How do you program a computer that doesn’t exist yet? In a new project, researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are looking into this question and developing software for quantum computers – even though no such computers are working yet and may not be for decades to come. But once the hardware is available, it needs to be usable without further delay; even the most powerful quantum computer will certainly be useless without suitable programs.

The Polarstern recently ended a two-month expedition in the Central Arctic in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The international and interdisciplinary research team, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, focused on the summer melting of Arctic sea ice in three different regimes. The comprehensive inventory revealed major differences between the various sea ice regimes and a low sea ice concentration in the study area. In addition, bacteria and zooplankton dominated the biological communities, while the expected ice algae could hardly be found. 

The University of Texas at Arlington is far from California earthquake country, yet its researchers are helping pinpoint which sections of the San Andreas Fault are most active.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) research team successfully conducted the first reinforcement learning (RL) control of a free-flyer in space on May 27.