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I will like to see how this stacks against China’s Quantum net, QC platform, AI, and hackers in the future. Not sold at this point until we truly have a QC infrastructure in place.

At DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge, bots showed off their ability to help a world wallowing in vulnerable code.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Mayhem ruled the day when seven AIs clashed here last week — a bot named Mayhem that, along with its competitors, proved that machines can now quickly find many types of security vulnerabilities hiding in vast amounts of code.

Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the first-of-its-kind contest sought to explore how artificial intelligence and automation might help find security and design flaws that bad actors use to penetrate computer networks and steal data.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence Just Changed the Future of Information Security – Defense One” | >

Dmitry Fedyanin from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Mario Agio from the University of Siegen and LENS have predicted that artificial defects in the crystal lattice of diamond can be turned into ultrabright and extremely efficient electrically driven quantum emitters. Their work, published in New Journal of Physics, demonstrates the potential for a number of technological breakthroughs, including the development of quantum computers and secure communication lines that operate at room temperature.

The research conducted by Dmitry Fedyanin and Mario Agio is focused on the development of electrically driven single-photon sources—devices that emit when an electrical current is applied. In other words, using such devices, one can generate a photon “on demand” by simply applying a small voltage across the devices. The probability of an output of zero photons is vanishingly low and generation of two or more photons simultaneously is fundamentally impossible.

Until recently, it was thought that quantum dots (nanoscale semiconductor particles) are the most promising candidates for true single-photon sources. However, they operate only at very low temperatures, which is their main drawback – mass application would not be possible if a device has to be cooled with liquid nitrogen or even colder liquid helium, or using refrigeration units, which are even more expensive and power-hungry. At the same time, certain point defects in the crystal lattice of diamond, which occur when foreign atoms (such as silicon or nitrogen) enter the diamond accidentally or through targeted implantation, can efficiently emit single photons at room temperature. However, this has only been achieved by optical excitation of these defects using external high-power lasers. This method is ideal for research in scientific laboratories, but it is very inefficient in practical devices.

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Quantum computers are largely hypothetical devices that could perform some calculations much more rapidly than conventional computers can. Instead of the bits of classical computation, which can represent 0 or 1, quantum computers consist of quantum bits, or qubits, which can, in some sense, represent 0 and 1 simultaneously.

Although quantum systems with as many as 12 have been demonstrated in the lab, building quantum computers complex enough to perform useful computations will require miniaturizing qubit technology, much the way the miniaturization of transistors enabled modern computers.

Trapped ions are probably the most widely studied qubit technology, but they’ve historically required a large and complex hardware apparatus. In today’s Nature Nanotechnology, researchers from MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory report an important step toward practical quantum computers, with a paper describing a prototype chip that can trap ions in an electric field and, with built-in optics, direct toward each of them.

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Nice — another step forward for all things connected.

Scientists can now talk to and even command living cells–to a limited degree at the moment, but with massive implications for the future. MIT biological engineers have created a computer code that allows them to basically hijack living cells and control them. It works similarly to a translation service, using a programming language to create a function for a cell in the form of a DNA sequence. Once it’s scalable, the invention has major ramifications. Future applications could include designing cells that produce a cancer drug when a tumor is detected or creating yeast cells that halt their own fermentation if too many toxic byproducts build up.

That’s not to imply it isn’t a big deal already. The code allows anyone, even someone without a biology background, to modify a pre-existing cell. All that’s required is knowledge of the programming language, which is based on one commonly used for computer chips called Verilog. “You could be completely naive as to how any of it works,” MIT biological engineering professor Christopher Voigt said in a press release. “That’s what’s really different about this. You could be a student in high school and go onto the Web-based server and type out the program you want, and it spits back the DNA sequence.” To learn more, read the full story here. For more on the confluence of biology and technology, watch this TED Talk below.

Continue reading “Scientists Create Language to Program Living Cells” | >

Indeed, if we set ethical and safety objections aside, genetic enhancement has the potential to bring about significant national advantages. Even marginal increases in intelligence via gene editing could have significant effects on a nation’s economic growth. Certain genes could give some athletes an edge in intense international competitions. Other genes may have an effect on violent tendencies, suggesting genetic engineering could reduce crime rates.

We may soon be able to edit people’s DNA to cure diseases like cancer, but will this lead to designer babies? If so, bioethicist G Owen Schaefer argues that China will lead the way.

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But, using an assumption that a wormhole can be found at the middle of a black hole, a group of Portugese researchers modelled how objects like a chair, a scientist and a spacecraft would be able to withstand the journey through it.

‘What we did was to reconsider a fundamental question on the relation between the gravity and the underlying structure of space-time,’ Diego Rubiera-Garcia, lead author from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, said.

‘In practical terms, we dropped one assumption that holds in general relativity, but there is no a priori reason for it to hold in extensions of this theory.’

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