Credit: Lucas Schweickert
In a potential boost for quantum computing and communication, a European research collaboration reported a new method of controlling and manipulating single photons without generating heat. The solution makes it possible to integrate optical switches and single-photon detectors in a single chip.
Publishing in
Nature Communications, the team reported to have developed an optical switch that is reconfigured with microscopic mechanical movement rather than heat, making the switch compatible with heat-sensitive single-photon detectors.
Optical switches in use today work by locally heating light guides inside a semiconductor chip. This approach does not work for quantum optics, says co-author Samuel Gyger, a PhD student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
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HANOVER, N.H. - March 1, 2020 - During World War II, British intelligence agents planted false documents on a corpse to fool Nazi Germany into preparing for an assault on Greece. Operation Mincemeat was a success, and covered the actual Allied invasion of Sicily.
The canary trap technique in espionage spreads multiple versions of false documents to conceal a secret. Canary traps can be used to sniff out information leaks, or as in WWII, to create distractions that hide valuable information.
WE-FORGE, a new data protection system designed at Dartmouth s Department of Computer Science, uses artificial intelligence to build on the canary trap concept. The system automatically creates false documents to protect intellectual property such as drug design and military technology.
With the voice commands Alexa Skills, users can load numerous extra functions onto their Amazon voice assistant. However, these Skills can often have security gaps and data protection problems, as researchers from Germany and the USA report.
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Credit: IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica
According to recent estimates, there will be roughly 10 billion people to feed in 2050. Agricultural production will need to increase by almost 56% to guarantee food security globally, without converting more land for agriculture (in line with environmental and climate targets). This unprecedented challenge has ushered in the era of smart agriculture, which promises to revolutionize food production by combining agricultural techniques with information technology, automation, and artificial intelligence. This new era, called Agriculture 4.0, could ensure sustainable food production for the entire world. However, as communities gradually embrace smart agriculture, it is important to understand how to manage the security and privacy risks associated with the integration of information technology into agriculture.
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How much personal information can our phone apps gather through location tracking? To answer this question, two researchers - Mirco Musolesi (University of Bologna, Italy) and Benjamin Baron (University College London, UK) - carried out a field study using an app specifically developed for this research. Through the app employed in the study - published in
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies - researchers were able to identify which kind of personal information the app extracted and its privacy sensitivity according to users. Users are largely unaware of the privacy implications of some permissions they grant to apps and services, in particular when it comes to location-tracking information , explains Mirco Musolesi. Thanks to machine learning techniques, these data provide sensitive information such as the place where users live, their habits, interests, demographics, and information about users personalities .