Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: food – Page 126

Quantum computers are getting bigger, but there are still few practical ways to take advantage of their extra computing power. To get over this hurdle, researchers are designing algorithms to ease the transition from classical to quantum computers. In a new study in Nature, researchers unveil an algorithm that reduces the statistical errors, or noise, produced by quantum bits, or qubits, in crunching chemistry equations.

Developed by Columbia chemistry professor David Reichman and postdoc Joonho Lee with researchers at Google Quantum AI, the uses up to 16 qubits on Sycamore, Google’s 53- , to calculate ground state energy, the lowest energy state of a molecule. “These are the largest quantum chemistry calculations that have ever been done on a real quantum device,” Reichman said.

The ability to accurately calculate ground state energy, will enable chemists to develop new materials, said Lee, who is also a visiting researcher at Google Quantum AI. The algorithm could be used to design materials to speed up for farming and hydrolysis for making , among other sustainability goals, he said.

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And going forward, we’ll do this with far more knowledge of what we’re doing, and more control over the genes of our progeny. We can already screen ourselves and embryos for genetic diseases. We could potentially choose embryos for desirable genes, as we do with crops. Direct editing of the DNA of a human embryo has been proven to be possible — but seems morally abhorrent, effectively turning children into subjects of medical experimentation. And yet, if such technologies were proven safe, I could imagine a future where you’d be a bad parent not to give your children the best genes possible.

Computers also provide an entirely new selective pressure. As more and more matches are made on smartphones, we are delegating decisions about what the next generation looks like to computer algorithms, who recommend our potential matches. Digital code now helps choose what genetic code passed on to future generations, just like it shapes what you stream or buy online. This might sound like dark science fiction, but it’s already happening. Our genes are being curated by computer, just like our playlists. It’s hard to know where this leads, but I wonder if it’s entirely wise to turn over the future of our species to iPhones, the internet and the companies behind them.

Discussions of human evolution are usually backward looking, as if the greatest triumphs and challenges were in the distant past. But as technology and culture enter a period of accelerating change, our genes will too. Arguably, the most interesting parts of evolution aren’t life’s origins, dinosaurs, or Neanderthals, but what’s happening right now, our present – and our future.

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As the U.S. corporate world continues its withdrawal from Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine, a growing stigma against anything Russian is reverberating in Silicon Valley as tech start-ups and venture capital firms reassess their exposure and limit risks.

DoorDash and GrubHub recently cancelled deals with now-shut U.S. food delivery start-ups launched by Russian founders. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology pulled out of a multi-year partnership with Moscow’s Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, while Index Ventures halted further deals in the country.

For Silicon Valley, the issues with Russian business run to the heart of immigrant founder-led culture and a global world of institutional investors that in recent years sought more access to top VC ideas.

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The teeth of a mollusk can not only capture and chew food to nurture its body, but the marine choppers also hold insights into creating advanced, lower-cost and environmentally friendly materials.

David Kisailus, UC Irvine professor, and graduate student Taifeng Wang, both in and engineering, took a close look at the ultrahard teeth of the Northern Pacific Cryptochiton stelleri or gumboot chiton. Their findings are published in the Small Structures April 2022 issue.

“The findings in our work are critical, as it not only provides an understanding of the precision of in mineralization to form high-performance architected materials, but also provides insights into bioinspired synthetic pathways to a new generation of advanced materials in a broad range of applications from wear-resistant materials to ,” said Kisailus.

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BOW ISLAND, AB — Patrick Fabian is quickly picking up a new skill. The seed farmer plans to start using drones…

BOW ISLAND, AB – Patrick Fabian is quickly picking up a new skill.

The seed farmer plans to start using drones to monitor his 1,250 irrigated acres.

“On our farm, it will be mostly for crop surveillance to check the middle of the fields and the things we can’t normally see properly without walking every single square foot of the farm,” Fabian said.

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The human brain, fed on just the calorie input of a modest diet, easily outperforms state-of-the-art supercomputers powered by full-scale station energy inputs. The difference stems from the multiple states of brain processes versus the two binary states of digital processors, as well as the ability to store information without power consumption—non-volatile memory. These inefficiencies in today’s conventional computers have prompted great interest in developing synthetic synapses for use in computers that can mimic the way the brain works. Now, researchers at King’s College London, UK, report in ACS Nano Letters an array of nanorod devices that mimic the brain more closely than ever before. The devices may find applications in artificial neural networks.

Efforts to emulate biological synapses have revolved around types of memristors with different resistance states that act like memory. However, unlike the the devices reported so far have all needed a reverse polarity to reset them to the initial state. “In the brain a change in the changes the output,” explains Anatoly Zayats, a professor at King’s College London who led the team behind the recent results. The King’s College London researchers have now been able to demonstrate this brain-like behavior in their synaptic synapses as well.

Zayats and team build an array of gold nanorods topped with a polymer junction (poly-L-histidine, PLH) to a metal contact. Either light or an electrical voltage can excite plasmons—collective oscillations of electrons. The plasmons release hot electrons into the PLH, gradually changing the chemistry of the polymer, and hence changing it to have different levels of conductivity or light emissivity. How the polymer changes depends on whether oxygen or hydrogen surrounds it. A chemically inert nitrogen chemical environment will preserve the state without any energy input required so that it acts as non-volatile memory.

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