Category: new technology

Even though it has a diameter of just two inches.

By Nathaniel Mott

Adamant Namiki Precision Jewel Co. has created a diamond wafer that, according to the company, could make its way into a variety of quantum computing projects.

“A 2-inch diamond wafer theoretically enables enough quantum memory to record 1 billion Blu-ray discs,” Adamant Namiki says. “This is equivalent to all the mobile data distributed in the world in one day.” The purity of the diamonds produced using this process could allow the material to be used in quantum computers, quantum memory, and quantum sensing devices.

Adamant Namiki collaborated with Saga University to develop this new diamond creation method. The company says it originally produced a diamond wafer of this size in September 2021, but that iteration of the process introduced too many impurities for the resulting diamond to be useful in quantum computers, so it’s spent the last few months investigating that problem.

Continue reading… “This Diamond Could Store As Much Data As 1 Billion Blu-ray Discs”

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a world map that for the first time uses machine learning to derive vegetation heights from satellite images in high resolution.

by Stéphanie Hegelbach

Using an artificial neural network, researchers at ETH Zurich have created the first high-resolution global vegetation height map for 2020 from satellite images. This map could provide key information for fighting climate change and species extinction, as well as for sustainable regional development planning.

Last year marked the beginning of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. This initiative is aimed at halting the degradation of ecosystems by 2030, preventing it going forward and, if possible, remedying the damage that has already been done. Delivering on these kinds of projects calls for accurate foundations, such as surveys and maps of the existing vegetation.

In an interview, Ralph Dubayah, the Principal Investigator of NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission, explains: “We simply do not know how tall trees are globally. […] We need good global maps of where trees are. Because whenever we cut down trees, we release carbon into the atmosphere, and we don’t know how much carbon we are releasing.”

Analyzing and preparing precisely this kind of environmental data is what the EcoVision Lab in the ETH Zurich Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering specializes in. Founded by ETH Zurich Professor Konrad Schindler and University of Zurich Professor Jan Dirk Wegner in 2017, this lab is where researchers are developing machine learning algorithms that enable automatic analysis of large-scale environmental data. One of those researchers is Nico Lang. In his doctoral thesis, he developed an approach—based on neural networks—for deriving vegetation height from optical satellite images. Using this approach, he was able to create the first vegetation height map that covers the entire Earth: the Global Canopy Height Map.

Continue reading… “Neural network can read tree heights from satellite images”

By JARON SCHNEIDER

NVIDIA’s Instant NeRF is a neural rendering model that can produce a 3D scene from 2D data inputs in seconds and can render images of that scene in milliseconds. 

The process is known as inverse rendering and allows AI to approximate how light behaves in the real world, which can be used to turn a collection of still images into a digital 3D scene in seconds. NVIDIA’s research team has developed an approach that accomplishes the task extremely rapidly — almost instantly — which makes it one of the first models of its kind that can combine ultra-fast neural network training and rapid render.

What is a NeRF?

NVIDIA simplifies this explanation and says that NeRFs use neural networks to represent and render 3D scenes based on an input collection of 2D images. The neural network requires a few dozen images taken from multiple positions around the scene as well as the camera’s position of each of those shots.

“In a scene that includes people or other moving elements, the quicker these shots are captured, the better. If there’s too much motion during the 2D image capture process, the AI-generated 3D scene will be blurry,” NVIDIA says.

Continue reading… “NVIDIA’s New Tech Can Turn A Set of Photos into 3D Scenes in Seconds”

Ion engines are the best technology for sending spacecraft on long missions. They’re not suitable for launching spacecraft against powerful gravity, but they require minimal propellant compared to rockets, and they drive spacecraft to higher velocities over extended time periods. Ion thrusters are also quiet, and their silence has some scientists wondering if they could use them on Earth in applications where noise is undesirable.

Powered flight is noisy. Helicopters make a horrible racket, and screaming jet engines can make life near an airport almost unbearable. Even small propeller-driven aircraft are noisy. But what if ion engines could be used instead of these louder propulsion systems, at least in some applications where noise is an issue?

Steven Barrett from MIT thinks the idea has merit. Barrett is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He’s also the Director of the MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment. “The aim of Steven’s research is to help aviation achieve zero environmental impacts,” the MIT website says. “This includes developing low emissions and noise propulsion technologies for aircraft…” This is where Barrett’s work on ion propulsion comes in.

Barrett’s been interested in an ion propulsion system for many years. In 2018 Barrett and colleagues published an article in the journal Nature titled “Flight of an aeroplane with solid-state propulsion.” Solid-state propulsion systems have no moving parts, so they’re very quiet. The power for flight comes from electroaerodynamics, where electricity moves ions and provides propulsion. Barrett and colleagues call the flow of ions the “ionic wind.” They’ve used it to propel a small test aircraft on steady, stable flights. 

