The Chinese “Micius” satellite has successfully set up the world’s most secure video conference, using quantum cryptography to connect scientists in Europe and China for an unhackable, intercontinental chat.
The feat marks another milestone for the satellite, officially called Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QESS), which only last year was making headlines for transmitting an “unbreakable” quantum code to the Earth’s surface.
Posted in military, robotics/AI
At least the world knows what it is like to live in the shadow of nuclear weapons. There are much bigger question-marks over how the rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning will affect the way wars are fought, and perhaps even the way people think of war. The big concern is that these technologies may create autonomous weapons systems that can make choices about killing humans independently of those who created or deployed them.
War is still a contest of wills, but technology and geopolitical competition are changing its character, argues Matthew Symonds.
Imagine a police car that issues tickets without even pulling you over.
What if the same car could use artificial intelligence to find good hiding spots to catch traffic violators and identify drivers by scanning license plates, tapping into surveillance cameras and wirelessly accessing government records?
What if a police officer tapping on your car window asking for your license and registration became a relic of transportation’s past?
China is hoping to ride the wave of the AI development boom to increase the country’s role in building the chips that will power future AI devices.
China’s increasingly vested interest in developing artificial intelligence (AI) is breathing new life into the country’s semiconductor industry. A new report from MIT Technology Review explains how China’s dedication to becoming a global leader in AI development is giving Chinese chipmakers a new opportunity to reclaim territory in the burgeoning field of hardware development.
Lasers powerful enough to tear the fabric of matter itself are being developed in a special laboratory in China, potentially giving scientists the chance to create and study experimental environments unlike anything we have on Earth.
The stats behind these lasers are impressive: One has already reached a peak of 5.3 million billion watts or petawatts (PW), which is around 500 times the power of all the world’s electrical grids combined. There are plans to double that figure before 2018 is out, and yet these intense bursts of light last less than one trillionth of a second.
Meanwhile a new 100-PW laser is on the drawing board that could produce a pulse of light capable of ripping electrons and positrons (the antimatter counterparts to electrons) right out of empty space, showing that matter and energy are interchangeable – as Einstein so famously proposed with E=mc^2.
What if damaged teeth could heal themselves without the need of a root canal? Apparently, that’s what Harvard and the University of Nottingham are trying to figure out. They believe they can create stem cell stimulated fillings.
Worldwide, dentists treat hundreds of millions of cavities each year by drilling out the decayed part of the tooth and replacing it with a filling. According to Popular Science, the problem is up to 15 percent of those procedures will fail, which will lead to a root canal to remove the tooth’s pulp, a soft tissue in the center of the tooth that contains blood vessels, nerves, and connective tissue. The downside is, following a root canal, the tooth’s strength is weaker and could eventually need to be removed.
Adam Celiz is a therapeutic biomaterials researcher who believes that stem cells could help reduce the number of root canals and the need for dentures. Celiz and his team developed a new kind of filling that is made from stem cells that can help your tooth heal. Just like regular fillings, the biomaterial stem cells are injected into the tooth and hardened with ultra-violet light.
