Why world has declared a war against plastic

A look at the growing plastic menace and how the movement against it came to be

from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2Ny0dL9

Quantum Radar Hides In Plain Sight

Radar was a great invention that made air travel much safer and weather prediction more accurate, indeed it is even credited with winning the Battle of Britain. However, it carries a little problem with it during times of war. Painting a target with radar (or even sonar) is equivalent to standing up and wildly waving a red flag in front of your enemy, which is why for example submarines often run silent and only listen, or why fighter aircraft often rely on guidance from another aircraft. However, researchers in Italy, the UK, the US, and Austria have built a proof-of-concept radar that is very difficult to detect which relies upon quantum entanglement.

Despite quantum physics being hard to follow, the concept for the radar is pretty easy to understand. First, they generate an entangled pair of microwave photons, a task they perform with a Josephson phase converter. Then they store an “idle” photon while sending the “signal” photon out into the world. Detecting a single photon coming back is prone to noise, but in this case detecting the signal photon disturbs the idle photon and is reasonably easy to detect. It is likely that the entanglement will no longer be intact by the time of the return, but the correlation between the two photons remains detectable.

Of course, in reality they don’t use just a single photon. The process — known as quantum illumination — uses the weakened correlation and sampling to beat the performance of other techniques using the same number of photons and bandwidth.

Other than the quantum part, the rest of the setup is pretty simple to understand. The signal frequency is a little more than 10 GHz, while the idler is at almost 7 GHz. The receiver down converts to an intermediate frequency of 20 MHz and then uses a 100 MHz 8-bit A/D to grab the signal and do a Fourier transform.

Most of what we see involving quantum physics involves computing. We are still hoping [Sean] will work out his quantum coffee pot.

from Hackaday https://ift.tt/2NzRFDA

VMAs host opens with safe space jokes, and bombs hard

The 2018 VMAs didn't have a host, and ten minutes into the 2019 VMAs, fans were wishing this year's show didn't either.

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco — already the host who launched a thousand SEO-optimized "Who is...?" posts — opened the show with a series of jokes punching directly down at the crowd in front of him, and not in a particularly clever way.

From a punchline-free bit about people recording things on their phones (fresh!) to an extended rant about how there was a "safe space" backstage for anyone who was "triggered", Maniscalco didn't endear himself to the audience in the room or at home. Read more...

More about Vmas, Sebastian Maniscalco, Vmas 2019, Entertainment, and Music

from Mashable https://ift.tt/2MGGXvs

4 Leadership Lessons From A Female Extraction Expert

I pivoted jobs, pivoted again, and eventually came out on top. Here's how.

from Entrepreneur https://ift.tt/2HtL2ij

Instagram is working on yet another Snapchat clone

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Facebook is testing yet another Snapchat clone. 

Yes, again. And, once again, Facebook's latest effort to take on Snap is centered around Instagram. That's according to The Verge, which reports that Instagram has been testing "Threads," a new, separate app based around Instagram users' "close friends" lists. 

The app is "designed to promote constant, automatic sharing between users," says The Verge, which has published mock-ups of the app based on screenshots of the unreleased app. The images show a single feed where you can view friends' Stories or brief "statuses."  Read more...

More about Tech, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Snap Inc

from Mashable https://ift.tt/2L5X8PK

Golf balls programmed with Nissan’s self-driving tech always find the hole

Autonomous golf balls might not be what anyone really needs, but it's pretty satisfying to always get a hole-in-one. 

The high-tech golf balls from Nissan are just a concept the Japanese automaker is showing off this week in Japan to highlight its newest driver assistance system, ProPilot 2. The new system will let drivers take their hands off the wheel on designated roads with the destination plugged into the navigation system.

It's a small dose of autonomous driving that's coming to the Nissan Skyline sedan this fall in Japan. It's like a hands-free Autopilot system on Tesla vehicles. But to get a better sense of how the car can drive itself between two points, Nissan took the technology and put it in a golf ball. There's even a small electric motor in the ball. Read more...

More about Nissan, Autonomous Vehicles, Semi Autonomous, Tech, and Transportation

from Mashable https://ift.tt/2KVRTTK

US Open 2019: Serena Williams beats Maria Sharapova 6-1 6-1 to reach second round

Serena Williams makes the perfect return to the US Open after last year's controversial final by thrashing her long-time rival Maria Sharapova.

from BBC Sport - Sport https://ift.tt/2NyJqrj