Show Notes 28 February 2025
Story 1: This Chip Could Be the Massive Breakthrough We’ve Been Waiting for in Quantum Computing
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by Darren Orf
Link: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a63872181/majorana-1-topological-qubit/
See Microsoft’s official announcement here: https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/microsofts-majorana-1-chip-carves-new-path-for-quantum-computing/
See Mircosoft’s video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSHmygPQukQ&t=18s
- First, let’s set the stage with a reminder – A quantum computer is a type of computer that uses the principles of quantum mechanics to perform calculations. Unlike classical computers, which use bits as the smallest unit of information (with values of either 0 or 1), quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits. Qubits can represent both 0 and 1 simultaneously, thanks to a property called superposition.
- WHAT FOLLOWS IS VERY GEEKY STUFF! The key points from the Popular Science article are below, along with additional educational information, you can check out if you like. But, to give us a general summary of this news I asked Microsoft’s AI Co-Pilot to give me a quick way to outline the significance of the new Microsoft Majorana 1 chip. Here is what came back:
- Quantum Leap: The Majorana 1 chip is a big step forward in quantum computing, which is a new type of computing that can solve very complex problems much faster than regular computers.
- Side note about the chip’s name – Microsoft’s new quantum chip is called Majorana 1 because it is based on a particle known as the Majorana fermion. This particle has the unique property of being both matter and anti-matter.
- Topological Qubits: It uses a special kind of qubit (the basic unit of quantum information) called topological qubits. These are more stable and less prone to errors, making the chip more reliable.
- Scalability: The chip can potentially support up to 1 million qubits on a single chip, which is a huge improvement over current quantum computers.
- Side note, in our January 31 show we talked about a company called Equal 1 which claims it has developed a way to create quantum processing chips using conventional semiconductor manufacturing methods. And they claim, “It can operate at ultra-low temperatures and paves the way for millions of qubits on a single chip.”
- New State of Matter: The Microsoft Majorana 1 chip is powered by a new state of matter called topological superconductivity, which helps in creating and controlling the qubits.
- Real-World Applications: This technology could revolutionize various fields like medicine, science, and environmental solutions by solving problems that are currently impossible for regular computers.
- Here are highlights from the Popular Mechanics article:
- Quantum computers—like nuclear fusion and other hyper-advanced technologies—always seem to be just on the threshold of changing the world. And, like fusion, quantum computers have a problem with stability.
- While fusion experts are working on ways to stabilize the ultra-hot plasma required to sustain their reactions, so too are quantum engineers looking for ways to stabilize qubits in order to reduce errors and (hopefully) create machines that exceed today’s current threshold of around 1,000 qubits.
- This week [Feb. 22], Microsoft announced that it had made a major breakthrough in achieving that goal, stating that they created a quantum architecture—known as Majorana 1—that’s capable of one day hosting one million qubits on a single chip.
- To achieve this technological breakthrough, the company decided years ago to, in a sense, go back to the basics. Instead of using qubits found in other quantum computers, Microsoft engineers set out to create what’s known as a “topological qubit”—a different approach to creating a qubit that theoretically should make them more stable, and therefore scalable.
- Additional Background on Majorana and Topological Qubits:
- A topological qubit is a type of qubit used in quantum computing that leverages the properties of a special state of matter called a topological superconductor.
- Topological qubits are designed to be more stable and less prone to errors compared to other types of qubits. This stability comes from the way quantum information is stored in the topological properties of a physical system, rather than in individual particles or atoms. This makes them more robust against disturbances and noise, which is a significant challenge in quantum computing.
- The key to topological qubits is the use of Majorana zero modes (MZMs), which are exotic particles that are their own antiparticles. These MZMs can be created at the ends of superconducting nanowires and can be “braided” to perform quantum computations. This braiding process helps protect the quantum information from errors, making topological qubits a promising path toward scalable and fault-tolerant quantum computing.
