Lifeboat Foundation

Over the past few decades, computer scientists have developed increasingly advanced technologies and tools to store large amounts of music and audio files in electronic devices. A particular milestone for music storage was the development of MP3 (i.e., MPEG-1 layer 3) technology, a technique to compress sound sequences or songs into very small files that can be easily stored and transferred between devices.

The encoding, editing and compression of media files, including PKZIP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, MP3, AAC, Cinepak and MPEG-2 files, is achieved using a set of technologies known as codecs. Codecs are compression technologies with two key components: an encoder that compresses files and a decoder that decompresses them.

There are two types of codecs, the so-called lossless and lossy codecs. During decompression, lossless codecs, such as PKZIP and PNG codecs, reproduce the exact same file as original files. Lossy compression methods, on the other hand, produce a facsimile of the original file that sounds (or looks) like the original but takes up less storage space in electronic devices.

Engineers have repaired an issue affecting data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft. Earlier this year, the probe’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which keeps Voyager 1’s antenna pointed at Earth, began sending garbled information about its health and activities to mission controllers, despite operating normally. The rest of the probe also appeared healthy as it continued to gather and return science data.

The team has since located the source of the garbled information: The AACS had started sending the telemetry data through an onboard computer known to have stopped working years ago, and the computer corrupted the information.

Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager, said that when they suspected this was the issue, they opted to try a low-risk solution: commanding the AACS to resume sending the data to the right computer.

Too much screen use has been linked to obesity and psychological problems. Now a new study has identified a new problem—a study in fruit flies suggests our basic cellular functions could be impacted by the blue light emitted by these devices. These results are published in Frontiers in Aging.

“Excessive exposure to blue light from everyday devices, such as TVs, laptops, and phones, may have detrimental effects on a wide range of cells in our body, from skin and fat cells, to sensory neurons,” said Dr. Jadwiga Giebultowicz, a professor at the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University and senior author of this study. “We are the first to show that the levels of specific metabolites—chemicals that are essential for cells to function correctly—are altered in fruit flies exposed to blue light.”

“Our study suggests that avoidance of excessive blue light exposure may be a good anti-aging strategy,” advised Giebultowicz.

The company achieved the leap from 14-nm to 7-nm without the most advanced equipment due to U.S. curbs.

U.S. sanctions intended to halt the rise of China’s largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), didn’t stand a chance against the company’s technological progress.

SMIC took two years to achieve the leap from 14-nm to 7-nm, faster than TSMC and Samsung, TechInsights said.

Continue reading “China’s top chip maker said to reach tech level on par with global giants” »

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics recently demonstrated a record-breaking experiment that could turn the quantum computing industry on its…

Researchers looking to synthesize a brighter and more stable nanoparticle for optical applications found that their creation instead exhibited a more surprising property: bursts of superfluorescence that occurred at both room temperature and regular intervals. The work could lead to the development of faster microchips, neurosensors, or materials for use in quantum computing applications, as well as a number of biological studies.

Superfluorescence occurs when atoms within a material synchronize and simultaneously emit a short but intense burst of light. The property is valuable for quantum optical applications, but extremely difficult to achieve at room temperatures and for intervals long enough to be useful.

The material in question—lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticle, or UCNP—was synthesized by the research team in an effort to create a “brighter” optical material. They produced hexagonal ceramic crystals ranging from 50 nanometers (nm) to 500 nm in size and began testing their lasing properties, which resulted in several impressive breakthroughs.

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As the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is undergoing a staggering growth in the creation of data, organizations need to place a strong focus on data governance best practices.

That is one of the findings of a new study of the AEC sector that reveals it has experienced a 31.2% compound growth rate in data storage since 2017. The amount of new data being captured or created is staggering, but getting full value from it depends on how the data is managed, stored, accessed and protected.

Superfast algorithm put crimp in 2019 claim that Google’s machine had achieved “quantum supremacy”.

German scientists at the Max Planck Institutes have experimentally pushed the limits of quantum technology.