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Creating the Heart of a Quantum Computer: Developing Qubits

A computer is suspended from the ceiling. Delicate lines and loops of silvery wires and tubes connect gold-colored platforms. It seems to belong in a science-fiction movie, perhaps a steam-punk cousin of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But as the makers of that 1968 movie imagined computers the size of a spaceship, this technology would have never crossed their minds – a quantum computer. Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that conventional computers can’t. Conventional computer chips can only process so much information at one time and we’re coming very close to reaching their physical limits. In…

New Robotic Platform Speeds Up Directed Evolution of Molecules in the Lab

Lead Image: A new robotic platform can speed up directed evolution more than 100-fold, and allows hundreds of evolving populations to be monitored at the same time. The work was led by Kevin Esvelt and colleagues at the MIT Media Lab. Using a new robotic platform, researchers can simultaneously track hundreds of microbial populations as they evolve new proteins or other molecules. Natural evolution is a slow process that relies on the gradual accumulation of genetic mutations. In recent years, scientists have found ways to speed up the process on a small scale, allowing them to rapidly create new…

New Biomedical Research Outlines How Longer Lives Are Tied to Physical Activity

Taking it easy as you get older? Nope! Message of new Lieberman study: ‘Because we evolved to be active throughout our lives, our bodies need physical activity to age well.’ Just about everyone knows that exercise is good for you. Some people can even rattle off reasons it keeps your muscles and joints strong, and how it fights off certain diseases. But how many people can tell you the story of why and how physical activity was built into human biology? A team of evolutionary biologists and biomedical researchers from Harvard are taking a run at it (sometimes literally)…

Turning Up the Heat: Thermal Energy Storage Could Help Decarbonize Buildings

Berkeley Lab researchers have reported a breakthrough in phase-change materials, which will improve the affordability of thermal energy storage. Phase-change materials can be added inside walls and automatically keep a building cool or warm depending on the ambient temperature. Credit: Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab Berkeley Lab research efforts in advanced materials and cost analyses give major boost to an overlooked technology. Could a tank of ice or hot water be a battery? Yes! If a battery is a device for storing energy, then storing hot or cold water to power a building’s heating or air-conditioning system is a different type of…

Possible Chemical Leftovers From Early Earth Sit Near the Planet’s Core

A simulation of the evolution of the Earth’s interior over time, showing the thermal (bottom), chemical (middle), and thermochemical evolution under the simulated conditions. The bottom of each field is the core-mantle boundary. Ultra-low velocity zones can be seen in the top and middle fields, forming at the toes of the light blue zones. Credit: Surya Pachhai Let’s take a journey into the depths of the Earth, down through the crust and mantle nearly to the core. We’ll use seismic waves to show the way, since they echo through the planet following an earthquake and reveal its internal structure like…