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Category: computing – Page 977

Europe’s billion Euro bet on quantum computing

Nice

Quantum computers have been hailed for their revolutionary potential in everything from space exploration to cancer treatment, so it might not come as a surprise that Europe is betting big on the ultra-powerful machines.

A new €1 billion ($1.13 billion) project has been announced by the European Commission aimed at developing quantum technologies over the next 10 years and placing Europe at the forefront of “the second quantum revolution.”

The Quantum Flagship announced will be similar in size, time scale and ambition as the EC’s other ongoing Flagship projects: the Graphene Flagship and the Human Brain Project. As well as quantum computers, the initiative will aim to address other aspects of quantum technologies, including quantum secure communication, quantum sensing and quantum simulation.

Superfast light source made from artificial atom

A new method to create light while retaining the energy using Q-Dot technology.

All light sources work by absorbing energy – for example, from an electric current – and emit energy as light. But the energy can also be lost as heat and it is therefore important that the light sources emit the light as quickly as possible, before the energy is lost as heat. Superfast light sources can be used, for example, in laser lights, LED lights and in single-photon light sources for quantum technology. New research results from the Niels Bohr Institute show that light sources can be made much faster by using a principle that was predicted theoretically in 1954. The results are published in the scientific journal, Physical Review Letters.

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute are working with quantum dots, which are a kind of artificial atom that can be incorporated into optical chips. In a quantum dot, an electron can be excited (i.e. jump up), for example, by shining a light on it with a laser and the electron leaves a ‘hole’. The stronger the interaction between light and matter, the faster the electron decays back into the hole and the faster the light is emitted.

But the interaction between light and matter is naturally very weak and it makes the light sources very slow to emit light and this can reduce energy efficiency. Already in 1954, the physicist Robert Dicke predicted that the interaction between light and matter could be increased by having a number of atoms that ‘share’ the excited state in a quantum superposition.

Reliability of material simulations put to test

Change is good; looks like we’re about to re-review some existing simulation codes around Quantum Mechanic Simulation.

Researchers show that new generations of quantum mechanical simulation codes agree better than earlier generations’. The study appears in Science.

Several international scientists from over 30 universities and institutes teamed to investigate to what extent quantum simulations of material properties agree when they are performed by different researchers and with different software. Torbjörn Björkman from Åbo Akademi participated from Finland. Björkman has previously worked at COMP Centre of Excellende at Aalto University. “A group of researchers compared the codes, and the results we got were more precise than in any other calculations before,” he said.

The possibility to produce identical results in independent yet identical researches is a corner stone of science. Only in this way science can identify ‘laws’, which lead to new insights and new technologies. However, several recent studies have pointed out that such reproducibility does not always come spontaneously. Even predictions by computer codes require caution, since the way in which theoretical models are implemented may affect simulation results.

New Tools for Human-Machine Collaborative Design

Nice; taking design and manufacturing to new levels.

Advanced materials are increasingly embodying counterintuitive properties, such as extreme strength and super lightness, while additive manufacturing and other new technologies are vastly improving the ability to fashion these novel materials into shapes that would previously have been extremely costly or even impossible to create. Generating new designs that fully exploit these properties, however, has proven extremely challenging. Conventional design technologies, representations, and algorithms are inherently constrained by outdated presumptions about material properties and manufacturing methods. As a result, today’s design technologies are simply not able to bring to fruition the enormous level of physical detail and complexity made possible with cutting-edge manufacturing capabilities and materials.

To address this mismatch, DARPA today announced its TRAnsformative DESign (TRADES) program. TRADES is a fundamental research effort to develop new mathematics and algorithms that can more fully take advantage of the almost boundless design space that has been enabled by new materials and fabrication methods.

“The structural and functional complexities introduced by today’s advanced materials and manufacturing methods have exceeded our capacity to simultaneously optimize all the variables involved,” said Jan Vandenbrande, DARPA program manager. “We have reached the fundamental limits of what our computer-aided design tools and processes can handle, and need revolutionary new tools that can take requirements from a human designer and propose radically new concepts, shapes and structures that would likely never be conceived by even our best design programs today, much less by a human alone.”

