An "Entrepreneurs, Leaders, and Legends Conference," a new event scheduled next month in Auburn, willinclude two former congressman, CEOs and an author as speakers.

The conference, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Feb. 1 at Kruse Plaza, is designed to help business owners, church leaders, corporate teams, community leaders, and emerging entrepreneurs find renewed focus in their vision for 2020, a news release said today.

The speaker lineup includes nationally, regionally, and locally recognized names, including Former NFL Quarterback Heath Shuler, Indiana State Rep. Christy Stutzman, and businessman John Kruse, managing director of Kruse Plaza.

The conference was created by former Congressman Marlin Stutzman and entrepreneur, author, and speaker Dave Kauffman as a way to "bring great leaders together" in northeast Indiana.

We saw the need for a space where the most brilliant minds in our region could come together to create fresh connections and walk away with increased focus and vision, Stutzman said in a statement.

Conference topics includehow to shift in business and maximize relationships; how to lead from a serving position vs. a self-serving one; winning leadership principles; how to build, share, and leave a legacy; and the secrets to effectively communicating your messaging.

Presenterswill include a surprise lunch panel andsix entrepreneurs, leaders, and legends from Indiana and around the country, the news release said. Along with Rep. Christy Stutzman, former congressman Stutzman and entrepreneur and author Kauffman, other announcedspeakers scheduled are leadership expert and trainer Luke Kuepfer; Do You Speak Bride CEO Wendy Rivera; son of Zig Ziglar and CEO Tom Ziglar; and WOWO Radios Pat Miller. Comedian John Branyan willbe event emcee.

Whether its learning from the experience of someone who has gone before you or talking to the young person who reminds you of your original vision, connection is priceless, said Kauffman, co-founder of the event.

The conference is open to all ages. Tickets are $197 each and $98.50 for students, with group pricing available.For more information or to purchase tickets, visit https://kruseplaza.com/ell/.

To share a thought, a favorite quote or other wisdom about leadership, email Lisa Green at lisagreen@jg.net. Lead On also appears every other week as a column in The Journal Gazette's Sunday Business section.

Originally posted here:
Auburn to host new "Entrepreneurs, Leaders, and Legends Conference" | Lead on - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Take a deep breath.

Everyone feels overwhelmed by life and stressed out at times most stressis normal and will pass. Instead of working yourself to exhaustion, know when to take a break. You can get a lot more done with a clear mind and a happy heart.

Only you know what is too much for you to handle so take care of yourself. Your tasks will still be there tomorrow, so if you want to spend today not caring about your responsibilities then let them go.

RELATED: How To Change Your Life & Find Happiness In 4 Simple Steps

You shouldnt feel guilty if you want to stay in bed, rest, and binge watch a television show. Dont be afraid to answer yes to Netflix asking are you still watching? If you need time to reflect, then take a long walk and enjoy the scenery all around you. Maybe you have friends that you have been too busy to spend time with and now would be a great time to see them. Plan a cute dinner with your gal pals, get drinks, and have akiki!

If your brain has been in overdrive, maybe put more attention on connecting with your body to relieve your anxiety. Take a hot yoga or spin class to get your body moving. Just do things that will bring you joy and satisfaction.

It is important that you put yourself and your mental health first, so take the necessary steps you need to take to do that. If you have been wanting to take up a new hobby, nothing is stopping you. Enroll in that photography class you have always wanted to take. Find the balance and reach equilibrium.

Life is difficult, but it can also be beautiful. So focus on finding the beauty in it instead of just seeing the darkness and gloom that comes with anxiety and the feelings of being overwhelmed with life.

It might not be obvious right now, but it will get better and you will overcome this.

These anxiety quotes about what it feels like to be overwhelmed are sure to give you the right mindset to help you find peace and calm, even when you're stressed out.

