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Winfried Hensinger likes Star Trek. “It goes all the way back to primary school,” said the director of the Sussex Centre for Quantum Technologies in England. “I wanted to be science officer on the Enterprise, so I worked out in about grade five that I wanted to study physics.”

Today, his day-to-day work on abstract notions of quantum mechanics would make even Spock’s ears perk up.

“[Quantum computing] has a huge appeal for young people,” Hensinger told Digital Trends, “because it’s basically science fiction.” When he started in the field, it was largely confined to theoretical study. Today, the most promising projects are within reach of producing a universal quantum computer — something that was as sci-fi as Star Trek just a few years ago.

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If I had to pick my least favorite subject in high school, it would be physics.

The concepts themselves were challenging. The math was even more challenging.

However, my views on physics quickly changed when my teacher mentioned the words “quantum mechanics.”

He refused to discuss it, saying it was beyond the scope of our class. However, my curiosity was piqued.

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No surprise; we knew this was going to happen.

China launched its second space lab, Tiangong-2, on Thursday, paving the way for a permanent space station that the country plans to build around 2022. In a space science first, a human brain-computer interaction test system, developed by Tianjin University, has been installed in the lab and it is set to conduct a series of experiments in space, People’s Daily reported. According to Ming Dong, the leader of the research team in charge of the brain-computer test system, the brain-computer interaction will eventually be the highest form of human-machine communication.

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Scientists have shown they can teleport matter across a city, a development that has been hailed as “a technological breakthrough”.

However, do not expect to see something akin to the Star Trek crew beaming from the planet’s surface to the Starship Enterprise.

Instead, in the two studies, published today in Nature Photonics, separate research groups have used quantum teleportation to send photons to new locations using fibre-optic communications networks in the cities of Hefei in China and Calgary in Canada.

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“Hopes of a fast and effective response to the global refugee crisis now rest on a summit convened by Barack Obama on Tuesday in New York, after negotiations before a meeting of world leaders at the UN on Monday failed to produce any concrete measures.”

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Scientists at Vanderbilt University have developed a first-ever implantable artificial kidney. The artificial kidney contains a microchip filter and living kidney cells that can function using the patient’s heart, and this bio-synthetic kidney acts like the real organ, removing salt, water and waste products to keep patients with kidney failure from relying on dialysis.

The key to this new development is a breakthrough in the microchip itself, which uses silicon nanotechnology. “[Silicon nanotechnology] uses the same processes that were developed by the microelectronics industry for computers,” said Dr. William H. Fissell IV, who led the team that developed the device.

The microchips are affordable, precise, and function as an ideal filter.

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