Lifeboat Foundation

Today it only takes one and a half hours to make a superconducting particle accelerator at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory colder than outer space.

“Now you click a button and the machine gets from 4.5 Kelvin down to 2 Kelvin,” said Eric Fauve, director of the Cryogenic team at SLAC.

Continue reading “Helium’s chilling journey to cool a particle accelerator” »

A tiny but important area in the middle of the brain acts as a switch that determines when an animal is willing to work for a reward and when it stops working, according to a study published Aug. 31 in the journal Current Biology.

“The study changes how we think about this particular brain region,” said senior author Melissa Warden, assistant professor and Miriam M. Salpeter Fellow in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, which is shared between the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“It has implications for psychiatric disorders, particularly depression and anxiety,” Warden said.

Qubits are the building blocks of quantum computers, which have the potential to revolutionize many fields of research by solving problems that classical computers can’t.

But creating qubits that have the perfect quality necessary for quantum computing can be challenging.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, HRL Laboratories LLC, and University of New South Wales (UNSW) collaborated on a project to better control silicon quantum dot qubits, allowing for higher-quality fabrication and use in wider applications. All three institutions are affiliated with the Chicago Quantum Exchange. The work was published in Physical Review Letters, and the lead author, J. P. Dodson, has recently transitioned from UW–Madison to HRL.

Millions of faces and car license plates were stored in a sizable Chinese database that was publicly accessible for months before it was silently removed in August.

A tech business called Xinai Electronics with headquarters in Hangzhou on China’s east coast is the owner of the disclosed data. In China, the firm creates systems for regulating entry for people and cars to workplaces, schools, construction sites, and parking lots. Its website boasts the use of facial recognition for a variety of uses beyond building access, including personnel management, such as payroll, monitoring employee attendance and performance, while its cloud-based vehicle license plate recognition system enables drivers to pay for parking in unattended garages that are managed by staff remotely.

Continue reading “A database containing 800 million Chinese faces and vehicle license plates leaked” »

Google has launched its new Vulnerability Bounty Program for its open source software. The company will pay up to more than US$31,000 as an incentive to those who find bugs in its ecosystem and report them.

“Today we are launching the Open Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Program (OSS VRP) to reward vulnerability discoveries in Google’s open source projects. As responsible for major projects like Golang, Angular and Fuchsia, Google is among the largest contributors and users of open source in the world. With the addition of Google’s OSS VRP to our family of Vulnerability Bounty Programs (VRPs), researchers can now be rewarded for finding bugs that could potentially affect the entire open source ecosystem,” said Francis Perron, program manager. open source security technician, and Krzysztof Kotowicz, information security engineer, in a statement from Google.

Continue reading “Google will pay up to $31,000 to those who find vulnerabilities in its open source software” »

Researchers have combined a mechanical oscillator with a superconducting resonator to create a system that vibrates at GHz frequencies.

Researchers used mathematical modeling to analyze the movements of individual organisms that make up a coral, finding correlation between their otherwise random sways and bounces.

“In June, our delegation was in South Korea, in July we went to France. Negotiations are ongoing with Chinese suppliers. Based on the results of an in-depth study of international experience, nuclear technology suppliers will be involved. I repeat, this will be an international project,” he reaffirmed, adding that the results of this experience is under study.

“In principle, the construction of a nuclear power plant is a long process, it takes about eight years. Without nuclear power, we will not be able to ensure energy security for ourselves… We will need such generation — the whole world is moving towards decarbonisation. We must move to clean technologies, and nuclear generation is the answer to the challenge of the times,” he stressed.

He stressed that the safety of NPP operation is of paramount importance. “We will choose the technology that is the safest, and those suppliers who can complete all the work in a timely manner. Related areas of our economy will also develop around this industry. There will be a big positive effect on the development of our country as a whole.”

Boeing received a worldwide safety alert after British safety experts said they discovered a possible vulnerability in its software used by pilots during takeoff and landing.

Earlier this month, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a global “safety alert for operators” after researchers discovered a problem with Boeing’s Onboard Performance Tool (OPT), a mobile app that pilots can use to calculate safety before takeoff and landing…

The tool uses data on metrics such as weather and weight to help with calculations for aircraft leaving and returning to the runway.