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Category: computing – Page 6

Using tiny ripples at skin level to monitor for possible health problems below

Caltech scientists have developed a method that detects tiny, imperceptible movements at the surface of objects to reveal details about what lies beneath. By analyzing the physics of waves traveling across the surface of an object—whether that be a manufactured product or the human body—the new technique can determine both the stiffness and thickness of the underlying material or tissue. This lays the groundwork for the project’s ultimate goal of enabling inexpensive, at-home health monitoring using little more than a smartphone camera.

“There is information scattered all around us in plain sight that we just haven’t learned to tap into. Our work is trying to leverage that information to recover material properties from inside objects by studying tiny movements on the surface,” says Katie L. Bouman, professor of computing and mathematical sciences, electrical engineering, and astronomy at Caltech and both a Rosenberg Scholar and a Heritage Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Investigator.

Bouman and her colleagues from Caltech presented the technique, called visual surface wave elastography, and its medical applications in a paper presented at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Honolulu last fall. The lead authors are Alexander C. Ogren, Ph.D., and Berthy T. Feng, Ph.D., who completed the work while at Caltech.

Trapping light on thermal photodetectors shatters speed records

Electrical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated the fastest pyroelectric photodetector to date, which works by absorbing heat generated by incoming light. Capable of capturing light from the entire electromagnetic spectrum, the ultrathin device requires no external power, operates at room temperature and can be readily integrated into on-chip applications.

The advance could form the basis of a new class of multispectral cameras capable of impacting a wide range of fields such as skin cancer detection, food safety inspection and large-scale agriculture.

The results appear in Advanced Functional Materials.

What’s going on inside quantum computers? New method simplifies process tomography

Quantum computers work by applying quantum operations, such as quantum gates, to delicate quantum states. Ideally, quantum computers can solve complex equations at staggeringly fast speeds that vastly outpace regular computers. In real hardware, the operations of quantum computers often deviate from the ideal behavior because of device imperfections and unwanted noise from the environment. To build reliable quantum machines, researchers need a way to accurately determine what a quantum device is actually doing.

Quantum process tomography (QPT) is a standard method for this. However, traditional QPT becomes very costly as the system grows, because the number of required measurements and calculations increases rapidly with the number of qubits.

To address this challenge, a research team from Tohoku University, the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), and the University of Information Technology (Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City) has introduced a new framework called compilation-based quantum process tomography (CQPT). The work is published in Advanced Quantum Technologies.

Debugging a quantum processor: New method pinpoints qubit errors during logical operations

Researchers at the University of Innsbruck, together with partners from Sydney and Waterloo, have presented a new diagnostic method for quantum computers. It makes errors in individual quantum bits visible during logical calculation and evaluates them. The new method was demonstrated on an ion trap quantum processor in Innsbruck. It can be used to identify critical error sources—a key to developing more robust, fault-tolerant quantum processors.

In Physical Review X, the researchers present a scalable method that can be used to reliably characterize logical quantum operations at the level of the underlying quantum bits. Cycle error reconstruction identifies which physical errors influence the performance of logically encoded gates.

“With cycle error reconstruction, we can quantitatively capture the error structure and clearly distinguish between correctable and uncorrectable contributions,” says first author Robert Freund from the Department of Experimental Physics.

Full dimensional control of structured microwaves based on microcombs

Using a chip-based microcomb, full dimensional control of structured microwaves is demonstrated, including vortex-microwave generation, submicrosecond spatiotemporal mode switching, broadband phase–frequency response tuning and wide-angle two-dimensional beam steering. These capabilities are applied in a structured-microwave-based integrated sensing and communication system.

Australian consortium to develop quantum biotechnology platform to transform Alzheimer’s treatment discovery

“Our system provides a pathway towards a fast, scalable tool for measuring real-time brain activity in synthetic tissue cultures that replicate human brain tissue,” Associate Professor Simpson said.

If successful, this brain-on-chip technology could help evaluate the effectiveness of treatments for neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, epilepsy and anxiety, in the laboratory before moving into expensive and complex human trials.

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