Green Hydrogen Systems Receives Electrolysis Units from Logan Energy

Green Hydrogen Systems, a leading provider of efficient pressurized alkaline electrolyzers used in on-site hydrogen production based on renewable electricity, has today signed a supply agreement with Edinburgh-based Logan Energy to deliver electrolysis equipment for a project in England.

The order includes the supply of two GHS HyProvide® A90 electrolysers with a combined capacity of 0.9 MW for the production of green hydrogen from renewable energy.

Manufactured by Green Hydrogen Systems and operated by Logan Energy, the electrolyzers will be deployed in a 40 ft container as a complete green hydrogen plant as part of plans to develop a regional hydrogen economy in Dorset, England.

Green Hydrogen Systems will be responsible for delivering the electrolyser units and will support the project with on-site maintenance and remote monitoring and support as part of a three-year service agreement.

Logan Energy is a leading hydrogen technology company with a proven track record for delivering affordable, market-ready projects and solutions in the low carbon, renewable energy, and hydrogen sectors.

When fully operational during 4Q22, the ordered electrolyzers have the capacity to provide approximately 389 kg/day of green hydrogen.

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Everfuel receives grant for hydrogen refuelling stations in Sweden

Monday 31 January 2022 14:00

Everfuel Sweden AB has been awarded two grants totaling approximately SEK45 million by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency investment program.

MIT – A New Language for Quantum Computing

While the nascent field of quantum computing can feel flashy and futuristic, quantum computers have the potential for computational breakthroughs in classically unsolvable tasks, like cryptographic and communication protocols, search, and computational physics and chemistry. Credits: Photo: Graham Carlow/IBM

Twist is an MIT-developed programming language that can describe and verify which pieces of data are entangled to prevent bugs in a quantum program.

Time crystals. Microwaves. Diamonds. What do these three disparate things have in common? 

Quantum computing. Unlike traditional computers that use bits, quantum computers use qubits to encode information as zeros or ones, or both at the same time. Coupled with a cocktail of forces from quantum physics, these refrigerator-sized machines can process a whole lot of information — but they’re far from flawless. Just like our regular computers, we need to have the right programming languages to properly compute on quantum computers. 

Programming quantum computers requires awareness of something called “entanglement,” a computational multiplier for qubits of sorts, which translates to a lot of power. When two qubits are entangled, actions on one qubit can change the value of the other, even when they are physically separated, giving rise to Einstein’s characterization of “spooky action at a distance.” But that potency is equal parts a source of weakness. When programming, discarding one qubit without being mindful of its entanglement with another qubit can destroy the data stored in the other, jeopardizing the correctness of the program. 

Scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL) aimed to do some unraveling by creating their own programming language for quantum computing called Twist. Twist can describe and verify which pieces of data are entangled in a quantum program, through a language a classical programmer can understand. The language uses a concept called purity, which enforces the absence of entanglement and results in more intuitive programs, with ideally fewer bugs. For example, a programmer can use Twist to say that the temporary data generated as garbage by a program is not entangled with the program’s answer, making it safe to throw away.

While the nascent field can feel a little flashy and futuristic, with images of mammoth wiry gold machines coming to mind, quantum computers have potential for computational breakthroughs in classically unsolvable tasks, like cryptographic and communication protocols, search, and computational physics and chemistry. One of the key challenges in computational sciences is dealing with the complexity of the problem and the amount of computation needed. Whereas a classical digital computer would need a very large exponential number of bits to be able to process such a simulation, a quantum computer could do it, potentially, using a very small number of qubits — if the right programs are there. 

“Our language Twist allows a developer to write safer quantum programs by explicitly stating when a qubit must not be entangled with another,” says Charles Yuan, an MIT PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science and the lead author on a new paper about Twist. “Because understanding quantum programs requires understanding entanglement, we hope that Twist paves the way to languages that make the unique challenges of quantum computing more accessible to programmers.” 

Yuan wrote the paper alongside Chris McNally, a PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science who is affiliated with the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, as well as MIT Assistant Professor Michael Carbin. They presented the research at last week’s 2022 Symposium on Principles of Programming conference in Philadelphia.

