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Scientists set the stage for quantum chemistry in space on NASA’s cold atom lab

For the first time in space, scientists have produced a mixture of two quantum gases made of two types of atoms. Accomplished with NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory aboard the International Space Station, the achievement marks another step toward bringing quantum technologies currently available only on Earth into space.

Physicists at Leibniz University Hannover (LUH), part of a collaboration led by Prof. Nicholas Bigelow, University of Rochester, provided the theoretical calculations necessary for this achievement. While quantum tools are already used in everything from cell phones to GPS to , in the future, quantum tools could be used to enhance the study of planets, including our own, as well as to help solve mysteries of the universe and deepen our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature.

The new work, performed remotely by scientists on Earth, is described in Nature.

Sutro introduces AI-powered app creation with no coding required

AI is already transforming the way we search, gather information, create, code, decipher data and more, and now it may democratize the process of building an app, too. A new AI-powered startup called Sutro promises the ability to build entire production-ready apps — including those for web, iOS and Android — in a matter of minutes, with no coding experience required.

The idea is to allow founders to focus on their unique ideas by leaning on Sutro to automate other aspects of app building, including the necessary AI expertise, product management and design, hosting, use of domain-specific languages, compiling and scaling.

The company was founded in late 2021 by Tomas Halgas, who sold his previous startup, the group chat app Sphere, to Twitter, alongside former Google and Facebook Product Manager Owen Campbell-Moore. The two have taken turns running the company, with Campbell-Moore at the head while Halgas worked at Twitter in its chaotic days leading up to Elon Musk’s takeover. Now, with Halgas having departed Twitter, he’s acting as CEO as Campbell-Moore has shifted to a day job at OpenAI.

Apple’s modem chip project fails to match Qualcomm’s modem technology

The company’s journey to make its modem has been long and frustrating.


Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

As per a Bloomberg report, the iPhone maker, which had planned to launch its chip by next year, will likely miss its target of shipping the component by the spring of 2025, people familiar with the matter said. The chip may debut at the end of 2025 or early 2026, the last year of Apple’s extended contract with Qualcomm.

These noise-canceling headphones can filter specific sounds on command, thanks to deep learning

Scientists have built noise-canceling headphones that filter out specific types of sound in real-time — such as birds chirping or car horns blaring — thanks to a deep learning artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm.

The system, which researchers at the University of Washington dub “semantic hearing,” streams all sounds captured by headphones to a smartphone, which cancels everything before letting wearers pick the specific types of audio they’d like to hear. They described the protoype in a paper published Oct. 29 in the journa IACM Digital Library.

Fusion magnets could lead to improved microchip production

Swooping magnetic fields that confine plasma in doughnut-shaped fusion facilities known as tokamaks could help improve the efficiency of complex machines that produce microchips. This innovation could lead to more powerful computers and smart phones, near-essential devices that make modern society possible.

Engineers use high-energy light emitted by plasma, the electrically charged fourth state of matter, to create small structures on the surfaces of silicon wafers during their transformation into microchips. These tiny components enable a range of devices, including consumer electronics, video games, medical machinery, and telecommunications. Improving the generation of this light could extend the life of vital parts within the machines and make the manufacture of microchips more efficient.

“These findings could change the microchip industry,” said Ben Israeli, lead author of the paper publishing the results in Applied Physics Letters. Israeli is a graduate student in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics, based at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), which is managed by Princeton University.

AI-powered headphones let users choose what they hear

The devices are controlled via voice commands or a smartphone app.


Active noise control technology is used by noise-canceling headphones to minimize or completely block out outside noise. These headphones are popular because they offer a quieter, more immersive listening experience—especially in noisy areas. However, despite the many advancements in the technology, people still don’t have much control over which sounds their headphones block out and which they let pass.

Semantic hearing

Now, deep learning algorithms have been developed by a group of academics at the University of Washington that enable users to select which noises to filter through their headphones in real-time. The system has been named “semantic hearing” by its creators.