Lifeboat Foundation

At long last, physicists from Harvard and MIT have found the killer application for quantum computing: a Mario Bros. GIF made from qubits. The qubits (quantum bits) can also be arranged in a Space Invaders design, or Tetris, or any other shape—your geometrical wish is the qubits’ command.

The GIFs are from QuEra Computing, a Boston startup emerging from stealth, to show off the programmability of their 256-qubit quantum simulator —a special-purpose quantum computer built for solving certain types of problems.

Long-term supply agreements are nothing new in the semiconductor industry. Both fabless chip designers and contract makers of chips prefer stable supply and demand, respectively. But in a world with severely constrained supply, chip developers are willing to pay for their integrated circuits well in advance, which is a boon for foundries.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest foundry, disclosed in a filing that it received temporary receipts of around $3.825 billion (NT$106,33 billion) from customers as of September 30, 2021. Temporary receipts from TSMC’s customers are payments received to retain its capacity. To put the number into context, TSMC earned some $14.926 billion (NT$414.67 billion) in Q3 2021, so $3.825 billion is a sizeable sum for the company.

Google is secretly working with the world’s leading neuroscientists on mapping the entire Human Brain. Neuroscientists at have released the most detailed 3D map of the mammalian brain ever made. Google has helped them by funding their goal to create the most detailed map yet of the connections within the human brain. It reveals a staggering amount of detail, including patterns of connections between neurons, as well as what may be a new kind of neuron.

The applications in the field of Brain Computer Interfaces or understanding medical conditions are staggering. But it’s doubtful that this will just help companies such as Neuralink develop advanced future brain computer interfaces and will likely lead to Google doing evil things by understanding people’s way of thinking and delivering ads to them.
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OAKLAND, Calif. Nov 17 (Reuters) — A new quantum computer startup born from researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) called QuEra Computing said on Wednesday it raised $17 million from investors, including Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc (4755.T).

It’s the latest quantum computer hardware maker to come out of the lab at a time when funding for the nascent technology is booming. read more

While there are various technologies for creating so-called quantum bits or qubits where the computations happen, QuEra’s qubits use neutral atoms in a vacuum chamber and use lasers to cool and control them.

The creation of nanoscale computers for use in precision health care has long been a dream of many scientists and health care providers. Now, for the first time, researchers at Penn State have produced a nanocomputing agent that can control the function of a particular protein that is involved in cell movement and cancer metastasis. The research paves the way for the construction of complex nanoscale computers for the prevention and treatment of cancer and other diseases.

Nikolay Dokholyan, G. Thomas Passananti Professor, Penn State College of Medicine, and his colleagues — including Yashavantha Vishweshwaraiah, postdoctoral scholar in pharmacology, Penn State — created a transistor-like ‘logic gate,’ which is a type of computational operation in which multiple inputs control an output.

“Our logic gate is just the beginning of what you could call cellular computing,” he said, “but it is a major milestone because it demonstrates the ability to embed conditional operations in a protein and control its function, said Dokholyan. ” It will allow us to gain a deeper understanding of human biology and disease and introduces possibilities for the development of precision therapeutics.”

Apple delivered an early holiday gift to the eco-conscious and the do-it-yourselfers: It said it would soon begin selling the parts, tools and instructions for people to do their own iPhone repairs. It was a major victory for the “right to repair” movement.

Apple said it would soon provide parts, tools and manuals to those who wanted to fix their own iPhones and Mac computers.

Sporting neon hair and flawless skin, Bangkok Naughty Boo is one of a new generation of influencers in Asia promising to stay forever young, on-trend, and scandal-free — because they are computer generated.

Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, these stars are hugely popular with teenagers in the region and will yield increasing power as interest grows in the “metaverse”, industry experts say.

“I’m 17 forever, non-binary, with a dream of becoming a pop star,” Bangkok Naughty Boo — who uses they/them pronouns — said in an introductory video sent to AFP.

A team of researchers from Tri Alpha Energy Inc. and Google has developed an algorithm that can be used to speed up experiments conducted with plasma. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group describes how they plan to use the algorithm in nuclear fusion research.

As research into harnessing nuclear fusion has progressed, scientists have found that some of its characteristics are too complex to be solved in a reasonable amount of time using current technology. So they have increasingly turned to computers to help. More specifically, they want to adjust certain parameters in a device created to achieve fusion in a reasonable way. Such a device, most in the field agree, must involve the creation of a certain type of plasma that is not too hot or too cold, is stable, and has a certain desired density.

Finding the right parameters that meet these conditions has involved an incredible amount of trial and error. In this new effort, the researchers sought to reduce the workload by using a computer to reduce some of the needed trials. To that end, they have created what they call the “optometrist’s algorithm.” In its most basic sense, it works like an optometrist attempting to measure the visual ability of a patient by showing them images and asking if they are better or worse than other images. The idea is to use the crunching power of a computer with the intelligence of a human being—the computer generates the options and the human tells it whether a given option is better or worse.

MIT physicists and colleagues have demonstrated an exotic form of superconductivity in a new material the team synthesized only about a year ago. Although predicted in the 1960s, until now this type of superconductivity has proven difficult to stabilize. Further, the scientists found that the same material can potentially be manipulated to exhibit yet another, equally exotic form of superconductivity.

The work was reported in the Nov. 3 issue of the journal Nature.

The demonstration of finite momentum superconductivity in a layered crystal known a natural superlattice means that the material can be tweaked to create different patterns of superconductivity within the same sample. And that, in turn, could have implications for quantum computing and more.