Untangling quantum entanglement 

Imagine a wooden box that has a thousand cables protruding out from one side. You can pull any cable all the way out of the box, or push it all the way in.

After you do this for a while, the cables form a pattern of bits — zeros and ones — depending on whether they’re in or out. This box represents the memory of a classical computer. A program for this computer is a sequence of instructions for when and how to pull on the cables.

Now imagine a second, identical-looking box. This time, you tug on a cable, and see that as it emerges, a couple of other cables are pulled back inside. Clearly, inside the box, these cables are somehow entangled with each other. 

The second box is an analogy for a quantum computer, and understanding the meaning of a quantum program requires understanding the entanglement present in its data. But detecting entanglement is not straightforward. You can’t see into the wooden box, so the best you can do is try pulling on cables and carefully reason about which are entangled. In the same way, quantum programmers today have to reason about entanglement by hand. This is where the design of Twist helps massage some of those interlaced pieces. 

The scientists designed Twist to be expressive enough to write out programs for well-known quantum algorithms and identify bugs in their implementations. To evaluate Twist’s design, they modified the programs to introduce some kind of bug that would be relatively subtle for a human programmer to detect, and showed that Twist could automatically identify the bugs and reject the programs.

They also measured how well the programs performed in practice in terms of runtime, which had less than 4 percent overhead over existing quantum programming techniques.

For those wary of quantum’s “seedy” reputation in its potential to break encryption systems, Yuan says it’s still not very well known to what extent quantum computers will actually be able to reach their performance promises in practice. “There’s a lot of research that’s going on in post-quantum cryptography, which exists because even quantum computing is not all-powerful. So far, there’s a very specific set of applications in which people have developed algorithms and techniques where a quantum computer can outperform classical computers.” 

An important next step is using Twist to create higher-level quantum programming languages. Most quantum programming languages today still resemble assembly language, stringing together low-level operations, without mindfulness towards things like data types and functions, and what’s typical in classical software engineering.

“Quantum computers are error-prone and difficult to program. By introducing and reasoning about the ‘purity’ of program code, Twist takes a big step towards making quantum programming easier by guaranteeing that the quantum bits in a pure piece of code cannot be altered by bits not in that code,” says Fred Chong, the Seymour Goodman Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago and chief scientist at Super.tech. 

The work was supported, in part, by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research.

Breathing: The master clock of the sleeping brain

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich neuroscientists have shown that breathing coordinates neuronal activity throughout the brain during sleep and quiet.

While we sleep, the brain is not switched off, but is busy with “saving” the important memories of the day. To achieve that, brain regions are synchronized to coordinate the transmission of information between them. Yet, the mechanisms that enable this synchronization across multiple remote brain regions are not well understood.

Traditionally, these mechanisms were sought in correlated activity patterns within the brain. However, LMU neuroscientists Prof. Anton Sirota and Dr. Nikolas Karalis have now been able to show that breathing acts as a pacemaker that entrains the various brain regions and synchronizes them with each other.

Breathing is the most persistent and essential bodily rhythm and exerts a strong physiological effect on the autonomous nervous system. It is also known to modulate a wide range of cognitive functions such as perception, attention, and thought structure. However, the mechanisms of its impact on cognitive function and the brain are largely unknown.

The scientists performed large-scale in vivo electrophysiological recordings in mice, from thousands of neurons across the limbic system. They showed that respiration entrains and coordinates neuronal activity in all investigated brain regions—including the hippocampus, medial prefrontal and visual cortex, thalamus, amygdala, and nucleus accumbens—by modulating the excitability of these circuits in olfaction-independent way.

“Thus, we were able to prove the existence of a novel non-olfactory, intracerebral, mechanism that accounts for the entrainment of distributed circuits by breathing, which we termed “respiratory corollary discharge,” says Karalis, who is currently research fellow at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel. “Our findings identify the existence of a previously unknown link between respiratory and limbic circuits and are a departure from the standard belief that breathing modulates brain activity via the nose-olfactory route,” underlines Sirota.

