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Category: computing – Page 26

Photonic chip packaging can withstand extreme environments

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new way to package photonic integrated circuits—tiny chips that convey information using light instead of electricity—so they can survive and operate in extreme environments, from scorchingly hot industrial settings to ultracold vacuum chambers and the depths of outer space.

“Our study marks a major step toward bringing the speed and efficiency of photonics into environments where conventional semiconductor chips powered by electric current and photonics chips packaged using traditional methods have not been able to operate,” said NIST physicist Nikolai Klimov, who led the project. The results were just published in Photonics Research.

Finding the ‘quantum needle’ in a haystack: New filtering method can isolate photons

In quantum technologies, everything depends on the ability to detect the properties carried by a single photon. But in the real world, that photon of interest is often buried in a sea of unwanted light—a true “needle in a haystack” challenge that currently limits the deployment of many applications, including secure quantum communication, quantum sensors used in telescope networks, as well as the interconnection of quantum computers to accelerate the development of new drugs and materials.

At the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), the team of Professor José Azaña, in collaboration with Professor Roberto Morandotti’s group, has developed a surprisingly simple and energy-efficient way to overcome this obstacle. The work was carried out by Benjamin Crockett during his Ph.D. at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre. He recently completed his degree and is now a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Their method not only reduces noise but, more importantly, recovers essential quantum properties that would otherwise be lost in bright environments where current technologies fail.

Novel protocol reconstructs quantum states in large-scale experiments up to 96 qubits

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could outperform classical computers on some computationally demanding tasks. Despite their potential, as the size of quantum computers increases, reliably describing and measuring the states driving their functioning becomes increasingly difficult.

One mathematical approach to simplify the description of quantum systems entails the use of matrix-product operators (MPOs). These are mathematical representations that allow researchers to break down very large systems into a long chain of connected smaller pieces.

Researchers at Université Grenoble Alpes, Technical University of Munich, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, University of Innsbruck and University of Bologna recently developed a new protocol that could be used to learn the MPO representations of quantum states in real, large-scale quantum experiments. Their protocol, presented in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, has so far been found to reliably reconstruct states in quantum systems including up to 96 qubits.

Aerosol jet printing creates durable, low-power transistors for next-generation tech

Tiny electronic devices, called microelectronics, may one day be printed as easily as words on a page, thanks to new research from scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. Building on years of progress in printed electronics, the team has shown how to create durable, low-power electronic switches, called transistors, by combining custom inks and a specialized printing process.

These switches, which control the flow of electrical current to turn circuits on and off, use very little power, are built to last and show new behaviors not seen in earlier printed devices. This research could help create flexible sensors, smart windows and other new technologies that need reliable, energy-saving electronics. The work is published in Advanced Materials Technologies.

How aerosol jet printing works The scientists used a method called aerosol jet printing, which works like an inkjet printer. But instead of regular ink, it uses specially formulated ink made from nanoparticles. The printer turns the ink into a fine mist and sprays it onto a surface, building up layers to form electronic parts.

Holographic storage approach packs more data into the same space by encoding three properties of light

Researchers have developed a holographic data storage approach that stores and retrieves information in three dimensions by combining three properties of light—amplitude, phase and polarization. By allowing more data to be stored in the same space, the new approach could help advance efforts to meet the growing global demand for data storage.

Holographic data storage uses laser light to store digital information inside a material. Instead of recording data only on a surface, like a hard drive or optical disk, it stores many overlapping light patterns throughout the volume of the material, allowing much higher storage density and faster data transmission.

“In conventional holographic data storage, data encoding typically uses one light dimension such as amplitude or phase alone, or, at most, combines two of these dimensions,” said research team leader Xiaodi Tan from Fujian Normal University in China.

Natural competition between brain circuits may boost information processing

Over the past decades, neuroscience studies have painted an increasingly detailed picture of the human brain, its organization and how it supports various functions. To plan and execute desired behaviors in changing circumstances, networks of neurons in the brain can either work together or suppress each other, thus employing both cooperative and competitive interaction strategies.

Researchers at University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, McGill University, University of Aarhus and Pompeu Fabra University recently set out to better understand the mammalian brain’s underlying dynamics, specifically how its underlying architecture balances cooperative and competitive interactions between neural circuits. Their paper, published in Nature Neuroscience, offers new insight that could both improve the understanding of the brain and inform the development of brain-inspired computational models.

“Building models of the brain is an important part of modern neuroscience,” Andrea Luppi, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “As Nobel winner Reichard Feynman said, ‘what I cannot create, I do not understand.’ Most current models, however, share a limitation. Everyday experience, from focusing attention or switching between tasks, also reveals that brain systems must compete for limited resources.

CPSF73 activation and 3′ RNA polymerase II pausing are lost during readthrough transcription after heat shock

Here, we identified key signatures of transcriptional termination mechanisms that are altered by heat shock, enabling global readthrough of the 3′ends of mRNA genes. The Pol II 3′ pause is lost, CTD phosphorylation at Ser2 and Tyr1 changes, and endonucleolytic cleavage of the transcript is impaired, which is relieved by expression of RBBP6, a cleavage activator. Our data support a multifaceted mechanism of readthrough during stress, whereby changes to both Pol II and the termination machinery trigger transcription to bypass normal termination sites.

The stress-induced readthrough we observed was pervasive, with 85% of the analyzable genes showing downstream transcription after heat shock. There was no correlation with the level of transcription or activation/repression and no indication of any gene class specificity. Prior work has shown that genes with readthrough are largely overlapping between types of cellular stress.19 Moreover, only loose correlations have been found between sequence markers for termination, such as the strength of the PAS and/or flanking GA-rich regions, and readthrough transcription.26 Distinguishing characteristics of readthrough susceptibility for any given stress remain to be elucidated.

Our Pol II ChIP-seq data show that heat shock induces global loss of 3′ Pol II pausing. This occurred at genes with and without readthrough, indicating that lack of Pol II pausing is not sufficient to cause readthrough. This raises interesting questions about the relationship between Pol II deceleration and transcription termination mechanisms. Current models suggest the slowing of Pol II helps the 5′-to-3′ exonuclease XRN2 to degrade the nascent RNA, catch up to transcribing Pol II, and trigger the dissociation of the polymerase from the DNA.9,10,34 This model requires that nascent RNA cleavage occurs to generate the 5′ end for XRN2 to bind. For readthrough genes that retain RNA cleavage during heat shock, the failure of Pol II to decelerate could prevent XRN2 from “catching up,” thereby enabling downstream transcription. For readthrough genes that lose cleavage, Pol II deceleration likely enhances readthrough by having a fast-moving polymerase.

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