Google And NASA Make Quantum Leap With New Computer ...

The standard computer works with a series of basic units called bits that can be either 1s or 0s: They signify on and off, yes and no. It is binary code, and until now it has been the basic language of computing.

Technology is, of course, always accelerating onward, but since the birth of computing, the underlying binary code language has been standard to the majority of machines. This may be about to change. Ready to make yet-unknown leaps into the future of technology, quantum computing, a benefactor of decades of quantum theory research, has arrived. As compared to standard computing, where bits must?either be a 0 or a 1, in quantum computing, the basic units of data, called qubits, can be either 1, 0, or anywhere in between in what is called in quantum mechanics a superposition. Moreover, the value of a qubit can change when grouped with other qubits, or when observed by scientists. (Click here for a more thorough explanation of a qubit.) The potential is almost endless, but for now scientists are still mostly contemplating uses for this new way of computing.

When business becomes involved, theory has a way of becoming reality: Corporations are beginning to buy quantum machines. Yesterday, NASA and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced they were co-purchasing a quantum computer, from a little-known Canadian company called D-Wave.

The 12-year-old firm based near Vancouver, BC, has received venture funds from Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), and In-Q-Tel (an investment firm with ties to the CIA), and is the first to offer quantum computers for commercial use, with a price tag of about $15 million. D-Wave sold its first machine to global aerospace and security company?Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) about two years ago, and the company recently announced it would be upgrading the technology from experimental to commercial use.

Not only are the machines expensive, but so is their upkeep: D-Wave's computer employs a pulse fridge that uses Helium-3 to maintain a steady state of .02 degrees above absolute zero. If not kept super chilled, the molecules that the computer manipulates would move around too chaotically to be properly analyzed.

Now, Google and NASA have followed suit: Among the many realistic and imaginative ideas the company has for its new technology, Google wants to improve search, especially for images, but also hopes to make leaps and bounds in improving machine learning and artificial intelligence. NASA intends to use the machine to optimize its search for planets, especially Earth-like ones, outside of our solar system.?

Additionally, Google and NASA will split their quantum computer contract with the Universities Space Research Association. Universities will claim 20% of the computer's use, with research teams competing to work their proposal on the machine, which will be located at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, exactly 2.5 miles away from Google's headquarters in Mountain View. The computer is expected to go online in the third quarter of 2013.

In a statement on the deal, Google said, "We hope it helps researchers construct more efficient, effective models for everything from speech recognition, to Web search, to protein folding." From improving its search functionality to literally investigating (and perhaps replicating) the way that cells function, Google's approach to the quantum computer seems wide and varied.

But one man at Google definitely has a specific vision. As Greg Satell at Forbes wrote, "In many ways, the Google-NASA partnership represents a new Manhattan Project, but instead of the aim being a nuclear explosion, the goal is to simulate the human brain, a feat that Google's Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, believes will be completed before the end of the next decade."

Kurzweil is one of the world's leading experts on artificial intelligence, and with his position at Google, he has a great deal of freedom to direct the company's $6.7 billion research and development budget towards A.I., and towards calculations and problem-solving that only a machine as sophisticated as a quantum computer could handle. Kurzweil is the author of seven books, including The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near, in which he addresses, among other elements of artificial intelligence, an event called "the singularity."

"The singularity" is the term for the theoretical emergence of technological superintelligence, when computer intelligence and human intelligence reach equilibrium and become inseparable. Moreover, many believe computer superintelligence would quickly and handily surpass human intelligence. The scientists and theorists who believe the singularity is coming, Kurzweil being prominent among them, project the event happening within a general range of 2030 to 2070.

There is a lot to be read about the singularity, about quantum computing, and about quantum mechanics for that matter, but for the purposes of this story, the takeaway is this: Google has given an important job with a great deal of responsibility to a man who believes 100% that, within less than a century, machines will have intelligence equal to or greater than that of the most intelligent human being. Kurzweil will have direct access to the Ames Research Center quantum computer, as well as Google's deep pockets, in order to explore and develop artificial intelligence.

Lockheed Martin, Google, and NASA are dipping their toes into this untested new technology, so which industries will be next? As D-Wave has received funding from Goldman Sachs and Jeff Bezos, it's possible banking and online retail will see a quantum leap sometime soon. Though this remains to be seen, it is safe to say that a wide array of companies are paying attention to Google and NASA's joint-venture.