This mechanism mediates the coordination of sleep-related activity in these brain regions, which is essential for memory consolidation and provides the means for the co-modulation of the cortico-hippocampal circuits synchronous dynamics. According to the authors, these results represent a major step forward and provide the foundation for new mechanistic theories, that incorporate the respiratory rhythm as a fundamental mechanism underlying the communication of distributed systems during memory consolidation.

The research was published in Nature Communications.

StoreDot Makes Ultra-Fast 4680 EV Battery cells – Develops Tech to Extend Batteries’ First and Second Life

StoreDot, an Israel-based electric vehicle extreme fast charging (XFC) battery startup, today announced that it has advanced technology that extends the life span of batteries, making them highly effective not only during the vehicle life span, but also for second-life applications.

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The technology combines the electrochemistry system of the company’s silicon dominant cells to ensure that there is minimal drop-off in performance even as the battery ages.

StoreDot reports that a robust performance is maintained even after 1,000 cycles and 80% capacity, the point at which rival lithium-ion fast-charging technologies start to rapidly deteriorate in performance. Even after 1,700 cycles, long after the accepted industry norm, StoreDot claims its batteries can maintain 70% of their original capacity, making them effective in second-life usage for less dynamic applications such as in energy storage and grid load balancing systems.

Dr. Doron Myersdorf, StoreDot CEO, said:

StoreDot is well known for creating extreme fast charging technologies and helping drivers overcome charging anxiety, which is currently the biggest barrier to EV ownership.

But we believe in advancing the entire battery eco-system, ultimately delivering an optimum solution to sustain the transition to full EV electrification. This latest development is proof of that.

We now have the ability to hugely extend the life of our batteries, long after their vehicle service life. This not only has benefits for the drivers of EVs, allowing them to maintain performance of their vehicles for many more years, but also in second-life applications.

Not only will this transformative development encourage more people to drive EVs, but this technology has huge benefits for sustainability, too, reducing the need to retire and recycle an expensive component that can now serve in critical second-life applications.

StoreDot says it’s in advanced talks with global car makers. It also says it’s on track to deliver mass-produced XFC batteries, which provide a 50% reduction in charging time at the same cost, by 2024.

In early September 2021, StoreDot announced that it produced the first 4680 cylindrical cell, that it claims can charge in only 10 minutes.

In November, StoreDot claimed it had become the first company to produce XFC cells for electric vehicles on a mass production line. And on December 1, 2021, StoreDot announced new patented technology that uses a background repair mechanism to allow battery cells to regenerate while they are in use.

Images: StoreDot

Ag Nanoparticles in Water Treatment: Cost-Effective Applications

Image Credit: Irina Kozorog/Shutterstock.com

One of the main causes of water pollution is the contamination of water bodies by industrial effluents. The different types of water contaminants include organic and inorganic dyes that are used as colorants in many industries, such as food, cosmetics, paper, and textiles.

Nanomaterials are tiny particles whose size ranges from 1-100 nm and possess unique physical, chemical, electrical, optical, catalytic, and biological properties.

These particles have a high surface to area ratio and are applied in varied fields of science and technology. Silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NPs) are among the most widely used nanoparticles owing to their superior catalytic activity and antimicrobial properties.

Green Synthesis of Nanoparticles

Various methods are used to synthesize Ag NPs, such as chemical, radiation, electrochemical, and biological methods.

Green synthesis of Ag NPs is a biochemical-based process that utilizes living organisms (e.g., plant, bacteria, algae, or fungi) or their metabolites, as the reducing agent.

Typically, nanoparticles are produced by first reducing the salt containing the metal ion. Following this, the newly synthesized nanoparticles are stabilized via capping techniques.

Phytochemicals extracted from plants and secondary microbial metabolites are often used as reducing and capping agents.

The main advantage of the green synthesis of nanoparticles is that it does not use any hazardous chemicals and does not produce any harmful by-products.

Additionally, this method is cost-effective, eco-friendly, and does not require any stabilizers. Scientists have determined the metabolites, such as alkaloids, that are responsible for the conversion of metallic Ag to Ag nanoparticles.

