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Freedom of Information Act requests are rarely speedy, but when a group of scientists asked the federal government to share the data it relied upon in licensing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, the response went beyond typical bureaucratic foot-dragging.

55 years and longer.

That’s how long the Food & Drug Administration in court papers this week proposes it should be given to review and release the trove of vaccine-related documents responsive to the request. If a federal judge in Texas agrees, plaintiffs Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency can expect to see the full record in 2076.

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The creation of the Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactor (SMR) business was announced following a £195m cash injection from private firms and a £210m grant from the government.

It is hoped the new company could create up to 40,000 jobs by 2050.

However, critics say the focus should be on renewable power, not new nuclear.

Private investors and the UK government will help fund the firm’s development of small nuclear reactors.

Continue reading “Rolls-Royce gets funding to develop mini nuclear reactors” | >

On Wednesday, CEO Elon Musk outlined how the company’s under-development rocket will deliver a “high fly rate” of a dozen launches in 2022. This will enable the ship to deliver actual payloads in 2023 before moving on to more ambitious goals like sending humans to the Moon and Mars.

The comments, made at the joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Board on Physics and Astronomy, outline how the stainless steel rocket taking shape in Texas will move from prototype curiosity to working ship.

It’s a project that could enable some of SpaceX’s most significant goals. First outlined in 2017 under the name “BFR,” the Starship is a stainless steel rocket that measures around 400 feet tall when paired with its Super Heavy booster. It’s fully reusable, designed to fly up to three times per day. It’s capable of sending up to 150 tons or 100 people into space at a time.

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“Fountain is an example of a biotech company emerging as a direct result of basic research, in this case the biology of aging,” said Dr Rando, founder and chairman of Fountain. “The company’s screening and discovery platform is built upon foundational research showing that the age of a cell can be modulated by factors in the cell’s environment. By identifying compounds that work through these pathways, we seek to restore youthful resilience to cells and tissues, leading to therapies that treat or even prevent chronic diseases of aging.”

Longevity funding: Eli Lilly and R42 Group join the party as Khosla-backed biopharma brings total Series A to $26 million.

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More than 100 years ago, a lake outside what is now the Abbotsford, B.C., area was drained to create lucrative farmland. Many say that decision is a big contributor to the devastating flooding.

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Continue reading “The 100-year-old decision that contributed to Abbotsford, B.C., flooding” | >

Dozens of space-based telescopes operate near Earth and provide incredible images of the universe. But imagine a telescope far away in the outer solar system, 10 or even 100 times farther from the Sun than Earth. The ability to look back at our solar system or peer into the darkness of the distant cosmos would make this a uniquely powerful scientific tool.

I’m an astrophysicist who studies the formation of structure in the universe. Since the 1960s, scientists like me have been considering the important scientific questions we might be able to answer with a telescope placed in the outer solar system.

So what would such a mission look like? And what science could be done?

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While traditional computers use magnetic bits to represent a one or a zero for computation, quantum computers use quantum bits or qubits to represent a one or a zero or simultaneously any number in between.

Today’s quantum computers use several different technologies for qubits. But regardless of the technology, a common requirement for all quantum computing qubits is that it must be scalable, high quality, and capable of fast quantum interaction with each other.

IBM uses superconducting qubits on its huge fleet of about twenty quantum computers. Although Amazon doesn’t yet have a quantum computer, it plans to build one using superconducting hardware. Honeywell and IonQ both use trapped-ion qubits made from a rare earth metal called ytterbium. In contrast, Psi Quantum and Xanadu use photons of light.

Atom computing chose to use different technology — nuclear-spin qubits made from neutral atoms. Phoenix, the name of Atom’s first-generation, gate-based quantum computer platform, uses 100 optically trapped qubits.

Full Story:

Continue reading “Atom Computing: A Quantum Computing Startup That Believes It Can Ultimately Win The Qubit Race” | >