Follow me on Twitter: @JoshWolonick?and @Minyanville

Source: http://www.minyanville.com/sectors/technology/articles/Google-and-NASA2527s-New-Quantum-Computer/5/23/2013/id/49953

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Microsoft recruits Siri -To Bad Mouth The iPad

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Source: http://ihackthatifone.com/microsoft-recruits-siri-to-bad-mouth-the-ipad/

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Google Takes Street View Trekker And Underwater Cameras To The Galapagos Islands, Coming To Google Maps Later This Year

Google today announced that it has been taking its Street View Trekker - the compact backpack version of its Street View cars - and its underwater Street View cameras to the Galapagos Islands and that it plans to make these images available on Google Maps later this year. The company worked together with the Charles Darwin Foundation, the Galapagos National Parks Directorate and, for the underwater survey, the Catlin Seaview Survey.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/WQKUW-YgL8s/

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Hubble reveals the Ring Nebula?s true shape

May 23, 2013 ? The Ring Nebula's distinctive shape makes it a popular illustration for astronomy books. But new observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, sun-like star reveal a new twist.

"The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it's like a jelly doughnut, because it's filled with material in the middle," said C. Robert O'Dell of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He leads a research team that used Hubble and several ground-based telescopes to obtain the best view yet of the iconic nebula. The images show a more complex structure than astronomers once thought and have allowed them to construct the most precise 3-D model of the nebula.

"With Hubble's detail, we see a completely different shape than what's been thought about historically for this classic nebula," O'Dell said. "The new Hubble observations show the nebula in much clearer detail, and we see things are not as simple as we previously thought."

The Ring Nebula is about 2,000 light-years from Earth and measures roughly 1 light-year across. Located in the constellation Lyra, the nebula is a popular target for amateur astronomers.

Previous observations by several telescopes had detected the gaseous material in the ring's central region. But the new view by Hubble's sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 shows the nebula's structure in more detail. O'Dell's team suggests the ring wraps around a blue, football-shaped structure. Each end of the structure protrudes out of opposite sides of the ring.

The nebula is tilted toward Earth so that astronomers see the ring face-on. In the Hubble image, the blue structure is the glow of helium. Radiation from the white dwarf star, the white dot in the center of the ring, is exciting the helium to glow. The white dwarf is the stellar remnant of a sun-like star that has exhausted its hydrogen fuel and has shed its outer layers of gas to gravitationally collapse to a compact object.

O'Dell's team was surprised at the detailed Hubble views of the dark, irregular knots of dense gas embedded along the inner rim of the ring, which look like spokes in a bicycle wheel. These gaseous tentacles formed when expanding hot gas pushed into cool gas ejected previously by the doomed star. The knots are more resistant to erosion by the wave of ultraviolet light unleashed by the star. The Hubble images have allowed the team to match up the knots with the spikes of light around the bright, main ring, which are a shadow effect. Astronomers have found similar knots in other planetary nebulae.

All of this gas was expelled by the central star about 4,000 years ago. The original star was several times more massive than our sun. After billions of years converting hydrogen to helium in its core, the star began to run out of fuel. It then ballooned in size, becoming a red giant. During this phase, the star shed its outer gaseous layers into space and began to collapse as fusion reactions began to die out. A gusher of ultraviolet light from the dying star energized the gas, making it glow.

The outer rings were formed when faster-moving gas slammed into slower-moving material. The nebula is expanding at more than 43,000 miles an hour, but the center is moving faster than the expansion of the main ring. O'Dell's team measured the nebula's expansion by comparing the new Hubble observations with Hubble studies made in 1998.

The Ring Nebula will continue to expand for another 10,000 years, a short phase in the lifetime of the star. The nebula will become fainter and fainter until it merges with the interstellar medium.

Studying the Ring Nebula's fate will provide insight into the sun's demise in another 6 billion years. The sun is less massive than the Ring Nebula's progenitor star, so it will not have an opulent ending.

"When the sun becomes a white dwarf, it will heat more slowly after it ejects its outer gaseous layers," O'Dell said. "The material will be farther away once it becomes hot enough to illuminate the gas. This larger distance means the sun's nebula will be fainter because it is more extended."