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the preparation method of phyto-capped Ag NPs.  © Kordy, M.G.M. et al. (2022)

Green Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles – A New Study

Coffea arabica is one of the most popular plants, whose beans are used regularly to produce coffee.

In the new study, aqueous extracts of Arabic green coffee (GC) beans were used as the reducing and stabilizing agent for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles.

Researchers investigated the ability of these Ag NPs as antioxidants and catalysts for methylene blue dye reduction by sodium borohydride.

Previous studies have revealed that GC extracts contain many important phytoconstituents such as alkaloids, glycosides, and other phenolic compounds, that can convert metallic silver to silver nanoparticles.

The mechanisms behind the production of silver nanoparticles using GC extract are discussed in the following steps.

1. The Ag atoms are formed by the reduction of Ag⁺ ion by GC extract, which nucleates to form Ag NPs.
2. The size of the nanoparticles is controlled using electrostatic stabilizing agents via the capping process. This process requires a stabilizer that can adsorb onto the surface of the newly synthesized Ag NPs to be capped. The authors used the GC extract as a capping agent as well.

The results of this study are in line with previous studies where researchers have used various plant extracts such as Emblica officinalis (amla), Aloe vera, and Phyllanthus emblica (Indian gooseberry).

Figure 2. (A) HRTEM and (B) SEM images of the capped Ag NPs.  © Kordy, M.G.M. et al. (2022)

Characterization of Newly Synthesized Ag NPs

Scientists used various analytical tools such as SEM, EDX, FTIR, TEM, DLS, zeta potential, and XRD to characterize the biologically synthesized Ag NPs using GC extract.

Initially, the production of Ag NPs was determined by the color change of the reactants from pale yellow to dark brown.

The synthesis of Ag NPs was further determined by a UV-Visible spectrophotometer where the researchers detected the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of GC-capped Ag NPs at 425 nm.

The difference in the FTIR spectrum of Ag NPs as well as GC extract signifies the participation of polyphenolic compounds in the reduction process.

FTIR analysis indicated the role of natural metabolites in the reduction of Ag⁺ and the stabilization of the green-produced Ag NPs. TEM and SEM analysis revealed that Ag NPs were poly-dispersed and were spherical or semi-spherical in shape.

The EDX spectrum also confirmed the presence of Ag signals at 2.983 keV. The crystalline nature of GC-capped Ag NPs was determined using XRD analysis.

The zeta potential of the colloidal sample determined the stability of the Ag NPs.

Figure 3. The antioxidant activity of GC-capped Ag NPs using different concentrations to determine the IC₅₀ after linear fitting for experimental data. © Kordy, M.G.M. et al. (2022)

Reduction of Methylene Blue Dye Using Ag NPs

In this study, scientists determined the potential of the newly developed Ag NPs as a reducing agent of methylene blue dye in the presence of sodium borohydride (NaBH₄).

They reported a high degradation efficiency of 96% by GC-capped Ag NPs. Researchers revealed a catalytic reduction of 50 ppm of MB dye using 0.1 M of NaBH₄.

Additionally, maximum catalytic activity was achieved in a record time of 12 minutes.

A robust antioxidant activity has been reported for the first time against 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radicals.

Scientists are optimistic that GC-capped Ag NPs could be effectively applied in the treatment of contaminated water in the future.

Continue reading: How are Nanocatalysts Used for Environmental Applications?

Reference

Kordy, M.G.M. et al. (2022) Phyto-Capped Ag Nanoparticles: Green Synthesis, Characterization, and Catalytic and Antioxidant Activities. Nanomaterials. 12(3):373. https://doi.org/10.3390/nano12030373

Contributed by Dr. Priyom Bose : AZ Nano: University of Madras

Will Quantum Computers be Able to Crack Bitcoin? In 10 Years? Less?

Quantum Computing CPU

A new study reveals whether quantum computers could crack the complex blockchain cryptography that makes Bitcoin possible, and the answer is… complicated.

