129199124
submission
Wave723 writes:
"Two research groups say they’ve independently built quantum devices that can operate at temperatures above 1 Kelvin—15 times hotter than rival technologies can withstand.
The ability to work at higher temperatures is key to scaling up to the many qubits thought to be required for future commercial-grade quantum computers."
122494116
submission
Wave723 writes:
"Only in the past five years has it become possible to raise thousands of healthy fish so far from the shoreline without contaminating millions of gallons of fresh water. A technology called recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) now allows indoor aquaculture farms to recycle up to 99 percent of the water they use. And the newest generation of these systems will help one biotech company bring its unusual fish to U.S. customers for the first time this year.
For AquaBounty Technologies... this technology couldn’t have come at a better time. The company has for decades tried to introduce a transgenic salmon it sells under the brand name AquAdvantage to the U.S. market. In this quest, AquaBounty has lost between US $100 million and $115 million (so far)."
117968400
submission
Wave723 writes:
"When it comes to relocating a data center, Joel Gabel is an expert. But when the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) selected the company he works for, Pivot Technology Services, to help them with a project, he says that it more or less went against all the best practices.
That’s because the project was relocating Colosseum. At first glance, Colosseum may look like a data center, but in reality, it’s a massive radio-frequency emulation testbed that DARPA built for its Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2)."
115646864
submission
Wave723 writes:
"Amid the sand dunes of the western Sahara, workers are putting the finishing touches on one of the world’s largest solar installations. There, as many as 7.2 million photovoltaic panels will make up Benban Solar Park—a renewable energy project so massive, it will be visible from space.
The 1.8-gigawatt installation is the first utility-scale PV plant in Egypt, a nation blessed with some of the best solar resources on the planet. The ambitious project is part of Egypt’s efforts to increase its generation capacity and incorporate more renewable sources into the mix."
114721794
submission
Wave723 writes:
"Dubbed the Interspecies Internet, the project aims to provide intelligent animals such as elephants, dolphins, magpies, and great apes with a means to communicate among each other and with people online.
And through artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other digital technologies, researchers hope to crack the code of all the chirps, yips, growls, and whistles that underpin animal communication."
113343172
submission
Wave723 writes:
"One of the earliest quantum applications, which dates back to the 1980s, still appears very far indeed from any kind of widespread, commercial rollout. Despite decades of research, there’s no viable roadmap for how to scale quantum cryptography to secure real-world data and communications for the masses." .....
From a practical standpoint, then, it doesn’t appear that quantum cryptography will be anything more than a physically elaborate and costly—and, for many applications, largely ignorable—method of securely delivering cryptographic keys anytime soon."
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fspectrum.ieee.org%2Ftech...
112936746
submission
Wave723 writes:
"Continuing current is thought to occur in about 11 percent of lightning strikes. Lightning that harbors a continuing current is more likely to start fires and damage homes or equipment.
Such “hot lightning,” as it’s called, can be spotted by the Geostationary Lightning Mappers, which detect rapid changes in brightness in the 777.4-nanometer (near infrared) band associated with lightning."
112259072
submission
Wave723 writes:
"Atop a rocky peak in the Swiss Alps sits a telecommunications tower that gets struck by lightning more than 100 times a year, making it perhaps the world’s most frequently struck object. Taking note of the remarkable consistency with which lightning hits this 124-meter structure, researchers have adorned it with instruments for a front-row view of these violent electric discharges."
111900154
submission
Wave723 writes:
One researcher said his main concern was "that the proliferation of illegal, effectively encrypted data will turn the hobby of ham radio into a mean-spirited, non-technical dummied-down mosh pit of signals that eventually becomes a high-frequency Internet access point in the sky.”
106422646
submission
Wave723 writes:
"A new kind of magnet, theorized for decades, may now have been experimentally proven to exist. And it could eventually lead to better data storage devices.
In a normal magnet, the magnetic moments of individual grains align with each other to generate a magnetic field. In contrast, in the new "singlet-based" magnet, magnetic moments are temporary in nature, popping in and out of existence."
106057034
submission
Wave723 writes:
"To make its developers’ jobs more rewarding, Facebook is now using two automated tools called Sapienz and SapFix to find and repair low-level bugs in its mobile apps. Sapienz runs the apps through many tests to figure out which actions will cause it to crash. Then, SapFix recommends a fix to developers, who review it and decide whether to accept the fix, come up with their own, or ignore the problem."
105366102
submission
Wave723 writes:
On New Year’s Eve, millions of people will use Facebook’s Messenger app to wish friends and family a “Happy New Year!” If everything goes smoothly, those messages will reach recipients in fewer than 100 milliseconds, and life will go on. But if the service stalls or fails, a small team of software engineers based in the company’s New York City office will have to answer for it.
104509730
submission
Wave723 writes:
"What do a Silicon Valley massage spa, a local community college, and a Californian plastics manufacturer have in common? They will soon be testing hundreds of cutting-edge wireless devices, according to an application for an experimental permit filed last week with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
If that sounds unlikely, it is. It seems much more likely that the new devices will actually be tested at three nearby Amazon facilities. These include two buildings belonging to the company’s secretive Lab126 research division, and one of the retailer’s largest fulfillment centers in the state."
104369460
submission
Wave723 writes:
"In an interesting twist, the kidney was subjected to slightly fewer vibrations when transported in the drone compared to a control delivery mission in a fixed wing plane (a dual engine turboprop King Air). Biopsies of the kidney before and after drone transportation revealed no damage from the journey, suggesting that the experiment—which the research team believes is the first ever use of a drone for organ delivery—was a success."
102794092
submission
Wave723 writes:
I was scrolling through emails on my phone one recent morning when a strange message appeared among the usual mix of advertisements and morning newsletters. It was a confirmation for an upcoming doctor’s appointment in New York City, but came from an address I’d never seen before. And at the top, there was a friendly note: “I guess this is for you :)”
