Lifeboat Foundation

Xanadu, a photonic quantum computing company, announced today the release of the world’s first publicly available photonic quantum cloud platform, according to a press release. Developers can now access Xanadu’s gate-based photonic quantum processors, in 8, 12, and soon 24-qubit machines.

Photonics based quantum computers have many advantages over older platforms. Xanadu’s quantum processors operate at room temperature. They can easily integrate into existing fiber optic-based telecommunication infrastructure, enabling a future where quantum computers are networked. It also offers great scalability supporting fault tolerance, owing to robust error-resistant physical qubits and flexibility in designing error correction codes. Xanadu’s unique type of qubit is based on squeezed states – a special type of light generated by our own chip-integrated silicon photonic devices.

“We believe that photonics offers the most viable approach towards universal fault-tolerant quantum computing with Xanadu’s ability to network a large number of quantum processors together. We are excited to provide this ecosystem, a world-first for both quantum and classical photonics,” said Christian Weedbrook, Xanadu Founder and CEO. “Our architecture is new, designed to scale-up like the Internet versus traditional mainframe-like approaches to quantum computing.”

“Hotspots” of Coronavirus Infections in Human Bodies

An infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 can affect multiple organs. With this in mind, researchers of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Cornell University in the US have investigated cellular factors that could be significant for an infection. To this end, they analyzed the activity of 28 specific genes in a wide range of human tissues. Their findings, which provide a map of potentially disease-relevant factors across the human body, are published in the journal Cell Reports.

“SARS-CoV-2 not just infects the respiratory system, it has the potential to affect many other organs in the body. Even if the virus infects the respiratory system first, it is essential to be able to predict where it might go next. This aids to develop therapies. Our goal was thus to learn more about what makes the different organs susceptible to infection,” explained Dr. Vikas Bansal, a data scientist at the DZNE’s Tuebingen site. “Therefore, we looked at different tissues to see which components of the cellular machinery might be relevant for infection and also which cell types appear to be particularly susceptible.” Bansal co-authored the current paper with Manvendra Singh, a Cornell presidential fellow, and with Cedric Feschotte, professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University.

A downsized version of the company’s Sycamore chip performed a record-breaking simulation of a chemical reaction.

MIT’s Cheetah 3 robot can now leap and gallop across rough terrain, climb a staircase littered with debris, and quickly recover its balance when suddenly yanked or shoved, all while essentially blind.

Watch more videos from MIT: https://www.youtube.com/user/MITNewsOffice?sub_confirmation=1

Continue reading “Vision-free MIT Cheetah” »

Circa 2018

SPIDERS often make people jump but a bunch of clever scientists have managed to train one to jump on demand.

Researchers managed to teach the spider – nicknamed Kim – to jump from different heights and distances so they could film the arachnid’s super-springy movements.

Continue reading “Scientists train spider to jump on demand in bid to launch army of pest-fighting robots” »

November 2019 is a landmark month in the history of the future. That’s when humanoid robots that are indistinguishable from people start running amok in Los Angeles. Well, at least they do in the seminal sci-fi film “Blade Runner.” Thirty-seven years after its release, we don’t have murderous androids running around. But we do have androids like Hanson Robotics’ Sophia, and they could soon start working in jobs traditionally performed by people.

Russian start-up Promobot recently unveiled what it calls the world’s first autonomous android. It closely resembles a real person and can serve in a business capacity. Robo-C can be made to look like anyone, so it’s like an android clone. It comes with an artificial intelligence system that has more than 100,000 speech modules, according to the company. It can operate at home, acting as a companion robot and reading out the news or managing smart appliances — basically, an anthropomorphic smart speaker. It can also perform workplace tasks such as answering customer questions in places like offices, airports, banks and museums, while accepting payments and performing other functions.

Continue reading “Insanely humanlike androids have entered the workplace and soon may take your job” »

Electric current is everywhere, from powering homes to controlling the plasma that fuels fusion reactions to possibly giving rise to vast cosmic magnetic fields. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found that electrical currents can form in ways not known before. The novel findings could give researchers greater ability to bring the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars to Earth.

“It’s very important to understand which processes produce electrical currents in plasma and which phenomena could interfere with them,” said Ian Ochs, graduate student in Princeton Universitys Program in Plasma Physics and lead author of a paper selected as a featured article in Physics of Plasmas. “They are the primary tool we use to control plasma in magnetic fusion research.”

With a pig-filled demonstration, Neuralink revealed its latest advancements in brain implants this week. But what do scientists think of Elon Musk’s company’s grand claims?

What’s the risk of different human populations to develop a disease? To find out, a team led by Université de Montréal professor Guillaume Lettre created an international consortium to study the blood of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

In one of the largest studies of its kind, published today in Cell, close to 750,000 participants from five major populations—European, African, Hispanic, East Asian and South Asian—were tested to see the effect of genetic mutations on characteristics in their blood.

These characteristics include such things as hemoglobin concentration and platelet counts.