Lifeboat Foundation

Quantum physicists at the University of Copenhagen are reporting an international achievement for Denmark in the field of quantum technology. By simultaneously operating multiple spin qubits on the same quantum chip, they surmounted a key obstacle on the road to the supercomputer of the future. The result bodes well for the use of semiconductor materials as a platform for solid-state quantum computers.

One of the engineering headaches in the global marathon towards a large functional quantum computer is the control of many basic memory devices – qubits – simultaneously. This is because the control of one qubit is typically negatively affected by simultaneous control pulses applied to another qubit. Now, a pair of young quantum physicists at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute –PhD student, now Postdoc, Federico Fedele, 29 and Asst. Prof. Anasua Chatterjee, 32,– working in the group of Assoc. Prof. Ferdinand Kuemmeth, have managed to overcome this obstacle.

The brain of the quantum computer that scientists are attempting to build will consist of many arrays of qubits, similar to the bits on smartphone microchips. They will make up the machine’s memory.

China’s economy — the 2nd-largest in the world — is teetering on the brink of disaster.

Since this spring, Beijing has canceled initial public offerings, fined tech companies billions for antitrust violations, forcibly shut down China’s entire for-profit education industry, and sent CEOs running for the exits to avoid the government’s ire. Even more dire, the Chinese megadeveloper Evergrande recently started missing payments on its more than $300 billion in debt, shaking global markets. The convulsions have woken the world up to a startling new possibility — that Beijing may be willing to allow some of its private corporate behemoths to collapse in a bid to reshape the economic model that made China a superpower.

Continue reading “If China’s economy keeps stumbling, it won’t just take down Beijing — the whole world will collapse with it” »

A few days ago, United Nations World Food Program (WFP) director David Beasley told CNN that a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals such as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk could help solve world hunger with just a fraction of their net worth. Musk’s net worth currently stands at $311 billion thanks to a recent rally in TSLA stock, effectively making the CEO the world’s wealthiest individual today.

While speaking at CNN’s Connect the World with Becky Anderson, Beasley called for billionaires to “step up now, on a one-time basis.” He also noted that even just 2% of Musk’s current net worth could solve world hunger. This translates to roughly about $6 billion. “$6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated,” the UN WFP director said.

Musk has now responded to Beasley’s statements. While responding to a post on Twitter which highlighted that the UN World Food Program actually raised $8.4 billion in 2,020 Musk noted that if the WFP could explain exactly how $6 billion would solve world hunger, then he would be more than willing to sell some TSLA stock right now. This is a key point as most of Musk’s net worth is tied to his majority stake in Tesla. This means that for Musk to have $6 billion in cash, he’d have to sell TSLA stock, which would then be taxed.

Summary: A new study presents the first quantitative comparison of adaptation response.

Source: University of Toronto.

Research on sensory adaptation led by University of Toronto Engineering professor Willy Wong may have unearthed a previously overlooked organizational principle of physiology.

The iconic Princess Leia hologram scene in the original Star Wars movie in 1978 did much to whet our technology appetite for this futuristic form of communication. In 2012 in the real world, the ground-breaking telepresence resurrection of Tupac Shakur at the Coachella music festival wowed the audie.

The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating Halloween by releasing new images of a spooky “orange eye” peeking out of a cosmic cloud.

The eye in question is CW Leonis, a carbon star in the constellation of Leo, the lion.

Look closely at the main image, above, and you’ll see that not only is CW Leonis itself an incredible sight, but around it are countless distant galaxies.… See more.

As the world turns increasingly more digital and data-driven, there is an increasing desire for greater visibility and transparency of data. Governments around the world have turned to digital means to submit and pay taxes as well as collect a variety of revenue from different sources. Likewise, governments are making deeper use of data and systems for their expenditures and analyzing the patterns of that spending.

One of the lesser-known agencies in the US federal government is the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). As a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the BSF manages the federal government’s accounting, central payment systems, and public debt. In essence, the BFS is the bookkeeper for the US federal government. A huge role given the trillions of dollars that flow through US coffers on an annual basis. Since the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA) was signed into law on September 26 2006, the BFS has embarked on a number of wide ranging data-centric efforts to provide visibility into government spending including USASpending.gov, FiscalData.Treasury.gov, and DataLab.USASpending.gov.

Not surprisingly, the BFS has also invested heavily in the use of AI, the main topic of an upcoming AI in Government presentation on November 18 2021 with Justin Marsico, Chief Data Officer of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. In that presentation, Justin shares how deeply the bureau is investing in the use of AI and some of the ways in which it is providing insights into government spending and revenues.

During the mid-twentieth century, managing the household was transformed by the mainstreaming of technological innovations such as washing machines, dishwashers, and vacuum cleaners.

Perhaps in three decades from now, technology will have evolved to a level to allow humanoid robots, such as Andrew played by the late Robin Williams in the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, to take over the household chores entirely.

Whether or not this represents a flight of fancy, what we know is that technological advancement rarely happens in great leaps but rather, through incremental steps.

Advances make high-density, 5D optical storage practical for long-term data archiving.

Researchers have developed a fast and energy-efficient laser-writing method for producing high-density nanostructures in silica glass. These tiny structures can be used for long-term five-dimensional (5D) optical data storage that is more than 10,000 times denser than Blue-Ray optical disc storage technology.

“Individuals and organizations are generating ever-larger datasets, creating the desperate need for more efficient forms of data storage with a high capacity, low energy consumption and long lifetime,” said doctoral researcher Yuhao Lei from the University of Southampton in the UK. “While cloud-based systems are designed more for temporary data, we believe that 5D data storage in glass could be useful for longer-term data storage for national archives, museums, libraries or private organizations.”