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| Illustration of the ten-qubit processor (Courtesy: Chao Song et al/ Physical Review Letters) |
Topics: Nanotechnology, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics, Superconductors
Physicists in China and the US have built a 10-qubit superconducting quantum processor that could be scaled up to tackle problems not solvable by classical computers. The performance of the device was verified using quantum tomography, which showed that the new approach can generate a true 10-partite Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state – the largest yet achieved in a solid-state system.
The field of quantum computing is in its infancy, and a genuinely useful, practical device that outperforms classical computers has not yet been built. At this stage of development, researchers do not even agree on the basics of implementation, but techniques employing superconducting circuits have an advantage over some other designs in that they are based on established and scalable microfabrication processes.
Superconducting quantum computer achieves 10-qubit entanglement
Marric Stephens, Physics World
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| Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region Flickr (CC BY 2.0) |
Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Existentialism
A U.S. Forest Service scientist who was scheduled to talk about the role that climate change plays in wildfire conditions was denied approval to attend the conference featuring fire experts from around the country.
William Jolly, a research ecologist with the agency's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont., was supposed to give a 30-minute presentation titled "Climate-Induced Variations in Global Severe Fire Weather Conditions" at the International Fire Congress in Orlando, Fla., next month. The event is hosted by the Association for Fire Ecology (AFE).
The travel denial follows reports last week that U.S. EPA blocked three scientists from making presentations at a conference in Rhode Island featuring climate change. Critics accused the Trump administration of stifling the dissemination of taxpayer-funded science.
"It's kind of weird that they would make it hard for a government scientist to take part in this because managing wildfire is a huge challenge logistically and financially on a vast array of federal lands," he said. "These scientists, by participating in these kinds of society meetings, share their thoughts and hear other people's thoughts, which is important because their work is supposed to form how these lands are managed and how we prepare for and adapt under climate change."
Government Scientist Blocked from Talking About Climate and Wildfires Brittany Patterson, Scientific American, ClimateWire
Rollo Ahmed sounds like someone worth looking into, His volume on magick and the supernatural might make a good addition to libraries on the subject.
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| Penn researchers are collaborating to study how giant clams convert sunlight into energy, which could lead to more efficient production of biofuel. Photo credit: Malcolm Browne |
Topics: Biochemistry, Green Energy, Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Physics, Solar Power
Alison Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania has been studying giant clams since she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. These large mollusks, which anchor themselves to coral reefs in the tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans, can grow to up to three-feet long and weigh hundreds of pounds. But their size isn’t the only thing that makes them unique. Anyone who has ever gone snorkeling in Australia or the western tropical Pacific Ocean, Sweeney says, may have noticed that the surfaces of giant clams are iridescent, appearing to sparkle before the naked eye. The lustrous cells on the surface of the clam scatter bright sunlight, which typically runs the risk of causing fatal damage to the cell, but the clams efficiently convert the sunlight into fuel. Using what they learn from these giant clams, the researchers hope to improve the process of producing biofuel.
Sweeney, an assistant professor of physics in the Penn School of Arts and Sciences, and her collaborator Shu Yang, a professor of materials science and engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, refer to the clams as “solar transformers” because they are capable of absorbing bright sunlight at a very high rate and scattering it over a large surface area. When the light is distributed evenly among the thick layer of algae living inside the clam, the algae quickly converts the light into energy.
“What those sparkly cells are doing,” Sweeney says, “is causing light to propagate very deeply into the clam tissue and spread out.”
“What those sparkly cells are doing,” Sweeney says, “is causing light to propagate very deeply into the clam tissue and spread out.”
After coming across Sweeney’s work, Yang struck up a collaboration to see if they could mimic the system by abstracting the principles of the clam’s process to create a material that works similarly. She and Ph.D. student Hye-Na Kim devised a method of synthesizing nanoparticles and adding them to an emulsion — a mixture of water, oil, and soapy molecules called surfactants — to form microbeads mimicking the iridocytes, the cells in giant clams responsible for solar transforming. Their paper has been published in Advanced Materials.
Penn Researchers Working to Mimic Giant Clams to Enhance the Production of Biofuel Ali Sundermier, Evan Lerner, University of Pennsylvania News
Well since the last time I wrote, I went ahead with school. I sadly ended up flunking out. I was made to feel like I didn't belong there. I tried to open up and do different things and it just didn't work. This school is not at all what i thought it would be. They do not welcome writers like me, meaning students that want to be authors. They are more for tv, and movie type of writers.
