SpaceX prepared for its first all-civilian flight and completed a mission for the U.S. Space Force the week of June 17–23, while scientists made surprising discoveries about insects and animals on Earth.
SpaceX’s Inspiration4 all-commercial crew remains in training for its flight in September, and discoveries from deep space and Earth’s ancient past abound this week.
Great new episode with former Fermilab physicist Gerald Jackson who chats about antimatter propulsion and the politics of advanced propulsion research. This one is out a bit later in the week than normal, but please listen. Good stuff.
Guest Gerald Jackson, former Fermilab physicist and advanced propulsion entrepreneur chats about his plans for an Antimatter Propulsion interstellar robotic probe. First stop would be Proxima Centauri. In a wide-ranging interview, Jackson talks about the politics and pitfalls of advance propulsion research. Too many people seem to think antimatter is something that is still science fiction. It’s not. It’s as real as the chair you’re sitting on.
The artificial intelligence revolution is just getting started. But it is already transforming conflict. Militaries all the way from the superpowers to tiny states are seizing on autonomous weapons as essential to surviving the wars of the future. But this mounting arms-race dynamic could lead the world to dangerous places, with algorithms interacting so fast that they are beyond human control. Uncontrolled escalation, even wars that erupt without any human input at all.
DW maps out the future of autonomous warfare, based on conflicts we have already seen – and predictions from experts of what will come next.
Continue reading “How AI is driving a future of autonomous warfare | DW Analysis” »
In fall of 2019, we demonstrated that the Sycamore quantum processor could outperform the most powerful classical computers when applied to a tailor-made problem. The next challenge is to extend this result to solve practical problems in materials science, chemistry and physics. But going beyond the capabilities of classical computers for these problems is challenging and will require new insights to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy. Generally, the difficulty in performing quantum simulations of such physical problems is rooted in the wave nature of quantum particles, where deviations in the initial setup, interference from the environment, or small errors in the calculations can lead to large deviations in the computational result.
In two upcoming publications, we outline a blueprint for achieving record levels of precision for the task of simulating quantum materials. In the first work, we consider one-dimensional systems, like thin wires, and demonstrate how to accurately compute electronic properties, such as current and conductance. In the second work, we show how to map the Fermi-Hubbard model, which describes interacting electrons, to a quantum processor in order to simulate important physical properties. These works take a significant step towards realizing our long-term goal of simulating more complex systems with practical applications, like batteries and pharmaceuticals.
Chinese taikonauts’ electronic devices that were brought to Tiangong space station drew Chinese IT fans’ attentions on social media Sina Weibo. Netizens have found out those devices are all produced by Chinese companies.
Netizens have found that the electronic devices brought to China’s Tiangong space station and Shenzhou-12 capsule are all produced by Chinese companies. The topic “daily life of Chinese astronauts” had 240 million views on Sina Weibo by Thursday.
Various devices including a Huawei P30 mobile phone, Lenovo ThinkPad laptop and Xiaomi electronic screwdriver can be seen clearly in the livestream, released on Wednesday.
Still the comic relief til about December 31, 2024. By 2035 curing everything, already in the early stages towards that.
Giovanni Traverso, an MIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and also the senior author of the study said, that they were actively working on robots that can help provide health care services to maximize the safety, of both the patients and the health care workforce.
Traverso and his colleagues after the Covid-19 began last year, worked towards reducing interaction between the patients and the health care workers. In this process, they collaborated with Boston Dynamics in creating mobile robots that can interact with patients who waited in the emergency department.
Continue reading “Robot Doctors to Provide Health Care Services Soon” »
MIT researchers demonstrate a way to sharply reduce errors in two-qubit gates, a significant advance toward fully realizing quantum computation.
MIT researchers have made a significant advance on the road toward the full realization of quantum computation, demonstrating a technique that eliminates common errors in the most essential operation of quantum algorithms, the two-qubit operation or “gate.”
“Despite tremendous progress toward being able to perform computations with low error rates with superconducting quantum bits (qubits), errors in two-qubit gates, one of the building blocks of quantum computation, persist,” says Youngkyu Sung, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science who is the lead author of a paper on this topic published on June 16, 2021, in Physical Review X. “We have demonstrated a way to sharply reduce those errors.”
Move over, gene-editing proteins—there’s a smaller, cheaper, more specific genetic engineering tool on the block: DNAzymes—small DNA molecules that can function like protein enzymes.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a technique that, for the first time, allows DNAzymes to target and cut double-stranded DNA, overcoming a significant limitation of the technology. DNAzymes have been used in biosensing, DNA computing and many other applications. However, when it comes to genetic engineering applications such as gene editing or gene therapy, they have faced a challenge: DNAzymes have only been able to target sites on single-stranded DNA, while the DNA coding for genes in cells is double-stranded. The researchers published their new technique in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
“DNAzymes have many advantages, including higher stability, smaller size and lower cost than protein enzymes. These advantages perfectly fit the requirement for genetic engineering tools,” said study leader Yi Lu, a professor of chemistry at Illinois. “No DNAzymes could alter double-stranded DNA until this work. By making that happen, we open the door for DNAzymes to enter the entire world of genetic engineering.”
Rather than steal credentials or hold data for ransom, a recent campaign observed by Sophos prevents people from visiting sites that offer illegal downloads.
The objective of most malware is some kind of gain — financial or otherwise — for the attackers who use it. However, researchers recently observed a unique malware with a single intent: Blocking the infected computers from visiting websites dedicated to software piracy.
The malware (which SophosLabs principal researcher Andrew Brandt called “one of the strangest cases I’ve seen in a while”) works by modifying the HOSTS file on the infected system, in a “a crude but effective method to prevent a computer from being able to reach a web address,” he wrote in a report published Thursday.
