Lifeboat Foundation

QuTech has resolved a major issue on the road toward a working large-scale quantum computer. QuTech, a collaboration of TU Delft and TNO, and Intel have designed and fabricated an integrated circuit that can controlling qubits at extremely low temperatures. This paves the way for the crucial integration of qubits and their controlling electronics in the same chip. The scientists have presented their research during the ISSCC Conference in San Francisco.

Quantum computers

“This result brings us closer to a large-scale quantum computer which can solve problems that are intractable by even the most powerful supercomputers. Solutions to those problems can make a strong impact on everyday life, for instance in the fields of medicine and energy,” said team lead Fabio Sebastiano from QuTech and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.

Competition between the U.S. and China in quantum computing revolves, in part, around the role such a system could play in breaking the encryption that makes things secure on the internet.

Truly useful quantum computing applications could be as much as a decade away, Aaronson says. Initially, these tools would be highly specialized.

“The way I put it is that we’re now entering the very, very early, vacuum-tube era of quantum computers,” he says.

Massive-scale particle physics produces correspondingly large amounts of data – and this is particularly true of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, which is housed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. In 2026, the LHC will receive a massive upgrade through the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) Project. This will increase the LHC’s data output by five to seven times – billions of particle events every second – and researchers are scrambling to prepare big data computing for this deluge of particle physics data. Now, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are working to tackle high volumes of particle physics data with quantum computing.

When a particle accelerator runs, particle detectors offer data points for where particles crossed certain thresholds in the accelerator. Researchers then attempt to reconstruct precisely how the particles traveled through the accelerator, typically using some form of computer-aided pattern recognition.

This project, which is led by Heather Gray, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a particle physicist at Berkeley Lab, is called Quantum Pattern Recognition for High-Energy Physics (or HEP.QPR). In essence, HEP.QPR aims to use quantum computing to speed this pattern recognition process. HEP.QPR also includes Berkeley Lab scientists Wahid Bhimji, Paolo Calafiura and Wim Lavrijsen.

But apart from a few small-scale examples, the only stem cell-based medical treatment practised in clinics uses haematopoietic stem cells found in the blood and bone marrow – which only produce blood cells – for transplants in blood cancer patients. These cells are taken from a patient’s sibling or an unrelated donor, before being infused into a patient’s blood, or they’re taken from a patient’s own blood before being reinfused. The procedure has been used to treat blood malignancies for almost half a century, and recently multiple sclerosis too. So how likely is it that the predictions about stem cells’ longevity-enhancing powers will become a reality?

Startups are offering stem cells as the cure to everything from age-related illness to wrinkles. But the science is far from clear-cut.

A new proof-of-concept study has found a combination of two drugs, already approved by the FDA for other uses, may boost the release of stem cells from bone marrow and accelerate the healing of broken bones. Only demonstrated in animals at this stage, the researchers suggest clinical trials could progress rapidly considering the drugs have already been demonstrated as safe in humans.

“The body repairs itself all the time,” says corresponding author on the study Sara Rankin. “We know that when bones break they will heal, and this requires the activation of stem cells in the bone. However, when the damage is severe, there are limits to what the body can do of its own accord.”

A great deal of current research is focusing on mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapies. MSCs are a type of adult stem cell that can grow into a variety of different cell types including muscle, fat or bone. Many current MSC treatments in development involve extracting a small number from a patient, growing them in laboratory conditions, then injecting them back into the patient.

A surprising star collision is making scientists rethink what they know about the universe.

For the first time, researchers have used light to control the shape of nanoparticles and create micron-size hollow shells from crystals of cuprous oxide (copper and oxygen). Such particles could have future applications as a low-cost catalyst to help pull excess carbon dioxide from the air, a way to improve microscopic imaging and more, says Bryce Sadtler, a chemist at Washington University in St. Louis and senior author of a study on the new method, published last October in Chemistry of Materials.

Hollowed-out microcrystals could lock away carbon.

The US Navy has successfully installed its first Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN) laser weapon aboard one of its warships. During dry-dock operations, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105) received the stand-alone laser system, which is designed to blind the sensors on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS).

The ODIN laser isn’t the first to be deployed on a US Navy warship. That honor goes to the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) Laser Weapon System (LaWS), which was deployed on the USS Ponce (LPD-15) in 2014. However, this experience by the team behind LaWS at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren Division provided the expertise needed to complete the development of ODIN.

Unlike other laser weapons that are designed to destroy targets with blasts of concentrated laser light, ODIN is what is known as a dazzler laser. That is, it’s one of a class of lasers that are intended to blind or distract rather than destroy. Though the legality of using such lasers against human pilots restricts them to only distracting the person by acting like the glare of oncoming headlamps, such lasers can also disable or destroy delicate optical sensors on drones.

Last year we ogled the Newron EV-1 electric motorcycle upon its debut, but questioned whether it would ever make it to market. As of today though, the company has ended speculation by opening pre-orders for the highly unique, wooden-bodied electric motorcycle.