A team led by Yale University researchers has created the first rudimentary solid-state quantum processor, taking another step toward the ultimate dream of building a quantum computer.

They also used the two-qubit superconducting chip to successfully run elementary algorithms, such as a simple search, demonstrating quantum information processing with a solid-state device for the first time. Their findings will appear in Nature’s advanced online publication June 28.

“Our processor can perform only a few very simple quantum tasks, which have been demonstrated before with single nuclei, atoms and photons,” said Robert Schoelkopf, the William A. Norton Professor of Applied Physics & Physics at Yale. “But this is the first time they’ve been possible in an all-electronic device that looks and feels much more like a regular microprocessor.”

Toyota (NYSE: TM) researchers in Japan have built a brain/machine interface (BMI) that has been demonstrated to control a wheelchair using a person’s thoughts.

The system enables a person to make a wheelchair turn left or right to move forward simply by thinking the commands. The response time is in 125 milliseconds. One millisecond is equal to 1/1000 of a second.

The BMI was developed at the BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center (BTCC), a 2-year-old research center established by Japan’s government research unit RIKEN and Toyota Motor, Toyota Central R&D Labs, and Genesis Research Institute. Japan has focused on the control of devices through brain waves as a way to deal with the projected shortage of healthcare workers to tend to Japan’s large aging population.

The BTCC’s system uses several sensors placed over the areas of the brain that control motion to measure electrical activity in the region. The electical impulses triggered by the rider thinking of turning or moving the wheelchair are picked up and analyzed by an onboard laptop that passes the commands on to the wheelchair.

The system has an emergency stop that can be activated by the user puffing his cheeks.

Cable TV operators won a key legal battle against Hollywood studios and television networks on Monday as the Supreme Court declined to block a new digital video recording system that could make it even easier for viewers to bypass commercials.

The justices declined to hear arguments on whether Cablevision Systems Corp.’s remote-storage DVR system would violate copyright laws. That allows the Bethpage, N.Y.-based company to proceed with plans to start deploying the technology this summer.

With remote storage, TV shows are kept on the cable operator’s servers instead of the DVR inside the customer’s home, as systems offered by TiVo Inc. and cable operators currently do.

The distinction is important because a remote system essentially transforms every digital set-top box in the home into a DVR, allowing customers to sign up instantly, without the need to pick up a DVR from the nearest cable office or wait for a technician to visit.

Movie studios, TV networks and cable TV channels had argued that the service is more akin to video-on-demand, for which they negotiate licensing fees with cable providers.

They claimed a remote-storage DVR service amounts to an unauthorized rebroadcast of their programs.

In a statement, the Copyright Alliance, whose members include Hollywood studios and television broadcasters, called the Supreme Court action “unfortunate and potentially harmful to creators and creative enterprises across the spectrum of copyright industries.”

Cablevision argued its service was permissible because the control of the recording and playback was in the hands of the consumer.

Industry experts say the new technology could put digital recording service in nearly half of all American homes, about twice the current number.

Comcast Corp. will become the first major cable TV operator to roll out wireless broadband outside of Wi-Fi hotspots as it launches the service in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday, with at least three other cities to follow this year.

Comcast will offer speeds of up to 4 Megabits per second, faster than any other comparable, non-Wi-Fi service currently being marketed. The service is for use with laptops, but not other mobile devices.

Comcast’s wireless broadband, which lets users surf the Web on the go with their computers, pits it squarely against the mobile data offerings of phone companies.

But the cable operator is coming out first with the market’s fastest wireless broadband, using WiMax technology. Phone companies have lined up behind a competing technology called LTE, with Verizon Communications Inc. planning to deploy it next year.