Lifeboat Foundation

Corneal transplants can be the last step to returning clear vision to many patients suffering from eye disease. Each year, approximately 80,000 corneal transplantations take place in the U.S. Worldwide, more than 184,000 corneal transplantation surgeries are performed annually.

However, rejection rates for the corneal grafts can be as high as 10%. This is largely due to poor patient compliance to the medications, which require frequent administrations of topical eyedrops over a long period of time.

This becomes especially acute when patients show signs of early rejection of the transplanted corneas. When this occurs, patients need to apply topical eyedrops hourly to rescue the corneal grafts from failure.

Researchers have succeeded in creating an efficient quantum-mechanical light-matter interface using a microscopic cavity. Within this cavity, a single photon is emitted and absorbed up to 10 times by an artificial atom. This opens up new prospects for quantum technology, report physicists at the University of Basel and Ruhr-University Bochum in the journal Nature.

Quantum physics describes photons as light particles. Achieving an interaction between a single photon and a single atom is a huge challenge due to the tiny size of the atom. However, sending the photon past the atom several times by means of mirrors significantly increases the probability of an interaction.

In order to generate photons, the researchers use artificial atoms, known as quantum dots. These semiconductor structures consist of an accumulation of tens of thousands of atoms, but behave much like a single atom: when they are optically excited, their energy state changes and they emit a photon. “However, they have the technological advantage that they can be embedded in a semiconductor chip,” says Dr. Daniel Najer, who conducted the experiment at the Department of Physics at the University of Basel.

In the latest sign of growing interest in the flying taxi sector, United Airlines and air mobility startup Archer Aviation have announced an upcoming service for hops between downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport.

The service will offer a sustainable, low-noise, and cost-competitive alternative to ground transportation for folks traveling to and from the airport, United and Archer said in a release.

Could an injection of lab-cultured brain cells, created from a person’s own cells, reverse symptoms of Parkinson’s disease? That’s an idea that Aspen Neuroscience Inc., a startup based in San Diego, plans to test in human trials later this year.

In patients with Parkinson’s, neurons die and lose the ability to make the chemical dopamine, leading to erratic, uncontrollable movements. Aspen Neuroscience will test if the newly injected cells can mature into dopamine producers, stopping the debilitating symptoms of this incurable disease, says Damien McDevitt, the company’s chief executive officer. Tests in animals have shown promise, the company says.

The idea of the “technological singularity” was inspired by how ubiquitous and invasive AI is becoming. As they combine thought and machine, recent advanceme…

Supercomputers and quantum computers are potent tools for handling difficult calculations, problem-solving, and data analysis. Although they both have the potential to transform computing technology, their speeds and capacities differ greatly.

Supercomputers quickly process massive volumes of data to provide a single result using a conventional computing strategy with numerous processors. These computers are the most powerful in terms of raw computing speed, but they can only do one task at a time, and Moore’s Law places a cap on how much data they can process (the principle that computer processor speeds double every two years).

Quantum computers, on the other hand, utilize laws of quantum mechanics to process information in ways that regular computers cannot, resulting in vastly higher processing speeds. They can manage several activities at once and take on challenging issues that would take supercomputer months to resolve. Yet, because of their great sensitivity to temperature fluctuations and need for isolation from outside influences, quantum computers require more upkeep than their conventional equivalents.

Finding early signs of dementia in the back of the eye may be a way to catch the disease early and start preventive treatment, a study says.

Gordon Moore, thank you for everything.

Observations deliver evidence of an exotic “sixth-order” electromagnetic transition in the gamma-ray emission of an iron isotope, a finding that could provide new ways to test nuclear models.