I was depressed for a while and stopped writing. I was trying to find a better job so I wasn't so stressed. Maybe a year later I'm back to writing again. I write a little everyday thanks to my oldest daughter and Watt Pad. I'm still at my job, which i dont like anymore, so Im in school again, this time its affordable, and they encourage the kind of writer I am.
I am still very much into science fiction and fantasy. I had the pleasure of reading a few samples of books from Tanarive Due. I have also found a bit of inspiration from a few different people who have read my work. Now to find a way to make writing my career. Not quite sure how to start but if this is for me, everything will work out.
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| Image Source: Education Exodus: Students are Fleeing the U.S. for Free Higher Education Abroad |
Topics: Civics, Education, Existentialism, Politics
My wife and I exercised our right to vote in the Greensboro municipal elections. Our impact wasn't as sweeping as seen across the United States, nor was it a referendum/check on power to the current 140-character president.
As a graduate student, I do have my concerns on how politics affects personal outcomes:
The sweeping tax overhaul released by House Republicans Thursday would kill or limit key benefits for many colleges, students and borrowers paying off student loans.
House GOP leaders released this plan about half a year after President Trump issued a set of broad but vague principles for tax reform legislation. The proposal released Thursday slashes corporate tax rates, reduces the number of income tax brackets and repeals taxes on large estates.
To pay for revenue that would be lost, the plan would kill many tax breaks, some of them popular in higher education.
The plan would impose a 1.4 percent excise tax on college endowments at private universities valued at $100,000 or more per full-time student. The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities said Friday it estimated more than 150 institutions would be affected by the proposed tax based on 2014-15 endowment values.
The bill would double the standard individual tax deduction, meaning much weaker incentives for charitable contributions to colleges, higher education groups say. Phasing out the estate tax, they say, would also have a negative impact on charitable contributions.
The GOP plan would end student loan interest rate deductions and eliminate state and local income tax deductions, potentially encouraging spending cuts in states that are among the biggest supporters of public higher education.. 1
*****
Graduate students and their professors say their careers and programs are threatened by a provision of the House Republican tax bill that proposes tens of thousands of dollars in higher income taxes on American doctoral students.
Why it matters: The legislation, following a series of threats by the Trump administration that could reduce the number of foreign Ph.D students and their ability to stay in the country after graduation, could be another strike at U.S. dominance of global research and invention. Claus Wilke, chairman of Integrative Biology at University of Texas at Austin, said that should the proposal become law, he "could not in good conscience recommend a Ph.D. to anybody unless they were so rich they didn't care."
"I would tell them to see if somebody can offer you a slot in Canada or Europe where they don't make you pay for your Ph.D," Wilke said. 2
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
I am involved with mankind with regards to my family. We pursued student loans to pay for college for both of our sons. Now as I pursue a Masters and PhD in Nanoengineering, we've pursued those loans for me. It was to better myself; train in a related field and work at a higher level, hopefully in academia as an instructor and researcher. Those are two things - correct me if I'm wrong - I thought might "make America great." Apparently, exaggerating the already abysmal stratification is the only thing our legislators have in mind to make us "great"...like the 1950s, before Brown vs. Board of Education, before James Baldwin and "Giovanni's Room," before Gloria Steinem; before Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." All dreams except the inept dreams of tiki-torch Nazis - in opposition to the eloquence and elocution of Langston Hughes - must be deferred.
Often, mostly out of frustration my wife and I postulate living in another country. One where politics isn't so polarized, consensus is pursued post election, not gridlock. We're the only nation on the planet where the election cycle starts a full 2 years before the actual elections. I believe most European countries get it done in about six weeks, but that doesn't make for good Nielsen Ratings and advertising dollars ALL the major networks pursue during presidential contests. A reality television star - clearly not in full control of his faculties, but has the nuclear keys to species extinction - is there because in the words of CBS chairman Les Moonves, he was "good for ratings."
I'm told by a friend from Denmark I study with currently I could command a good salary overseas.
Post my matriculation, I may have to consider the option.
..."good for ratings"... That will be a new Rome's epitaph.
