Canadian startup D-Wave Systems has extended the availability of its Leap branded cloud-based quantum computing service to Europe and Japan.
With Leap, researchers will be granted free access to a live D-Wave 2000Q machine with – it is claimed – 2,000 quantum bits, or qubits.
Developers will also be free to use the company’s Quantum Application Environment, launched last year, which enables them to write quantum applications in Python.
It is important to note that the debate on whether D-Wave’s systems can be considered “true” quantum computers has raged since the company released its first commercial product in 2011.
Rather than focusing on maintaining its qubits in a coherent state – like Google, IBM and Intel – the company uses a process called quantum annealing to solve combinatorial optimisation problems. The process is less finnicky but also less useful, which is why D-Wave claims to offer a 2,000-qubit machine, and IBM presents a 20-qubit computer.
And yet D-Wave’s systems are being used by Google, NASA, Volkswagen, Lockheed Martin and BAE – as well as Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Laboratories, among others.
Speed limiting technology looks set to become mandatory for all vehicles sold in Europe from 2022, after new rules were provisionally agreed by the EU.
The Department for Transport said the system would also apply in the UK, despite Brexit.
Campaigners welcomed the move, saying it would save thousands of lives.
Road safety charity Brake called it a “landmark day”, but the AA said “a little speed” helped with overtaking or joining motorways.
Safety measures approved by the European Commission included intelligent speed assistance (ISA), advanced emergency braking and lane-keeping technology.
The EU says the plan could help avoid 140,000 serious injuries by 2038 and aims ultimately to cut road deaths to zero by 2050.
EU Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska said: “Every year, 25,000 people lose their lives on our roads. The vast majority of these accidents are caused by human error.
“With the new advanced safety features that will become mandatory, we can have the same kind of impact as when safety belts were first introduced.”
What is speed limiting technology and how does it work?
Under the ISA system, cars receive information via GPS and a digital map, telling the vehicle what the speed limit is.
This can be combined with a video camera capable of recognising road signs.
The system can be overridden temporarily. If a car is overtaking a lorry on a motorway and enters a lower speed-limit area, the driver can push down hard on the accelerator to complete the manoeuvre.
A full on/off switch for the system is also envisaged, but this would lapse every time the vehicle is restarted.
How soon will it become available?
It’s already coming into use. Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot-Citroen, Renault and Volvo already have models available with some of the ISA technology fitted.
However, there is concern over whether current technology is sufficiently advanced for the system to work effectively.
In particular, many cars already have a forward-facing camera, but there is a question mark over whether the sign-recognition technology is up to scratch.
Other approved safety features for European cars, vans, trucks and buses include technology which provides a warning of driver drowsiness and distraction, such as when using a smartphone while driving, and a data recorder in case of an accident.
Media captionTheo Leggett: ‘The car brought us to a controlled halt’
What does it all mean in practice?
Theo Leggett, business correspondent
The idea that cars will be fitted with speed limiters – or to put it more accurately, “intelligent speed assistance” – is likely to upset a lot of drivers. Many of us are happy to break limits when it suits us and don’t like the idea of Big Brother stepping in.
However, the new system as it’s currently envisaged will not force drivers to slow down. It is there to encourage them to do so, and to make them aware of what the limit is, but it can be overridden. Much like the cruise control in many current cars will hold a particular speed, or prevent you exceeding it, until you stamp on the accelerator.
So it’ll still be a free-for-all for speeding motorists then? Not quite. Under the new rules, cars will also be fitted with compulsory data recorders, or “black boxes”.
So if you have an accident, the police and your insurance company will know whether you’ve been going too fast. If you’ve been keeping your foot down and routinely ignoring the car’s warnings, they may take a very dim view of your actions.
In fact, it’s this “spy on board” which may ultimately have a bigger impact on driver behaviour than any kind of speed limiter. It’s easy to get away with reckless driving when there’s only a handful of traffic cops around to stop you. Much harder when there’s a spy in the cab recording your every move.
Researchers at cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab say that ASUS, one of the world’s largest computer makers, was used to unwittingly install a malicious backdoor on thousands of its customers’ computers last year after attackers compromised a server for the company’s live software update tool. The malicious file was signed with legitimate ASUS digital certificates to make it appear to be an authentic software update from the company, Kaspersky Lab says.
ASUS, a multi-billion dollar computer hardware company based in Taiwan that manufactures desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, smart home systems, and other electronics, was pushing the backdoor to customers for at least five months last year before it was discovered, according to new research from the Moscow-based security firm.
The researchers estimate half a million Windows machines received the malicious backdoor through the ASUS update server, although the attackers appear to have been targeting only about 600 of those systems. The malware searched for targeted systems through their unique MAC addresses. Once on a system, if it found one of these targeted addresses, the malware reached out to a command-and-control server the attackers operated, which then installed additional malware on those machines.
Kaspersky Lab said it uncovered the attack in January after adding a new supply-chain detection technology to its scanning tool to catch anomalous code fragments hidden in legitimate code or catch code that is hijacking normal operations on a machine. The company plans to release a full technical paper and presentation about the ASUS attack, which it has dubbed ShadowHammer, next month at its Security Analyst Summit in Singapore. In the meantime, Kaspersky has published some of the technical details on its website.
A rigorous new study has examined the large-scale brain activity of a number of human subjects while sleeping, presenting one of the most detailed investigations into sleep phases conducted to date. The study suggests that instead of the traditional four sleep stages we generally understand the brain moves through, there are in fact at least 19 different identifiable brain patterns transitioned through while sleeping.
Traditionally scientists have identified four distinct stages our brain transitions through in a general sleep cycle – three non-REM sleep phases (N1-3) that culminate in an REM phase. The four stages have been classically determined and delineated using electroencephalographic (EEG) brainwave recordings.
“This way of dividing sleep into stages is really based on historical conventions, many of which date back to the 1930s,” explains Angus Stevner, one of the researchers on the project from the Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University. “We’ve come up with a more precise and detailed description of sleep as a higher number of brain networks which change their communication patterns and dynamic characteristics during sleep.”
The new research set out to more comprehensively record whole-brain activity in a number of subjects by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study began by studying 57 healthy subjects in an fMRI scanner. Each subject was asked to lie in the scanner for 52 minutes with their eyes closed. At the same time, each subject was tracked using an EEG. This allowed the researchers to compare traditional brainwave sleep cycle data with that from the fMRI.
Due to the limited duration of the fMRI data, no subjects were found to enter REM sleep, however, 18 subjects did completely transition from wakefulness through the three non-REM sleep phases according to the EEG data. Highlighting the complexity of brain activity during our wake-to-sleep cycle the researchers confidently chronicled 19 different recurring whole-brain network states.
Mapping these whole-brain states onto traditional EEG-tracked sleep phases revealed a number of compelling correlations. Wakefulness, N2 sleep and N3 sleep all could be represented by specific whole brain states. The range of different fMRI-tracked brain states did reduce as subjects fell into deeper sleep phases, with two different fMRI brain states correlating with N2 sleep, and only one with N3. However, N1 sleep as identified by EEG data, the earliest and least clearly defined sleep phase, did not consistently correspond with any fMRI brain state.
The researchers conclude from this data that N1 is actually a much more complex sleep phase than previously understood. This phase, a strange mix of wakefulness and sleep, seemed to encompass a large range of the 19 different whole-brain network states identified in the fMRI data.
