Category Physics

A Logical Magic State with Fidelity beyond Distillation Threshold realized on Superconducting Quantum Processor

Experimental results of the prepared different logical states. (a) Logical state fidelity with post-selection in Bloch sphere. The fidelity of the preparation of different logical states is represented as a circle, which is divided into multiple annular sectors, each representing a point on the Bloch sphere, with the radial direction representing the polar angle θ and the tangential direction representing the azimuthal angle φ. The obtained average logical fidelity is 0.8983. (b) Logical measurement results of X ̂_L, Y ̂_L, Z ̂_L as a function of polar angle θ or azimuthal angle φ. The colored dashed curves are the result of fitting with trigonometric function.

Quantum computers have the potential to outperform conventional computers on some tasks, including complex optimization...

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NASA Flies Drones Autonomously for Air Taxi research

An Alta-8 small Unmanned Aircraft System testbed vehicle flies above NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Flying beyond visual line of sight from observers on the ground required special approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA. Credit: NASA / Bowman

Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia recently flew multiple drones beyond visual line of sight with no visual observer. The drones successfully flew around obstacles and each other during takeoff, along a planned route, and upon landing, all autonomously without a pilot controlling the flight. This test marks an important step towards advancing self-flying capabilities for air taxis.

“Flying the vehicles beyond visual line of sight, where neither the vehicle nor the airsp...

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Researchers develop ‘Electronic Soil’ that Enhances Crop Growth

Electronic
Eleni Stavrinidou, associate professor, and supervisor of the study and Alexandra Sandéhn, Ph.D. student, one of the lead authors, connect the eSoil to a low power source for stimulating plant growth. Credit: Thor Balkhed

Barley seedlings grow on average 50% more when their root system is stimulated electrically through a new cultivation substrate. In a study published in the journal PNAS, researchers from Linköping University have developed an electrically conductive “soil” for soilless cultivation, known as hydroponics.

“The world population is increasing, and we also have climate change. So it’s clear that we won’t be able to cover the food demands of the planet with only the already existing agricultural methods...

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New AI Model can Predict Human Lifespan, researchers say. They want to make sure it’s used for good

Hand pointing to lines of code on a black screen.
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Researchers have created an Artificial Intelligence tool that uses sequences of life events—such as health history, education, job and income—to predict everything from a person’s personality to their mortality.

Built using transformer models, which power large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, the new tool, life2vec, is trained on a data set pulled from the entire population of Denmark—6 million people. The data set was made available only to the researchers by the Danish government.

The tool the researchers built based on this complex set of data is capable of predicting the future, including the lifespan of individuals, with an accuracy that exceeds state-of-the-art models...

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