Promise me you will not spend so much time treading water and trying to keep your head above the waves that you forget, truly forget, how much you have always loved to swim. Tyler Knott Gregson

RELATED: How To Make It Through The Day (And Life) When Youre Feeling Overwhelmed

"You cant calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass. Timber Hawkeye

"Make sure your worst enemy is not living between your ears." Laird Hamilton

"Life is short. Stop worrying about what might happen. Live in the moment. Follow your heart. Be with good people. Forget what hurt you but never forget what it taught you." Karen Salmansohn

"Sometimes when Im not feeling so happy, I do something to make someone else happy. Afterwards I find Im suddenly feeling happy again." Karen Salmansohn

"Dont let people pull you into their storm. Instead, pull them into your peace." Unknown

"The comeback is always stronger than the setback." Unknown

A woman who lives with the stress of an overwhelmed schedule will often ache with the sadness of an underwhelmed soul. Lysa Terkeurst

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace. Robert J. Sawyer

Life has many ways of testing a persons will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once. Paulo Coelho

RELATED: 7 Tips For When You Feel SUPER-Stressed And Overwhelmed At Work

Sometimes you just need to be selfish and take care of you. If they love you, theyll understand. Robert Tew

"I feel so much that it is hard for me at times to feel anything at all. Mary Kate Teske

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go. Abraham Lincoln

"If a door closes, quit banging on it. Whatever was behind it was not meant for you. Consider that perhaps the door was closed because youre worth so much more than what was on the other side." Unknown

"Spend time with people who bring out the best in you. Not the stress in you." Unknown

"Im not yet where I want to be. But thank goodness Im not where I used to be. Onward and upward." Karen Salmansohn

"Stop living in the land of why. There are no happy answers to why me? why didnt I? Why did I? If you must ask any questions, ponder: How can I grow? Whats in my control to change? Whats a gain in my pain?" Karen Salmansohn

"Everything youve ever done, every person youve ever met, every experience youve ever had is a part of who you are today, adding interesting layers to your being, and colorful depths to your soul. Everything needed to be as it was, so you could grow as you did and do." Karen Salmansohn

Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it. Ann Landers

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking your overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. Mark Twain

RELATED: The Most Overwhelmed Zodiac Signs Who Get Easily Stressed Out By Life

Life can be magnificent and overwhelmingthat is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live. Albert Camus

When it hurtsobserve. Life is trying to teach you something. Anita Krizzan

Some days you will feel like the ocean. Some days you will feel like you are drowning in it. Lora Mathis

I often think I cant do this anymore but then I realize what choice do I have? Justin Blaney

"Getting knocked down in life is a given. Getting up and moving forward is a choice." Zig Ziglar

RELATED: 10 Essential Coping Skills To Lean On When Life Feels Overwhelming

"What is coming is better than what is gone. Let this belief aim you in the direction you need to go." Karen Salmanson

"Just doing nothing and having those still moments is what really rejuvenates the body." Miranda Kerr

"If we don't see a failure as a challenge to modify our approach, but rather as a problem with ourselves, as a personality defect, we will immediately feel overwhelmed." Anthony Robbins

"When you're overwhelmed by your emotion, you listen less and you judge more. This is also the reality of the dogmatic mind." Tariq Ramadan

"You are more than the mistakes youve made. Instead youre the wisdom, love, strength, and compassion youve gained from all youve been through." Karen Salmansohn

"No matter where you are in life, celebrate it! Its either a product of your growth or a place that will help you to grow. Cheers to today!" Unknown

"Anxiety happens when you think to have to figure out everything all at once. Breathe. Youre strong. You got this. Take it day by day." Karen Salmansohn

"We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace." Elizabeth Gilbert

RELATED: 5 Sneaky Reasons You're Unhappy And Stressed Out

"Even from a dark night, songs of beauty can be born." Mary Anne Radmacher

"When life gets hectic and you feel overwhelmed, take a moment to focus on the people and things you are most grateful for. When you have an attitude of gratitude, frustrating troubles will fall by the wayside." Dana Arcuri

