Lifeboat Foundation

Industrial powerhouse Honeywell says its latest quantum computer is now the fastest in the world. How quickly real-world applications will develop or how swiftly they’ll be able to impact industries or affect cryptographic systems such as Bitcoin is the subject of rigorous debate.

In an announcement on Thursday, Honeywell says its team of scientists, engineers and technicians has delivered a quantum volume of 64. The metric measures both the total number of the computer’s qubits and how well it handles them. IBM’s machine scored a 32, suggesting Honeywell’s quantum computer is twice as fast.

Continue reading “Tech Giant Announces ‘World’s Fastest Quantum Computer’ – Are Bitcoin (BTC) and Cryptographic Systems at Risk?” »

My interview.

An African perspective on COVID-19 and technology.

Summary: Findings reveal individual differences in the severity of depressive symptoms following a relationship breakdown are associated with changes in resting-state whole-brain dynamics.

Source: UPF Barcelona

During a person’s life, the experience of a stressful life event can lead to the development of depressive symptoms, even in a non-clinical population. For example, a relationship breakup is a fairly common event and is a powerful risk factor for quality of life, in addition to increasing the risk of a major depressive disorder.

For instance, suppose a neural network has labeled the image of a skin mole as cancerous. Is it because it found malignant patterns in the mole or is it because of irrelevant elements such as image lighting, camera type, or the presence of some other artifact in the image, such as pen markings or rulers?

Researchers have developed various interpretability techniques that help investigate decisions made by various machine learning algorithms. But these methods are not enough to address AI’s explainability problem and create trust in deep learning models, argues Daniel Elton, a scientist who researches the applications of artificial intelligence in medical imaging.

Elton discusses why we need to shift from techniques that interpret AI decisions to AI models that can explain their decisions by themselves as humans do. His paper, “Self-explaining AI as an alternative to interpretable AI,” recently published in the arXiv preprint server, expands on this idea.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has applied to offer high-speed internet to Canadians living in remote areas by beaming it to them via satellites.

The Globe and Mail newspaper first reported that space exploration company SpaceX applied with Canada’s telecom regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), for what’s known as a Basic International Telecommunications Services, or BITS, licence.

From Alaska airlines flight

#SpaceExploration

Solar Eclipse from Alaska airlines flight #SpaceExploration

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the Emory Vaccine Center (EVC) are first to show a new adjuvant, 3M-052, helps induce long-lasting immunity against HIV. The study results are published today in Science Immunology.

In this pre–clinical study that included 90 rhesus monkeys, the researchers showed 3M-052, a new, synthetic small molecule that targets a specific receptor (TLR 7/8), successfully induced vaccine-specific, long-lived bone marrow plasma cells (BM-LLPCs), which are critical for durable immunity. In a striking observation, 3M-052-induced BM-LLPCs were maintained at high numbers for more than one year after vaccination. This prolonged interval is not only feasible in monitoring pre–clinical effectiveness, it is also highly informative in down selecting vaccine candidates.

First author Sudhir Pai Kasturi, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and a research assistant professor at Yerkes and the EVC, says, “We have known adjuvants are critical immunity-boosting supplements that help improve the effectiveness of vaccines. Until now, however, it has been unclear which class of adjuvants can promote stable and long-lived immunity in nonhuman primate models. Our study provides that information.”

In 2018, China launched a secret project with the goal of eradicating U.S. submarines.

It’s called Project Guanlan, which means “Watching the Big Waves,” and it’s a space-based laser weapon.

If you’re a regular reader, then this won’t come as a surprise to you.

Continue reading “China’s Top-Secret Laser Project” »

When the next Ford F-150 arrives on American roads, you’ll recognize it immediately even if you can’t see the emblem on its grille. The company published a preview image that reveals the truck’s LED lighting signature.

Posted on Twitter, the blacked-out photo is our first official look at the next-generation F-150 due out for the 2021 model year. It confirms the front end receives two pairs of LEDs that create the outline of a rectangle when lit. The top bars frame the headlights and stretch into the grille, while the lower bars underline the fog lights.

Our spies have regularly sent us images of camouflaged F-150 test mules taken all over the United States, so we have a decent idea of what to expect from the truck, and the preview image reveals nothing that we don’t already know. It wears a tall hood with sculpted sides, vertical headlights, and rectangular mirrors. Its design is more of an evolution than a revolution, but Ford hinted it’s making significant changes under the body panels.