Lifeboat Foundation

AI tools based on artificial neural networks (ANNs) are being introduced in a growing number of settings, helping humans to tackle many problems faster and more efficiently. While most of these algorithms run on conventional digital devices and computers, electronic engineers have been exploring the potential of running them on alternative platforms, such as diffractive optical devices.

A research team led by Prof. Tie Jun Cui at Southeast University in China has recently developed a new programmable neural network based on a so-called spoof surface plasmon polariton (SSPP), which is a surface electromagnetic wave that propagates along planar interfaces. This newly proposed surface plasmonic neural network (SPNN) architecture, introduced in a paper in Nature Electronics, can detect and process microwaves, which could be useful for wireless communication and other technological applications.

“In digital hardware research for the implementation of artificial neural networks, optical neural networks and diffractive deep neural networks recently emerged as promising solutions,” Qian Ma, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. “Previous research focusing on optical neural networks showed that simultaneous high-level programmability and nonlinear computing can be difficult to achieve. Therefore, these ONN devices usually have been limited to specific tasks without programmability, or only applied for simple recognition tasks (i.e., linear problems).”

The first results from the James Webb Space Telescope have hinted at galaxies so early and so massive that they are in tension with our understanding of the formation of structure in the universe. Various explanations have been proposed that may alleviate this tension. But now a new study from the Cosmic Dawn Center suggests an effect which has never before been studied at such early epochs, indicating that the galaxies may be even more massive.

If you have been following the first results from the James Webb Space Telescope, you have probably heard about the paramount issue with the observations of the earliest galaxies: They are too big.

From a few days after the release of the first images, and repeatedly through the coming months, new reports of ever-more distant galaxies appeared. Disturbingly, several of the galaxies seemed to be “too massive.”

For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans more than half a billion years ago.

Searching among today’s most primitive-looking animals for the earliest branch of the animal tree of life, scientists gradually narrowed the possibilities down to two groups: sponges, which spend their entire adult lives in one spot, filtering food from seawater; and comb jellies, voracious predators that oar their way through the world’s oceans in search of food.

In a new study published this week in the journal Nature, researchers use a novel approach based on chromosome structure to come up with a definitive answer: Comb jellies, or ctenophores (pronounced teen’-a-fores), were the first lineage to branch off from the animal tree. Sponges were next, followed by the diversification of all other animals, including the lineage leading to humans.

What makes some materials carry current with no resistance? Scientists are trying to unravel the complex characteristics. Harnessing this property, known as superconductivity, could lead to perfectly efficient power lines, ultrafast computers, and a range of energy-saving advances. Understanding these materials when they aren’t superconducting is a key part of the quest to unlock that potential.

“To solve the problem, we need to understand the many phases of these materials,” said Kazuhiro Fujita, a physicist in the Condensed Matter Physics & Materials Science Department of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. In a new study just published in Physical Review X, Fujita and his colleagues sought to find an explanation for an oddity observed in a phase that coexists with the superconducting phase of a copper-oxide superconductor.

The anomaly was a mysterious disappearance of vibrational energy from the atoms that make up the material’s crystal lattice. “X-rays show that the atoms vibrate in particular ways,” Fujita said. But as the material is cooled, the X-ray studies showed, one mode of the vibrations stops.

After a relatively low period of solar activity, the Sun sprung back into action yesterday, May 16. A near-X-class solar flare eruption occurred on the southeastern limb of the Sun. Even as the explosion was on the horizon of the Sun and a part of it was eclipsed due to its edge, the solar flare had a major impact on the Earth. Ultraviolet radiation ionized the upper atmosphere and caused a shortwave radio blackout over North America and the northern parts of South America. And now, fears are rising over another major solar storm that could be headed toward the Earth.

As per a SpaceWeather.com report, “Earth-orbiting satellites detected an M9.6-class solar flare from a sunspot hiding behind the sun’s southeastern limb. It was only percentage points away from being an X-flare. The event could herald a period of renewed solar activity as the sunspot turns toward Earth”.

The radio blackout was so severe that several reports highlighted that most of the shortwave frequencies faded away when the flare erupted. This would have affected mariners, amateur radio operators, and aviators. The blackout persisted for about an hour before subsiding.

A computer based in Russia was able to breach the Washington, D.C., Metro system earlier this year, the Metro’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) said in a new report.

The partially redacted report, released Wednesday and first reported by The Washington Post, said the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) cybersecurity group detected “abnormal network activity originating in Russia” in January.

In a paper published in the journal Nature on May 11, researchers at Google Quantum AI announced that they had used one of their superconducting quantum processors to observe the peculiar behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time ever. They also demonstrated how this phenomenon could be used to perform quantum computations. Earlier this week the quantum computing company Quantinuum released another study on the topic, complementing Google’s initial discovery. These new results open a new path toward topological quantum computation, in which operations are achieved by winding non-Abelian anyons around each other like strings in a braid.

Google Quantum AI team member and first author of the manuscript, Trond I. Andersen says, “Observing the bizarre behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time really highlights the type of exciting phenomena we can now access with quantum computers.”

Imagine you’re shown two identical objects and then asked to close your eyes. Open them again, and you see the same two objects. How can you determine if they have been swapped? Intuition says that if the objects are truly identical, there is no way to tell.

SideWinder, a state-sponsored group, uses a network of phishing domains to target government and financial sectors in Pakistan and China.

The Nanoracks Starlab (seen on the upper left) is one of three additional contenders aiming to launch and operate a commercial space station before the end of this decade.

In Part 2 looking at LEO space station deployment we focus on Nanoracks’ Starlab and Outposts, Northrop Grumman, and Vast Space.