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Oct 30, 2019

New ‘unremovable’ xHelper malware has infected 45,000 Android devices

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, robotics/AI

Factory resets aren’t helping. Neither are mobile antivirus solutions. Malware keeps reinstalling itself.

Oct 30, 2019

Scientists Create Solid Light

Posted by in category: futurism

Circa 2014 o.o


On a late summer afternoon it can seem like sunlight has turned to honey, but could liquid—or even solid—light be more than a piece of poetry? Princeton University electrical engineers say not only is it possible, they’ve already made it happen.

In Physical Review X, the researchers reveal that they have locked individual photons together so that they become like a solid object.

Continue reading “Scientists Create Solid Light” »

Oct 30, 2019

Origin of modern humans ‘traced to Botswana’

Posted by in category: futurism

Scientists say the possible homeland of all humans alive today is an area south of the Zambezi River.

Oct 30, 2019

Block-like robots could assemble into emergency staircases

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

MIT’s M-blocks don’t look like robots, but they can jump, flip and self-assemble.

Oct 30, 2019

LIGO’s Lasers Can See Gravitational Waves, Even Though The Waves Stretch The Light Itself

Posted by in category: physics

If you think about the way a gravitational wave detector works, you might encounter a paradox. Here’s the solution.

Oct 30, 2019

Faster, More Secure Communications Using Structured Light in Quantum Protocols

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, security

Structured light is a fancy way to describe patterns or pictures of light, but deservedly so as it promises future communications that will be both faster and more secure.

Quantum mechanics has come a long way during the past 100 years but still has a long way to go. In AVS Quantum Science, from AIP Publishing, researchers from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa review the progress being made in using structured light in quantum protocols to create a larger encoding alphabet, stronger security and better resistance to noise.

“What we really want is to do quantum mechanics with patterns of light,” said author Andrew Forbes. “By this, we mean that light comes in a variety of patterns that can be made unique — like our faces.”

Oct 30, 2019

Researchers transmit energy with laser in ‘historic’ power-beaming demonstration

Posted by in categories: energy, military

It was the second day of a three-day-long tech demonstration at the David Taylor Model Basin at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where attendees had gathered to stand around in the dark to look at something they mostly couldn’t see.

It was a long-range, free-space power beaming system — the first of its kind. Attendees that day, May 23, could see the system itself—the two 13-foot-high towers, one a 2-kilowatt laser transmitter, the other a receiver of specially designed photovoltaics. But the important part, the laser that was beaming 400 watts of power across 325 meters, from the transmitter to the receiver, was invisible to the naked eye.

Oct 30, 2019

Confirmed: North Korean malware found on Indian nuclear plant’s network

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, nuclear energy

Two days after rumors of a malware infection at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant surfaced on Twitter, the plant’s parent company confirms the security breach.

Oct 30, 2019

300 Million People Threatened

Posted by in category: futurism

Coastal cities such as India’s Mumbai, China’s Shanghai and Thailand’s Bangkok could be submerged in three decades.

Oct 30, 2019

Hard as ceramic, tough as steel: Newly discovered connection could help design of nextgen alloys

Posted by in categories: information science, nuclear energy, quantum physics, robotics/AI

A new way to calculate the interaction between a metal and its alloying material could speed the hunt for a new material that combines the hardness of ceramic with the resilience of metal.

The discovery, made by engineers at the University of Michigan, identifies two aspects of this interaction that can accurately predict how a particular alloy will behave—and with fewer demanding, from-scratch quantum mechanical calculations.

“Our findings may enable the use of machine learning algorithms for alloy design, potentially accelerating the search for better alloys that could be used in turbine engines and nuclear reactors,” said Liang Qi, assistant professor of materials science and engineering who led the research.