Lifeboat Foundation

During NeurIPS 2021, seven quantum computer scientists from Amazon came together to discuss the current state of quantum computing, some of the biggest challenges facing the field, and what the future might hold.

Panelists included:
• Simone Severini, director of quantum computing.
• Antia Lamas-Linares, principal research scientist.
• Earl Campbell, senior research scientist.
• John Preskill, Amazon Scholar.
• Katharine Hyatt, applied scientist.
• James Whitfield, Amazon Visiting Academic.
• Helmut Katzgraber, senior practice manager.

Continue reading “The challenge and promise of quantum computing | Amazon Science” »

In aviation, any advancement in design must either reduce weight or the benefit has to be worth the extra weight. Researchers at the University of Bath seem to have achieved the perfect balance between the two by developing a way to reduce aircraft engine noise by up to 80% while adding almost no extra weight.

As Green Car Congress reports, the research team at the University of Bath developed a graphene oxide-polyvinyl alcohol aerogel, which only weighs 2.1kg (4.6lbs) per cubic meter and therefore makes it the lightest sound insulation ever manufactured.

Researchers developed a graphene aerogel that reduces engine noise to the same level as a hair dryer.

Continue reading “Lightest Sound Insulation Ever Created Will Make Aircraft Engines 80% Quieter” »

The ultra-slippery nature of a two-dimensional material called magnetene could be down to quantum effects rather than the mechanics of physical layers sliding across each other, say researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada and Rice University in the US. The result sheds light on the physics of friction at the microscopic scale and could aid the development of reduced-friction lubricants for tiny, implantable devices.

Two-dimensional materials are usually obtained by shaving atomically thin slices from a sample of the bulk material. In graphene, a 2D form of carbon that was the first material to be isolated using this method, the friction between adjacent layers is very low because they are bound together by weak van der Waals forces, and therefore slide past each other like playing cards fanning out in a deck. For magnetene, the bulk material is magnetite, a form of iron oxide with the chemical formula Fe₃O₄that exists as a 3D lattice in the natural ore. The bonds between layers are much stronger in magnetene than in graphene, however, so its similarly low-friction nature was a bit of a mystery.

In 1971, scientists turned to genetics to control disease-spreading mosquitoes without DDT. Today, there are a variety of pesticide-free methods.

Amazon’s online grocery delivery efforts are reportedly set to ramp up in the US and Europe in 2022.

Physicists are translating commonsense principles into strict mathematical constraints for how our universe must have behaved at the beginning of time.

Wordfence analysts report having detected a massive wave of attacks in the last couple of days, originating from 16,000 IPs and targeting over 1.6 million WordPress sites.

The threat actors target four WordPress plugins and fifteen Epsilon Framework themes, one of which has no available patch.

Some of the targeted plugins were patched all the way back in 2018, while others had their vulnerabilities addressed as recently as this week.

Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared a video on Twitter of the giant Starship and its steering engines, a sign production may be back on track.

The company’s current Glass hardware is built on Android.

Google is hiring an “Augmented Reality OS” team focused on building software for an “innovative AR device,” according to job listings spotted by 9to5Google. The team is led by Mark Lucovsky, who announced he’d joined the company this week. Lucovsky previously worked at Meta developing an in-house alternative to Android to power the company’s hardware, and also co-authored the Windows NT operating system.

According to Google’s job listings, the Augmented Reality OS team is building “the software components that control and manage the hardware on [its] Augmented Reality (AR) products.” This is far from Google’s first stab at developing AR software, and follows the company’s work on ARCore for Android and Tango. The company’s Google Glass, which is aimed at the business and enterprise market, is currently built on Android.

Continue reading “Google staffs up to build OS for unknown ‘innovative AR device’” »