- Microsoft’s new quantum chip, Majorana 1, is a groundbreaking development in quantum computing. It relies on a never-before-seen state of matter called “topological superconductivity”. This state of matter was previously only theoretical and has now been realized through the creation of a new class of materials called “topoconductors”.
- Topoconductors are made by combining the semiconductor indium arsenide with aluminum, a superconductor. When these materials are cooled to near absolute zero and tuned with magnetic fields, they form topological superconducting nanowires with Majorana Zero Modes (MZMs) at the ends. These MZMs are the building blocks of the qubits used in Majorana 1.
- This new state of matter allows for more stable and reliable qubits, which are essential for the development of practical quantum computers. The Majorana 1 chip is designed to ultimately store up to one million qubits, paving the way for significant advancements in various fields, including artificial intelligence, medical research, and sustainable energy.
Story 2: Scientists Reveal “Artificial Leaf” That Turns Carbon into Sustainable Fuels
Source: Futurism.com Story by Noor Al-Sibai
Link: https://futurism.com/artificial-leaf-carbon-sustainable-fuel
See research paper here: See research paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41929-025-01292-y
- My comment – a trend I’m seeing more and more is research to imitate photosynthesis to produce interesting results. This news fits the bill!
- Using an ingenious method inspired by the photosynthesis of living things, scientists at the University of Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley have developed a new “artificial leaf” that removes CO2 from the air and turns it into sustainable fuels.
- For years, scientists at various institutions have experimented with similar artificial leaves that can absorb light and CO2 in similar ways to the real thing.
- Now, researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley have designed a system that uses that nature-inspired technology [i.e. photosynthesis] alongside microscopic copper “nanoflowers” to create cleaner hydrocarbons, which, like fossil fuels, are derived from hydrogen and carbon.
- Side note – Copper nanoflowers are tiny, flower-shaped structures made of copper at the nanoscale. These fascinating structures have unique properties and applications, particularly in the field of clean energy and chemical production.
- In a recently published paper the scientists detailed how they built on prior Cambridge research into artificial leaves made with perovskite, a crystalline compound that might make solar panels cheaper and more efficient in the future.
- Despite their success in making carbon-scrubbing artificial leaves in the past, a Cambridge chemist and the paper’s lead author, said that he and his fellow researchers wanted to take the technology further.
- “We wanted to go beyond basic carbon dioxide reduction and produce more complex hydrocarbons,” he said in the school’s press release, “but that requires significantly more energy.”
- To make that happen, the Berkeley and Cambridge scientists used the light absorption power of the perovskite-based artificial leaves and the copper nanoflower as a catalyst to synthesize complex hydrocarbons like ethane and ethylene with just CO2 and water.
- The researchers then tacked onto their device some electrodes made of silicon nanowire, which allowed them to add in the chemical compound glycerol and make their device a reported 200 times more efficient and produce valuable chemical byproducts like glycerate, lactate, and formate.
- Side notes on glycerate, lactate and formate:
Glycerate, often referred to as glycerin or glycerol, is a versatile compound used in various industries:
– Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care**: Acts as a humectant, attracting and retaining moisture, making it a popular ingredient in skincare products, soaps, and pharmaceutical formulations.
– Food and Beverage**: Used as a sweetener, solvent, and moisture-retaining agent in various food and beverage products.
– Textiles: Employed in dyeing fabric due to its viscosity and hygroscopic properties.
– Biodiesel: A byproduct of biodiesel production, used in animal feed and other industrial applications.
Lactate, particularly lactic acid, has several industrial uses:
– Food Industry: Used as a preservative, flavoring agent, and pH regulator in various food products.
– Polymers: A key component in the production of polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable and biocompatible polymer used in packaging, fibers, and biomedical devices.
– Cosmetics and Pharmaceuticals: Utilized in skincare products, pharmaceuticals, and dental preparations.
– Solvents: Ethyl lactate, derived from lactic acid, is an environmentally friendly solvent used in various industrial applications.