1. Tax Benefits at Risk for Colleges, Student Borrowers, Andrew Kreighbaum, Inside Higher Education
2. The GOP tax plan could lead to a brain drain, Steve LeVine, Axios
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| While quantum entanglement usually spreads through the atoms in an optical lattice via short-range interactions with the atoms' immediate neighbors (left), new theoretical research shows that taking advantage of long-range dipolar interactions among the atoms could enable it to spread more quickly (right), a potential advantage for quantum computing and sensing applications. Credit: Gorshkov and Hanacek/NIST |
Topics: Laser, Materials Science, Optical Physics, Quantum Mechanics
“It is these long-range dipolar interactions in 3-D that enable you to create entanglement much faster than in systems with short-range interactions,” said Gorshkov, a theoretical physicist at NIST and at both the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and the Joint Quantum Institute, which are collaborations between NIST and the University of Maryland. “Obviously, if you can throw stuff directly at people who are far away, you can spread the objects faster.”
Applying the technique would center around adjusting the timing of laser light pulses, turning the lasers on and off in particular patterns and rhythms to quick-change the suspended atoms into a coherent entangled system.
The approach also could find application in sensors, which might exploit entanglement to achieve far greater sensitivity than classical systems can. While entanglement-enhanced quantum sensing is a young field, it might allow for high-resolution scanning of tiny objects, such as distinguishing slight temperature differences among parts of an individual living cell or performing magnetic imaging of its interior.
Gorshkov said the method builds on two studies from the 1990s in which different NIST researchers considered the possibility of using a large number of tiny objects—such as a group of atom—as sensors. Atoms could measure the properties of a nearby magnetic field, for example, because the field would change their electrons’ energy levels. These earlier efforts showed that the uncertainty in these measurements would be advantageously lower if the atoms were all entangled, rather than merely a bunch of independent objects that happened to be near one another.
Need Entangled Atoms? Get 'Em FAST! With NIST’s New Patent-Pending Method
Paper: Z. Eldredge, Z.-X. Gong, J. T. Young, A.H. Moosavian, M. Foss-Feig and A.V. Gorshkov. Fast State Transfer and Entanglement Renormalization Using Long-Range Interactions. Physical Review Letters. Published 25 October 2017. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.170503
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| A snapshot of silicene (shown in yellow), a 2-D material made up of silicon atoms, as it grows on iridium substrate (shown in red). The image was taken from a molecular dynamics simulation, which Argonne researchers used to predict the growth and evolution of silicene. (Image courtesy of Joseph Insley / Argonne National Laboratory.) |
Topics: Computer Science, Graphene, Materials Science, Nanotechnology
Alliteration source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," by Milan Kundera.
The remarkable properties of 2-D materials — made up of a single layer of atoms — have made them among the most intensely studied materials of our time. They have the potential to usher in a new generation of improved electronics, batteries and sensory devices, among other applications.
One obstacle to realizing applications of these materials is the cost and time needed for experimental studies. However, computer simulations are helping researchers overcome this challenge in order to accurately characterize material structures and functions at an accelerated pace.
At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, researchers have simulated the growth of silicene, a 2-D material with attractive electronic properties. Their work, published in Nanoscale, delivers new and useful insights on the material’s properties and behavior and offers a predictive model for other researchers studying 2-D materials.
The flat and the curious, Joan Koka, Argonne National Laboratories
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| Schematic of the sandwich tunnelling electrode structure functionalized with RGD peptide, with a human integrin &alphaVβ3 protein in the junction gap. Courtesy of Nano Futures. |
Topics: Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Nanotechnology
When electrochemistry, transient charging and heating effects all failed to explain the fluctuating high conductance detected in a human integrin protein, Stuart Lindsay at Arizona State University and his colleagues considered the possibility that the protein’s electronic properties teetered at a critical point between conducting and insulating states. Further analysis of the results revealed characteristics typical of a quantum critical point. While as yet unconfirmed, it is possible this "Goldilocks zone" may aid the protein’s functions, so that evolutionary advantages would have promoted the prevalence of this statistically unlikely electronic behaviour. On a more pragmatic level, the distinctive electronic signal is clearly identified against noisy backgrounds, and may have applications in single-molecule detection.
"There has long been this breadcrumb trail of evidence that proteins behave unusually electronically," explains Lindsay, director of the Biodesign Center for Single Molecule Biophysics at Arizona State University. "All the experiments you can shoot down because you don’t know the state of the protein or how many proteins you have there – here, for the first time, we trap a single protein in a well defined gap and in a condition in which the protein is native."
Lindsay worked alongside researchers at Arizona State University in the US and Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary to characterize the proteins both using a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) similar to other groups, as well as with a "fixed-gap device" junction developed in work on DNA sequencing. Characterizing proteins by STM raises several issues because the precise chemistry and geometry of the STM tip are not known, and the native environment of these proteins differs greatly from a vacuum, where the physics is well established. However, Lindsay and his colleagues found that their less error-prone fixed-gap device also gave conductances several orders of magnitude greater than expected, and that they fluctuated.
