Integrated quantum Optical Circuits Soon a Reality

Scientists are on the Verge of Enabling Chip with Quantum Optical Circuit for Information Processing

A group of researchers working on the quantum nano photonics has come up with a method which would result in the development of new age quantum optical circuit. Our world of technology is going through a breakneck pace of advancement which is happening almost every given second across the varied fields. One such field is filled with quantum computers and networks which are designed to work in a way better than our conventional computers and networks.

Our traditional computing devices and networks works by encoding information in binary bits while the quantum computing makes use of quantum bits which can contain two vales at the same time. Quam Computers thus have the ability to process a larger amount of information with lesser number of calculation steps. This functionality makes them a huge potential for the creating energy efficient computation along with sensing and securing the communication in near future.

Developing Quantum Optical Circuit

 

In order to develop quantum computers researchers will have to get a working circuit to power it. So far researchers have failed to create an effective integrated quantum circuits but it has been finally done by the KTH researchers. This team made use of the novel nano-manipulation technique in order to transfer the selected single photon emitters right into the nanowire present on a silicon chip. This process was utilized to carefully build a highly integrated optical circuit which has the ability to filter single photons as well as multiplex them. This quantum optical circuit makes use of multiple quantum dots in order to generate light in varied colours thereby encoding different information on the same chip.

Developing a fully functional quantum optical circuit it was a challenge to build all of its components deterministically. In other words each and every component of this unique circuit is simply designed and optimized a single specific task. Researchers had to work in a tiresome fashion with no room of error at all in order to get right set of characteristics embedded in its exact location on the circuit.

Achievement And Future Application Of Quantum Optical Circuit

This team of researchers has been able to get achievement associated with their name for years to come. Their work has also resulted in the creation of a hybrid approach which helps in combining two very different semiconductor technologies. Essentially they had combined III-IV technology using their nanowire-based emitters with the silicon technology to create an integrated quantum optical circuit. As stated earlier no one has been able match this feat before using a hybrid integration utilizing just the nanowires.

This intricate process had made them  successful at generating and adding filtered single photons right on the silicon chipset without making use of any external components. Their great invention and complete breakdown of the methods and results will be published shortly in a popular scientific journal named Nature Communications. This also paves the way for the scientists to develop effective quantum circuits in future for specific purposes.

iPhone X: The Way Forward for Apple

Apple as a company has seen tough times in its history. Without exception though, its tough times have inevitably coincided with the departure of the locomotive in the Apple machinery: Steve Jobs. Jobs was ousted from the company he founded with Steve Wozniak twice. Both times, the company floundered and the man was invited back. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs isn’t coming back any more. So, what does the future hold for the company he built? A long history behind iPhone X

Apple recently launched the iPhone X to much consternation online. Some people lauded it as a bold step forward as we have come to expect from Apple. Gadget review sites expressed concern about how effective the new design might actually be. Whether the gadget lives up to mark remains to be seen since the gadget has not yet been launched. However, what we can say definitively is that the collective business process at Apple has undergone a sea change. The company launched two iPhones: the iPhone 8 which is the replacement for last year’s iPhone 7 and the iPhone X. What made the decision even more bizarre is the fact that the iPhone X costs just shy of USD 1000. It is the most expensive iPhone ever released.

So, what gives? What is the purpose, the raison d’etre for the iPhone X? Is it really the step that Apple is going to take going ahead? Or will it be a one-off creation intended for people who think phones are good replacements for trophies? Whatever will become of the iPhone 9? Will there even be an iPhone 9 next year?
The answers to these questions are not with us. As with all things Apple, the gadget was meant to be the bombshell that would leave everyone dumbstruck. Instead what we do have is a debate about whether Apple the company is undergoing an existential crisis.

The iPhone X is not revolutionary in any way. Its technical specifications are not a significant departure from Apple’s other gadgets. Its storage space on offer is in line with iPhones from the past. From the outside, the gadget seems to have only a few defining features: the top notch that houses an array of sensors and is border by screen on its two ends and the lack of a physical home key / button. No home button means that the gadget does without a fingerprint sensor or TouchID. Instead, Apple is touting FaceID, a kind of facial recognition system that will remain exclusive to the gadget. However, people have already expressed significant concern about the efficacy of FaceID and the remarkable drop in security it presents.

Whether the iPhone X succeeds in the market is anyone’s guess. Apple’s gadgets have a history of defying expectations since its customers are not ordinary customers. They are governed mostly buy passion and not logic. And for the most part Steve Job’s Apple did a great job of meeting the expectations of such demanding customers. But now that the miracle maker has left us for a better place, what will happen to his beloved company remains to be seen.

Bluetooth Problem Could Let Hackers Take Control of Your Devices

Blueborne, the incredible Bluetooth Issue allows hacking Android phones

More than 5 billion vulnerable Bluetooth devices, including mobile phones, laptops or IoT devices

Perhaps at the worst of times to announce a security problem like this (with the iPhone X presentation monopolizing the day), security researchers have uncovered eight major Bluetooth Issues as vulnerabilities. Three of them are especially dangerous. They would allow attacking devices like Android phones without needing to connect to them.

