bio Model Analyzer, a cloud-based tool which allows for biologists to model cell interaction and communication. This latest move is one of the many Microsoft Research initiatives which aims to help lab experts use computer science to speed up breakthroughs in cancer research and treatment.

According to the post, the Bio Model Analzyer (BMA) allows for researchers and science to compare the normal processes of healthy cells to the abnormal processes that occur when disease infects the body. Set against more traditional methods, when using computers, researchers can quickly explore many more possibilities than were previously possible. Jasmin Fisher, a Senior researcher in the programming principles and tools group in Microsoft’s Cambridge, U.K explains in the post:

“That, in turn, can speed up research in areas like drug interaction and resistance, and it could eventually provide patients with more personalized and effective cancer treatments… We are trying to change the way research is done on a daily basis in biology.”

For the First Time Scientists Have Observed a Quantum Phase Transition

In Brief

  • Scientists were able to rig up a system in which they could view a “photon-blockade breakdown” where the system switched from opaque to transparent.
  • This discovery has implications in both the development of advanced computer memory systems and better quantum simulations in the future.

For the first time, physicists have experimentally observed a first-order phase transition occur in a quantum system – verifying years of theoretical predictions.

Phase transitions are something that we see on a daily basis when our ice melts into water, or steam evaporates from a boiling kettle. While these transitions are easy for us to observe, phase transitions also happen on the very tiny, quantum-scale, where they play an important role in physics. But, up until now, no one had ever witnessed one experimentally.

Blockchain Scalability: Proof-of-Work vs BFT Replication

Research can seem bland to us laypersons. But, Marko Vukolić shares many of my research interests and he exceeds my academic credentials (with just enough overlap for me to understand his work). So, in my opinion, his writing is anything but bland…

Vukolić started his career as a post-doc intern at IBM in Zurich Switzerland. After a teaching stint as assistant professor at Eurecom and visiting professor at ETH Zurich, he rejoined the IBM research staff in both cloud computing infrastructure and the Blockchain Group.*

As a researcher and academic, Vukolić is a rising star in consensus-based mechanisms and low latency replicated state machines. At Institut Mines-Télécom in Paris, he wrote papers and participated in research projects on fault tolerance, scalability, cloud computing and distributed trust mechanisms.

Now, at IBM Zurich, Vukolić has published a superior analysis addressing the first and biggest elephant in the Bitcoin ballroom, Each elephant addresses an urgent need:

  • Scalability & throughput
  • Incentivize (as mining reward withers)
  • Grow & diversify governance & geographic influence
  • Anonymize transactions to protect privacy
  • Recognize & preserve ownership

Regarding the first elephant, scalability, Bitcoin urgently needs to grow its Blockchain dynamics into something that is living and manageable. To that end, Vukolić refers to a transaction bookkeeping mechanism that works as a “fabric”. That is, it does not require every miner to access the history-of-the-world and append each transaction onto the same chain in serial fashion. Rather than growing an ever bigger blockchain—with ever bigger computers—we need a more 3D approach that uses relational databases in a multi-threaded, transactional environment, while still preserving the distributed, p2p trust mechanisms of the original blockchain.

While clearly technical, it is a good read, even for lay enthusiasts. It directly relates to one of the elephants in the room.

I have pasted Marko’s Abstract below. The full paper is 10½ pages (14 with references).

Bitcoin cryptocurrency demonstrated the utility of global consensus across thousands of nodes, changing the world of digital transactions forever. In the early days of Bitcoin, the performance of its probabilistic proof-of-work (PoW) based consensus fabric, also known as blockchain, was not a major issue. Bitcoin became a success story, despite its consensus latencies on the order of an hour and the theoretical peak throughput of only up to 7 transactions per second.

The situation today is radically different and the poor performance scalability of early PoW blockchains no longer makes sense. Specifically, the trend of modern cryptocurrency platforms, such as Ethereum, is to support execution of arbitrary distributed applications on blockchain fabric, needing much better performance. This approach, however, makes cryptocurrency platforms step away from their original purpose and enter the domain of database-replication protocols, notably, the classical state-machine replication, and in particular its Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) variants.

In this paper, we contrast PoW-based blockchains to those based on BFT state machine replication, focusing on their scalability limits. We also discuss recent proposals to overcoming these scalability limits and outline key outstanding open problems in the quest for the “ultimate” blockchain fabric(s). Keywords: Bitcoin, blockchain, Byzantine fault tolerance, consensus, proof-of-work, scalability, state machine replication

* Like Marko, Blockchains, Cloud computing, and Privacy are, also my primary reserach interests, (GMTA!). But, I cede the rigorous, academic credentials to Marko.

† BFT = Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus protocols

Related—and recently in the news:

Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA and The Bitcoin Event. A columnist & board member at Lifeboat Foundation
he edits AWildDuck. He will deliver the keynote address at Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg.

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