Lifeboat Foundation

Earlier this month D-Wave Systems, the quantum computing pioneer that has long championed quantum annealing-based quantum computing (and sometimes taken heat for that approach), announced it was expanding into gate-based quantum computing.

Surprised? Perhaps we shouldn’t be. Spun out of the University of British Columbia in 1,999 D-Wave initially targeted gate-based quantum computing and discovered how hard it would be to develop. The company strategy morphed early on.

“I joined in 2005 when the company was first transitioning from a gate-model focus to quantum annealing focus,” recalled Mark Johnson, now vice president of quantum technologies and systems products. “There was still this picture that we wanted to find the most direct path to providing valuable quantum applications and we felt that quantum annealing was the was the way to do that. We felt the gate model was maybe 20 years away.”

For the first time, physicists have been able to directly measure one of the ways exploding stars forge the heaviest elements in the Universe.

By probing an accelerated beam of radioactive ions, a team led by physicist Gavin Lotay of the University of Surrey in the UK observed the proton-capture process thought to occur in core-collapse supernovae.

Not only have scientists now seen how this happens in detail, the measurements are allowing us to better understand the production and abundances of mysterious isotopes called p-nuclei.

Ron Hetrick, a labor economist at EMSI and one of the report’s authors, said that as a whole the industry is not yet able to bring robotics in at a meaningful level. But future restaurant business models will continue to evolve as labor challenges remain. He expects business models could change so that the amount of service customers need drops.

“You will probably lose out on the amount of restaurants that you can go sit in,” Hetrick said.

Miso’s Bell said that software engineers are always in high demand, but the company is facing “normal challenges” in terms of worker availability. The current supply chain crunch is more of an immediate concern.

Scientists at Rice University have created a material that will protect steel from corrosion. In fact, it will also be flexible and heal itself when damaged.

This material will be used as a coating and is made from a lightweight sulfur-selenium alloy. It will be able to block moisture and chlorine-like zinc-and chromium-based coatings, protect steel under seawater-like conditions like polymer-based coatings, keep it from microbe-induced corrosion.

The experiments carried out before the results comprised putting small slabs of common mild steel coated with sulfur-selenium alloy in seawater for a month, along with an uncoated slab of steel as a control. The coated steel did not oxidize.

Nuclear energy is becoming more popular by the day and is being considered an eco-friendly option for the energy crisis we are going through. The US Department of Energy has dedicated US$20 million to a project that is based in Arizona that will use nuclear energy to make green hydrogen. They will be testing its capability as a liquid backup battery and as a secondary product for nuclear power installations.

The project will be headed by PNW Hydrogen LLC. They will build hydrogen production plants on-site at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Phoenix, Arizona. Storage tanks will be used that will be able to store six tonnes of hydrogen onsite, representing about 200 MWh of energy that can be converted back into electricity and given to the grid when demand is more than usual.

The hydrogen will also be “used to make chemicals and other fuels,” and the project will gauge how nuclear stations can export and sell extra energy as an extra revenue stream. It is said that in the future, baseline power providers like nuclear stations will only be needed when the sun’s not shining or the wind’s not blowing. Hence, it makes sense to use this technology to make use of it and produce energy in the downtime.

Taking psilocybin can affect one’s emotional state when listening to music, according to new research presented earlier this month at the 34th ECNP Congress in Lisbon.

Psilocybin, the active psychedelic component of magic mushrooms, has previously shown great promise when used in therapy settings for the treatment of depression. Many of these clinical trials often make use of selected music playlists to support the subjective psychedelic experience felt by the trial participant.

Now, scientists believe that this action of combining psilocybin with music may result in enhanced emotional processing on behalf of the participant, implying that music should be treated as a more active component of psilocybin therapy.

Scientists are coming up with practical and cheaper desalination processes for water. It has been going on since half a century ago in Spain. Currently, Ikaria, a Greek island, got access to clean water by virtue of desalination.

The common method used in the process is called reverse osmosis (RO) but it has to be connected to the electricity grid. This is expensive and inaccessible for areas far from the grid. So, researchers have come up with sustainable off-grid desalination systems that run on renewable energy.

Now, microbial desalination cells (MDCs) are being suggested to use. This is developed by MIDES. It produces drinkable water from the sea. It means electro-active bacteria desalinate and sterilize water making it suitable and safe. “This technology offers new options to provide clean water and wastewater treatment to small, isolated locations without electricity,” said Frank Rogalla, director of innovation and technology at Aqualia and a member of the project team.

A company made a fossil-free fuel out of ‘electrified CO₂.’

It is almost equally fascinating to see old things pop up out of dust and new flashy things invented. Kory Anderson and his team in South Dakota did precisely the same thing. They breathed life back into a monster. As a result, the largest steam engine to have ever made, the 150HP Case, came to life nearly after a slumber of a century.

The JI Case Company based in Racine, Wisconsin, back in the day boasted the creation of this mammoth engine to their credit. It was used like a warhorse or a work mule to pull gigantic freights and heavy loads over long distances.

This magnanimous engines were produced for a little over two years, after which their production was shelved because of the lack of metallurgical advancements back in the day. Only 9 of these engines were produced, and their parts were later sold off for scrap. The only remnant of these engines was a boiler.