Quantum states stabilized by laser light and X-rays hint at breakthroughs in optoelectronics and quantum memory.
Category: innovation
Breakthrough: FDA Approves Injection to Prevent HIV
The US Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved Gilead Sciences’ twice-yearly injection to prevent HIV – a move the company hailed as a major breakthrough in the fight against the sexually transmitted virus.
Drugs to prevent HIV transmission, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP, have existed for more than a decade. But because they typically require taking a daily pill, they have yet to make a significant dent in global infections.
“This is a historic day in the decades-long fight against HIV,” Gilead chairman and chief executive Daniel O’Day said in a statement.
Stir stick that detects spiked drinks developed by UBC researchers
Researchers at the University of British Columbia say they have developed a new tool to detect common drink-spiking drugs.
They say they plan to test the device, known as Spikeless, in the hopes it will one day be used widely to combat drugs being added to drinks and to prevent sexual assaults.
The university said in a news release that the “seemingly ordinary stir stick” can detect drugs such as GHB and ketamine within 30 seconds, changing colour if a beverage is contaminated.
Sasha Santos, an anti-violence activist working with the researchers on the project, says the technology has the potential to be a game-changer, adding that other drug testing tools are marketed to customers in a problematic way.
An anti-violence activist says the invention, which can detect drugs within 30 seconds, aims to make the stir sticks ubiquitous in bars, clubs and pubs, so every single drink served comes with a safety test.
Strontium optical lattice clock in China surpasses key benchmarks for precision timekeeping
A research team led by Prof. Chang Hong from the National Time Service Center (NTSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has developed a strontium optical lattice clock with both frequency stability and systematic uncertainty surpassing 2×10-18. This achievement places China among the global leaders in the field of optical lattice clock development.
The breakthrough aligns with the roadmap set by the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) in 2022, which proposed redefining the SI unit of time—the second—by 2030. The resolution outlined rigorous performance benchmarks for next-generation optical clocks.
Strontium optical lattice clocks, known for their exceptional precision, have emerged as the most promising candidates for the redefinition, offering systematic uncertainties two orders of magnitude lower than those of the current cesium fountain clocks.
Debut of LLM-enabled humanoid robot at event met with mixed reviews by human attendees
A team of roboticists at the University of Canberra’s Collaborative Robotics Lab, working with a sociologist colleague from The Australian National University, has found humans interacting with an LLM-enabled humanoid robot had mixed reactions. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group describes what they saw as they watched interactions between an LLM-enabled humanoid robot posted at an innovation festival and reviewed feedback given by people participating in the interactions.
Over the past couple of years, LLMs such as ChatGPT have taken the world by storm, with some going so far as to suggest that the new technology will soon make many human workers obsolete. Despite such fears, scientists continue to improve such technology, sometimes employing it in new places—such as inside an existing humanoid robot. That is what the team in Australia did—they added ChatGPT to the interaction facilities of a robot named Pepper and then posted the robot at an innovation festival in Canberra, where attendees were encouraged to interact with it.
Before it was given an LLM, Pepper was already capable of moving around autonomously and interacting with people on a relatively simple level. One of its hallmarks is its ability to maintain eye contact. Such abilities, the team suggested, made the robot a good target for testing human interactions with LLM-enabled humanoid robots “in the wild.”
Scientists Finally Discover a New Way to Travel Ten Times Faster than Light!
Watch THIS Next: https://youtu.be/6kcNzmUaTdA
Faster-than-light travel still seems like pure science fiction—but it could soon become a reality. Scientists have finally discovered a new way to travel at speeds ten times faster than light! Other research teams have made amazing breakthroughs in WARP technology, and in practice this could mean that in just 10 or 20 years we could have the first prototypes of spaceships capable of traveling enormous distances in ever shorter times.