Lifeboat Foundation

The observation of quantum modifications to a well-known chemical law could lead to performance improvements for quantum information storage.

The Arrhenius law says that the rate of a chemical reaction should decrease steadily as you increase the energy barrier between initial and final states. Now researchers have found a system that obeys a quantum version of the Arrhenius law, where the rate does not drop smoothly but instead decreases in a staircase pattern [1]. The system is a type of quantum bit (qubit) that is particularly robust against environmental disturbances. The researchers demonstrated that they can take advantage of this quantum effect to improve the qubit’s performance.

Technologies such as quantum computers and quantum cryptography use qubits to store information, and one of the continuing challenges is that uncontrolled environmental effects can change the state of a qubit. The most common solutions require large amounts of hardware, but an alternative method is to use qubits that are more error resistant, such as so-called cat qubits. The information in these qubits is stored in robust combinations of quantum states that resemble the states in Schrödinger’s famous feline thought experiment (see Synopsis: Quantum-ness Put on the Scale).

Diamonds are forever 💎 A team of scientists from UniMelb, RMIT University and The City College of New York were able to observe lightning in a diamond ⚡️ Diamond chips can potentially be used in electronics and are more powerful than silicon. Tap to learn more ➡️

We also don’t yet fully understand how charges flow inside diamond, and how unavoidable impurities and defects affect these electrical properties.

In a recent study with colleagues from the University of Melbourne, RMIT University and the City College of New York, we sought to combine electrical measurements of a diamond optoelectronic device with 3D optical microscopy.

Continue reading “Lightning in a diamond to power the quantum revolution” »

To build light-based quantum technologies, scientists and engineers need the ability to generate and manipulate photons as individuals or a few at a time. To build such quantum photonic logic gates that might be used in an optical quantum computer requires a special medium which allows strong and controlled interactions of just a few photons.

Terahertz (THz) waves and THz technologies have gradually opened a new style for communications, cloud-based storage/computing, information contest, and medical tools. With the advancement of THz technologies, studies on THz nonlinear optics have emerged, achieving considerable breakthroughs in both physics and technology.

Researchers have decoded the genomic sequence of Zygnema algae, revealing insights into the evolutionary transition from aquatic to terrestrial plant life. This breakthrough enhances our understanding of plant adaptation mechanisms and offers a basis for future studies in environmental resilience and bioenergy.

Plant life first emerged on land about 550 million years ago, and an international research team co-led by University of Nebraska–Lincoln computational biologist Yanbin Yin has cracked the genomic code of its humble beginnings, which made possible all other terrestrial life on Earth, including humans.

The team — about 50 scientists in eight countries – has generated the first genomic sequence of four strains of Zygnema algae, the closest living relatives of land plants. Their findings shed light on the ability of plants to adjust to the environment and provide a rich basis for future research.

Eight vulnerabilities have been uncovered in Microsoft applications for macOS that an adversary could exploit to gain elevated privileges or access sensitive data by circumventing the operating system’s permissions-based model, which revolves around the Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC) framework.

“If successful, the adversary could gain any privileges already granted to the affected Microsoft applications,” Cisco Talos said. “For example, the attacker could send emails from the user account without the user noticing, record audio clips, take pictures, or record videos without any user interaction.”

The shortcomings span various applications such as Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Neurons in the brain are like vast networks, receiving thousands of signals from other neurons through tiny structures called synapses.

Researchers from Bonn and Japan have clarified how neighboring synapses coordinate their response to plasticity signals: Nerve cells in the brain receive thousands of synaptic signals via their “antenna,” the so-called dendritic branch. Permanent changes in synaptic strength correlate with changes in the size of dendritic spines. However, it was previously unclear how the neurons implement these changes in strength across several synapses that are close to each other and active at the same time.

The researchers—from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) and the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS)—assume that the competition between spines for molecular resources and the spatial distance between simultaneously stimulated spines affect their resulting dynamics. The results of the study have now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Continue reading “Study reveals how neighboring synapses coordinate their response to plasticity signals” »

Understanding cellular architectures and their connectivity is essential for interrogating system function and dysfunction. However, we lack technologies for mapping the multiscale details of individual cells and their connectivity in the human organ–scale system. We developed a platform that simultaneously extracts spatial, molecular, morphological, and connectivity information of individual cells from the same human brain. The platform includes three core elements: a vibrating microtome for ultraprecision slicing of large-scale tissues without losing cellular connectivity (MEGAtome), a polymer hydrogel–based tissue processing technology for multiplexed multiscale imaging of human organ–scale tissues (mELAST), and a computational pipeline for reconstructing three-dimensional connectivity across multiple brain slabs (UNSLICE).

A writer with no technical background recounts his incredible journey into the realm of coding and the invaluable lesson it taught him about the modern world.