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Quantum computing is one of the future's transitional technologies destined to transform human society, along with advanced materials like graphene and metallic glass or advances in space propulsion. Imagine what the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors did for computing, scale that a couple of folds and you might somewhat be close to what quantum computers are capable of. Operations that today's supercomputers require days even weeks to crunch, would be completed immediately by leveraging the quantum weirdness that happens below the nano scale. All of this is theoretically possible - but in practice building a working quantum computer that doesn't disintegrate information has proven to be an immense challenge. We're still far from there, but advances reported by Australian researchers hint that quantum computers aren't a pipe dream.
The brain forms new thoughts using two adjacent brain regions that are the cornerstone of the process.
Despite decades worth of research, unbelievable computing power and sophisticated algorithms, one of today's best artificial intelligence can't score better than a four year old on a standard IQ test.
For most people listening to music or playing an instrument is a great way to relax, unwind, have fun, and express themselves. But not everybody is able to perceive, appreciate or memorize music, to sing or to dance. Monica is one such person, and to her, any kind of music is just a bunch of noise that makes her head ache and feel stressed.
Material scientists at Oxford University, collaborating with experts from Karlsruhe, Munster and Exeter, have developed the world's first light-based memory banks that can store data permanently. The device is build from simple materials, in use in CDs and DVDs today, and promises to dramatically improve the speed of modern computing.
Two drugs, currently prescribed to organ transplant patients to suppress their immune system after the procedure, show great promise as birth-control medicine for men, according to a study published in the journal Science.
While everyone from Google, to Tesla, to BMW is engineering driverless cars, gearing up for an impeding auto revolution, a Chinese company went directly for a niche market: driverless buses.
After the recent Volkswagen fiasco which revealed that their cars emit much more than they should (and claimed), a new study revealed that diesel cars made by Renault, Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Volvo and many others also emit more.
When there's rain, let alone a storm, city streets form puddles and in some extreme cases get flooded. That's because concrete mostly keeps water out, and only a tiny volume gets absorbed. A company from the UK, however, has come up with such an innovative solution that it almost seems like magic were it not pure science at work. Namely, they came up with a new kind of concrete that allows more water to percolate through its gaps, so much that 1,056 gallons were gobbled up in under 60 seconds during a test. It all seems unreal - but it's as concrete as it gets.
The word on every tech executive's mouth today is data. Curse or blessing, there's so much data lying around - with about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data added each day - that it's become increasingly difficult to make sense of it in a meaningful way. There's a solution to the big data problem, though: machine learning algorithms that get fed countless variables and spot patterns otherwise oblivious to humans. Researchers have already made use of machine learning to solve challenges in medicine, cosmology and, most recently, crime. Tech giant Hitachi, for instance, developed a machine learning interface reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report which can predict when, where and possibly who might commit a crime before it happens.
In front of hundreds of guests, Tesla's CEO, the ever resourceful Elon Musk, unveiled the company's new model: the Model X crossover. It's been a long heralded and waited vehicle, and it sure didn't disappoint. This beauty, all dressed in white, looks more like a bird than a car with its upward-opening "falcon doors". It also flies like one, reaching 0 to 60mph in 3.2 seconds making it the world's quickest SUV. Wait 'till the kids see it.
Despite manufacturers have tirelessly designed new types of razor blades for a cleaner shave, the process has stayed virtually unchanged for thousands of years. The difference between a modern razor blade and an ancient roman shaving knife isn't that large, on a fundamental level at least. This may set to change if the Skarp Laser Razor makes its way into the shaving kit market. The gadget is basically a high-tech razor - named so only by function - that uses a highly focused laser beam instead of a blade.
North Carolina State University researchers have succeeded in proving that the crystalline structure of a material can be formed by disorder at an atomic level and not chemical bonds, by creating the world's first entropy-stabilized alloy incorporating oxides.
Fewer materials in nature rival the toughness and resilience of a tooth or a seashell, and it's all due to their unique structure; viewed under powerful enough microscope, they reveal layers upon layers of micro-plates, perfectly aligned and fused together. Material scientists have long sought to produce something that imitates these structures, with comparable properties and complexity, but apart from nacre (mother-of-pearl) they've had very little success. Until now.
A 30KW high-power laser was demonstrated by Lockheed Martin after it was used to disable a vehicle more than a mile away. One of the great perks of laser weapons is their phenomenal accuracy. To showcase this, the weapon was directed specifically on the hood of the vehicle, where it fried the engine. The beam from the Advanced Test High Energy Asset, or ATHENA, is believed to be most powerful ever documented in a laser weapon.
A new paper published Thursday in Science looks at how climate change is (out of all things) making the tongue of some bumble bees shrink. Two species of alpine bumbles in the Rocky Mountains already show a decrease in tongue volume of nearly 25 percent in the last 40 years; and smaller tongues could spell big trouble for the flowers that rely on bumble bees for pollination.