Unexplained huge protein conductances hint at evolution, Anna Demming, Nanotechweb.org
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| Virtual-reality representation of the interior of Khufu's Pyramid. The small structure with the peaked roof near the bottom of the pyramid is the Queen's Chamber where the emulsion and hodoscope detectors were installed. The large inclined structure is the Great Gallery, which leads to King's Chamber. The new void is the white region above the Great Gallery. (Courtesy: ScanPyramids) |
Topics: History, Modern Physics, Particle Physics
A large void hidden deep within Khufu's Pyramid at Giza in Egypt has been discovered by a team of physicists. The first-ever image of the mysterious structure was taken using muons that shower down on Earth after being created when cosmic rays collide with the atmosphere.
The measurements were done by the ScanPyramids collaboration that includes researchers from Egypt, Japan and France. The team used three different muon-imaging techniques to study the pyramid, which was built in about 2500 BCE and is also known as the Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Cheops.
Called muography, the technique is similar to radiography using X-rays. Dense materials such as stone tend to absorb muons, which travel relatively unhindered through the air. If more muons than expected reach a detector within the pyramid, it means that they must have passed through an air-filled void on their way.
To verify the existence of the void, scientists from the KEK particle physics lab in Japan installed hodoscopes at a separate location within the Queen's Chamber. These comprise layers of plastic scintillator, which measure muon trajectories. Outside the pyramid, physicists from France's nuclear research agency CEA monitored the muon flux through the pyramid using micromegas detectors. These were arranged in muon "telescopes", which are also able to measure muon trajectories.
Muons reveal hidden void in Egyptian pyramid, Hamish Johnston, Physics World
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| Chinese translations for significant, meaning, connotation, denotation, import, gist, substance, significance, signification, implication, suggestion, consequence, worth, nuance, association, subtext, sense. Image Source: Words-Chinese.com |
Topics: Commentary, Internet, Politics
When I was dating my wife and living in Austin, Texas, I saw an article in the Austin American Statesman that concerned me (I think it regarded a subject in science the author was completely off-base on). I wrote them and got promptly rejected with a reply from the editor. The editor liked my reasoning and sentence structure: I was over their 130 word limit. I was invited to rewrite and resubmit my points within a 10-day window, otherwise it wouldn't be considered. I sent my edit and it was printed. It scored me bragging points with my then girlfriend (she's still with me, amazingly).
The editor was a filter, not just of grammar and syntax but what represented the Statesman as far as policy, their editorial standards and business model.
I will post on this Google/Blogger platform. Any points I make will have associated links I will give attribution to. The only editor is myself.
The Internet as we know it was a product of science and ironically (or perhaps these days, apropos) The Cold War. Leonard Kleinrock wrote a white paper in 1961 entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets." At the link provided, there is a timeline of the Internet's evolution that preceded my awareness of it (I encountered it as DARPANET, but apparently Queen Elizabeth sent the first email when I was in high school in the seventies). It's not surprising that MIT et al universities were involved as for any Pollyannish vision of education being unfairly influenced by corporate interests, that's been around for some time as well. War fighting was on a "hub-and-spoke" configuration (think wagon wheel): the main headquarters was usually at the center of any military deployment, talking to their distant ends through microwave, troposphere scatter and satellite. As a lucky - and stressed - communications/computer systems officer, I was usually at the deployed headquarters, i.e. the "hub" where I would have likely gotten nuked.
The first efforts amounted to text messaging on Zenith computers with HUGE deployed mainframes: things you do with your phones now. The Internet is a wonder, but unlike the Statesman's editor, it lacks a filter.
Several generations from humble beginnings, the Internet Service Providers and social media companies do not want a filter as existed (and I assume still does) for the Statesman and other like media, albeit dwindling. The flaw of an open society is the fact it is open. Vigilance bordering paranoia has to exist to protect a federal republic - the hen house - from ravenous wolves without and within.
I am not advocating a tiered Internet, a removal of net neutrality.
However, the inevitable consequences of removing the traditional filters of discourse is where two technological advances - television and Twitter - have placed our republic in the hands of a chief executive that displays Internet addiction and the impulse control of a prepubescent, our inanity personified.
