Lifeboat Foundation

The nature of work is evolving at an unprecedented pace. The rise of generative AI has accelerated data analysis, expedited the production of software code and even simplified the creation of marketing copy.

Those benefits have not come without concerns over job displacement, ethics and accuracy.

At the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), IEEE experts from industry and academia participated in a panel discussion discussing how the new tech landscape is changing the professional world, and how universities are educating students to thrive in it.

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new lithium metal battery that can be charged and discharged at least 6,000 times — more than any other pouch battery cell — and can be recharged in a matter of minutes.

Research paves the way for better lithium metal batteries.

The UK Ministry of Defence has demonstrated the DragonFire high-powered, directed-energy laser weapon system against aerial targets.

Germany has built a passive radar demonstrator that tracks targets using radiation from Starlink satellites opportunistically.

The Hilbert space of a physical qubit typically features more than two energy levels. Using states outside the qubit subspace can provide advantages in quantum computation. To benefit from these advantages, individual states of the $d$-dimensional qudit Hilbert space have to be discriminated during readout. We propose and analyze two measurement strategies that improve the distinguishability of transmon qudit states. Based on a model describing the readout of a transmon qudit coupled to a resonator, we identify the regime in hardware parameter space where each strategy is optimal. We discuss these strategies in the context of a practical implementation of the default measurement of a ququart on IBM Quantum hardware whose states are prepared by employing higher-order $X$ gates that make use of two-photon transitions.

Relationship of the photon to cosmology and the origin of the universe.

Shared with Dropbox.

ABC News anchor Robin Roberts was brought to tears on Thursday while reporting on a new cancer treatment breakthrough. The story was about a new means of helping cancer patients find donors for blood stem cell transplants – something that Roberts herself had to deal with during her own cancer battle and subsequent health issues. She shed tears thinking of families who will not have to worry as much as she did.

Roberts presented this story along with Good Morning America co-hosts George Stephanopoulos and Lara Spencer. They explained how patients previously had to find a near perfect match for a blood stem cell transplant. This was a particular issue for people of color, but this new breakthrough more than doubles their chances of finding a match. They illustrated the effects with the real-life story of a girl who recently survived a cancer diagnosis that would have been much more dangerous beforehand. Roberts explained how broadening the list of potential donors can be so helpful – and can improve the mindsets of patients and their families as well.

A significant breakthrough has been achieved by quantum physicists from Dresden and Würzburg. They’ve created a semiconductor device where exceptional robustness and sensitivity are ensured by a quantum phenomenon. This topological skin effect shields the functionality of the device from external perturbations, allowing for measurements of unprecedented precision.

This remarkable advance results from the clever arrangement of contacts on the aluminum-gallium-arsenide material. It unlocks potential for high-precision quantum modules in topological physics, bringing these materials into the semiconductor industry’s focus. These results, published in Nature Physics, mark a major milestone.

Researchers from the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences have published a new study exploring the use of positron emission particle tracking (PEPT) in a living subject for the first time.

PEPT technology allows for the 3D localization and tracking of a single radioactive particle within large, dense, and/or optically opaque systems, which is difficult to study using other methodologies. The technology is currently used to study flows within complex mechanical systems such as large engines, industrial mixers, etc., but has not yet been translated for use in biomedical applications.

PEPT has previously been an unexplored area in biomedical imaging due to the lack of methods to isolate and radiolabel a single particle of a small enough size and with enough radioactivity which to would enable it to be injected and detected in a living subject.