Continue reading… “Ion Engines Could Work on Earth too, to Make Silent, Solid-State Aircraft”

The Roswell Molecular Electronics Chip uses single molecules as universal sensor elements in a circuit to create a programmable biosensor with real-time, single-molecule sensitivity and unlimited scalability in sensor pixel density.

A platform for single-molecule measurement of binding kinetics & enzyme activity.

The first molecular electronics chip has been developed, realizing a 50-year-old goal of integrating single molecules into circuits to achieve the ultimate scaling limits of Moore’s Law. Developed by Roswell Biotechnologies and a multi-disciplinary team of leading academic scientists, the chip uses single molecules as universal sensor elements in a circuit to create a programmable biosensor with real-time, single-molecule sensitivity and unlimited scalability in sensor pixel density. This innovation, appearing this week in a peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), will power advances in diverse fields that are fundamentally based on observing molecular interactions, including drug discovery, diagnostics, DNA sequencing, and proteomics.

“Biology works by single molecules talking to each other, but our existing measurement methods cannot detect this,” said co-author Jim Tour, PhD, a Rice University chemistry professor and a pioneer in the field of molecular electronics. “The sensors demonstrated in this paper for the first time let us listen in on these molecular communications, enabling a new and powerful view of biological information.”

Continue reading… “First Molecular Electronics Chip Developed – Realizes 50-Year-Old Goal”

Every green glowing area is one synapse in a living mouse’s brain. The image shows dense constellations of millions of synapses throughout the mouse cortex. Credit: Austin Graves, Johns Hopkins Medicine

To solve the mysteries of how learning and memory occur, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists have created a system to track millions of connections among brain cells in mice — all at the same time — when the animals’ whiskers are tweaked, an indicator for learning.

Researchers say the new tool gives an unprecedented view of brain cell activity in a synapse — a tiny space between two brain cells, where molecules and chemicals are passed back and forth.

“It was science fiction to be able to image nearly every synapse in the brain and watch a change in behavior,” says Richard Huganir, Ph.D., Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Psychological and Brain Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University and director of the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

A summary of the research was published online first Oct. 18 and in its final form Nov. 25 in the journal eLife.

Continue reading… “Scientists Create Mind-Blowing Tool to ‘See’ Millions of Brain Cell Connections in Mice”

And how they will change the world

By Adrien Book

CRISPR, Quantum, Graphene, Smart Dust, Digital Twins, the Metaverse… You’ve heard about it all. Seen it all. Read it all. These technologies no longer hold any secrets for you. Hell, you even regularly mention them over dinner and at work, and have become the go-to person for questions about future innovations.

Yet, technology is ever-changing, and this precious knowledge must be both managed and updated regularly. With this in mind, I’ve put together a list of 10 technologies that are likely to make big waves in the future, but are not on the public’s radar as of today.

Continue reading… “Top 10 future technologies you’ve definitely never heard of”

By Alex McFarland

Researchers at the University of Rochester have harnessed quantum entanglement to achieve incredibly large bandwidth. They did this by using a thin-film nanophotonic device. 

This new approach could lead to enhanced sensitivity and resolution for experiments in metrology and sensing, as well as higher dimensional encoding of information in quantum networks for information processing and communications. 

The research was published in Physical Review Letters. 

Continue reading… “Researchers Use Quantum Entanglement to Achieve “Ultrabroadband””

• The 10^th anniversary edition of the World Economic Forum’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report lists new technologies poised to impact the world in the next three to five years.
• Experts convened by the World Economic Forum and Scientific American highlight technological advances that could revolutionize agriculture, health and space.
• Self-fertilizing crops, on-demand drug manufacturing, breath-sensing diagnostics and 3D-printed houses are among the technologies on the list.

At COP26, countries committed to new, ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions this decade. Delivering on these promises will rely on the development and scale up of green technologies. 

Two such technologies – the production of “green” ammonia and engineered crops that make their own fertilizer – both aiming to make agriculture more sustainable, made it onto this year’s list of emerging tech.

Continue reading… “These are the top 10 emerging technologies of 2021”

By Christine Hall

While studying engineering at Stanford, Alex Kolchinski, Alex Gruebele and Max Perham met and bonded around the lack of food options on campus and the cost of the options that were there.

“Even on a subsidized meal plan, it would cost $10 for lunch and more for dinner,” Kolchinski told TechCrunch. “I would sit and do my work in the dining hall just to be able to eat two lunches. Alex (Gruebele) would just go to Chipotle and spend his stipend there.”

While thinking about how to provide good food at a lower cost, both Kolchinski and Gruebele, who were doing PhD work involving robotics, got to thinking about how robots could help people with meal prepping and other tasks.

“It turns out that a $10 burrito bowl really costs $3 in food costs, and the rest of the money goes to places like labor, overhead and real estate,” Kolchinski added. “If we built a self-contained restaurant, we would bring down the price of really good food, and it would be close by.”

Continue reading… “Stanford engineers team up with Michelin-star chef to build modular restaurants”