Quantum computers could, in theory, crack Bitcoin, but probably not in the near future, as they would have to be about a million times larger than they are today, a report from NewScientist reveals.

So, in practice, the cryptocurrency likely won’t be at risk from quantum computer-wielding hackers for roughly a decade.

Quantum supremacy could put the Bitcoin network at risk

The Bitcoin network uses a series of increasingly complex computations in the blockchain to make transactions. The immense processing power required to make these computations is what keeps crypto wallets secure, but it’s also the reason behind climate concerns over cryptocurrencies. In February last year, for example, an analysis by the University of Cambridge showed that so-called Bitcoin miners use more energy worldwide than entire countries, including Argentina and the Netherlands.

While this energy-intensive process makes it practically impossible for ordinary computers to crack the code used by the Bitcoin network, quantum computers are expected to be orders of magnitude more powerful than today’s classical computers.

What’s more, several companies, including Google and IBM already claim to have achieved quantum supremacy, a term which refers to the successful achievement of a calculation that it would take thousands of years for a classical computer to achieve.

Cracking the Bitcoin code

These recent breakthroughs in quantum computing are the reason why a team from the University of Sussex, led by Mark Webber, Ph.D., set out to investigate the requirements one of the machines would need to crack the Bitcoin network. 

“The [Bitcoin] transactions get announced and there’s a key associated with that transaction,” Webber told NewScientist. “And there’s a finite window of time that that key is vulnerable and that varies, but it’s usually around 10 minutes to an hour, maybe a day.”

Webber and his team calculated that breaking Bitcoin’s code in this 10-minute window would require a quantum computer with 1.9 billion qubits. Cracking it in an hour would require 317 million qubits, while 13 million qubits would be required to crack it in a day. 

“This large physical qubit requirement implies that the Bitcoin network will be secure from quantum computing attacks for many years (potentially over a decade),” Webber wrote in a paperpublished in the journal AVS Quantum Science. While that is assuring for Bitcoin owners, it does also highlight the possibility that huge Bitcoin fortunes could become vulnerable in the not-too-distant future. 

IBM’s superconducting quantum computer has only 127 qubits, meaning it would have to be a million times larger to hack Bitcoin. However, the company aims to build a 1000-qubit quantum computing chip called Condor by 2024. The pace of innovation in quantum computing is difficult to predict, but you can bet a Bitcoin that hackers will be keeping an eye on the latest developments.

De-carbonization Tech from RMIT instantly converts CO2 to solid carbon

Graphical abstract. Credit: DOI: 10.1

Australian researchers have developed a smart and super-efficient new way of capturing carbon dioxide and converting it to solid carbon, to help advance the decarbonisation of heavy industries.

The carbon dioxide utilization technology from researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, is designed to be smoothly integrated into existing industrial processes.

Decarbonisation is an immense technical challenge for heavy industries like cement and steel, which are not only energy-intensive but also directly emit CO₂ as part of the production process.

The new technology offers a pathway for instantly converting carbon dioxideas it is produced and locking it permanently in a solid state, keeping CO₂ out of the atmosphere.

The research is published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Co-lead researcher Associate Professor Torben Daeneke said the work built on an earlier experimental approach that used liquid metals as a catalyst.

“Our new method still harnesses the power of liquid metals but the design has been modified for smoother integration into standard industrial processes,” Daeneke said.

“As well as being simpler to scale up, the new tech is radically more efficient and can break down CO₂ to carbon in an instant.

“We hope this could be a significant new tool in the push towards decarbonisation, to help industries and governments deliver on their climate commitments and bring us radically closer to net zero.”

A provisional patent application has been filed for the technology and researchers have recently signed a $AUD2.6 million agreement with Australian environmental technology company ABR, who are commercializing technologies to decarbonise the cement and steel manufacturing industries.

Co-lead researcher Dr. Ken Chiang said the team was keen to hear from other companies to understand the challenges in difficult-to-decarbonise industries and identify other potential applications of the technology.

