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Archive for the ‘computing’ category: Page 266

Feb 9, 2023

Atom-thin walls could smash size, memory barriers in next-gen devices

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience, particle physics

For all of the unparalleled, parallel-processing, still-indistinguishable-from-magic wizardry packed into the three pounds of an adult human brain, it obeys the same rule as the other living tissue it controls: Oxygen is a must.

So it was with a touch of irony that Evgeny Tsymbal offered his explanation for a technological wonder—movable, data-covered walls mere atoms wide—that may eventually help computers behave more like a brain.

“There was unambiguous evidence that oxygen vacancies are responsible for this,” said Tsymbal, George Holmes University Professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Feb 9, 2023

Why more and more physicists consider space and time to be “illusions”

Posted by in categories: computing, cosmology, holograms, quantum physics

O.o! If the universe is some sorta hologram then this could be a clue to our actual reality.


Last December, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for experimental evidence of a quantum phenomenon that has been known for more than 80 years: entanglement. As envisioned by Albert Einstein and his collaborators in 1935, quantum objects can be mysteriously correlated even when separated by great distances. But as strange as the phenomenon may seem, why is such an old idea still worthy of the most prestigious award in physics?

Coincidentally, just weeks before the new Nobel laureates were honored in Stockholm, another team of respected scientists from Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Fermilab and Google reported that they ran a process on Google’s quantum computer that could be interpreted as a wormhole. Wormholes are tunnels through the universe that can function as a shortcut through space and time and are loved by science fiction fans, and although the tunnel realized in this latest experiment only exists in a two-dimensional toy universe, it could be a breakthrough for the future represent research at the forefront of physics.

Continue reading “Why more and more physicists consider space and time to be ‘illusions’” »

Feb 9, 2023

Continuation of our gifting session. Today we gift Chukwuemeka Obi one of our pioneer students an iPhone 6 phone to enable him to browse and attend Zoom meetings. We need more of these phones and laptops to gift our students

Posted by in categories: computing, mobile phones

We gift Chukwuemeka Obi one of our pioneer students an iPhone 6 phone to enable him to browse and attend Zoom meetings. We need more of these phones and laptops to gift our students.

Feb 8, 2023

HAL 9000: “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”

Posted by in categories: computing, space

If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s an uppity machine.


An excerpt from the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Continue reading “HAL 9000: ‘I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that’” »

Feb 8, 2023

Conversational Computing Changes Everything: Bing vs. Bard Is Just The Beginning

Posted by in categories: computing, internet

Today’s Internet is in the early stages of being transformed once again—this time, instead of search, social, mobile, etc.—it’s going to be a Web that supports conversations.

Feb 8, 2023

Optical Fibers Go Topological

Posted by in categories: computing, humor, mathematics, quantum physics

A new design for an optical fiber borrows concepts from topology to protect light from imperfections in the fiber’s light-guiding materials or from distortions in its cross section.

Using concepts from the mathematical field of topology, researchers at the University of Bath, UK, have designed an optical fiber that can robustly propagate light, even if there are variations in the properties of its light-guiding materials or in its overall geometry [1]. The team thinks that this newfound topological protection could enable advances in optical communication and photonic quantum computing.

The concept of topology is often explained using a joke about a donut and a coffee cup. A coffee cup made of rubber can be continuously twisted and stretched—no cuts need to be made—so that it takes on the shape of a donut. Even though the object’s outline changes under this transformation, its essence remains the same—it contains one hole. Thus, the quip goes, a topologist cannot tell the difference between the two things.

Feb 7, 2023

N-Electron Valence Perturbation Theory with Reference Wave Functions from Quantum Computing: Application to the Relative Stability of Hydroxide Anion and Hydroxyl Radical

Posted by in categories: computing, information science, quantum physics

Quantum simulations of the hydroxide anion and hydroxyl radical are reported, employing variational quantum algorithms for near-term quantum devices. The energy of each species is calculated along the dissociation curve, to obtain information about the stability of the molecular species being investigated. It is shown that simulations restricted to valence spaces incorrectly predict the hydroxyl radical to be more stable than the hydroxide anion. Inclusion of dynamical electron correlation from nonvalence orbitals is demonstrated, through the integration of the variational quantum eigensolver and quantum subspace expansion methods in the workflow of N-electron valence perturbation theory, and shown to correctly predict the hydroxide anion to be more stable than the hydroxyl radical, provided that basis sets with diffuse orbitals are also employed.

Feb 7, 2023

Underdog technologies gain ground in quantum-computing race

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics

Individual atoms trapped by optical ‘tweezers’ are emerging as a promising computational platform.

Feb 7, 2023

A wi-fi sensing system that creates 3D human meshes

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, biotech/medical, computing, internet, virtual reality

A 3D mesh is a three-dimensional object representation made of different vertices and polygons. These representations can be very useful for numerous technological applications, including computer vision, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) systems.

Researchers at Florida State University and Rutgers University have recently developed Wi-Mesh, a system that can create reliable 3D human meshes, representations of humans that can then be used by different computational models and applications. Their system was presented at the Twentieth ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys ‘22), a conference focusing on computer science research.

“Our research group specializes in cutting-edge wi-fi sensing research,” Professor Jie Yang at Florida State University, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. “In previous work, we have developed systems that use to sense a range of human activities and objects, including large-scale human body movements, small-scale finger movements, sleep monitoring, and daily objects. Our E-eyes and WiFinger systems were among the first to use wi-fi sensing to classify various types of daily activities and finger gestures, with a focus on predefined activities using a trained model.”

Feb 7, 2023

First-of-its-kind instrument officially ushers in new era of X-ray science

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, computing, health, science

Arizona State University has officially begun a new chapter in X-ray science with a newly commissioned, first-of-its-kind instrument that will help scientists see deeper into matter and living things. The device, called the compact X-ray light source (CXLS), marked a major milestone in its operations as ASU scientists generated its first X-rays on the night of Feb. 2.

“This marks the beginning of a new era of science with compact accelerator-based X‑ray sources,” said Robert Kaindl, who directs ASU’s Compact X-ray Free Electron Laser (CXFEL) Labs at the Biodesign Institute and is a professor in the Department of Physics. “The CXLS provides hard X-ray pulses with high flux, stability and ultrashort durations, in a very compact footprint. This way, matter can be resolved at its fundamental scales in space and time, enabling new discoveries across many fields — from next-generation materials for computing and information science, to renewable energy, biomolecular dynamics, drug discovery and human health.”

Building the compact X-ray light source is the first phase of a larger CXFEL project, which aims to build two instruments including a coherent X-ray laser. As the first-stage instrument, the ASU CXLS generates a high-flux beam of hard X‑rays, with wavelengths short enough to resolve the atomic structure of complex molecules. Moreover, its output is pulsed at extremely short durations of a few hundred femtoseconds — well below a millionth of one millionth of a second — and thus short enough to directly track the motions of atoms.