Related links:
Tech Executives Are Contrite About Election Meddling, but Make Few Promises on Capitol Hill, Cecilia Kang, Nicholas Fandos and Mike Isaac, NY Times How Russian-Backed Agitation Online Spilled Into The Real World In 2016, Miles Parks, NPR Fiery exchanges on Capitol Hill as lawmakers scold Facebook, Google and Twitter, Craig Timberg, Hamza Shaban, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Washington Post
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| Artist’s rendition of colliding neutron stars creating gravitational waves and a kilonova. Image: Fermilab |
Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Nobel Prize, White Dwarfs
(Oct 16) A team of scientists using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), the primary observing tool of the Dark Energy Survey, was among the first to observe the fiery aftermath of a recently detected burst of gravitational waves, recording images of the first confirmed explosion from two colliding neutron stars ever seen by astronomers.
Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey joined forces with a team of astronomers based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) for this effort, working with observatories around the world to bolster the original data from DECam. Images taken with DECam captured the flaring-up and fading over time of a kilonova — an explosion similar to a supernova, but on a smaller scale — that occurs when collapsed stars (called neutron stars) crash into each other, creating heavy radioactive elements.
This particular violent merger, which occurred 130 million years ago in a galaxy near our own (NGC 4993), is the source of the gravitational waves detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo collaborations on Aug. 17. This is the fifth source of gravitational waves to be detected — the first one was discovered in September 2015, for which three founding members of the LIGO collaboration were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics two weeks ago.
Scientists spot explosive counterpart of LIGO/Virgo’s latest gravitational waves Andre Salles, Fermilab Office of Communication, asalles@fnal.gov, 630-840-6733
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| The use of pulses of chemical fuel to directionally transport components and substrates via an energy ratchet mechanism is operationally simple, effective, generates relatively innocuous waste products, and can function in a range of rotary and linear molecular motor and pump designs. Such a universally applicable chemically-fuelled molecular motor-mechanism has the potential to find broad application in molecular nanotechnology. Courtesy: D Leigh |
Topics: Brownian Motion, Chemistry, Nanotechnology, NEMS
Chemists at the University of Manchester in the UK say they have succeeded in developing a new and simple technique for powering both linear and rotary molecular motors made from catenanes. These are mechanically interlocked rings of DNA that could be used to make devices that can be switched between different states using external triggers like changes in pH. The breakthrough method – until now it was only possible to power either rotary or linear motors – might be used to power future molecular machines.
“In the molecular machines we are familiar with in the ‘big world’, the parts, such as cogs, flywheels and pistons, do not move unless a force is applied to them,” explains team leader David Leigh. “At the molecular scale, however, molecules and their parts are constantly moving through Brownian motion and we need to find ways to control the direction of this motion if we are to develop fully-functioning nanomachines.”
Last year, Leigh’s team made the first autonomous chemically-fuelled molecular motor that runs as long as a chemical fuel is present. This rotary motor relies on information transfer between the machine components: a blocking group adds as soon as the ring has moved past a certain point in a given direction and that group also prevents the ring moving backwards through Brownian motion.
The researchers use trichloroacetic acid (Cl3CCOOH) as the fuel in their motor. Cl3CCOOH undergoes base-catalysed decarboxylation, and by adding an excess of this acid to a solution containing the molecular motor and another chemical (triethylamine, or Et3N), they were first able to make the medium acidic and then, as the Cl3CCOOH decomposes, basic.
Chemical fuel pulses power rotary and linear nanomotors, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org
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| The Marius Hills Skylight, as observed by the Japanese SELENE/Kaguya research team. (Image: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University) |
Topics: Moon, NASA, Planetary Science, Science Fiction, Space Exploration
Hm. Just in time for Halloween, though (I think) the architecture of science fiction space bases will obviously need an update. This is also the idea motivating any future Martian colonies as well.
New research published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that several pits located near the Marius Hill region of the Moon are large open lava tubes, and that these ancient caverns have the potential to offer, in the words of the researchers, a “pristine environment to conduct scientific examination of the Moon’s composition and potentially serve as secure shelters for humans and instruments.” The team, which included scientists from NASA and Japan’s space agency, JAXA, combined radar and gravity data to make the finding.
No doubt, these caverns would be perfect for aspiring lunar colonists. Inside these large holes, humans would be protected from the Sun’s dangerous rays, and other hazards. The Moon has no atmosphere to speak of, so these “instant” shelters would be extremely advantageous.
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| Philadelphia is shown inside a theoretical lunar lava tube. (Image: Purdue University/David Blair) |
Scientists Just Found the Perfect Spot to Build an Underground Colony on the Moon George Dvorsky, Gizmodo
