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Category: computing

Axial encoding unlocks up to eightfold faster 3D microscopy with less light

A research team from HKU Engineering has pioneered a fundamentally new imaging strategy known as AIMED (Arbitrary illumination microscopy with encoded depth), which utilizes a sub-sampling approach. By integrating innovations in axial optical encoding with advanced computational image reconstruction, the AIMED technology enables a substantial increase in 3D imaging speed while enhancing photon safety, all with minimal additional system complexity. This breakthrough demonstrates significant advantages across efficiency, image quality, and system compatibility.

This work was conducted by the OMEGA laboratory under the leadership of Professor Kenneth K. Y. Wong of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The study is published in the journal Advanced Photonics.

Better math discriminates exotic from classical materials

The planar Hall effect is a tabletop diagnostic tool for special quantum properties useful in basic research and technological applications. Or so it was thought, because careful calculation by Kobe University researchers clarifies the conditions under which this effect may also appear in classical materials. This makes the diagnostic more meaningful and enables more purposeful design.

In the hunt for materials with properties that are useful for quantum computing or spintronics, researchers have used the “planar Hall effect” as a tabletop diagnostic tool: The researchers send a current through a thin, flat sample and observe whether an electric voltage is produced in response to a magnetic field in the same plane as the sample.

If it is, the pattern of how the voltage responds to rotating the magnetic field in the plane of the sample tells researchers about the properties of the material.

The quantum internet, explained

The quantum internet is a network of quantum computers that will someday send, compute, and receive information encoded in quantum states. The quantum internet will not replace the modern or “classical” internet; instead, it will provide new functionalities such as quantum cryptography and quantum cloud computing.

While the full implications of the quantum internet won’t be known for some time, several applications have been theorized and some, like quantum key distribution, are already in use.

It’s unclear when a full-scale global quantum internet will be deployed, but researchers estimate that interstate quantum networks will be established within the United States in the next 10 to 15 years.

Thanks to a push from Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson and an army of MAHA influencers, Ancient Crunch sells 500,000 bags of its $13 seed-oil-free Masa chips every month

Having launched a potato version last year and with a popcorn line on the way, the founders hope to build the LVMH of healthy snack foods.

Researchers teach brain cells to play ‘Doom’

Investigadores enseñan a las células cerebrales a jugar a ‘Doom’

Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the nineties shooter game “Doom” and say they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing.

It’s the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system.

Each so-called “biological computer” contains around 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations.

3D silicon circuits bring denser computer chips closer to reality

Through new research published in Nature, Qing Cao and colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a new approach that sidesteps these problems, bringing high-performance 3D chips a step closer to reality.

Overheated stacks of transistors

Modern computer chips are built on thin wafers of silicon, with transistors (the tiny switches that process information) arranged in a single flat layer. If multiple layers of transistors could instead be stacked on top of each other on the same chip, it would dramatically increase their density without enlarging the chip’s footprint. However, this 3D design would cause the chip to overheat, which could destroy the circuitry already laid down beneath it.

A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits

In 1937, a young graduate student named Claude Shannon submitted a master’s thesis with an unassuming title: “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits.”

A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits is the title of a master’s thesis written by computer science pioneer Claude E. Shannon while attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1937, [ 1 ] [ 2 ] and then published in 1938. In his thesis, Shannon, a dual degree graduate of the University of Michigan, proved that Boolean algebra [ 3 ] could be used to simplify the arrangement of the relays that were the building blocks of the electromechanical automatic telephone exchanges of the day. He went on to prove that it should also be possible to use arrangements of relays to solve Boolean algebra problems. His thesis laid the foundations for all digital computing and digital circuits. [ 4 ] [ 5 ]

The utilization of the binary properties of electrical switches to perform logic functions is the basic concept that underlies all electronic digital computer designs. Shannon’s thesis became the foundation of practical digital circuit design when it became widely known among the electrical engineering community during and after World War II. At the time, the methods employed to design logic circuits (for example, contemporary Konrad Zuse’s Z1) were ad hoc in nature and lacked the theoretical discipline that Shannon’s paper supplied to later projects.

Shannon’s work also differed significantly in its approach and theoretical framework compared to the work of Akira Nakashima. Whereas Shannon’s approach and framework was abstract and based on mathematics, Nakashima tried to extend the existent circuit theory of the time to deal with relay circuits, and was reluctant to accept the mathematical and abstract model, favoring a grounded approach. [ 6 ] Shannon’s ideas broke new ground, with his abstract and modern approach dominating modern-day electrical engineering. [ 6 ].

Lab-grown brain organoids power biocomputers

A feature story authored by Simon Spichak, MSc investigates how biotech companies like Cortical Labs and FinalSpark harness human brain cells to electrodes, performing computational functions and testing the cells’ responses to electrical and chemical stimuli. To create biocomputers, scientists grow organoids—small spheres of, in this case, neural tissue—on top of multi-electrode arrays in a hardware shell, which can then be used for everything from testing medications to playing video games. The work is published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

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