“In a sense, we’re all meat robots.” Chief Scientist at Hanson Robotics blurs the lines between biological and engineered robotics in this short yet fascinating excerpt.
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Will You Ever Love a Robot?
Posted in biological, robotics/AI
Now, a team of engineers at Washington University in St. Louis has found a way to use graphene oxide sheets to transform dirty water into drinking water, and it could be a global game-changer.
“We hope that for countries where there is ample sunlight, such as India, you’ll be able to take some dirty water, evaporate it using our material, and collect fresh water,” said Srikanth Singamaneni, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the School of Engineering & Applied Science.
The new approach combines bacteria-produced cellulose and graphene oxide to form a bi-layered biofoam. A paper detailing the research is available online in Advanced Materials.
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A new Type of Quantum Bit
Posted in materials, quantum physics
In approaches using conventional semiconductor materials, scientists typically created qubits in the form of individual electrons. However, this caused dephesing, and the information carriers were difficult to program and read. Now, researchers from the University of Basel, Ruhr University Bochum, and the Universite de Lyon have overcome this problem by using holes — instead of electrons — to create qubits.
A new type of quantum bit | university of basel.
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Like a whirlpool, a new light-based communication tool carries data in a swift, circular motion.
Described in a study published today (July 28, 2016) by the journal Science, the optics advancement could become a central component of next generation computers designed to handle society’s growing demand for information sharing.
It may also be a salve to those fretting over the predicted end of Moore’s Law, the idea that researchers will find new ways to continue making computers smaller, faster and cheaper.
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Nice paper on QC from the Obama Administration. While reading this paper; I also kept in mind why the US, Europe, Canada, etc. all must accelerate our efforts on QC which is government backed hackers in China, etc. especially since China will have a Quantum Internet and have also accelerated their efforts on QC with their partnership with Australia’s QC efforts which many discoveries on QC has happened.
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In December of last year, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe announced startling results hinting at the existence of an undiscovered subatomic particle—one with a mass six times heavier than the Higgs boson, the particle that made headlines in 2012.
The evidence is still thin, but if more data confirm the finding, it could sharpen humankind’s understanding of the building blocks of the universe.
“This was a very surprising announcement and a puzzle at the same time, because the lifetime and mass of the particle could reveal something else beyond simply one extra particle, if it turns out to be a real signal,” said Kyoungchul “K.C.” Kong, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas. “Yet we do not claim this as a discovery, and we need more data.”
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Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have engineered a potentially game-changing solar cell that cheaply and efficiently converts atmospheric carbon dioxide directly into usable hydrocarbon fuel, using only sunlight for energy.
The finding is reported in the July 29 issue of Science and was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. A provisional patent application has been filed.
Unlike conventional solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity that must be stored in heavy batteries, the new device essentially does the work of plants, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel, solving two crucial problems at once. A solar farm of such “artificial leaves” could remove significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and produce energy-dense fuel efficiently.
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