Increasing the capacity of the immune system to kill cancer cells

Graphical abstract. Credit: DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.110111

Awakening the immune system’s instinct for destroying cancer, using two molecules located on the surface of macrophages: that’s the promising avenue opening up from recent laboratory work of Dr. André Veillette.null

Director of the Molecular Oncology Research Unit of the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) and a professor in the Department of Medicine at the Université de Montréal, Veillette recently published his findings in the journal Cell Reports.

His study unveils an innovative therapeutic way to treat cancer in line with the burgeoning field of precision medicine. For several years now, immunology and personalized medicine have brought new hope to physicians and patients in the fight against cancer.

These advanced therapies largely target cells of the immune system called T cells or T lymphocytes, whose role is to defend the body against harmful foreign agents such as viruses, bacteria and parasites, on the one hand, but also against cancer cells.

Among these “guardians of the body” are also macrophages, cells whose central role is to eliminate harmful agents by simply devouring them. There is a growing interest, among scientists and pharmaceutical companies, in targeting macrophages for therapeutic purposes.

In their lab, Dr. Veillette’s team discovered that macrophages are particularly good at destroying certain types of cancer cells. Even more, the team was able to greatly stimulate the appetite of these immune cells. In particular, they uncovered two molecules located on the surface of macrophages (CD11a and CD11c) which can be activated to increase their instinct to destroy macrophages.

In animal models and in human cell cultures in the lab, the stimulated macrophages turn into super-eaters of cancer cells.

“The ability to unleash the destructive power of macrophages is an important discovery that paves the way to some really exciting new possibilities in personalized medicine,” said Zhenghai Tang, co-first author of the study with Dominique Davidson. “In fact, added Davidson, “we help the body to protect itself better.”

This new use of the molecules to help the body cope better with cancer is an outgrowth of ongoing work in Dr. Veillette’s lab. He and his team have been studying the mechanisms that govern the functioning of the immune system for the past 30 years. In 2017, in a work published in the journal Nature, the team shed light on the SLAMF7 molecule, which also acts on the destructive capacity of macrophages.

“The more we know about the functioning of the immune system, the more we will be able to find effective and less toxic therapeutic solutions to fight diseases,” said Veillette. “Immune cells like macrophages are gaining a lot of interest in immunology research today, but also in the pharmaceutical industry, because this is truly the future of medicine for many deadly diseases.”

He added: “For our part, the next step will be to establish to what extent the molecules CD11a and CD11c can be used as biomarkers to identify patients who are most likely to respond to this type of therapy.”

Beyond Cars: General Motors and Others Look to Expand Market for Hydrogen Fuel Cells

General Motors is finding new markets for its hydrogen fuel cell systems, announcing that it will work with another company to build mobile electricity generators, electric vehicle charging stations and power generators for military camps.

The emissions-free generators will be designed to power large commercial buildings in the event of a power outage, but the company says it’s possible that smaller ones could someday be marketed for home use.

The automaker says it will supply fuel cell power systems to Renewable Innovations of Lindon, Utah, which will build the generators and rapid charging stations. The partnership adds more products and revenue from GM’s hydrogen power systems that now are being developed for heavy trucks, locomotives and even airplanes.

Hydrogen generators are far quieter than those powered by petroleum, and their only byproduct is water, Charlie Freese, executive director of GM’s hydrogen business, told reporters Wednesday.

He said it’s too early to talk about prices, but said production of the systems should start in the next year. At first the generators will be aimed at powering police stations or industrial uses, as well as outdoor concerts.

“These systems run extremely quietly,” he said. “You can stand next to them while having a conversation,” he said.

But Freese said the technology also can be very compact and could be used to power homes at some point.

GM would provide the hydrogen fuel cells built at a plant in Brownstown Township, Michigan, while Renewable Innovations will build the generator units, he said.

GM is not alone in entering the hydrogen generator market. Multiple companies, including AFC Energy in the United Kingdom, are selling or testing the products, said Shawn Litster, a professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied hydrogen fuel cells for about two decades.

