Month: November 2013

Building muscle at Calico, Google’s health moonshot

Google made waves in September when it launched its health research arm Calico, led by Arthur Levinson, the former CEO of Roche's US biotech company Genentech. Calico has now announced the hire of four heavy-hitters from the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.  Not surprisingly, three of them have connections with Genentech.  Dr Hal Barron was chief medical officer of Roche, which acquired Genentech in 2009 for $50bn.  He becomes president of R&D at Calico. Dr David Botstein, who joins Calico as chief scientific officer, was VP of Genentech in the late 1980s before moving to academia at Princeton, and Dr Bob Cohen leaves...

What is it about Canadians and quantum computing?

A Canadian company called D:Wave has the best claim to be making and selling quantum computers.  Now a research team at Canada's Simon Fraser University has announced that it has held a quantum memory state stable at room temperature for 39 minutes.  This is 100 times longer than the previous record, and it has got the scientific community excited. In conventional computers, "bits" of data are stored as a string of 1s and 0s.  In a quantum system, quantum bits, or "qubits" are stored in a so-called "superposition state" in which they can be both 1s and 0 at the...

Automation or liberation?

People get worried about automation.  Every time Google's driverless cars hit the headlines, journalists fret that the people who drive lorries, taxis, buses and so on - will soon be out of a job.  It's probably not true.  Trains have drivers even though they can't be steered.  Planes have pilots even though much of the flying process is automated.  Lorries, taxis and buses are likely to have humans in charge of them for many years to come, even if only to sort out the problem when they break down, or when passengers or cargo create an unexpected situation.  With any...

Google Glass takes the broader view

Google has several thousand people test-driving its optical head-mounted display product known as Google Glass.  Each of these people has just been asked to invite three other people to join in and become "Explorers".  If you're reading this anywhere outside the USA you can put your phone back down as the programme is only available to US residents over 18 years old. Meanwhile, Marc Levoy, a Stanford professor, claims that Google's first foray into wearable computing will give its users "superhero vision".  And he should know, since he's has just finished a two-year sabbatical working on the Glass project.  He...