I love disruptive technologies, and 3D printing is undoubtedly one of the leading such movements in the 21st century. This kind of tech will democratize manufacturing, moving it away from 3rd world sweatshops to your own garage. And no, you don't have to be a geek to own one. Ten years from now, it should be as easy to use and as widespread in homes as a regular ink printer. But for now, 3D printing is limited, particularly as far as electronics are concerned. Usually, you have to print the plastic parts, then order electronic parts like circuits, chips or motors, before finally assembling it all together yourself. You can't have a global manufacturing revolution if you need to be a lab wiz to print a new TV remote control to replace the one the dog just shred to pieces. But this is all changed. We're just now seeing the first steps that might one day lead people to print their own smartphones.
Humans are walking ecosystems. Each of us carries around about 100 trillion microbes in and on our bodies, which make up our microbiome. The quality of this bacterial community has a lot to say about our health and well-being. The blend of microbes is also surprisingly unique, which says a lot about who we are […]
Ian Lipkin, a virus hunter from Columbia University, along with fellow professors Thomas Briese and Amit Kapoor have designed a new system, known as VirCapSeq-VERT, that they claim can detect any known human virus in a blood sample.
Computer chips today have billions of tiny transistors just a few nanometers wide (a hair is 100nm thick), all crammed up in a small surface. This huge density allows multiple complex operations to run billions of times per second. This has been going on since the '60s when Gordan Moore first predicted that the number of transistors on a given silicon chip would roughly double every two years. So far, so good - Moore is still right! But for how long? There's only so much you can scale down a computer chip. At some point, once you cross a certain threshold, you pass from the macroworld into the spooky domain of quantum physics. Past this point, quantum fluctuations might render the chips useless. Moore might still be right, though. Or he could be wrong, but in a way that profits society: computer chips could increase in computer power at a far grater pace than Moore initially predicted (if you still keep Moore's law but replace transistors with the equivalent computing power). This doesn't sound so crazy when you factor in quantum computers or, more practical, a 3D computer architecture demonstrated by a team at Stanford University which crams both CPU and memory into the same chip. This vastly reduces the "commuting time" electrons typically have to go through while traveling through conventional circuits and makes them more efficient. Such a 3D design could make a chip 1,000 faster than what we typically see today, according to the researchers.
Drones are often feared as instruments of destruction, and as John Oliver pointed out, in some parts of the world, people fear blue skies because that’s when the drones strike. But this technology isn’t only used to destroy – it can also be used to create, as demonstrated by these very efficient quadrocopters building a rope […]
Researchers from the University of Washington and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) have developed a computer software that scored 49% on high-school geometry SAT tests - an average score for a human, but a great one for current AIs.
The Øresund bridge is a wonder of engineering, and one of the coolest engineering accomplishments on the planet.
The human inovation process is more of a slow, steady climb than a sum of great leaps, a new University of Reading study shows. Our minds tend to innovate by adding small improvements through trial and error report the scientists, who studied one of the most important cultural events in human history - the migration of the Bantu-speaking farmers in Africa some 5,000 years ago. Mark Pagel, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University, led the study.
The Norwegian Ministry of Culture has finalized a transition date from Frequency Modulation (FM) radio to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) radio. They will thus become the first country in the world to switch completely from FM radio.
A group of elderly-care nurses working at the Swedish Svartedalens elderly home participated in the first controlled trial of shorter work hours the country held for a decade now. In February, the they switched from an eight-hours to a six-hour working day for the same wage, in an effort to improve productivity and quality of life.
Researchers at Purdue University in the US have developed a new tool for Android users that could increase your battery life by 16%.
A new report created by Dr Carl Benedikt Frey and Associate Professor Michael Osborne from the University of Oxford assesses the probability of jobs being taken over by robots in the next 20 years.
Two researchers at Baylor University looked into how breaks during the workday improve employee health and efficiency, and found that yes - there are a few constants that seem to make a break great. Their findings offer some surprising suggestions on when, where and how to plan the best moments of relaxation, while also debunking some common break-time myths.
Even though driving after drinking small amounts is legal, it's most definitely not safe, research from the University of Kentucky (UK) in the U.S. finds. Nicholas van Dyke and Mark Fillmore at UK reported that for intoxicated drivers, even those driving under the legally accepted alcohol limit, small distractions such as a text message or dashboard controls are just too much to handle safely. The study provides the first scientific evidence on the impact such distractions have on the ability of liquored drivers to safely control vehicles.
Networked gadgets and gizmos embedded in every day items - collectively known as the Internet of Things - are beginning to permeate our way of life. In your very own kitchen, a smart, networked refrigerator that identified items could give you suggestions on what you could cook or what was your calorie intake for the past week. The more data, the better the network effect and there might be no better place to reap the most rewards from the Internet of Things than sports. We're just beginning to discover how networked devices could change sports, for better or worse, and the first baby steps have been taken by the NFL.