DARPA wants someone to build the DoD a new secure Blockchain based messaging platform

I was talking to someone only last week about this plus leveraging GPU chips.

The United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is advertising for a business to assist it in building a secure messaging app using distributed ledger (Blockchain) technology for the Department of Defense (DoD).

An advertisement for the role appeared on the Defense Business portal and states that there is a “critical DoD need to develop a secure messaging and transaction platform accessible via web browser or standalone native application.”

The said platform would be required to offer separate message creation, from the transfer of the message within a secure courier to the reception and decryption of the message.

AI Helps Scientists Develop Anti-Poaching System

A team of computer scientists from the University of Southern California (USC) have been successful in developing a new method to alleviate wildlife poaching. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the project that has created a model for ‘green security games’.

This model is based on game theory to safeguard wildlife from poachers. Game theory involves predicting the actions of enemy using mathematical equations and subsequently formulating the best possible restrain moves. This model will enable more efficient patrolling of parks and wildlife by park rangers.

An artificial intelligence (AI) application, known as Protection Assistant for Wildlife Sanctuary (PAWS) was developed by Fei Fang, a Ph.D. candidate in the computer science department at USC and Milind Tambe, a professor of computer science and systems engineering at USC, in 2013. The team has since then spent a couple of years to test the effectiveness of the application in Uganda and Malaysia.

Zotac VR Backpack Makes Virtual Reality Wireless … But Not Exactly Convenient

Zotac specializes in making small computers, like their Magnus EN980, which packs a lot of powerful hardware into a tiny space. The company has used their proficiency with making compact hardware and applied it to this virtual reality backpack; it’s wireless and battery-powered, so you can explore an open space without having to worry about tripping on any wires.

The promotional video cites the possibility of tripping on wires as the main reason why you’d want one of these, but that justification might not be enough to sell you on it. Wireless VR headsets don’t exist yet, but they will soon. Optoma has been working on a cloud-based wireless VR headset; the reason that other companies haven’t done that yet is because of concerns about lag or reduction in picture quality. Optoma claims their headset doesn’t have these issues, and if that’s true, they could end up competing handily with Sony and Oculus, both of which require the user to remain plugged in at all times. Optoma’s headset won’t launch for another year, so until then, hardware developers have had to come up with some other ways to go wireless with VR.

Zotac’s backpack seems like one possible solution, and it certainly increases the user’s ability to take VR with them on the go. You could take this thing out to an electricity-free cabin in the middle of nowhere, so long as the battery’s charged up. (Also, most people probably go to remote cabins for reasons other than trying out a cool VR headset, but … shhh.)

Scientists take next step towards observing quantum physics in real life

Turning on Quantum properties onto a cup of coffee. First step; should be interesting in what researchers discover especially around teleporting. Imaging you’re Dominos pizza with a teleport hub and customer orders a pizza. No longer need a self driving car, or drone; with this technology Dominos can teleport your hot fresh pizza to your house immediately after it is out of the oven.

Small objects like electrons and atoms behave according to quantum mechanics, with quantum effects like superposition, entanglement and teleportation. One of the most intriguing questions in modern science is if large objects – like a coffee cup — could also show this behavior. Scientists at the TU Delft have taken the next step towards observing quantum effects at everyday temperatures in large objects. They created a highly reflective membrane, visible to the naked eye, that can vibrate with hardly any energy loss at room temperature. The membrane is a promising candidate to research quantum mechanics in large objects.

The team has reported their results in Physical Review Letters.

Swing

“Imagine you’re given a single push on a playground swing. Now imagine this single push allows you to gleefully swing non-stop for nearly a decade. We have created a millimeter-sized version of such a swing on a silicon chip”, says prof. Simon Gröblacher of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the TU Delft.

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