In the analysis, the research team also obtained images from the Large Binocular Telescope at the Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona and spectroscopic data from the San Pedro Martir Observatory in Baja California, Mexico.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/F6xrbVJXfqY/130523113207.htm

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A Peek at the Secret Lab Where Google Tries to Invent the Future

Google's got its hands in a lot of cooke jars. It's juggling Android, and ChromeOS, and maps, and Gmail, and Glass, and self-driving cars. But the real, secret goods are (presumably) hidden deep inside the secret "Google [x]" lab, and Bloomberg got an awful close?but not quite uncensored?peek.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/LcuqkF6SugM/a-peek-at-the-secret-lab-where-google-tries-to-invent-t-509342391

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Un retrato a la pir?mide de cuerpo entero. Google Street View usa su ?ltima tecn...

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Source: http://www.facebook.com/elpais/posts/10151399280236570

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Genetic predictors of postpartum depression uncovered by Hopkins researchers

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

The epigenetic modifications, which alter the way genes function without changing the underlying DNA sequence, can apparently be detected in the blood of pregnant women during any trimester, potentially providing a simple way to foretell depression in the weeks after giving birth, and an opportunity to intervene before symptoms become debilitating.

The findings of the small study involving 52 pregnant women are described online in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

"Postpartum depression can be harmful to both mother and child," says study leader Zachary Kaminsky, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "But we don't have a reliable way to screen for the condition before it causes harm, and a test like this could be that way."

It is not clear what causes postpartum depression, a condition marked by persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, exhaustion and anxiety that begins within four weeks of childbirth and can last weeks, several months or up to a year. An estimated 10 to 18 percent of all new mothers develop the condition, and the rate rises to 30 to 35 percent among women with previously diagnosed mood disorders. Scientists long believed the symptoms were related to the large drop-off in the mother's estrogen levels following childbirth, but studies have shown that both depressed and nondepressed women have similar estrogen levels.

By studying mice, the Johns Hopkins researchers suspected that estrogen induced epigenetic changes in cells in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that governs mood. Kaminsky and his team then created a complicated statistical model to find the candidate genes most likely undergoing those epigenetic changes, which could be potential predictors for postpartum depression. That process resulted in the identification of two genes, known as TTC9B and HP1BP3, about which little is known save for their involvement in hippocampal activity.

Kaminsky says the genes in question may have something to do with the creation of new cells in the hippocampus and the ability of the brain to reorganize and adapt in the face of new environments ? two elements important in mood. In some ways, he says, estrogen can behave like an antidepressant, so that when inhibited, it adversely affects mood.

The researchers later confirmed their findings in humans by looking for epigenetic changes to thousands of genes in blood samples from 52 pregnant women with mood disorders. Jennifer L. Payne, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Women's Mood Disorders Center, collected the blood samples. The women were followed both during and after pregnancy to see who developed postpartum depression.

The researchers noticed that women who developed postpartum depression exhibited stronger epigenetic changes in those genes that are most responsive to estrogen, suggesting that these women are more sensitive to the hormone's effects. Specifically, two genes were most highly correlated with the development of postpartum depression. TTC9B and HP1BP3 predicted with 85 percent certainty which women became ill.

"We were pretty surprised by how well the genes were correlated with postpartum depression," Kaminsky says. "With more research, this could prove to be a powerful tool."

Kaminsky says the next step in research would be to collect blood samples from a larger group of pregnant women and follow them for a longer period of time. He also says it would be useful to examine whether the same epigenetic changes are present in the offspring of women who develop postpartum depression.

Evidence suggests that early identification and treatment of postpartum depression can limit or prevent debilitating effects. Alerting women to the condition's risk factors ? as well as determining whether they have a previous history of the disorder, other mental illness and unusual stress ? is key to preventing long-term problems.

Research also shows, Kaminsky says, that postpartum depression not only affects the health and safety of the mother, but also her child's mental, physical and behavioral health.

Kaminsky says that if his preliminary work pans out, he hopes a blood test for the epigenetic biomarkers could be added to the battery of tests women undergo during pregnancy, and inform decisions about the use of antidepressants during pregnancy. There are concerns, he says, about the effects of these drugs on the fetus and their use must be weighed against the potentially debilitating consequences to both the mother and child of forgoing them.

"If you knew you were likely to develop postpartum depression, your decisions about managing your care could be made more clearly," he says.

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Johns Hopkins Medicine: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org

Thanks to Johns Hopkins Medicine for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128331/Genetic_predictors_of_postpartum_depression_uncovered_by_Hopkins_researchers

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