Informatics

Research published Wednesday in Nature Scientific Reports lays out a theoretical map to use ferroelectric material to process information using multivalued logic – a leap beyond the simple ones and zeroes that make up our current computing systems that could let us process information much more efficiently. The language of computers is written in just two symbols…

A new proof-of-concept study by researchers from the University of California San Diego succeeded in training computers to “learn” what a healthy versus an unhealthy gut microbiome looks like based on its genetic makeup. Since this can be done by genetically sequencing fecal samples, the research suggests there is great promise for new diagnostic tools…

Imagine a dim light which is insufficiently bright enough to illuminate a room. An amplifier for such a light would increase the brightness by increasing the number of photons emitted. Photonics researchers have created such a high gain optical amplifier that is compact enough to be placed on a chip. The developed amplifier, when used…

Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies and techniques have improved the productivity and accuracy of DNA sequencers. The benefits of Moore’s Law are reducing the cost of the High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities needed to perform the alignment and other workflow steps on the outputs from NGS sequencing machines. These two trends deliver tremendous benefit to advancing…

A giant, fully operational 16-bit computer that aims to demystify the strange and seemingly magical mechanisms of computation has been built by students and staff from the University of Bristol. The Big Hex Machine, specifically designed to explain how a computer works, has been built out of over 100 specially designed four-bit circuit boards and will…

Atoms, photons, and other quantum particles are often capricious and finicky by nature; very rarely at a standstill, they often collide with others of their kind. But if such particles can be individually corralled and controlled in large numbers, they may be harnessed as quantum bits, or qubits — tiny units of information whose state…

University of Canterbury Distinguished Professor Jack Copeland and UC alumni and composer Jason Long have restored the earliest known recording of computer-generated music, created more than 65 years ago using programming techniques devised by Alan Turing. In 1951, a BBC outside-broadcast unit in Manchester used a portable acetate disc cutter to capture three melodies played by a…

Ford and the Chinese search engine company Baidu will each invest $75 million in Velodyne, a company that makes laser sensors that help guide self-driving cars. Velodyne, based in Morgan Hill, California, says it will use the $150 million investment to expand design and production and reduce the cost of its sensors. The laser sensors…

When scaling down robots to the micrometer scale for tiny tasks such as incising tissue and puncturing retinal veins, minimalism is key. To make smaller, simpler microrobots, researchers at Drexel University have developed a fabrication method which utilizes the minimum geometric requirements for fluid motion — consisting of just two conjoined microparticles coated with bits…

Aalto University scientists have broken the world record by fourteen fold in the energy resolution of thermal photodetection. The record was made using a partially superconducting microwave detector. The discovery may lead to ultrasensitive cameras and accessories for the emerging quantum computer. The first of the two key enabling developments is the new detector design…

Chemists at the Complutense University of Madrid have developed a method that allows brewers to measure the freshness of beer, using a polymer sensor that changes colour upon detecting furfural, a compound that appears when this beverage ages and gives it a stale flavour. The sensor can be controlled from a smartphone app also created…