"When you do nothing, you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved, you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better." Unknown

"We should all relax about life because you don't have a clue as to what's really going on." Barry Sonnenfeld

"Life is tough my darling but so are you." Stephanie Bennett Henry

"Sky above me, earth below me, fire within me." Unknown

"In order to move on you must understand why you felt how you did and why you no longer need to feel it." Mitch Albom

"You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anyone." Maya Angelou

"The benefit of carrying the entire world on your shoulders was that you didn't have to stare it in the face." Rhian J. Martin

RELATED: 23 Inspiring Quotes To Remind You To Live The Hell Out Of Your Life

"Don't give up now. Chances are your best kiss, your hardest laugh, and your greatest day are still yet to come." Atticus

"One must not let oneself be overwhelmed by sadness." Jackie Kennedy

"The best is yet to come." Unknown

"Anxiety happens when you think you have to figure out everything all at once. Breathe. You're strong. You got this. Take it day by day." Karen Salmansohn

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You have dealt with so much, and done the best that you can. So, take a moment now to appreciate how strong you are." Karen Salmansohn

"Dont let little things take up too much room in your heart. Or youll spend your entire life being annoyed and upset." Unknown

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." Friedrich Nietzsche

RELATED: How To Create 'Sacred' Space At Home Where You Can Actually Relax

Jaycee Levin is a writer who covers pop culture, astrology, and relationship topics.

More here:
50 Anxiety Quotes On Being Overwhelmed (And How To Relieve Stress) - YourTango

Happy New Year! I love saying that because it rings with the hope and promise of good things to come. I believe we can expect many blessings in the new year. Yet, many times we ask, Where did last year go?

For many years, I have kept a journal in which I keep a record of phone calls, correspondence, visitation, appointments, hours involved and other information related to work and ministry. I also record many blessings that come my way through family, friends and other sources. My journals are a record of where my year went and a reminder of Gods many blessings. I highly recommend keeping a journal of your journey through life. God required this of Moses and the Israelites.

In Numbers 33:2 it is written, At the Lords command, Moses recorded the stages in their journey. This is their journey by stages

Numbers 33 goes on to record 40-some places the Israelites camped on their journey to the promised land. It would be good if we also slowed down enough to review our journey. If we will, well discover the year has been full of Gods goodness.

Psalm 65:11 states: You crown the year with Your goodness, And Your paths drip with abundance.

This past year has brought abundant blessings into our lives. Regular reviews of Gods goodness will add to the joys of living. Let us frequently reflect on our journey and give God thanks for his many specific blessings.

Write your blessing on a calendar or in a journal and review them daily. Talk about them when you sit at the table and when you tuck the kids in at night. Once again Ill go over what God has done, lay out on the table the ancient wonders; Ill ponder all the things youve accomplished, and give a long, loving look at your acts, it says in Psalm 77:11-12. If we will review our journey daily, weekly and monthly, well see Gods many blessings, and have faith for the new year ahead.

One of the biggest reasons peoples faith is weak, or they lose their faith altogether, is because they fail to remember the good things God had done. The year past has brought blessings we should remember, and the new year will bring blessings also.

So, what does the new year hold? What do you want to accomplish? Have you made any New Years resolutions or set any goals?

I used to be against goal-setting because it seemed to be too self-centered and self-serving. However, I begin to realize godly goal-setting isnt just about what I want to do, but what I believe God wants to accomplish. As Zig Ziglar has said, Goals are fundamentally statements of faith faith in what God wants to achieve through you. And I learned a new acrostic for the word Goals from John Maxwell.

G.O.A.L.S.: Godly Objectives Assure Lasting Success.

