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Category: engineering – Page 238

China’s Scientists Propose the Human ‘Quantum Brain’ –“The Source of Our Dominance on the Planet: More Complex Than a Galaxy”

The human brain has Quantum consciousness according to China. Why a cogitative thinking system that truly mimics the human brain will require QC.

Chinese scientists have proposed a new theory that explains why humans are so much more intelligent than animals even though our brains are often much smaller than those of other species. Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Neuroscience and Neuro-engineering have previously carried out studies backing the theory that the brain not only processes and passes on information not only through electrical and chemical signals, but also with photons of light.

Video: The Coming Quantum Computing Revolution

In this video, D-Wave Systems Founder Eric Ladizinsky presents: The Coming Quantum Computing Revolution.

“Despite the incredible power of today’s supercomputers, there are many complex computing problems that can’t be addressed by conventional systems. Our need to better understand everything, from the universe to our own DNA, leads us to seek new approaches to answer the most difficult questions. While we are only at the beginning of this journey, quantum computing has the potential to help solve some of the most complex technical, commercial, scientific, and national defense problems that organizations face. We expect that quantum computing will lead to breakthroughs in science, engineering, modeling and simulation, financial analysis, optimization, logistics, and national defense applications.”

Eric Ladizinsky is a senior scientific management executive with a strong background in physics, engineering, materials, manufacturing and team building. Mr. Ladizinsky leads D-Wave’s technical effort to develop the superconducting integrated circuit fabrication process and is often called upon to evangelize on all aspects of quantum computing. At Northrop Grumman Space Technology (formerly TRW, Inc.), he ran a multi-million dollar DARPA program in Quantum Computing using superconducting integrated circuit technology. Mr. Ladizinsky has a BSc. Physics and Mathematics degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and is an Adjunct Professor of Physics at Loyola Marymount University.

Exploring the promise of the quantum realm

Nice work; understanding the quantum effects in nanomechanical systems is closer to reality in being achieved. Imagine a nanobot or microbot with quantum mechanic properties.

Rob Knobel is probing the ultimate limits of nanomechanical systems to develop and build tiny vapour sensors, which could be used as airport security tools to prevent terrorism or drug smuggling.

He and his students are using highly specialized equipment in the $5-million Kingston Nano Fabrication Laboratory (KNFL), which opened a year ago in Innovation Park, to fabricate nanosensors made from graphene, a form of carbon a single atom thick.

“Graphene is the strongest, lightest material yet discovered, and it has remarkable electrical and mechanical properties. We’re developing graphene chemical sensors that can detect vapours in parts per billion or trillion concentration. These could potentially be used for detecting explosives or biological agents,” says Dr. Knobel, an associate professor, the Chair of Engineering Physics and a Queen’s Engineering graduate himself.

How to make India an innovation hub

Innovation is all the buzz in Asia. Australia, China, Korea, Vietnam, and now lets look at India.

Personally, I believe there is great potential in India for some amazing innovations. Just look at their own historical sites and artifacts, art, etc.; no one can claim creativity, imagination, etc. does not exist. And, not to mention the engineering feats that have been proven by India many times.

India has moved 16 rungs up the global ranking for innovation in 2016, as compared to 2015, but still remains a lowly 66th, well below Malaysia and Vietnam, leave alone China in the middle-income category and far below countries like South Korea and Japan, and other high-income innovation hubs like Switzerland, the US, the UK and Singapore. What can be done to make India a hub of innovation? Improve the quality of education across all levels. A technology policy that incentivises genuine R&D is required. Ease of entry and exit of firms, competition, a vibrant financial sector that allocates capital to new profit potential, a culture of entrepreneurship and an end to failure-shaming would help. The least obvious requirement is political empowerment of the common man.

Close on the heels of the release of the ranking comes the news that India has got one more unicorn, a startup with a valuation in excess of $1billion, with fresh investment in Hike, a messenger app from the Bharti stable, valuing the company at $1.4 billion. This is a welcome development, and testimony to innovation at work in India. However, compared to what WeChat, a Chinese app that brings many functionalities together including payments and messages that expire, Indian innovation looks limited. Huge research and development expenditure by global majors in their units in India has helped raise the country’s ranking in the global index. But this only means Indian brawn working to bring foreigners’ innovation to fruition, for the most part.

Boston Dynamics: On a mission to build the most advanced robots on earth

Hey Boston Dynamics why don’t you team up with D-Wave and/ or Google’s QC work in building your advance robot because everyone knows that the real magic in robotics and other AI isn’t going to be realized until QC is implemented as part of the under lying technology.

