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Layout of IBM’s five superconducting quantum bit device. In 2015, IBM scientists demonstrated critical breakthroughs to detect quantum errors by combining superconducting qubits in latticed arrangements, and whose quantum circuit design is the only physical architecture that can scale to larger dimensions. Now, IBM scientists have achieved a further advance by combining five qubits in the lattice architecture, which demonstrates a key operation known as a parity measurement — the basis of many quantum error correction protocols. (credit: IBM Research)

IBM Research has announced that effective Wednesday May 4, it is making quantum computing available free to members of the public, who can access and run experiments on IBM’s quantum processor, via the IBM Cloud, from any desktop or mobile device.

IBM believes quantum computing is the future of computing and has the potential to solve certain problems that are impossible to solve on today’s supercomputers.

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Exploding polymer-coated gold nanoparticles in the world’s tiniest engine (credit: Yi Ju/University of Cambridge NanoPhotonics)

University of Cambridge researchers have developed the world’s tiniest engine, capable of a force per unit-weight nearly 100 times higher than any motor or muscle.

The new nano-engines could lead to nanorobots small enough to enter living cells to fight disease, the researchers say.

Professor Jeremy Baumberg from the Cavendish Laboratory, who led the research, has named the devices “actuating nanotransducers” (ANTs). “Like real ants, they produce large forces for their weight,” he quipped.

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Absolutely beautiful animation.

Where do I sign up to be ON one of those?! wink

I want to know more about the world in this short animation Entropy, by Tim Cahn. I want to know why the spaceship is leaving Earth. I want to know what the space station is doing all the way out there. I want to know who’s there. I want to know where the ship is headed. I want to live in this world. But in the stillness of the short, we only get to see the beautiful imagery of a spaceship leaving Earth, so we have to fill in the blanks ourselves.

Continue reading “Gorgeous Animation Shows a Spaceship Mysteriously Traveling to a Universe Beyond” | >

Soldiers wrapped up day two of an integrated cyber exercise between 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry, 14th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 201st Expeditionary Military Intelligence Brigade, from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., supported by cyber augmentees from the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade from Fort Meade, Md., Oct. 21. Cyber information collected during the exercise enabled the Soldiers to isolate and capture a simulated high-value target in a mock village. The training integrates infantry ground units with cyber, signal and human intelligence collection capabilities, which gives units on the modern battlefield a broader capacity to search out and isolate their enemies in real time. (Photo by Capt. Meredith Mathis)

“Recently, United States Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work publicly confirmed that the Pentagon’s Cyber Command was “dropping cyberbombs,” taking its ongoing battle against the Islamic State group into the online world. Other American officials, including President Barack Obama, have discussed offensive cyber activities, too.”

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If you’ve ever tried to learn how to spin a pencil in your hand, you’ll know it takes some concerted effort—but it’s even harder for a robot. Now, though, researchers have finally built a ‘bot that can learn to do it.

The reason that tasks like spinning a stick are hard is that a lot happens in a very short time. As the stick moves, the forces exerted by the hand can easily send it flying out of control if they’re not perfectly co-ordinated. Sensing where the stick is and varying the hand’s motion is an awful lot for even the smartest algorithms to handle based on a list of rules.

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Twenty-five years after the introduction of the World Wide Web, the Information Age is coming to an end. Thanks to mobile screens and Internet everywhere, we’re now entering what I call the “Experience Age.”

When was the last time you updated your Facebook status? Maybe you no longer do? It’s been reported that original status updates by Facebook’s 1.6 billion users are down 21 percent.

The status box is an icon of the Information Age, a period dominated by desktop computers and a company’s mission to organize all the world’s information. The icons of the Experience Age look much different, and are born from micro-computers, mobile sensors and high-speed connectivity.

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