So, what godly objectives and lasting success does God want for you? What do you believe God wants to accomplish in you, through you and for you in this New Year? What promise does he want you to possess, what godly character does he want you to develop, and what good things will he help you do for others? The apostle Paul summarized his goals this way in Philippians 3:10-14:

I want to know Christ yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Coming to know the creator better through the example and teachings of Jesus is a supremely worthy goal. It deserves to be at the top of our list. Read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John throughout 2020 to get to know Jesus better. Dont dwell on past failures. Press ahead toward what God has created you for. It will bring the greatest joy to your life.

At the beginning of 2020, lets pause and review the past year, paying special attention to the blessings, and then let us look forward to the new year with hope and faith. And as we go forward in our journey, let us gratefully record, review and retell the many good things we experience. I need to do a better job of this myself. I hope youll join me.

Happy New Year and blessings to all!

Dan Matney is the pastor at New Life Assembly of God in Avon. Email him at pastordanmatney@hotmail.com.

See the rest here:
Matney: Hope and faith in the new year - Vail Daily News

Sure, it looks like a very fancy chandelier, but it's actually a quantum computer and it's helping Daimler develop new EV battery chemistries.

Right now, we're living in a time where electric cars are really, genuinely good. They have long range capability, can charge in reasonable amounts of time, and are being marketed by automakers as serious vehicles, not novelties or something to sell only to stay in compliance with government regulations.

Still, genuinely good isn't good enough. Thus, people are looking for ways to improve the EV experience. Motors are already superpowerful and relatively efficient, so the next meaningful jump forward will likely come on the energy storage side of things, and many companies are banking on that jump being in the form of solid-state batteries.

Why solid-state batteries? Because, in theory, they will be lighter and more compact, more energy-dense and faster charging. Oh, and they'll likely be safer too with less of a possibility of a dangerous thermal runaway like lithium-ion. Only, here's the thing: they don't really exist yet.

Enter IBM (yes, that IBM), which at the CES 2020 show in Las Vegas on Tuesday announced that it had partnered with Daimler to leverage its considerable resources and research into quantum computing to help lick this solid-state battery problem once and for all.

How exactly are quantum computers helping to solve the complex problems that will lead to solid-state battery technology? Well, as the patron saint of grumpy people who swear a lot (Samuel L. Jackson) said in Jurassic Park, "Hold onto your butts."

In the most basic sense, the quantum computers from IBM have modeled the behavior of three different lithium-containing molecules. This, in turn, allows researchers to better understand how they will affect the energy storage and discharge properties that manufacturers are looking for in batteries. Specifically, simulating these molecules will enable scientists to find their "ground state" or most stable configuration.

This simulation of simple molecules is possible on traditional supercomputers, but it takes vast amounts of computing power and time, and as the molecules being simulated get more complex, the likelihood of errors gets bigger. Quantum computing gets around this by using the ideas of superposition (think Schrodinger's cat) and entanglement (aka Einstein's "spooky action at a distance") to much more efficiently evaluate much, much more data than a traditional computer.

Right now, the most promising of these new quantum computer-assisted potential battery chemistries -- according to IBM and Daimler, of course -- is lithium-sulfur. According to the research, lithium-sulfur batteries would be more powerful, longer-lasting and cheaper (the battery holy trinity) than today's lithium-ion cells.

So does this mean that we'll be seeing electric Benzes rolling around with sweet new lithium-sulfur batteries in the next year or two? Not really -- currently, neither company has offered an ETA on the tech -- but what it does mean is that researchers now have a leg up on developing the future of energy storage, and that's pretty damned cool.

73 Photos

Now playing: Watch this: Quantum computing is the new super supercomputer

4:11

Here is the original post:

CES 2020: IBM and Daimler teaming up for a quantum leap in battery tech - CNET

Column Just before Christmas, Google claimed quantum supremacy. The company had configured a quantum computer to produce results that would take conventional computers some 10,000 years to replicate - a landmark event.

Bollocks, said IBM - which also has big investments both in quantum computing and not letting Google get away with stuff. Using Summit, the world's largest conventional supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee, IBM claimed it could do the same calculation in a smidge over two days.

