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May 28, 2016

The business case for bots: Understanding the bot landscape (VB Live)

Posted by in categories: business, robotics/AI

Like anything else there are fundamentals around when, what, and why to use certain technologies and methods to achieve real value and return out of an investment; and bot technology is no different.


Bots are not only cheaper and faster to build than apps, they let companies engage consumers where they spend most of their mobile time: messaging platforms. Join us to understand why Facebook is going all in on chatbots for Messenger and brands as diverse as Staples, Bank of America, and Taco Bell are leading the bot charge — and bots are literally changing the conversation.

Register here for free.

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May 28, 2016

Investing in Lab-Grown Diamonds

Posted by in category: futurism

Another article on the growing importance and usage of synthetic diamonds in semiconductors especially in QC. In QC synthetic diamonds has been found through their complex crystalized structures to help stablelize processing and transmission of data. I strongly advise investors, labs, etc. to seriously look at this market. Also, some of the most proven laboratories are located in Russia, and US.


It might surprise you to learn that we can, in fact, grow diamonds in labs. Here’s the story.

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May 28, 2016

Synchronization of optical photons for quantum information processing

Posted by in category: quantum physics

Syncing of optical photons.


A fundamental element of quantum information processing with photonic qubits is the nonclassical quantum interference between two photons when they bunch together via the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect. Ultimately, many such photons must be processed in complex interferometric networks. For this purpose, it is essential to synchronize the arrival times of the flying photons and to keep their purities high. On the basis of the recent experimental success of single-photon storage with high purity, we demonstrate for the first time the HOM interference of two heralded, nearly pure optical photons synchronized through two independent quantum memories. Controlled storage times of up to 1.8 μs for about 90 events per second were achieved with purities that were sufficiently high for a negative Wigner function confirmed with homodyne measurements.

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May 28, 2016

The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality

Posted by in categories: evolution, neuroscience, quantum physics

Interesting.


The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman believes that evolution and quantum mechanics conspire to make objective reality an illusion.

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May 28, 2016

Thailand Creating Forests

Posted by in categories: climatology, drones, food, sustainability

As a result of deforestation, only 6.2 million square kilometers remain of the original 16 million square kilometers of forest that formerly covered Earth. Apart from adveserly impacting people’s livelihoods, rampant deforestation around the world is threatening a wide range of tree species, including the Brazil nut and the plants that produce cacao and açaí palm; animal species, including critically-endangered monkeys in the remote forests of Vietnam’s Central Highlands, and contributing to climate change instead of mitigating it (15% of all greenhouse gas emissions are the result of deforestation).

While the world’s forest cover is being unabashedly destroyed by industrial agriculture, cattle ranching, illegal logging and infrastructure projects, Thailand has found a unique way to repair its deforested land: by using a farming technique called seed bombing or aerial reforestation, where trees and other crops are planted by being thrown or dropped from an airplane or flying drone.

The tree seed bombing in Thailand is one of the greatest examples of ‘Conscious Entrepreneurs’ or ‘Spiritual Entrepreneurs’ out there right.

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May 27, 2016

Dark Matter + Black Hole = Wormhole?

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

According to a paper posted to the arXiv pre-print server last week, the difference between an everyday supermassive black hole and a space-time tunneling wormhole may be a lacing of dark matter. While it sounds like crank fodder of the sort that not infrequently winds up on arXiv, the idea may hold actual water.

The theory pertains to one particular proposed form of dark matter known as axionic dark matter. Axions, a hypothesized fundamental particle of matter relating to the strong nuclear force, aren’t the only proposed candidate for dark matter, but as searches for WIMPs (weakly-interacting massive particles)—far and away the favored proposed particle comprising dark matter—come up empty, axionic dark matter has become a more and more plausible scenario. As theorized, dark matter axions would permeate the universe as an energetic condensate, interacting only very weakly via the electromagnetic force and existing as a kind of ghostly cosmic foam.

Crucially, while individual axions would be very light, they would together make up enough mass to account for the dark matter halos that form the gravitational scaffolding of galaxies. Axions are currently being hunted for via experiments involving giant Earth-based mirrors.

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May 27, 2016

High-Tech Railgun Promises New Military Advantage

Posted by in category: military

A powerful new Naval railgun can fire a round that could travel from Washington, DC to Philadelphia in under two minutes. Pentagon officials believe the high-tech cannon could pave the way for a military advantage defending assets on sea and on land. Photo: U.S. Department of Defense.

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May 27, 2016

Is a Blockchain a Blockchain if it Isn’t?

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, cryptocurrencies, finance, innovation, internet, open source, software, transparency

Anyone who has heard of Bitcoin knows that it is built on a mechanism called The Blockchain. Most of us who follow the topic are also aware that Bitcoin and the blockchain were unveiled—together—in a whitepaper by a mysterious developer, under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

That was eight years ago. Bitcoin is still the granddaddy of all blockchain-based networks, and most of the others deal with alternate payment coins of one type or another. Since Bitcoin is king, the others are collectively referred to as ‘Altcoins’.

But the blockchain can power so much more than coins and payments. And so—as you might expect—investors are paying lots of attention to blockchain startups or blockchain integration into existing services. Not just for payments, but for everything under the sun.

Think of Bitcoin as a product and the blockchain as a clever network architecture that enables Bitcoin and a great many future products and institutions to do more things—or to do these things better, cheaper, more robust and more blockchain-01secure than products and institutions built upon legacy architectures.

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May 27, 2016

Schrödinger’s cat just got even weirder (and even more confusing)

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

The researchers hope their findings will help make quantum computers a reality.

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May 27, 2016

Light Can ‘heal’ Defects in New Solar Cell Materials

Posted by in categories: electronics, nanotechnology, particle physics, solar power, sustainability

A family of compounds known as perovskites, which can be made into thin films with many promising electronic and optical properties, has been a hot research topic in recent years. But although these materials could potentially be highly useful in applications such as solar cells, some limitations still hamper their efficiency and consistency.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere say they have made significant inroads toward understanding a process for improving perovskites’ performance, by modifying the material using intense light. The new findings are being reported in the journal Nature Communications, in a paper by Samuel Stranks, a researcher at MIT; Vladimir Bulovic, the Fariborz Maseeh (1990) Professor of Emerging Technology and associate dean for innovation; and eight colleagues at other institutions in the U.S. and the U.K. The work is part of a major research effort on perovskite materials being led by Stranks, within MIT’s Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory.

Tiny defects in perovskite’s crystalline structure can hamper the conversion of light into electricity in a solar cell, but “what we’re finding is that there are some defects that can be healed under light,” says Stranks, who is a Marie Curie Fellow jointly at MIT and Cambridge University in the U.K. The tiny defects, called traps, can cause electrons to recombine with atoms before the electrons can reach a place in the crystal where their motion can be harnessed.

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