news 2020

A new technique that synchronises the clocks of computers in under a billionth of a second can eliminate one of the hurdles for the deployment of all-optical networks, potentially leading to more efficient data centres, according to a new study led by UCL and Microsoft. Data centres, comprising tens or hundreds of thousands connected servers, are the underlying technology empowering everything we do online, from storing films and photos to serving up webpages and online services.

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In groundbreaking new research, mechanical engineers and computer scientists at the University of Minnesota have developed a 3D printing technique that uses motion capture technology, similar to that used in Hollywood movies, to print electronic sensors directly on organs that are expanding and contracting.

Improving our understanding of genome structure and function is central to biology and medicine. My research group uses computational models to study the functional potential of each of the three billion pairs of chemical bases in the human genome. Ultimately, we are paving the way to designing personalized interventions against disease, which technological advancements are finally pushing toward reality.

PhD candidate Riddhi Gupta has taken an algorithm used in autonomous vehicles and adapted it to help characterise and stabilise quantum technology. Scientists at the University of Sydney have adapted techniques from autonomous vehicles and robotics to efficiently assess the performance of quantum devices, an important process to help stabilise the emerging technologies.

Computers normally store and process data in separate modules. But now researchers at ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute have developed a method that allows logical operations to be performed directly within a memory element. Anyone who has ever accidentally pulled out the plug of a desktop computer will recall the painful moment when they realised that any unsaved information was lost forever.

Researchers have used artificial intelligence to reduce the 'communication gap' for nonverbal people with motor disabilities who rely on computers to converse with others. This method gives us hope for more innovative AI-infused systems to help people with motor disabilities to communicate in the future Per Ola Kristensson The team, from the University of Cambridge and the University of Dundee, developed a new context-aware method that reduces this communication gap by eliminating between 50% and 96% of the keystrokes the person has to type to communicate.

Several technical advances have been achieved recently in the pursuit of powerful quantum computers. Now, Computer scientists from ETH Zurich have made an important breakthrough in the field of programming languages: their quantum language is the first of its kind that is as elegant, simple and safe as classical computer languages.

Here's a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial. From new ways to make cloud computing applications more trustworthy, to a small 'switch' for turning genes on and off, here is some quick-read news from across the College. Cloud security The UKRI have announced funding for a new research project called CloudCAP: Capability-based Isolation for Cloud Native Applications.

Berkeley Lab scientists pair satellite data with high-resolution monitoring to estimate groundwater depletion across California's Central Valley Groundwater makes up 30 to 50 percent of California's water supply, but until recently there were few restrictions placed on its retrieval. Then in 2014 California became the last Western state to require regulation of its groundwater.

Share on: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Almost overnight, the sleep and wake patterns of nearly four billion people may have changed because of COVID-19-spurred lockdowns. A free app built by University of Michigan researchers will help users understand their own sleep rhythms, shedding light on how their biological clock is responding to lockdowns, and give tips about how to shift their potentially disrupted rhythms to a more appropriate time.

States that resemble sleep-like cycles in simulated neural networks quell the instability that comes with uninterrupted self-learning in artificial analogs of brains LOS ALAMOS, N.M. June 8, 2020-No one can say whether androids will dream of electric sheep, but they will almost certainly need periods of rest that offer benefits similar to those that sleep provides to living brains, according to new research from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The design could advance the development of small, portable AI devices. MIT engineers have designed a "brain-on-a-chip," smaller than a piece of confetti, that is made from tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses known as memristors - silicon-based components that mimic the information-transmitting synapses in the human brain.

EPFL researchers have developed a new tool called USBFuzz, which they have already used to detect 26 vulnerabilities in the USB driver stacks of widely used operating systems including Linux, Windows, and macOS. USB driver stacks are components that help computers communicate with external devices via the Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection.

Software for the analysis and visualization of single-cell data is one of the projects that will receive funding as part of CZI's Essential Open Source Software for Science (EOSS) program. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced $3.8 million in funding for 23 grants to support open-source software projects essential to biomedical research, enabling software maintenance, growth, development, and community engagement.

By Birgit Baustädter Electronics-based systems have long since found their way into our everyday lives. Consciously in the form of new technical gadgets and unconsciously in the form of embedded systems. It is therefore impossible to imagine our familiar life without electronics-based systems. But, and here researchers are in agreement, they will continue to shape our environment in the future as the basis for many innovative developments.

Method may help quickly identify regions where objects - and missing people - may have converged. The ocean is a messy and turbulent space, where winds and weather kick up waves in all directions. When an object or person goes missing at sea, the complex, constantly changing conditions of the ocean can confound and delay critical search-and-rescue operations.

A new app developed at Imperial College London aims to protect privacy whilst trying to minimise coronavirus spread. As part of their efforts to slow the outbreak of coronavirus , international governments, research institutions and industry are developing contact tracing apps to record interactions between people.

The development of quantum technologies promises to have a profound impact across science, engineering and society. Quantum computers at scale will be able to solve problems intractable on even the most powerful current supercomputers, with many revolutionary applications, for example, in the design of new drugs and materials.

Markedly different conclusions about brain scans reached by 70 independent teams highlight the challenges to data analysis in the modern era of mammoth datasets and highly flexible processing workflows. Scientific research has changed dramatically in the centuries since Galileo, Newton and Darwin. Whereas scientists once often toiled in isolation with homemade experiments and treatises, today collaboration is the norm.