There will be more demand for the generators as vehicles switch from internal combustion to electric power. Police departments and municipal governments, he said, will need backup power to charge emergency vehicles in case of a power outage. Hydrogen can be stored for long periods and used in emergency cases, he said.

Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is increasingly viewed, along with electric vehicles, as a way to slow the environmentally destructive impact of the planet’s 1.2 billion vehicles, most of which burn gasoline and diesel fuel. Manufacturers of large trucks and commercial vehicles are beginning to embrace hydrogen fuel cell technologies as a way forward. So are makers of planes, trains and passenger vehicles.

But generating hydrogen isn’t always clean. At present, most it is produced by using natural gas or coal for refineries and fertilizer manufacturing. That process pollutes the air, warming the planet rather than saving it. A new study by researchers from Cornell and Stanford universities found that most hydrogen production emits carbon dioxide, which means that hydrogen-fueled transportation cannot yet be considered clean energy.

Yet proponents say that in the long run, hydrogen production is destined to become more environmentally safe. They envision a growing use of electricity from wind and solar energy, which can separate hydrogen and oxygen in water. As such renewable forms of energy gain broader use, hydrogen production should become a cleaner and less expensive process.

Read More in the Scientific American: Read how other Renewable Energy Sources could power a new industrial revolution ….. that has been long delayed, but may now be ready to fulfill the promise envisioned by futurist Jeremy Rifkin in his book “The Hydrogen Economy” that prophesied hydrogen gas would catalyze a new industrial revolution. 

Solar and Wind Power Could Ignite a Hydrogen Energy Comeback

Freese said GM would always look to get hydrogen from a green source. But he conceded that supplies synthesized from natural gas would have to be a “stepping stone” to greener sources.

The EV charging stations would be able to charge up to four vehicles at once, and they could be installed quickly without changes to the electrical grid, Freese said. They also could go up to handle seasonal demand in places where people travel, he said.

The quietness and relative lack of heat make the military generators ideal for powering a camp of soldiers, Freese said.

GM wouldn’t say how much revenue it expects from the products, and it did not release financial arrangements of the deal.

Related video:

GM looks beyond cars for hydrogen fuel cell markets originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 20 Jan 2022 08:28:00 EST.

One Step closer to Mainstream: Quantum computing in silicon hits 99 per cent accuracy: University of NSW: Video

Australian researchers have proven that near error-free quantum computing is possible, paving the way to build silicon-based quantum devices compatible with current semiconductor manufacturing technology.

“Today’s publication shows our operations were 99 per cent error-free,” says Professor Andrea Morello of UNSW, who led the work with partners in the US, Japan, Egypt, and at UTS and the University of Melbourne.

“When the errors are so rare, it becomes possible to detect them and correct them when they occur. This shows that it is possible to build quantum computers that have enough scale, and enough power, to handle meaningful computation.”

The team’s goal is building what’s called a ‘universal quantum computer’ that won’t be specific to any one application.

“This piece of research is an important milestone on the journey that will get us there,” Prof. Morello says.

Quantum operations with 99% fidelity – the key to practical quantum computers.

Quantum computing in silicon hits the 99 per cent threshold

Prof. Morello’s paper is one of three published in Nature (“Precision tomography of a three-qubit donor quantum processor in silicon”) that independently confirm that robust, reliable quantum computing in silicon is now a reality. The breakthrough features on the front cover of the journal.

Morello et al achieved one-qubit operation fidelities up to 99.95 per cent, and two-qubit fidelity of 99.37 per cent with a three-qubit system comprising an electron and two phosphorous atoms, introduced in silicon via ion implantation. A Delft team in the Netherlands led by Lieven Vandersypen achieved 99.87 per cent one-qubit and 99.65 per cent two-qubit fidelities using electron spins in quantum dots formed in a stack of silicon and silicon-germanium alloy (Si/SiGe). A RIKEN team in Japan led by Seigo Tarucha similarly achieved 99.84 per cent one-qubit and 99.51 per cent two-qubit fidelities in a two-electron system using Si/SiGe quantum dots.

The UNSW and Delft teams certified the performance of their quantum processors using a sophisticated method called gate set tomography, developed at Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S. and made openly available to the research community.

