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The unique D-Wave 2X quantum computer at NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing facility in Silicon Valley was showed to media on Tuesday. The machine appears to be very impressive and engineers are even planning to sue it for a new area of computing.

The machine is even used by researchers at universities. It is linked to internet like other NASA supercomputers that are made available for academics.

Engineers who displayed the machine on Tuesday appeared very keen to talk about its outstanding features, but they seemed less interested in talking about the security measures in place to stop hackers.

David Bell, director at the Universities Space Research Association, in response to a question, said, “It’s behind various security firewalls, with RSA security tokens to get in”.

A team of researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, has recently developed a new unique camera which is so fast and quick that it can see around corners to track hidden objects in real time.

According to its makers, the camera uses echo mapping, which is an established technique used to locate objects around a corner. The same technique has been previously used by other cameras, but the thing makes the new camera different from other cameras is that it can do this in real time.

Genevieve Gariepy, co-lead researcher on the project, said, “This could be incredibly helpful for [computer assisted] vehicles to avoid collisions around sharp turns ... or for emergency responders looking around blind corners in dangerous situations”.

A team of researchers from University of Washington has developed a revolutionary 3D model algorithm that relies on bulk of images of celebrities that are available on the web to made 3D models.

The team even released a video in which it showed how their tool projected that facial mannerism of celebrities kike Tom hanks and former US President George Bush onto other 3D facial reconstructions.

Developing this outstanding 3D imaging tool took five years of time. The work has been led by graduate student Supasorn Suwajanakorn and assistant professor of computers science and engineering Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman.

The team presented their findings in a paper at the International Conference on Computer Vision, which was held in Chile on December 16.

Researchers in two new studies have got some insight into the secrets of Ceres. The data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has also provided clues about the mysterious bright features found all over the dwarf planet's surface.

In one of the studies, scientists call this bright spots as a kind of salt on the dwarf planet’s surface. The second study shows the presence of ammonia-rich clays on Ceres.

Findings of the studies have raised big questions on how Ceres was actually formed. Study led by Andreas Nathues at Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research showed that Ceres has more than 130 bright areas, and most of them are associated with impact craters.

He wrote that the bright spots on Ceres’ surface are consistent with a type of magnesium sulfate called hexahydrite.

Electric car market in China seems to be getting a boost after hazardous smog forced officials to ban use of vehicles for travelling due to pollution. Some dealers even told that the inquiries about all-electric models have increased by almost a tenth.

Seeing the high spread of hazardous smog, Beijing issued a first pollution ‘red alert’ on Monday. Officials in order to combat the harmful smog ordered to limit the use of conventional petrol-powered and hybrid cars to alternate days.

Smog was no fun for anyone, but the electric car market in China are the ones that is benefitted the most. People can easily use cars to commuting as they do not emit any pollution, which has prompted a rush of inquiries from would-be buyers, dealers and automakers.

Researchers after studying the recently found fossils of one of the oldest-known members of the dinosaur group like Triceratops said that the forerunners of this giant beast were far more modest.

A team of scientists on Wednesday announced that they have found remains of a spaniel-sized dinosaur in the Gobi Desert in western China’s Xinjiang Province. Scientists named the dinosaur as Hualianceratops that lived about 160 million years ago late in the Jurassic Period.

According to researchers, the dinosaur was almost three feet long and was much smaller than the later members of the same group. Triceratops, which lived alongside Tyrannosaurus rex in western North America about 67 million years ago, was more than 30 feet (9 meters) in length.