US takes first step toward a quantum computing workforce

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612071/us-takes-first-step-towards-creating-a-quantum-computing-workforce/


Quantum computers promise to transform computer security, finance, and many other fields by solving certain problems far faster than conventional machines. To unlock that potential, the U.S. government has just passed a bill to foster a viable quantum computing industry.

Christopher Monroe, at the University of Maryland, told the audience at EmTech, a conference organized by MIT Technology Review, that the U.S. needs a new generation of engineers, schooled in the quirks of quantum physics as well as the principles of computer engineering, to help create quantum computers that can tackle real-world problems.

That is why Monroe helped draft the National Quantum Initiative Act, a bill that just passed today that would establish a federal program for accelerating quantum computing research and training. The act will release $1.275 billion to help fund several centers of excellence that should help train many quantum engineers.

Monroe is also the cofounder of IonQ, one of several startups now racing to develop usable quantum computers. It is hard for these companies to find engineers to help them develop and commercialize scalable systems. “We need quantum systems engineers,” Monroe said. “We need that workforce.”

Quantum computers operate in a totally different way to conventional machines. In an ordinary computer, bits of information are represented using either a one or a zero. But in the quantum realm, matter behaves in bizarre ways. Quantum bits, or qubits, created and manipulated using superposition and entanglement, can perform certain types of calculation very rapidly on vast amounts of data.

In theory, a quantum machine with just a few hundred qubits should be able to run calculations that would be inconceivable using traditional hardware.

In practice, though, it is devilishly tricky to scale these systems up due to their sensitivity to interference. Quantum computers were first proposed decades ago, but research on the technology has progressed at a glacial pace.

Startups and big tech companies are currently racing to develop more powerful quantum computers. IonQ is building its computers using ions trapped with electric fields. Several others, including Google, IBM, and Rigetti are developing quantum computers using superconducting circuits. Rigetti recently demonstrated a new quantum cloud service (see “Running quantum algorithms in the cloud just got a lot faster”).

Monroe said the new national plan should also help the US compete internationally. China is pouring billions of dollars into its own quantum computing projects. The international picture is also significant because these technologies promise to be useful for breaking—but also securing—communications channels.

Within five years, quantum computers would be capable of calculations that could never be run using conventional hardware, Monroe predicts. But it remains unclear precisely how useful these early systems will be, since they will only be capable of certain types of computation.

Figuring out how to use these machines will then be up to the quantum software engineers. “When we build them, they will be useful for something,” Monroe says.

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September 13, 2018 at 02:31PM

MIT built a health-tracking sensor that can ‘see’ through walls

https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/13/mit-health-tracking-sensor-see-through-walls/



MIT

An MIT professor has built a prototype device that can wirelessly track your health — even through walls — using a mix of radio signals and machine learning. Dina Katabi’s gadget resembles a WiFi router and is designed to sit in your pad and monitor your breathing, heart rate, sleep, gait, and more as you go about your day. It’s already doing that in over 200 homes around the US of both healthy people and those with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, depression, and pulmonary diseases.

Here’s how it works: The device emits radio signals that bounce off nearby people’s bodies and back to the box. The neural network under the hood then analyses these reflections to estimate a person’s posture and movements without cameras and behind walls. It can also extract all that valuable health data from those same signals.

The box “takes advantage of the fact that every time we move—even if it’s just a teeny, tiny bit, such as when we breathe—we change the electromagnetic field surrounding us,” writes Rachel Metz in MIT Technology Review.

Research has shown that the device can accurately monitor sleep, including individual sleep stages — meaning it could replace laborious studies that require participants to wear electrodes and snooze in a lab. Another benefit touted by its creator is its ability to silently track people over time to give better insights into a patient’s life and the medication they’re taking. This, says Katabi, could help doctors figure out how some meds help certain patients but not others.

In terms of privacy, the device is encrypted and only works with your consent. In addition, it requires the user to complete a set of specific movements before it can track you, making it virtually impossible to snoop on an unwilling participant.

Of course, wearables with heart rate monitors are now the norm (the Apple Watch 4, meanwhile, even packs an electrocardiogram, or EKG, and can detect atrial fibrillation) and there’s sleep tracking devices to monitor the amount of quality shut-eye we’re getting. But this piece of kit, its maker claims, can discretely beam even more granular physiological data to your physician — plus you don’t have to wear it.

Next up, Katabi’s startup Emerald Innovations plans to commercialise the tech having recently made it available to biotech and pharmaceutical companies for research.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

September 13, 2018 at 12:45PM

AT&T and Verizon want to manage your identity across websites and apps

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1374989


A smartphone app showing an option to confirm or deny a login attempt.
Enlarge /

Project Verify would let you confirm or deny logins for other apps and websites.

The four major US mobile carriers have unveiled a system that would let them manage your logins across any third-party website or app that hooks into it.

