Month: March 2022

Enlarge (credit: BackyardProduction/Getty)

The Federal Communications Commission will consider issuing new rules for wireless receivers that could prevent future conflicts like the ongoing battle between the aviation and cellular industries.

There are strict rules requiring wireless devices to transmit only in their licensed frequencies. That means, for example, that AT&T and Verizon’s 5G transmissions in C-band spectrum (3.7 to 3.98 GHz) have to stay within the C-band.

But there isn’t much to prevent devices from receiving transmissions from outside their allotted frequencies. The altimeters used in airplanes to measure altitude officially rely on spectrum from 4.2 GHz to 4.4 GHz, but the Federal Aviation Administration has said that 5G transmissions in the C-band could interfere with the operation of some of those altimeters.

Enlarge / A cartoon diagram of the trapped ion system. (credit: IonQ)

Back in 2020, we talked to the CEO of a quantum computing startup called IonQ that uses trapped ions for its qubits. At the time, the company had just introduced a quantum processor that could host 32 qubits that had impressive fidelity, meaning they were much less likely to produce an error when being manipulated or read out. Best yet, the CEO suggested there was an obvious path to doubling the qubit count every eight months for the next few years.

By that metric, we should be seeing a high-fidelity, 128-qubit machine from the company about now. Instead, it chose to make a significant change to the underlying technology and rethought how it viewed scaling its processors. To find out what motivated the changes, we talked with the company’s CTO, Duke University’s Jungsang Kim, about the decision and where IonQ’s hardware stands in the larger landscape.

If you’re interested in IonQ’s hardware in particular, the next two sections are for you; if you care about the state of the quantum computing landscape more generally, you can skip ahead past those sections.

Enlarge / Mac Mini mod on top of the original Mac Mini. (credit: Snazzy Labs/YouTube)

At 7.7×7.7×1.4 inches, the Mac mini is a tiny desktop. When the form factor debuted in 2010, it was pretty impressive. But 12 years later, with mini PCs like the Intel NUC measuring 4.6×4.4×1.5 inches, the Mac mini doesn’t feel all that mini anymore.

As it turns out, the PC is packing some extra baggage, and by getting rid of some of those parts—like an overly powerful internal power supply unit (PSU)—an enthusiast has been able to rebuild the system with a 28 percent reduction in volume while allegedly keeping the same performance as the original machine.

YouTube channel Snazzy Labs shared its miniature Mac mini mod in a video called “We made the Mac mini ACTUALLY mini!” on Tuesday. The idea stemmed from the M1-based Mac mini‘s reliance on a dated design built around more power-hungry Intel chips. Part of that design included a large fan. Snazzy Labs removed the blower fan, certain that a fanless Mac mini would work because of the M1’s performance in the fanless Macbook Air laptop.

Enlarge / A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine. (credit: Getty | Sopa images)

New data on the real-world effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in children and teens largely mirrors what we’ve seen in adults so far: vaccine effectiveness is strong against the delta coronavirus variant but takes a significant hit when up against omicron. Time also erodes protection. But overall, the shots—particularly boosters—offer valuable protection against severe outcomes.

The data, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, drew on medical records from 10 states and only focused on vaccinations with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Researchers examined records of nearly 40,000 visits of non-immunocompromised children and teens to emergency departments and urgent care centers (ED and UC), as well as about 1,700 hospitalizations, all of which occurred between April 9, 2021, and January 29, 2022.

Expected waning

Across the delta and omicron eras, vaccine effectiveness of two doses against ED/UC visits was 83 percent in children 12 to 15, and 76 percent in teens 16 to 17. But those estimates only go up to five months after the two doses, and we know vaccine effectiveness wanes over time. After the five-month mark, those effectiveness estimates fell to 38 percent and 46 percent for ages 12 to 15 and 16 to 17, respectively.