Category: Calculatin’
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Future computers to run on quantum monoxide
Them quantum eggheads have long been a-huntin and a-scramblin to find the perfect building blocks for their quantum computers. They looked at photons, electrons, ions, neutral atoms and quantum dots. In fact there ain’t much they haven’t looked at. Now Elena “Coolhand” Kuznetsova and chums at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge says the…
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Studying the tunnel of death
The Lefortovo Tunnel runs underground for 3 kilometres on the outskirts of Moscow. The deep tunnel has three lanes which are equipped with traffic sensors every 60 metres. These have provided a rich vein of traffic data for Boris Livshits and pals at Moscow Technical University who have been a-mining and a-crunchin it. B Livshits…
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Crime ‘n’ punishment
Social physics is a cool new science in which the eggheads use mathematical models to simulate the behaviour of large numbers of people. What these guys are finding is that very simple assumptions can reproduce hugely complex behaviours and they is using it to study everything from trading on the money markets to the spread…
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How mathematics identifies urban ghettos
Ya’ll know how the distribution of crime is closely correlated to the space in which it occurs. Nobody gets mugged on a busy high street. But ya wander down a darkened, deadend alley at ya peril. Right? In recent years a number of eggheads have been a-speculatin’ and a-wondrin’ about the nature of urban space…
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How your name reveals your age, sex, nationality, social status, religion…
What’s in a name? Quite a lot, it turns out. Researchers are working out how to extract data such as ya sex, nationality, age and even ya social and economic status by looking at nothing but yer name. This week, Stasinos “King” Konstantopoulos at the National Center for Scientific Research in Athens, Greece gives us…
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Quamputing with atoms and photons
What kinda stuff is best at hosting ghostly bits of quantum information? It’s an important question cos we can’t tell what the next generation of quamputers will be like until we know what they gonna be made of. Photons are one option cos they can store qubits for relatively long periods (unlike ions and electrons…
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Improving “in silico” drug discovery
Drug discovery is a time consuming business and ah don’t mean those Friday nights searchin’ for Berkeley frat parties. Now some Frenchmen have found a new way to do it that don’t involve no dealers, middle men or rolled up $20 notes. For decades now, drug companies have tried the suck it ‘n’ see approach…
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Sims and music makers
There ain’t no limit to how impressive computer simulations of the real world can be. Ya only gotta switch on an SP3 or an Xbox 360 to see how far thing have come since since Pong hit the small screen in the 70s as a poor excuse for tennis. But there are still plenty of…