This is the biggest news that no one seems to notice. Sunvault Energy and the Edison Power Company quietly announced they're incorporating a new company called the the Edison Motor Cars Corporation which will focus on selling hydrogen powered cars running on a graphene-based fuel cells. Based on the press release, this is the dream vehicle the world was promised by the now disappointing hydrogen economy: a car that only runs on water and a bit of electricity, is lightning fast, has a high autonomy, is safe and charges within minutes to be ready to hit the road again. To top everything over, the car will allegedly be ready in 2016. That's less than a year from now. But we don't know how the car looks like and considering all these bombastic claims, it all looks like a bunch of star dust in the eyes.
Adult domestic cats do not view owners as the main provider of security and safety.
A recent study performed by researchers working at the University of Oxford, Harvard Medical School and the University of Nevada suggests that the current school and university start times have a damaging effect on the learning and health of students.
The results of a new study offer insight into the workings of predator-prey mechanisms, more specifically how the number of herbivores and other animals that are preyed upon affect the number of carnivores.
Today, Intel announced a 10 year collaboration with Delft University of Technology and TNO, the Dutch Organisation for Applied Research, to accelerate and enhance the advancements in quantum computing: the new type of computing which promises to revolutionize the world as we know it
Apparently, the best car in the world is now electric. Tesla's new Model S P85D, a fully electric Sedan, is so good that the world's largest independent product-tester, Consumer Reports, had to change its score system because they gave the car 103/100.
Researchers studying the plastic problem our ocean is facing predict that by 2050 nearly every single maritime bird species will have plastic pieces inside their digestive systems. The grim prediction is based on a new study showing that about 90 percent of seabirds today have plastic in their bodies.
India is one of the most polluted countries in the world, but for what it's worth local authorities acknowledge this and are trying to balance their energy mix, currently heavily reliant on fossil fuel. More than 90% of India's energy needs are met by coal, oil and gas. In all this ocean of dirt, particles and toxic fumes, the Cochin International Airport (CIAL) shines like jewel - the first international airport in the world that is 100% served by solar energy.
A city like no other will be built deep in the New Mexico desert. The brand new city will feature urban, suburban, exurban and rural zones dotted with houses, malls, power plants, police and fire stations, with only one big difference from a real city: it won't have any inhabitants. The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (CITE) will be the first of its kind, fully integrated test, evaluation and certification facility dedicated to enabling and facilitating the commercialization of new and emerging technologies. Basically, it will be a real life Sim City.
An international astronomy team has detected two supermassive black holes that appear to be orbiting each other in a nearby galaxy. The discovery of a likely binary black hole system suggests that supermassive black holes assemble their masses through violent unions.
Robotics has developed tremendously in recent years, and will almost surely continue to do so in the future. We have surgical robots, hotels run by robots, robots that learn, even samurai robots! After all, it makes sense we finally got some bartender robots, right? After MIT showed off its "Beerbots" that bring you beer while you're on the couch, we have HoLLiE, a robot bartender that did a fantastic job at a party in Berlin, making and serving over 280 cocktails!
Facebook has reached an impressive milestone: this Monday, on the 24th of August, 1 billion people signed into the social network - one billion! That's basically 1 out of every 7 people using Facebook on a given day.
The results of a new UEA study reveal that people who eat high levels of certain amino acids found in meat and plant-based protein have lower blood pressure and show less arterial stiffness, directly translating to higher levels of cardiovascular health. The magnitude of the association is similar to those previously reported for lifestyle risk factors including salt intake, physical activity, alcohol consumption and smoking.
If you’ve ever lived with someone hard of hearing, or have struggled with hearing difficulties yourself, you know it can be a hard condition to live with. Thankfully, modern technology has given us a wide variety of hearing implements that can let us salvage this precious physical sense. But hearing loss can come with several […]
In 2011 the Queller-Strassmann lab, then at Rice University, made a surprising announcement in Nature Letters. They had been collecting single-celled amoebae of the species Dictyostelium discoideum from the soil in Virginia and Minnesota. While laboratory grown strain of Dicty happily fed on the bacteria provided for it by its keepers, roughly one third of the wild strains showed a green (or maybe bacterial) thumb. When food was short, they gathered up bacteria, carried them to new sites and seeded the soil with them.
Several cultural beliefs and modern social practices may hinder children's mental, moral and emotional development, finds a study by an interdisciplinary body of research presented recently at a symposium at the University of Notre Dame.
The fact that the greatest biodiversity of large mammals we know of today is recorded in Africa is a legacy of past human activity, not climate or environmental phenomena, new study reveals. The paper theorizes at how the world today would look if Homo sapiens had never existed. In a previous analysis, the researchers from Aarhus Univeristy, Denmark, they showed how the mass extinction of large mammals during the last Ice Age and the subsequent millennia, most notably the late-Quaternary megafauna extinction, is largely explainable by the expansion of modern humans across the world.
Inventions are at the very core of human development, and quite often, the scope of the invention is not easy to grasp. Such is the case with a new "vomiting machine" which will be used to study noroviruses - fast spreading viruses that cause acute gastroenteritis.
Virtual reality and 4K displays, coupled with ever more powerful processors and graphic chipsets will see gaming make a huge leap, and Intel wants to be at the forefront of the scene.
