The frenzy over artificial intelligence may be ushering in the long-awaited moment when technology goes wild. Or maybe it’s the hype that is out of control.
The interplay of quantum measurements and unitary evolution is expected to produce dynamical phases with different entanglement properties. An entanglement phase transition has now been detected with hybrid quantum circuits in a superconducting processor.
Mercedes-Benz is the first automaker to get permission from California regulators to sell or lease vehicles with Level 3 (hands-off and eyes-off) self driving tech on designated roads, Reuters has reported. The California Department of Motor Vehicles issued a permit for the company’s Drive Pilot system, provided it’s used under certain conditions and on specific roads. Mercedes-Benz previous received a similar certification in Nevada.
Drive Pilot will allow Mercedes-Benz drivers to takes their eyes off the road and hands off the wheel, then do other non-driving activities like watching videos and texting. If the rules for use are followed, Mercedes (and not the driver) will be legally responsible for any accident that happens.
To do all this, the Drive Pilot system relies on sensors installed throughout the vehicle including visual cameras, LiDAR arrays, radar/ultrasound sensors and audio mics to keep an ear out for approaching emergency vehicles. It can even compare onboard sensor and GPS data to fix its precise location on roads.
Scientists have discovered not only that animals age more quickly when they don’t have enough of the amino acid taurine in the body, but that oral taurine supplements can delay aging and increase a healthy lifespan.
An international team of researchers found that taurine supplements delayed aging in worms, mice, and monkeys, and increased the healthy lifespan of middle-aged mice by up to 12 percent.
“For the last 25 years, scientists have been trying to find factors that not only let us live longer, but also increase health span, the time we remain healthy in our old age,” says biologist Vijay Yadav from Columbia University, senior author on the study.
BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) — Before Fred Kalfon began exercising at the Grey Team veterans center a couple months ago, the 81-year-old rarely left his Florida home.
Parkinson’s disease, an inner ear disorder and other neurological problems, all likely caused by the Vietnam vet’s exposure to the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, made it difficult for him to move. His post-traumatic stress disorder, centering on the execution of a woman who helped his platoon, was at its worst.
NASA is worried that SpaceX’s giant new Starship vehicle won’t be ready to carry astronauts to the surface of the moon in late 2025, as currently planned.
In 2021, the agency selected Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — to be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration.
To us, stars may resemble cut jewels, glittering coldly against the velvet darkness of the night sky. And for some of them, that may actually be sort of true.
As a certain type of dead star cools, it gradually hardens and crystallizes. Astronomers have found one doing just that in our cosmic backyard, a white dwarf composed primarily of carbon and metallic oxygen just 104 light-years away, whose temperature-mass profile suggests that the center of the star is transforming into a dense, hard, ‘cosmic diamond’ made up of crystallized carbon and oxygen.
The discovery is detailed in a paper accepted into the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and available on preprint website arXiv.
Quantum information (QI) processing may be the next game changer in the evolution of technology, by providing unprecedented computational capabilities, security and detection sensitivities. Qubits, the basic hardware element for quantum information, are the building block for quantum computers and quantum information processing, but there is still much debate on which types of qubits are actually the best.
Research and development in this field is growing at astonishing paces to see which system or platform outruns the other. To mention a few, platforms as diverse as superconducting Josephson junctions, trapped ions, topological qubits, ultra-cold neutral atoms, or even diamond vacancies constitute the zoo of possibilities to make qubits.
So far, only a handful of qubit platforms have been demonstrated to have the potential for quantum computing, marking the checklist of high-fidelity controlled gates, easy qubit-qubit coupling, and good isolation from the environment, which means sufficiently long-lived coherence.
Switching to a diet full of fresh veggies and low in processed foods could do wonders for your brain’s biological age, new research shows.
According to the international team of researchers who ran the study, eating a Mediterranean diet rich in vegetables, seafood, and whole grains appears to slow the signs of accelerated brain aging typically seen in obesity with as little as 1 percent loss in body weight.
Brain scans taken after 18 months showed the participants’ brain age appearing almost 9 months younger than expected, compared to estimates of their brain’s chronological age.
Right now, Fast Company reporters (not bots!) are covering how generative AI is enabling us to work better—and more creatively—than we have before. We’ve reported on how Stable Animation is giving creators a team of talented animators akin to having their own Disney studio, how workflow can be supercharged for productivity on Airtable, how you can use it to create more compelling marketing efforts, and even how AI makes a compelling case for liberating workers from the office, amid all the RTO mandates. And we’ve done a deep dive into how UX designers tap into the power of plug-ins like those on Figma to level up all aspects of their work from testing for accessibility to creating final code. If you’re curious, we’ve rounded up a bunch of AI tools you can try for free.
On the flip (read: darker) side, we’re already seeing how generative AI is threatening some jobs. A recently released report from the World Economic Forum revealed a number of jobs that would likely not exist in five years including bank tellers, cashiers, insurance clerks, and legislators, among others. Right now, even makeup artists —who you might think are so hands-on there’s no way they could be replaced—have proven to be dispensable. That’s thanks to a host of tools that can reshape entire video clips. The results are astounding and soon will be as easy to use as a TikTok filter.