News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Cryptocurrencies have been treated as a financial terra incognita -- they enjoyed growing interest but also raised concerns due to their virtuality. The use of statistical methods utilizing correlation matrices to analyze the hundred most-traded virtual currencies shows that the cryptocurrency market in the last two years is less and less different from the mature global currency market (Forex) and becomes independent of it. It means cryptocurrencies can be considered a serious and full-fledged financial instrument.

Imperial experts have posed eight privacy questions governments should consider when developing coronavirus contact tracing apps.

Knowing the air density outside of a spacecraft can have a substantial effect on its angle of descent and ability to hit a specific landing spot. But sensors that can withstand the harsh hypersonic conditions are rare. Aerospace engineering researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed an algorithm that can run onboard a vehicle, providing important real-time data to aid in steering the craft, particularly during the crucial entry, descent, and landing stage.

The temptation for businesses to use artificial intelligence and other technology to improve performance, drive down labor costs, and better the bottom line is understandable. But before pursuing automation that could put the jobs of human employees at risk, it is important that business owners take careful stock of their operations.

A team of cybersecurity researchers has discovered that a large number of cell phone applications contain hardcoded secrets allowing others to access private data or block content provided by users. The study's findings: that the apps on mobile phones might have hidden or harmful behaviors about which end users know little to nothing.

A team of medical researchers and bioethicists at Oxford University has published results today in Science that furthers our understanding of coronavirus transmission. This evidence is enabling several international partners to assess the feasibility of developing mobile apps for instant contact tracing in record time. If rapidly and widely developed, these mobile apps could help to significantly slow the rate of transmission, and support countries to emerge from lockdowns safely, as restrictions are gradually eased.

Researchers from the Quantum Optomechanics group at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, recently entangled two laser beams through bouncing them off the same mechanical resonator, a tensioned membrane. This provides a novel way of entangling disparate electromagnetic fields, from microwave radiation to optical beams. Creating entanglement between optical and microwave fields would be a key step towards solving the challenge of sharing entanglement between two distant quantum computers operating in the microwave regime.