After seeing the Dwave demo and hearing more about how it works. A paper by Seth Lloyd now makes more sense to me. Seth says:Adiabatic quantum computation is a recently proposed, general approach to solving NP-hard combinatorial minimization problems. It consists of constructing a set of qubits with a time-dependent Hamiltonian ˆH (t) whose starting …
An item related to my port security article, as we get better at catching a larger fraction of the illegal traffic in nuclear materials and dual use materials like beryllium and zirconium a computer model can piece together the partial information on traffic flows to determine who is working on a nuclear bomb and where …
A robotic exoskeleton controlled by the wearer’s own nervous system could help users regain limb function, which is encouraging news for people with partial nervous system impairment, say University of Michigan researchers. The ankle exoskeleton developed at U-M was worn by healthy subjects to measure how the device affected ankle function. The U-M team has …
A measure will be submitted to ban ordinary light bulbs in California starting in 2012 The measure will be submitted and voted upon this year. Rosenfeld, winner of the Enrico Fermi Presidential Award in 2006, said the switch from incandescent bulbs became feasible about five years ago when CFL (compact Florescent lights) performance improved. I …
There are two developing technologies. The millimeter radiation system for Active denial. The pain beam. It works out to 500+ meters. They are talking deployment in 2010. They are already in various field trials. I wrote about theHPM (High Power Microwave) pulses–powerful enough to destroy enemy electronics–can be produced without the need for explosives or …
Physorg reports, the stretchiness of these 20-nm-long carbon nanotubes enables them to do what straight nanotubes find difficult: namely, transfer tensile forces and possess high ductility, or malleability. Scientists Min Wang, Xinming Qiu, and Xiong Zhang from Tsinghua University in Beijing recently investigated the mechanical properties of super honeycomb structures, which are made of periodically …
The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe. It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs. Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his …
Organic containing metals have tuneable properties, and now they work above room temperature Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging …
The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel. Most are in poor countries. One study says 7-20% of cancers are attributable to poor air and pollution in homes and workplaces. Wikipedia discusses air …
Skin cells genetically engineered to be resistant to bacteria could reduce infections and improve chances of survival among burn victims. A patient’s skin cells, genetically modified and grown in a test tube, could provide the next generation of artificial skin. As a first step in creating such replacement skin, scientists in Cincinnati have engineered bacteria-resistant …
We can submit our challenges for friendly AI, molecular nanotechnology, large scale quantum computers, and mass producible thorium liquid fluoride reactors to the NSF. The NSF is looking for the greatest technological challenges of the next century — a nine-month process that could give birth to new research initiatives. The project, called the “Grand Challenges …