As befits all things quantum, the truth is a bit of both. IBM's claim is fair enough - but it's right at the edge of Summit's capability and frankly a massive waste of its time. Google could, if it wished, tweak the quantum calculation to move it out of that range. And it might: the calculation was chosen precisely not because it was easy, but because it was hard. Harder is better.

Google's quantum CPU has 54 qubits, quantum bits that can stay in a state of being simultaneously one and zero. The active device itself is remarkably tiny, a silicon chip around a centimetre square, or four times the size of the Z80 die in your childhood ZX Spectrum. On top of the silicon, a nest of aluminium tickled by microwaves hosts the actual qubits. The aluminium becomes superconducting below around 100K, but the very coldest part of the circuit is just 15 millikelvins. At this temperature the qubits have low enough noise to survive long enough to be useful

By configuring the qubits in a circuit, setting up data and analysing the patterns that emerge when the superpositions are observed and thus collapse to either one or zero, Google can determine the probable correct outcome for the problem the circuit represents. 54 qubits, if represented in conventional computer terms, would need 254 bits of RAM to represent each step of the calculation, or two petabytes' worth. Manipulating this much data many times over gives the 10 millennia figure Google claims.

IBM, on the other hand, says that it has just enough disk space on Summit to store the complete calculation. However you do it, though, it's not very useful; the only application is in random number generation. That's a fun, important and curiously nuanced field, but you don't really need a refrigerator stuffed full of qubits to get there. You certainly don't need the 27,648 NVidia Tesla GPUs in Summit chewing through 16 megawatts of power.

What Google is actually doing is known in the trade as "pulling a Steve", from the marketing antics of the late Steve Jobs. In particular, his tour at NeXT Inc, the company he started in the late 1980s to annoy Apple and produce idiosyncratic workstations. Hugely expensive to make and even more so to buy, the NeXT systems were never in danger of achieving dominance - but you wouldn't know that from Jobs' pronouncements. He declared market supremacy at every opportunity, although in carefully crafted phrases that critics joked defined the market as "black cubic workstations running NeXTOS."

Much the same is true of Google's claim. The calculation is carefully crafted to do precisely the things that Google's quantum computer can do - the important thing isn't the result, but the journey. Perhaps the best analogy is with the Wright Brothers' first flight: of no practical use, but tremendous significance.

What happened to NeXT? It got out of hardware and concentrated on software, then Jobs sold it - and himself - to Apple, and folded in some of that software into MacOS development. Oh, and some cat called Berners-Lee built something called the World Wide Web on a Next Cube.

Nothing like this will happen with Google's technology. There's no new web waiting to be borne on the wings of supercooled qubits. Even some of the more plausible things, like quantum decryption of internet traffic, is a very long way from reality - and, once it happens, it's going to be relatively trivial to tweak conventional encryption to defeat it. But the raw demonstration, that a frozen lunchbox consuming virtually no power in its core can outperform a computer chewing through enough wattage to keep a small town going, is a powerful inducement for more work.

That's Google's big achievement. So many new and promising technologies have failed not because they could never live up to expectations but because they cant survive infancy. Existing, established technology has all the advantages: it generates money, it has distribution channels, it has an army of experts behind it, and it can adjust to close down challengers before they get going. To take just one company - Intel has tried for decades to break out of the x86 CPU prison. New wireless standards, new memory technologies, new chip architectures, new display systems, new storage and security ideas - year after year, the company casts about for something new that'll make money. It never gets there.

Google's "quantum supremacy" isn't there either, but it has done enough to protect its infant prince in its superconducting crib. That's worth a bit of hype.

Sponsored: Detecting cyber attacks as a small to medium business

See the rest here:

Google and IBM square off in Schrodingers catfight over quantum supremacy - The Register

Only so many transistors can fit on a silicon chip. Photograph: Rowan Morgan/Alamy Stock Photo

Way back in the 1960s, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors that could be fitted on a silicon chip was doubling every two years. Since the transistor count is related to processing power, that meant that computing power was effectively doubling every two years. Thus was born Moores law, which for most people working in the computer industry or at any rate those younger than 40 has provided the kind of bedrock certainty that Newtons laws of motion did for mechanical engineers.

