Lifeboat Foundation

As 5G-enabled phones secured their spot as major players in smartphone technology in 2020, access to this latest functionality has been limited to higher-end phones. But things are about to change, as Qualcomm announced today the development of the Snapdragon 480 5G Mobile Platform, which is expected to usher in a new wave of low-cost smartphones featuring cutting-edge features of the latest wireless standard.

5G technology promises higher peak data speeds, very low latency and greater reliability. With the current crop of 5G-enabled phones hovering above $500, the extension of 5G to Qualcomm’s 4-series SoC could pave the way for smartphones priced in the $125-to-$250 range.

The Snapdragon 480 chipset incorporates an X51 modem that supports mmWave and below-6-GHz bandwidths, which ensures compatibility with nearly all 5G networks available today. 5G is not available everywhere, but users in regions offering the technology will see download speeds of 2.5 Gbps and upload speeds up to 660 Mbps.

Experts first floated immunity passports as something to give people who had recovered from COVID-19, but the idea was laden with ethical and logistical concerns — especially since scientists weren’t sure how long coronavirus antibodies lasted after a patient recovered.

But instead of the immune system’s response to COVID-19, this new system built by the medical testing platform startup Healthvana would show whether someone had been vaccinated, likely a more robust indicator that they’re no longer infectious.

After vaccination, you’d be able to take out your smartphone and show you’d been inoculated “to prove to airlines, to prove to schools, to prove to whoever needs it,” Healthvana CEO Ramin Bastani told Bloomberg.

Quantum computer: One of the obstacles for progress in the quest for a working quantum computer has been that the working devices that go into a quantum computer and perform the actual calculations, the qubits, have hitherto been made by universities and in small numbers. But in recent years, a pan-European collaboration, in partnership with French microelectronics leader CEA-Leti, has been exploring everyday transistors—that are present in billions in all our mobile phones—for their use as qubits. The French company Leti makes giant wafers full of devices, and, after measuring, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have found these industrially produced devices to be suitable as a qubit platform capable of moving to the second dimension, a significant step for a working quantum computer. The result is now published in Nature Communications.

Quantum dots in two dimensional array is a leap ahead

One of the key features of the devices is the two-dimensional array of quantum dots. Or more precisely, a two by two lattice of quantum dots. “What we have shown is that we can realize single electron control in every single one of these quantum dots. This is very important for the development of a qubit, because one of the possible ways of making qubits is to use the spin of a single electron. So reaching this goal of controlling the single electrons and doing it in a 2-D array of quantum dots was very important for us”, says Fabio Ansaloni, former Ph.D. student, now postdoc at center for Quantum Devices, NBI.

No escape.

Checking your notifications on a dive or live-streaming from the reef may not be such a far-off reality thanks to an underwater internet dubbed “Aqua-Fi.”

Developed by researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, Aqua-Fi uses a combination of lasers and existing computing technology to connect devices to the internet more than 30 feet underwater.

Continue reading “Scientists Create Underwater Internet” »

The advance could cut production costs and reduce the size of microelectronics for sensing and communication.

Light-emitting diodes — LEDs — can do way more than illuminate your living room. These light sources are useful microelectronics too.

Smartphones, for example, can use an LED proximity sensor to determine if you’re holding the phone next to your face (in which case the screen turns off). The LED sends a pulse of light toward your face, and a timer in the phone measures how long it takes that light to reflect back to the phone, a proxy for how close the phone is to your face. LEDs are also handy for distance measurement in autofocus cameras and gesture recognition.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, with collaborators at Technische Universität Berlin, have demonstrated the shortest wavelength ever reported of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). This can pave the way for future use in, for example, disinfection and medical treatment. The results were recently published in the scientific journal ACS Photonics.

“Although there is still much work to be done, especially to enable electrically driven devices, this demonstration provides an important building block for the realization of practical VCSELs covering the major part of the UV spectral range,” says Filip Hjort, Ph.D. student at the Photonics Laboratory at mc² and first author of the article.

A vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL) is a compact semiconductor laser and has seen widespread application in, for example, facial recognition in smartphones and for optical communication in data centers. So far, these lasers are only available commercially with red and infrared wavelengths, but also other visible-emitting VCSELs, that could find applications in adaptive headlamps for cars or projection displays, will soon be commercialized.

Google and its American internet peers are steadily amping up their investment in India, latching onto the only other country with a billion-plus population after getting shut out of China. From Amazon.com Inc. to Facebook Inc., they’re hoping to get in on the ground floor of what they envision as a smartphone and online commerce boom that could eventually create a market to rival the world’s No. 2 economy.

Google investments helped create India’s two youngest technology unicorns: a pair of startups that feed personalized news and entertainment to the world’s fastest-growing smartphone population.

SMART CONTACT LENSES are coming during this decade, probably within a few years. This company claims it is ready to launch one that will 1) give night vision to the wearer; 2) record video of what you see with your eyes in real time; 3) zoom magnification up to 60 times larger than regular vision, so if you see something far away, you can see what it is; 4) display “augmented” images on your visual field. This means you will be able to see everything normally, BUT can see a text of the weather, or map directions, etc. Eventually, such contact lenses will replace the smart phone, and you will dial, talk, etc, without use of your hands. I would like this to interface with instant language translation, to make learning a language five times faster!

This innovation, called iLens, looks unbelievable on paper. Associated with a smartphone via Bluetooth, this concept would allow you to record your daily memories in video. A telephoto camera embedded in the lens would allow you to zoom digitally up to 60x to enhance your eyesight and discover details invisible to the naked eye. This digital feat would also allow you to see perfectly in the dark.

ILens would also display augmented reality information, for instance to keep a certain distance from others, or practical information regarding air quality or the weather.

Continue reading “Contact lenses worthy of James Bond to zoom and film in a blink of an eye” »

I’m really excited to announce my new book And today the Kindle ebook version is FREE instead of $7.99. Richard Dawkins has shared some of the essays in this book in his social media before. Please download a FREE copy and share with friends and family! It has some of my new work in it!

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