Project Verify” from a consortium of AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile US, and Sprint, was unveiled in a demo yesterday. It works similarly to other multi-factor authentication systems by letting users approve or deny login requests from other websites and apps, reducing the number of times users must enter passwords. The carriers’ consortium is putting the call out to developers of third-party apps and websites, who can contact the consortium for information on linking to the new authentication system.

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

September 13, 2018 at 02:38PM

Find Free Housing With Airbnb If You’re Evacuating from Hurricane Florence

https://lifehacker.com/find-free-housing-with-airbnb-if-youre-evacuating-from-1829023955


Airbnb is asking hosts to open up their homes for free to people who are evacuating from Hurricane Florence, and to relief workers who have been deployed to the area.

The company is coordinating free housing in the areas shown above: parts of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

From September 10, 2018 to October 1, 2018, Airbnb is waiving booking fees on free listings in the area, but still providing customer service and honoring their Host Guarantee and other policies. Hosts who don’t want to rent out their place for free can also choose to offer a discounted rate for storm evacuees.

To find housing, create an Airbnb account if you haven’t already, and then click “Find shelter” on the disaster response page. If you have room in your home to offer, go to the same page and click “Sign up your home.”

via Lifehacker https://lifehacker.com

September 13, 2018 at 08:52AM

Former F1 team owner plans a more realistic kind of flying taxi

https://www.autoblog.com/2018/09/13/vertical-aerospace-flying-taxi-formula-one/


LONDON — A British energy entrepreneur and one-time Formula 1 racing team owner is entering the race to build new inter-city “flying taxi” services that tap recent aerospace advances while steering clear of more fanciful blue-sky visions touted by tech-focused rivals.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, founder of Ovo Energy, an upstart challenger to the UK’s big six electric utilities, said his new venture will apply lessons from F1 racing to build electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

Vertical Aerospace, as his self-funded, Bristol-based flying company is known, aims to offer short-haul, inter-city flights carrying multiple passengers using piloted aircraft within four years, Fitzpatrick said.

Since its inception in 2016, the firm has hired 28 veteran aerospace and technical experts from Airbus, Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Martin Jetpack and GE with extensive experience building certified commercial aircraft.

Unlike the majority of flying-car projects from tech, aerospace and automotive entrepreneurs that have captured the popular imagination by seeking to turn aircraft into pilotless, autonomous vehicles, Vertical believes it can overcome regulatory and safety concerns by delivering piloted, fixed-wing aircraft that capitalize on incremental, existing innovations.

Vertical is looking to target some of the most congested air corridors in the world with aircraft that don’t require runways but also have enough heft to travel up to 500 miles (800 km), Fitzpatrick said in an interview.

“We are investing in all the technology evolution taking place in aerospace but we are trying to apply that to something that’s real world and is possible to execute four years out,” the Vertical Aerospace founder and chief executive said.

“We are not waiting for huge changes in existing regulations.”

Fixed wing, multiple passengers

Competitors working toward launching autonomous flying cars early in the next decade range from aerospace giant Airbus to Uber, which is developing an intra-city flying taxi fleet, Volocopter, which is testing drone taxis that resemble a small helicopter powered by 18 rotors, and AeroMobil, with a stretch-limousine concept that can turn into a fixed-wing aircraft.

Several of these projects envision services that can be ordered up, on-demand, via smartphones, from skyhubs in city centers.

Vertical said it had conducted a test flight of an unmanned, single-passenger vertical takeoff prototype at an airport in Gloucestershire in western England in June after it was granted flight permission by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The black passenger pod with four rosters set the stage for more ambitious work.

It is gearing up to produce a fixed-wing, piloted version of its vertical takeoff aircraft capable of carrying multiple passengers. It will work with regulators to win certification in the first stage of the air taxi project through 2022, it said.

In a later stage, Vertical will seek to extend the aircraft’s range, introduce elements of autonomous flight and expand the number of chartered routes it can serve.

Lessons of Formula One

Belfast-born Fitzpatrick prides himself on developing business ideas in areas where, at the outset, he has zero technical background.

He said he spent years studying energy markets before launching his energy utility firm, Ovo, in 2009. It now counts around 680,000 customers, or 2.5 percent of the UK domestic retail energy market, and employs 1,200 staff.

His first brush with hardware and physical product engineering came when he was a short-term owner of flagging Formula 1 team Manor Racing.

Fitzpatrick said it dawned on him that many racing car advances also applied to aircraft, from high-powered electric batteries to hybrid power trains, lighter structural materials, like carbon fiber and, of course, aerodynamic design.

“The technology we were using in Formula 1 was just too high-spec to be applied to the challenges of the typical road car,” Fitzpatrick said. “What you can get from an F1 engine has more power density per kilo than a jet turbine,” he said.

Reporting by Eric Auchard

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via Autoblog http://www.autoblog.com

September 13, 2018 at 06:52AM