There is, however, one difference. Moores law is just a statement of an empirical correlation observed over a particular period in history and we are reaching the limits of its application. In 2010, Moore himself predicted that the laws of physics would call a halt to the exponential increases. In terms of size of transistor, he said, you can see that were approaching the size of atoms, which is a fundamental barrier, but itll be two or three generations before we get that far but thats as far out as weve ever been able to see. We have another 10 to 20 years before we reach a fundamental limit.

Weve now reached 2020 and so the certainty that we will always have sufficiently powerful computing hardware for our expanding needs is beginning to look complacent. Since this has been obvious for decades to those in the business, theres been lots of research into ingenious ways of packing more computing power into machines, for example using multi-core architectures in which a CPU has two or more separate processing units called cores in the hope of postponing the awful day when the silicon chip finally runs out of road. (The new Apple Mac Pro, for example, is powered by a 28-core Intel Xeon processor.) And of course there is also a good deal of frenzied research into quantum computing, which could, in principle, be an epochal development.

But computing involves a combination of hardware and software and one of the predictable consequences of Moores law is that it made programmers lazier. Writing software is a craft and some people are better at it than others. They write code that is more elegant and, more importantly, leaner, so that it executes faster. In the early days, when the hardware was relatively primitive, craftsmanship really mattered. When Bill Gates was a lad, for example, he wrote a Basic interpreter for one of the earliest microcomputers, the TRS-80. Because the machine had only a tiny read-only memory, Gates had to fit it into just 16 kilobytes. He wrote it in assembly language to increase efficiency and save space; theres a legend that for years afterwards he could recite the entire program by heart.

There are thousands of stories like this from the early days of computing. But as Moores law took hold, the need to write lean, parsimonious code gradually disappeared and incentives changed. Programming became industrialised as software engineering. The construction of sprawling software ecosystems such as operating systems and commercial applications required large teams of developers; these then spawned associated bureaucracies of project managers and executives. Large software projects morphed into the kind of death march memorably chronicled in Fred Brookss celebrated book, The Mythical Man-Month, which was published in 1975 and has never been out of print, for the very good reason that its still relevant. And in the process, software became bloated and often inefficient.

But this didnt matter because the hardware was always delivering the computing power that concealed the bloatware problem. Conscientious programmers were often infuriated by this. The only consequence of the powerful hardware I see, wrote one, is that programmers write more and more bloated software on it. They become lazier, because the hardware is fast they do not try to learn algorithms nor to optimise their code this is crazy!

It is. In a lecture in 1997, Nathan Myhrvold, who was once Bill Gatess chief technology officer, set out his Four Laws of Software. 1: software is like a gas it expands to fill its container. 2: software grows until it is limited by Moores law. 3: software growth makes Moores law possible people buy new hardware because the software requires it. And, finally, 4: software is only limited by human ambition and expectation.

As Moores law reaches the end of its dominion, Myhrvolds laws suggest that we basically have only two options. Either we moderate our ambitions or we go back to writing leaner, more efficient code. In other words, back to the future.

What just happened? Writer and researcher Dan Wang has a remarkable review of the year in technology on his blog, including an informed, detached perspective on the prospects for Chinese domination of new tech.

Algorithm says no Theres a provocative essay by Cory Doctorow on the LA Review of Books blog on the innate conservatism of machine-learning.

Fall of the big beasts How to lose a monopoly: Microsoft, IBM and antitrust is a terrific long-view essay about company survival and change by Benedict Evans on his blog.

Read more here:

Were approaching the limits of computer power we need new programmers now - The Guardian

Steve Anderrson Saturday, 11 January 2020, 04:58 EST Modified date: Saturday, 11 January 2020, 04:58 EST

At a glance, the quantum volume is a measure of the complexity of a problem that a quantum computer can provide a solution. Quantum volume can also use to compare the performance of different quantum computers.