The Bluetooth Issue, which has been given the name BlueBorne, affect virtually every device in the world with Bluetooth, about 5.3 billion devices with vulnerabilities. Among them are laptops, connected products at home, mobile phones of all kinds with Android, iOS or Windows.

According to Armis Security, this Bluetooth Issue is considered a scenario where an attacker can intercept Android mobile information without having to connect to the computer or pair. That is, as long as the mobile has Bluetooth active, it would be in danger.

The intermediary attack, also known as Man in the Middle, does not require you to access a website or download an application or attachment from your email. The Bluetooth issue called as BlueBorne is in the libraries that integrate for the Bluetooth chip to work.

In the worst case, a hacker could access the computer, take control and execute code with bad intentions. That if, it is necessary that the attacker is really close to the victim, since Bluetooth has about 10 meters of range of action.

At home this Bluetooth Issue, the BlueBorne will not generate many problems, details of these vulnerabilities have not been made public and proximity is required. At the corporate level or even for institutions, it is not known whether anyone has used BlueBorne. In an example rather taken from a series, but plausible, a person with confidential information on his mobile could be in a cafeteria and a hacker could access his files with being close to this person.

For Android phones, Armis has published a free application that tells you if you are affected. This does not mean that they can hack your phone, but your smartphone needs an update as soon as possible.

Google will send a patch on its monthly security updates for Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Android 7.0 Nougat. Microsoft few days ago sent a security update for Windows, specifically Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10. Meanwhile, Apple fixed this vulnerability in one of its latest iOS 10 updates, but all computers with iOS 9.3.5 or lower, Apple TV 7.2.2 or lower are affected.

Another perfect example of an even bigger problem with an unknown dimension. All connected products that begin to expand through our homes and that have Bluetooth Issue, are mostly unprotected. Also mobile phones that never receive updates. As long as manufacturers do not send security updates regularly and install them, even the smallest of these products is at the mercy of a large-scale attack, although this in particular requires being very close.

Engineers Developing Methods to Construct Blood Vessels Using 3D Printing Technology

From time to time new and interesting news about 3D printing technology in the field of health arise. In the near future, this technology will allow fabrics to be created on demand to repair any organ affected by an illness. There are a lot of medical advances commencing day to day and 3D printing technology is one among them which is really an astonishing factor in the field of medical science.

However, in spite of the promising of these and other advances, to date, it has only been possible to create fine tissues of living cells in the laboratory using 3D printing technology. When we tried to create tissues with a thickness greater than several layers of cells, those in the intermediate layers died from lack of oxygen and the impossibility of eliminating their residues.

They did not have a network of blood vessels to transmit oxygen and nutrients to each cell. Therefore the challenge was served because if a network of blood vessels were artificially created for this purpose using 3D printing technology, larger and more complex cell tissues could be developed.

To solve this problem, the team led by Professor Changxue Xu of Industrial, Manufacturing and system engineering and with his colleague Edward. E. Whitacre Junior college of Engineering has used a 3D printing technology specially adapted for this purpose with three different types of bio-inks. The first head extrudes a biotin of the extracellular compound, the biological material that binds the cells in the tissue. The second extrude a type of biotin which contains extracellular tissue and living cells.

An alternative to more complex installations

The creation of model blood vessels to aid in the study of diseases, such as strokes, can be complicated and costly in addition to consuming a lot of time. And the results can not always be truly representative of a human vessel. Changxue Xu's research has designed a new method to create models of veins and arteries using 3D printing technology that is more efficient, less expensive and more accurate. Changxue Xu and his team have created vascular channels using 3D printing technology.

An important advance is the ability to establish multiple layers of cells in the channels. Normally, when these microfluidic vascular chips are made, they only have one layer of cells. But the blood vessels within the body are composed of three to four different types of cells. The innermost cells, the endothelial cells, are those that come into contact with the blood, but the other layers of the cells help the internal cells. If there is an injury or a blood clot, there is an entire reaction that takes place between these cells.

3D printing technology has now made a difference in manufacturing. "We can use 3D printing technology to create the mold and use that mold to inject any gel and cells in whatever shape we want," says Changxue Xu. The difficulty so far was that much of the work has usually been done in "clean rooms," rooms that are environmentally controlled to prevent contamination and ultra-disinfected. Changxue Xu has a room like that, so the work has to be done at other universities.

The Great Tech Panic: What You Should Worry About?

Tech Panic – Cause for Worry 

Technology has been making great progress in transforming our lives which has given rise to panic. Experts have been weighing on how much one should be stressed with regards to self-driving cars, malevolent AI etc.

