Lifeboat Foundation

The gene-editing technology has led to innovations in medicine, evolution and agriculture — and raised profound ethical questions about altering human DNA.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales and a startup company, Silicon Quantum Computing, published results of their quantum dot experiments. The circuits use up to 10 carbon-based quantum dots on a silicon substrate. Metal gates control the flow of electrons. The paper appears in Nature and you can download the full paper from there.

What’s new about this is that the dots are precisely arranged to simulate an organic compound, polyacetylene. This allowed researchers to model the actual molecule. Simulating molecules is important in the study of exotic matter phases, such as superconductivity. The interaction of particles inside, for example, a crystalline structure is difficult to simulate using conventional methods. By building a model using quantum techniques on the same scale and with the same topology as the molecule in question, simulation is simplified.

The SSH (Su-Schreffer-Heeger) model describes a single electron moving along a one-dimensional lattice with staggered tunnel couplings. At least, that’s what the paper says and we have to believe it. Creating such a model for simple systems has been feasible, but for a “many body” problem, conventional computing just isn’t up to the task. Currently, the 10 dot model is right at the limit of what a conventional computer can simulate reasonably. The team plans to build a 20 dot circuit that would allow for unique simulations not feasible with classic computing tech.

Researchers from Rice University claim that processing boron nitride nanotubes used to be challenging, but not anymore.

Professors Matteo Pasquali and Angel Martí, along with their team of researchers, have simplified the handling of the highly valuable nanotubes, making them more suited for use in large-scale applications including electronics, aerospace, and energy-efficient materials.

According to the study’s findings published in Nature Communications, boron nitride nanotubes, also known as BNNTs, can self-assemble into liquid crystals when exposed to certain circumstances, particularly concentrations of chlorosulfonic acid that are greater than 170 parts per million by weight.

Transistors are the building blocks of modern electronics, used in everything from televisions to laptops. As transistors have gotten smaller and more compact, so have electronics, which is why your cell phone is a super powerful computer that fits in the palm of your hand.

But there’s a scaling problem: Transistors are now so small that they are difficult to turn off. A key device element is the channel that charge carriers (such as electrons) travel across between electrodes. If that channel gets too short, quantum effects allow electrons to effectively jump from one side to another even when they shouldn’t.

One way to get past this sizing roadblock is to use layers of 2D materials—which are only a single atom thick—as the channel. Atomically thin channels can help enable even smaller transistors by making it harder for the electrons to jump between electrodes. One well-known example of a 2D material is graphene, whose discoverers won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. But there are other 2D materials, and many believe they are the future of transistors, with the promise of scaling channel thickness down from its current 3D limit of a few nanometers (nm, billionths of a meter) to less than a single nanometer thickness.

Omuterema AkhahendaAdmin.

I remember when my friends worked at a Motorola Chip fabrication plant in San Antonio. They had the facilities, as well as skilled labor. However, cheaper labor led many to invest abroad. I even changed my major from computer science, as I heard of thi… See more.

Anne KristoffersenWell — Orbital semiconductor fabrication should be pursued, there are so many benefits to making chips in a naturally micro-gravity, hard-vacuum environment.

Continue reading “Incredible Virus Discovery Offers Clues About the Origins of Complex Life” »

An Israeli military technology startup called Camero-Tech has unveiled a radar-based device that it claims allows soldiers to literally “see through walls,” Insider reports, raising significant questions about surveillance and privacy.

The Xaver 1,000 is a futuristic gadget that can give intelligence units “an unprecedented situational awareness 3D visual picture,” according to the company’s website, and has the ability to detect “live objects (static or dynamic) behind walls and building obstacles.”

That means tactical teams could soon get a highly detailed picture of what’s going on behind a variety of obstructions, allowing them to prepare ahead of breaching urban environments.

Some things that could make the world more efficient simply feel impossible to achieve — not like having to eat and sleep or not suffering through inflated grocery store prices.

Earlier this week, though, scientists at UC Riverside and the University of Delaware say they found a way to cross one of those seemingly impossible barriers when they convinced plants to grow in total darkness. A university press release says the team used a two-step process to convert carbon dioxide, electricity and water into acetate. Plants consumed the acetate and were able to grow in the dark.

The release said that combined with solar panels to generate electricity, this method of food production would be more than 18 times as effective as the natural process, which they claim uses only 1 percent of the energy found in sunlight alone. The team’s research was published Thursday in the journal Nature Food.

Climate change is already had a serious impact on global food production — from making food less nutritious to messing with the growing season of plants, to even pushing some crop species towards extinction. On top of that, the world’s oceans are already stressed by overfishing, with over 70 percent of the world’s fish stocks fully exploited, over-exploited, or depleted.

The combination of overuse and climate change could prove deadly for global food security. And by the time 2,300 rolls around, it will be too late to mitigate the impact of human activity on our food sources, both those on land and those under the sea.

Parents of the future rejoice! Scientists in China have developed an AI nanny that they say could one day take care of human fetuses in a lab.

Researchers in Suzhou, China, claim to have created a system that can monitor and care for embryos as they grow into fetuses while growing inside an artificial womb, The South China Morning Post reports.