Formate, such as sodium formate, is used in multiple industries:
– Textiles: Used as a dyeing and printing auxiliary to enhance color uptake and fastness.
– Leather Industry: Serves as a tanning agent and bate auxiliary, helping to soften and preserve leather.
– Oil and Gas: Acts as a corrosion inhibitor and scale preventer in pipelines and equipment.
– Detergents: Enhances cleaning efficiency, stabilizes pH levels, and improves biodegradability in detergent formulations.
Story 3: AI-designed chips are so weird that humans cannot really understand them — but they perform better than anything we’ve created
Source: LiveScience.com Story by Tim Danton
See research paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54178-1#Fig1
- Engineering researchers at Princeton Engineering and the Indian Institute of Technology have demonstrated that artificial intelligence (AI) can design complex wireless chips in hours, a feat that would have taken humans weeks to complete.
- Side note – what are wireless chips? Wireless chips, also known as wireless communication chips or radio frequency (RF) chips, are integrated circuits that enable devices to connect and communicate without physical wires. They use electromagnetic waves to transmit data over the air. These chips are found in a variety of devices such as smartphones, laptops, routers, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices.
- Not only did the chip designs prove more efficient, the AI took a radically different approach — one that a human circuit designer would have been highly unlikely to devise.
- The research focused on millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) wireless chips, which present some of the biggest challenges facing manufacturers due to their complexity and need for miniaturization. These chips are used in 5G modems, now commonly found in phones.
- Manufacturers currently rely on a mix of human expertise, bespoke circuit designs and established templates. Each new design then goes through a slow process of optimization, based on trial and error because it is often so complex that a human cannot fully understand what is happening inside the chip. This leads to a cautious, iterative approach based on what has worked before.
- In this case, however, researchers at Princeton Engineering and the Indian Institute of Technology posited that deep-learning-based AI models could use an inverse design method — one that specifies the desired output and leaves the algorithm to determine the inputs and parameters.
- The AI also considers each chip as a single artifact, rather than a collection of existing elements that need to be combined. This means that established chip design templates, the ones that no one understands but probably hide inefficiencies, are cast aside.
- In this experiment, the resulting structures “look randomly shaped,” said lead author of the team’s research paper. “Humans cannot really understand them.”
- And when the team manufactured the chips, they found the AI creations hit performance levels beyond those of existing designs.
Story 4: Biohybrid hand gestures with human muscles – Complex finger movements made possible with rolls of tendon like human muscle tissue
Source: University of Tokyo Press Release
Link: https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00386.html
See video here: https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/terminator-like-hand-that-uses-lab-grown-muscle-tissue-developed/vi-AA1zddSI
- A biohybrid hand which can move objects and do a scissor gesture has been built by a team at the University of Tokyo and Waseda University in Japan.
- The researchers used thin strings of lab-grown muscle tissue bundled into sushi-like rolls to give the fingers enough strength to contract.
- These multiple muscle tissue actuators, created by the researchers, are a major development towards building larger biohybrid limbs.
- While currently limited to the lab environment, multiple muscle tissue actuators have the potential to advance future biohybrid prosthetics, aid drug testing on muscle tissue and broaden the potential of biohybrid robotics to mimic real-life forms.
- This robot hand has mastered the art of the scissor gesture. And while it might seem like a simple motion, in the realm of biohybrids and prosthetic limbs, this is a leap forward towards new levels of realism and usability.
- The hand is made of a 3D-printed plastic base, with tendons of human muscle tissue which move the fingers.
- Thick muscle tissue which is needed to move larger limbs is difficult to grow in the lab, as it suffers from necrosis. This is when insufficient nutrients reach the center of the muscle, resulting in tissue loss. However, by using multiple thin muscle tissues bundled together to act as one larger muscle, the team was able to create tendons with enough strength.
- The multiple muscle tissue actuators are stimulated using electrical currents, delivered through waterproof cables.
- To test the abilities of the hand, the team manipulated the fingers to form a scissor gesture by contracting the little finger, ring finger and thumb.
