A team from Bristol’s Quantum Engineering labs has shown how to protect qubits from errors using photons in a silicon chip. Quantum computers are gaining pace. They promise to provide exponentially more computing power for certain very tricky problems. They do this by exploiting the peculiar behaviour of quantum particles, such as photons of light. However, quantum states of particles are very fragile. The quantum bits, or qubits, that underpin quantum computing pick up errors very easily and are damaged…
The size of a grain of sand, dispersed microfliers could monitor air pollution, airborne disease and environmental contamination. Northwestern University engineers have added a new capability to electronic microchips: flight. About the size of a grain of sand, the new flying microchip (or “microflier”) does not have a motor or engine. Instead, it catches flight on the wind — much like a maple tree’s propeller seed — and spins like a helicopter through the air toward the ground. By studying…
Sensors have become the ubiquitous companions of our lives. Whether knowingly or not, we use them every day to collect, process, and interpret data and help us make sense of the world around us. The demand for connected devices keeps growing – in particular in the Internet of Things, or IoT for short. The Fraunhofer flagship project ZEWOPEL has shown successfully how all of these sensor systems can become extremely energy efficient or even completely autonomous. The potential result: Up…
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, present a unique optical amplifier that is expected to revolutionise both space and fiber communication. The new amplifier offers high performance, is compact enough to integrate into a chip just millimeters in size, and – crucially – does not generate excess noise. “This could be compared to switching from older, dial-up internet to modern broadband, with high speed and quality,” says Professor Peter Andrekson, Head of the Photonics Laboratory at the Department of…
NASA is developing tools to increase astronaut autonomy to operate spacecraft or systems without assistance from the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston because communication delays from Earth will last longer. Most often, communications delays between the International Space Station crew and ground are nearly unnoticeable as they are routed from one Tracking and Data Relay Satellite to another as the station orbits about 250 miles above Earth. As NASA prepares to explore the Moon, about 240,000 miles away, and…
Columbia Engineers invent software-controlled robotic lasers that cook food with unparalleled precision, retaining more moisture, and creating an entirely new, customized way to cook a tasty meal. Imagine having your own digital personal chef; ready to cook up whatever you want; able to tailor the shape, texture, and flavor just for you; and it’s all at the push of a button. Columbia engineers have been working on doing just that, using lasers for cooking and 3D printing technology for assembling…
Counterfeit-proof and unique identification shows authenticity of products. Counterfeit-proof product protection and resilient supply chains are the goals of the Fraunhofer SmartID project. The Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research IAP, for Secure Information Technology SIT and for Open Communication Systems FOKUS are developing a novel marking system that can determine the authenticity of products via smart devices even while being offline, i.e. without access to a database. SmartID will be embedded in existing track & trace infrastructures and can…
Psychoacoustic sonification: This term refers to the expression of data in form of sound rather than though visualization. Master’s degree students at the University of Bremen have now used this technology to create an acoustic spirit level, which is available free of charge in the form of the mobile “Tiltification” app. “The mobile app for Android and iOS devices equips your phone with a spirit level. For this, it uses the sensors that are built into virtually every smartphone,” explains…
Forget about online games that promise you a “whole world” to explore. An international team of researchers has generated an entire virtual UNIVERSE, and made it freely available on the cloud to everyone. Uchuu (meaning “Outer Space” in Japanese) is the largest and most realistic simulation of the Universe to date. The Uchuu simulation consists of 2.1 trillion particles in a computational cube an unprecedented 9.63 billion light-years to a side. For comparison, that’s about three-quarters the distance between Earth…
New research integrates the most effective practices for eye tracking in AR eyewear. The eyes have it. They are constantly on the move when viewing scenes in augmented reality (AR). Now, developers of AR headsets and mixed reality systems have become increasingly interested in the ability to track these eye movements with their eyewear, allowing system designers to improve image fidelity and contrast across the field of view without excessive demands on the power of the projection system. This in…
Scientists have spent decades searching for faster, more energy-efficient memory technologies for everything from large data centers to mobile sensors and other flexible electronics. Among the most promising data storage technologies is phase-change memory, which is thousands of times faster than conventional hard drives but uses a lot of electricity. Now, Stanford University engineers have overcome a key obstacle that has limited widespread adoption of phase-change memory. The results are published in a Sept. 10 study in Science. “People have…
International team of researchers develops algorithm that accelerates super-resolution microscopy. Scientists use super-resolution microscopy to study previously undiscovered cellular worlds, revealing nanometer-scale details inside cells. This method revolutionized light microscopy and earned its inventors the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In an international collaboration, AI researchers from Tübingen have now developed an algorithm that significantly accelerates this technology. Single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) is a type of super-resolution microscopy. It involves labelling proteins of interest with fluorescent molecules and using light…
Scientists awarded $6 million to plan brain-inspired computer that runs on probability. If you’ve ever asked a car mechanic how long a part will last until it breaks, odds are they shrugged their shoulders. They know how long parts last on average, and they can see when one is close to breaking. But knowing how many miles are left is extremely difficult, even using a supercomputer, because the exact moment a belt snaps or a battery dies is to some…
In June, the W-Cube nanosatellite began its journey aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral to polar orbit. About a month later, it was placed in its orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers and has now been successfully transmitting test signals to Earth in the Q and W band since August. It collects important data for the development of new frequency ranges for future satellite communication systems. The development of the W-Cube took place in the course of…
Metamaterials and metasurfaces have attracted great interests in recent years for their versatile possibilities in manipulating electromagnetic (EM) waves. Embedded tunable devices such as positive-intrinsic-negative (PIN) diodes and varactors enable digital representations of metasurfaces and programmability of functions in real time, and hence provide new avenues to tailor the EM waves and digital information dynamically. Based on the programmable metasurface, the concept of time-domain digital coding metasurface (TDCM) was proposed to manipulate the frequency harmonics by changing the external biasing…
To develop quantum networks, the unique needs of industry must be considered and may provide a solution. Large-scale quantum networks have been proposed, but so far, they do not exist. Some components of what would make up such networks are being studied, but the control mechanism for such a large-scale network has not been developed. In AVS Quantum Science, by AIP Publishing, investigators outline how a time-sensitive network control plane could be a key component of a workable quantum network….
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