Currently, the main method of combatting CoTS outbreaks is by manually culling each starfish one-by-one, which is highly inefficient, labor-intensive, and costly. But now, a team of researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan have discovered that CoTS use their characteristic spines to ‘smell’ peptides and communicate with one another, even outside mating seasons. Building on this finding, the team has created a synthetic peptide that consistently attracts CoTS at very low concentrations and with no toxicity. The results are published in iScience. Their discovery could lead to the further development of potent pest-management peptides – dubbed Acanthaster attractins – that prompts the starfish to congregate at one spot, enabling the efficient removal of many CoTS in one sweep.

UBC researchers are proposing a solution to a key hurdle in quantum networking: a device that can “translate” microwave to optical signals and vice versa. The technology could serve as a universal translator for quantum computers—enabling them to talk to each other over long distances and converting up to 95 per cent of a signal with virtually no noise. And it all fits on a silicon chip, the same material found in everyday computers.

Using the now-decommissioned Summit supercomputer, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran the largest and most accurate molecular dynamics simulations yet of the interface between water and air during a chemical reaction. 

Using population sample survey data, this study shows bike-sharing boosts household consumption by up to 6.8% and dining by 4.9%, as a catalyst for local development. The positive externalities are driven by reduced commuting time, increased leisure, and lower rental costs.

Researchers have been able to demonstrate a quantum exponential scaling advantage, using two 127-qubit IBM Quantum Eagle processor-powered quantum computers, over the cloud. The paper, “Demonstration of Algorithmic Quantum Speedup for an Abelian Hidden Subgroup Problem,” was published in APS flagship journal Physical Review X.