Prof. Morello had previously demonstrated that he could preserve quantum information in silicon for 35 seconds, due to the extreme isolation of nuclear spins from their environment.

“In the quantum world, 35 seconds is an eternity,” says Prof. Morello. “To give a comparison, in the famous Google and IBM superconducting quantum computers the lifetime is about a hundred microseconds – nearly a million times shorter.”

But the trade-off was that isolating the qubits made it seemingly impossible for them to interact with each other, as necessary to perform actual computations.

An artist’s impression of quantum entanglement between three qubits in silicon: the two nuclear spins (red spheres) and one electron spin (shiny ellipse) which wraps around both nuclei. (Image: UNSW/Tony Melov)

Nuclear spins learn to interact accurately

Today’s paper describes how his team overcame this problem by using an electron encompassing two nuclei of phosphorus atoms.

“If you have two nuclei that are connected to the same electron, you can make them do a quantum operation,” says Mateusz Mądzik, one of the lead experimental authors.

“While you don’t operate the electron, those nuclei safely store their quantum information. But now you have the option of making them talk to each other via the electron, to realise universal quantum operations that can be adapted to any computational problem.”

“This really is an unlocking technology,” says Dr Serwan Asaad, another lead experimental author. “The nuclear spins are the core quantum processor. If you entangle them with the electron, then the electron can then be moved to another place and entangled with other qubit nuclei further afield, opening the way to making large arrays of qubits capable of robust and useful computations.”

Professor David Jamieson, research leader at the University of Melbourne, says: “The phosphorous atoms were introduced in the silicon chip using ion implantation, the same method used in all existing silicon computer chips. This ensures that our quantum breakthrough is compatible with the broader semiconductor industry.”

All existing computers deploy some form of error correction and data redundancy, but the laws of quantum physics pose severe restrictions on how the correction takes place in a quantum computer. Prof. Morello explains: “You typically need error rates below 1 per cent, in order to apply quantum error correction protocols. Having now achieved this goal, we can start designing silicon quantum processors that scale up and operate reliably for useful calculations.”

Global collaboration key to today’s trifecta

Semiconductor spin qubits in silicon are well-placed to become the platform of choice for reliable quantum computers. They are stable enough to hold quantum information for long periods and can be scaled up using techniques familiar from existing advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology.

“Until now, however, the challenge has been performing quantum logic operations with sufficiently high accuracy,” Prof. Morello says.

“Each of the three papers published today shows how this challenge can be overcome to such a degree that errors can be corrected faster than they appear.”

While the three papers report independent results, they illustrate the benefits that arise from free academic research, and the free circulation of ideas, people and materials. For instance, the silicon and silicon-germanium material used by the Delft and RIKEN groups was grown in Delft and shared between the two groups. The isotopically purified silicon material used by the UNSW group was provided by Professor Kohei Itoh, from Keio University in Japan.

The gate set tomography (GST) method, which was key to quantifying and improving the quantum gate fidelities in the UNSW and Delft papers, was developed at Sandia National Laboratories in the US, and made publicly available. The Sandia team worked directly with the UNSW group to develop methods specific for their nuclear spin system, but the Delft group was able to independently adopt it for its research too.

There has also been significant sharing of ideas through the movement of people between the teams, for example:

Dr Mateusz Mądzik, an author on the UNSW paper, is now a postdoctoral researcher with the Delft team. Dr Serwan Asaad, an author on the UNSW paper, was formerly a student at Delft. Prof. Lieven Vandersypen, the leader of the Delft team, spent a five-month sabbatical leave at UNSW in 2016, hosted by Prof. Andrea Morello. The leader of the material growth team, Dr Giordano Scappucci, is a former UNSW researcher.

The UNSW-led paper is the result of a large collaboration, involving researchers from UNSW itself, University of Melbourne (for the ion implantation), University of Technology Sydney (for the initial application of the GST method), Sandia National Laboratories (Invention and refinement of the GST method), and Keio University (supply of the isotopically purified silicon material).

Source: University of New South Wales