 In cities like San Francisco; Boston, Tempe, Arizona where self-driving cars have been verified on public roads, there have been trained engineers on board to ensure that the emerging tech does not take on the pedestrians. Nidhi Kalra, co-director of the RAND Centre for Decision Making Under Uncertainty, had commented that it is that persons’ task of paying attention to what the vehicle seems to be doing.

As per the most optimistic estimates of experts, fully autonomous cars on the public roads seems to be at least three years away and that technology will never be infallible, people would still die in car crashes.

However, eventually, self-driving vehicles would probably save lives according to Mark Rosekind, chief safety innovation office at Robotaxi start-up Zoox as well as the former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and 94% of the crashes are credited to human mistake.

Would hackers leak my emails? 

To gain access of one’s email is not at all tough. We find phishers who seems to get more refined from the increased power of ransomware attack encountered.

Seth Schoen, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier foundation commented that `a cleverly composed email which states `I’m your tech support person and need to know your password’, still tends to function as a shocking percentage of the time.

When it comes to leaking those emails, the threat to the average person is quite insignificant and attacks like the DNC leaks, the Panama Papers together with the Macron campaign hack could encourage your sense of paranoia, unless you are a Kardashian or a Trump, your personal correspondence is likely to be of little interest to cyber thieves’.

Are We Prepared for Cyberwar?

Former US counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke in his 2010 book had ranked on how well some countries tend to fare in a digital conflict As per his formula, the US had been placed dead last and on top – North Korea.

Clarke had figured that the US and Russia could have the best offensive hacking capabilities in the world. However, North Korea seemed to have a bigger advantage - absence of digital dependence. The solitary kingdom’s hackers tend to indulge in a scorched-earth cyberwar without risking much since its citizen tends to stay disconnected.

The US on the other hand is in need of the internet than its opponents. Hence Clarke found America more susceptible to what he termed `the next threat to national security’. Seven years thereafter we need to quit worrying that the period of cyberwar is approaching and we need to admit the fact that the digital attacks on infrastructure are unavoidable.

On the contrary we need to focus on how we should recover from them. This would mean bringing down our reliance on digital systems and enhance on maintaining our consistent, out-dated, analog systems, in order that we can fall back on them when digital disaster occurs.

Essential to Hold On to Era of Physical Override 

When a team of hackers had blacked dozens of electrical substations in Ukraine, in 2015, the utility companies had the technician equipped to switch the power back manually, within a period of six hours.

They had been alert since the Soviet-era grid of Ukraine seems to be stiff on a normal day. The modern, highly automated grids of America do not tend to break often. US institutions should develop the readiness of Ukrainian-style, in an event of a grid attack. In case of interference, it is essential for voting machines to have auditable paper ballots as a backup.

 Organisations of all types should be kept updated, offline data backups for speedy recovery when cyber-attacks like the global WannaCry ransomware outburst. There is no need to relinquish on hyper-connected infrastructure though it is essential to hold on to the era of physical override – since when hackers tend to hijack the elevator of your high-rise apartment, one can be glad that the stairs was another option to resolve the issue.

Would Hackers Launch Nuclear Weapons?

Senior researcher at RAND, Bruce Bennett who seems to specialize in counter proliferation and risk management had stated that `in spite of the act flicks imagining that very scenario, it seems highly improbable. Nuclear weapon does not seem to be connected to the internet, making it complex for anyone to hack them.

On the contrary such weapons seems to be organized by standalone computers together with code keys that are distributed by human couriers, which is a method developed and maintained precisely with security in mind according to an aerospace engineer and analyst John Schilling, for 38 North a Korea-focused analysis group.

He informed that there could be a possibility of sabotaging a nuclear bomb by hacking its secondary as well as tertiary guidance system, which is a tactic the US could have utilised on the missiles of North Korea, though there seems little chance that the troublemaker agents could launch bombs.

Would AI Turn Against Humans? 

Paul Christiano, a researcher at the non-profit Open Ai had mentioned that AI ultimately would be capable of directing science experiments executing construction projects as well as develop more AI without human involvement. He together with his colleagues does not seem to worry that the evil robots would destroy us someday.

 Engineers at Google’s DeepMind unit and Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute however are collaborating in understanding which kind of AI systems could take actions in reducing the chance of being turned off. Their concern lies in the fact that as AI tends to progress beyond human understanding, the behaviour of the technology may deviate from our intended goals. Hence it is up to the researchers to construct a foundation which tends to have human values at heart.

Am I Being Spied on Through my Microphone – Equipped Device? 

Third-party developers, cyber-criminals and at times also the companies which tend to develop smart devices could have the means of accessing your audio stream. Mordechai Guri, head of R&D for Cyber Security Research Centre at Ben-Gurion University in Israel had stated that they are always accompanied by high-quality microphones and your smartphone or smart TV can be turned into a spying device for advertising purposes. Python for network engineers books helps to Mastering Python Networking.


It is also the same in the case of smart home devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home with far-field always-on microphones. Furthermore apps are probing to access smartphone microphone in order to feed on hyper-targeted ads.