- They also used the fingers to grasp and move the tip of a pipette.
- This demonstrated the hand’s ability to mimic a range of actions, as the multijointed fingers can be flexed either separately or at the same time, an impressive feat.
Honorable Mentions
Story: A tapeworm-inspired, tissue-anchoring mechanism for medical devices
Source: Harvard School of Engineering Press Release
Link: https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2024/12/tapeworm-inspired-tissue-anchoring-mechanism-medical-devices
- Ingestible devices are often used to study and treat hard-to-reach tissues in the body. Swallowed in pill form, these capsules can pass through the digestive tract, snapping photos or delivering drugs.
- While in their simplest form, these devices are passively transported through the gut, there are a wide range of applications where you may want a device to attach to the tissue or other flexible materials. A rich history of biologically inspired solutions exist to address this need, ranging from cocklebur-inspired Velcro to slug-inspired medical adhesives, but the creation of on-demand and reversible attachment mechanisms that can be incorporated into millimeter-scale devices for biomedical sensing and diagnostics remains a challenge.
- A new interdisciplinary effort led by Robert Wood, the Harry Lewis and Marlyn McGrath Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and James Weaver, of Harvard’s Wyss Institute, has drawn inspiration from an unexpected source: the world of parasites.
- “Parasitic species have a rather dubious reputation with the general public due to their often terrifying body forms and unfamiliar lifecycles that seem straight out of science fiction movies,” said Weaver. “Despite this fact, it is important to realize that these species are particularly well adapted for anchoring into a wide range of different host tissue types using a remarkably diverse set of species- and tissue-specific attachment organs. These features make them ideal model systems for the development of application-specific synthetic tissue anchoring mechanisms for biomedical applications.”
- “Mimicking both the morphology and functionality of these complex biological structures is an incredibly challenging problem, and requires expertise from a wide range of fields including robotics, microfabrication, medical device design, and invertebrate zoology,” said Wood.
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Story: Sofas that self-assemble when you heat them up? How 4D printing could transform manufacturing
Source: TechXplore.com Story by Hahdi Bodaghi
Link: https://techxplore.com/news/2025-02-sofas-4d.html
- Imagine buying a flat sheet from a furniture store that changes into a sofa when you heat it with a hairdryer. Or consider the value of a stent that precisely expands inside a patient’s artery, adapting to their unique anatomy.
- Welcome to 4D printing, a frontier in material and manufacturing science that has been rapidly expanding over the past decade. While 3D printing has captured global attention for its ability to create objects layer by layer, 4D printing adds the element of time.
- It involves 3D-printing adaptable objects from materials such as polymers or alloys that can bend, twist or transform entirely when they come into contact with heat or moisture. By moving beyond the constrictions of static designs, it opens up remarkable possibilities in areas such as medicine, aerospace, robotics and construction.
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Story: World’s largest electric ferry uses battery power equivalent to 860 EVs
Source: Interesting Engineering Story by Aman Tripathi
Link: https://interestingengineering.com/photo-story/undefined
- Hull 096 is equipped with a 43-megawatt-hour energy storage system.
- This battery capacity represents a significant increase compared to current operational electric ships.
- This deployment will provide data on the operational capabilities of large-scale electric propulsion systems in high-capacity maritime transport.
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Story: AI ‘brain decoder’ can read a person’s thoughts with just a quick brain scan and almost no training
Source: LiveScience.com Story by Skyler Ware
- Scientists at the University of Texas have made new improvements to a “brain decoder” that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to convert thoughts into text.
- Their new converter algorithm can quickly train an existing decoder on another person’s brain, the team reported in a new study. The findings could one day support people with aphasia, a brain disorder that affects a person’s ability to communicate, the scientists said.
- A brain decoder uses machine learning to translate a person’s thoughts into text, based on their brain’s responses to stories they’ve listened to. However, past iterations of the decoder required participants to listen to stories inside an MRI machine for many hours, and these decoders worked only for the individuals they were trained on.
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