Boston Dynamics is an engineering company that specializes in building dynamic robots and software for human simulation. You know doubt know of them from the many videos they produce. One of the more recent ones is below:

Currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, Inc. Began as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where National Academy of Engineering member Marc Raibert and his colleagues first developed robots that ran and maneuvered like animals. They founded the company in 1992, and their ground-breaking work continues to inspire the work.

DARPA is Working to Make Homes That Grow And Can Repair Themselves

DARPA has just launched the Engineering Living Materials program, with a vision to create building materials that grow on-site. The materials would be used to construct buildings that repair themselves and adapt to the environment.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has certainly had its hand in making the gizmos and gadgets we enjoy into a reality. The agency is still hard at work blazing the trail for the tech of the future, issuing challenges for the creation of the most advanced things on this Earth.

It has issued a new challenges, this time in the field of construction. DARPA has just announced the Engineering Living Materials program, a program to develop building materials that grow on site, repair themselves, and even adapt to the environment. “The vision of the ELM program is to grow materials on demand where they are needed,” said ELM program manager, Justin Gallivan, in a press release. “Imagine that instead of shipping finished materials, we can ship precursors and rapidly grow them on site using local resources.”

Researchers Use E.coli to Engineer Improved Biofuels

Interesting.

Although E. coli bacteria is often considered as a bad bug, laboratory-adapted E. coli that do not harm human beings and can multiply fast have been commonly used for various research purposes.

The same property allows the bacteria to rebuild into the smallest of factories when their chemical producing ability is utilized. E. coli possesses the ability to crank out pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and various other useful products.

Currently, a team of researchers from the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University have developed a technique to efficiently produce biofuels in certain E. coli. Fuzhong Zhang, assistant professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, accompanied by other researchers, has discovered a new method that will eliminate a major hurdle in the production process.

Long-term brain-machine interface use could lead to recovery in paraplegic patients

I know so many people who will benefit from this.

During the 2014 FIFA World Cup opening ceremony, a young Brazilian man, paralyzed from the chest down, delivered the opening kickoff. He used a brain-machine interface, allowing him to control the movements of a lower-limb robotic exoskeleton.

This unprecedented scientific demonstration was the work of the Walk Again Project (WAP), a nonprofit, international research consortium that includes Alan Rudolph, vice president for research at Colorado State University, who is also an adjunct faculty member at Duke University’s Center for Neuroengineering.

Barely two years after the demonstration, the WAP has released its first clinical report, published Aug. 11 in Scientific Reports. They report that a group of patients who trained throughout 2014 with the WAP’s brain-controlled system, including a motorized exoskeleton, have regained the ability to voluntarily move their leg muscles and to feel touch and pain in their paralyzed limbs. This, despite being originally diagnosed as having a clinically complete spinal cord injury — in some cases more than a decade earlier.

Quantum dots with impermeable shell used as a powerful tool for “nano-engineering”

I never get tired of talking about the many uses for Q-dot technology. One area that has me even more intrigued is how it is used in crystallized formations. I expect to see more and more experimenting on crystalized formations on many fronts including complex circuitry for performance and storage.

And, with synthetic technology today plus 3D printing along with Q-dots we could (as I have eluded to many times over several months) truly begin to see some amazing technology be developed on the wearable tech front.

Wearables could include synthetic circuitry stones in various accessories to not only store information, but also serve as another form of unique id because in synthetic stones we have been able (like in nature) create complex crystalized formations that are each unique/ 1 of a kind like a unique finger print, or iris of an eye. I expect to see some very interesting things coming in this space.

Unique optical features of quantum dots make them an attractive tool for many applications, from cutting-edge displays to medical imaging. Physical, chemical or biological properties of quantum dots must, however, be adapted to the desired needs.

Unfortunately, up to now quantum dots prepared by chemical methods could only be functionalized using copper-based click reactions with retention of their luminescence. This obstacle can be ascribed to the fact that copper ions destroy the ability of quantum dots to emit light. Scientists from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw and the Faculty of Chemistry of the Warsaw University of Technology (FC WUT) have shown, however, that zinc oxide (ZnO) quantum dots prepared by an original method developed by them, after modification by the click reaction with the participation of copper ions, fully retain their ability to emit light.

“Click reactions catalyzed by copper cations have long attracted the attention of chemists dealing with quantum dots. The experimental results, however, were disappointing: after modification, the luminescence was so poor that they were just not fit for use. We were the first to demonstrate that it is possible to produce quantum dots from organometallic precursors in a way they do not lose their valuable optical properties after being subjected to copper-catalysed click reactions,” says Prof. Janusz Lewinski (IPC PAS, FC WUT).

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