How much light do we really need at night for urban traffic, life? are we more secure with more light? or have we put too much?
Street lights across the country, particularly in rural areas, may be replaced with cleaner alternatives to cut a £3bn bill.
Here we propose a novel protected erasure qubit, the Floquet fluxonium molecule (FFM). The FFM qubit exhibits (i) extremely long predicted logical coherence times and relatively long erasure lifetimes, (ii) a simple superconducting circuit structure, and (iii) high-fidelity single-qubit gates, which are much faster than the coherence timescale. Based on a Floquet-driven pair of inductively coupled fluxonium circuits [13–15], the FFM is a multi-DOF superconducting circuit with engineered, highly coherent quasieigenstates.
Our key technical contribution is a novel form of Floquet protection in a multi-DOF qubit, which strongly suppresses phase-flip errors, removing them at first and second order in the flux noise. The combination of drive and multi-DOF allows the low-lying eigenstates to be disjoint and delocalized with a nonvanishing energy gap. The second-order sweet spot has no analogue in the single-DOF circuits that have been studied thus far [16–18]; in fact, in single-DOF circuits there is a generic trade-off between bit-and phase-flip errors arising from the inability to keep two eigenstates simultaneously disjoint and flux delocalized using accessible circuit QED Hamiltonians [19].
The higher-order phase-flip insensitivity allow the predicted coherence time of the FFM qubit to significantly outperform other multi-DOF circuits. These include the following: the dual-rail erasure transmon, with experimentally achieved logical lifetimes of approximately ms and erasure lifetimes of approximately [12]; the dual-rail cavity, with logical lifetimes predicted [10] (achieved [11]) at approximately ms (3 ms), limited by cavity and ancilla dephasing, and erasure lifetimes of approximately in both cases; and the cold echo qubit, with predicted logical lifetime of ms with erasure rates unreported [8]. Theoretically, we find the FFM exhibits long bit-flip coherence times of approximately 50 ms while suppressing phase flips even further, along with a 500-erasure lifetime.
Inspired by the external skeleton of a spider, the robot leg is more flexible than conventional robots.
A small robot that resembles a spider’s leg has been developed by engineers at the University of Tartu. Inspired by nature, the fingernail-long leg is more flexible than conventional robots.
Its dexterous movements are expected to help people rescued from rubble and other danger zones in the future.
The robot leg modeled after the leg of a cucumber spider was created by researchers from the Institute of Technology of the University of Tartu and the Italian Institute of Technology. In the near future, it’s expected to move where humans cannot.
Recently, two independent research groups have shown that the brain codes for zero much as it does for other numbers, on a mental number line. But, one of the studies found, zero also holds a special status in the brain.
In recent years, research started to uncover how the human brain represents numbers, but no one examined how it handles zero. Now two independent studies, led by Nieder and Barnett, respectively, have shown that the brain codes for zero much as it does for other numbers, on a mental number line. But, one of the studies found, zero also holds a special status in the brain.
“The fact that [zero] represents nothing is a contradiction in itself,” said Carlo Semenza, a professor emeritus of neuroscience at the University of Padua in Italy who wasn’t involved in either study. “It looks like it is concrete because people put it on the number line — but then it doesn’t exist. … That is fascinating, absolutely fascinating.”
The new studies are the first to reveal what goes on in the brain when a person thinks about zero, and they bring up broader questions about how the mind handles absence — a pursuit that would have pleased Jean-Paul Sartre, the 20th-century existentialist who claimed that “nothingness carries being in its heart.”
Actin, a family of proteins that help give cells their shape, are abundant throughout the body.
Humans aren’t the only ones who grow forgetful as they age—fruit flies do, too. But because fruit flies have a lifespan of only about two months, they can be a useful model for understanding the cognitive decline that comes with aging.
A new study published in Nature Communications shows that when a common cell structural protein called filamentous actin, or F-actin, builds up in the brain, it inhibits a key process that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components within cells, including DNA, lipids, proteins and organelles.
The resulting accumulation of waste diminishes neuronal functions and contributes to cognitive decline. By tweaking a few specific genes in aging fruit flies’ neurons, the researchers prevented F-actin buildup, maintained cellular recycling and extended the healthy lifespan of fruit flies by approximately 30%.
There are rare cells in the gut called enteroendocrine cells (EECs) that could be manipulated in a variety of ways to detect or treat disease.
The trillions of microbes in our gastrointestinal tract, known as the gut microbiome, are crucial to the body; the gut microbiome aids in digestion, nutrient absorption, and influences our health in different ways. But the body also has to be protected from all of those microbes, which are kept behind a tight barrier. But if the intestinal barrier is dysfunctional, or leaky, serious problems can arise.
There are cells in the gut called enteroendocrine cells (EECs) that can generate hormones, which may have a variety of effects on the body. EECs release hormones in response to cues like food intake and stomach stretching. The hormones can then influence physiological processes related to digestion or appetite. Scientists have now found receptors on EECs that control hormone release. It may one day be possible to alter these receptors to treat disease. The research has been reported in Science.
Organization runs deep in our family tree, if we use the literal definition of “organize”: to be furnished with organs. Eukaryotes emerged billions of years ago, bringing with them the copious benefits of compartmentalization.
All modern multicellular life — all life that any of us regularly see — is made of cells with a knack for compartmentalization. Recent discoveries are revealing how the first eukaryote got its start.
At 81, however, Scott maintains that he does not have time to wait for the FDA to approve the age-reversal treatments needed to achieve his goal of immorality.
“My concern is me, not the regulations which have been created,” he said.
Kenneth Scott travels internationally for experimental treatments, doesn’t use soap, and spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on his quest for immortality.
A colossal structure in the distant Universe is defying our understanding of how the Universe evolved. In light that has traveled for 6.9 billion years to reach us, astronomers have found a giant, almost perfect ring of galaxies, some 1.3 billion light-years in diameter. It doesn’t match any known structure or formation mechanism.
‘During the launch of Denmark’s inaugural AI supercomputer, Gefion, alongside Jensen Huang, King Frederik of Denmark remarked, ‘I am not the only king in this room; the other one is wearing a leather jacket.’‘