Ever since 2016, the IBM executives have doubled this value. In the 21st Century, Quantum computers have hailed as one of the most important innovations of the 21st century, along with potential applications in almost all fields of industries. Be it healthcare or artificial intelligence, and even financial modelling, to name a few.

Recently, quantum computers have also entered a new phase of development which can describe as practical. The first real quantum computer was launched in 2009 by Jonathan Holm. From that time, the quantum computer development has travelled a long way. At the moment, the industry driven by a handful of tech giants, including Google and IBM.

Even though IBMs latest advances viewed as significant advances, quantum computers can currently only be used for particular tasks. This indicates that they are far away from the general-purpose which classic computers serve us and to which we are used to.

Therefore, some people start worrying that the encryption technology which used to protect cryptocurrencies, for example, bitcoin may get destroyed. This worry is at least unfounded at present.

As the network is entirely built around the secure cryptographic transactions, a powerful quantum computer could eventually crack the encryption technology which used to generate Bitcoins private keys.

However, as per an article which was published by Martin Roetteler and various co-authors in June in 2017, such type of a machine requires approximately 2,500 qubits of processing power so that they can crack the 256-bit encryption technology which is used by Bitcoin.

Since the most powerful quantum computer which the world currently has only consisted of 72 qubit processors, one thing is clear that it will take several years for a quantum computer to reach the level of threatening encryption technology.

With the help of IBMs computing power which keeps doubling every year, and also the fact that Google has achieved quantum hegemony, Quantum might be working to ensure that Bitcoin can resist potential quantum computing attacks.

Read more:

Is Quantum Technology The Future Of The World? - The Coin Republic

Jeffrey Epstein in 2004.

Rick Friedman | Corbis News | Getty Images

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Friday that it had placed one of its tenured professors on paid administrative leave after finding that he "purposefully failed to inform MIT" that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was the source of two donations in 2012 to support the professor's research, and that the professor got a $60,000 personal gift from Epstein.

A scathing report released by MIT also found that the decision by three administrators to accept donations from Epstein, who pleaded guilty to sex crimes in Florida in 2008 one of which involved a minor girl "was the result of collective and serious errors in judgment that resulted in serious damage to the MIT community."

The report noted that even as its findings have been made public, "MIT is still without a clear and comprehensive gift policy or a process to properly vet donors." However, the university has begun to develop such a process.

Epstein, a former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, donated $850,000 to MIT from 2002 through 2017 in 10 separate gifts, the report said.

That was $50,000 more than the amount MIT has previously reported to have received from Epstein.

"The earliest gift was $100,000 given in 2002 to support the research of the late Professor Marvin Minsky, who died in 2016," MIT said as it released the report, which comes after four months of investigation of Epstein's ties to MIT conducted by the law firm Goodwin Procter.

"The remaining nine donations, all made after Epstein's 2008 conviction, included $525,000 to the Media Lab and $225,000 to" mechanical engineering professor Seth Lloyd, the report said.

The report also found that, "Unbeknownst to any members of MIT's senior leadership ... Epstein visited MIT nine times between 2013 and 2017."

"The fact-finding reveals that these visits and all post-conviction gifts from Epstein were driven by either former Media Lab director Joi Ito or professor of mechanical engineering Seth Lloyd, and not by the MIT administration or the Office of Resource Development."

Ito resigned last year after revelations about Epstein's donations to the Media Lab.

Lloyd received two donations of $50,000 in 2012, and the remaining $125,000 in 2017, according to the report.

"Epstein viewed the 2012 gifts as a trial balloon to test MIT's willingness to accept donations following his conviction" in Florida, MIT said.

"Professor Lloyd knew that donations from Epstein would be controversial and that MIT might reject them," MIT said.

"We conclude that, in concert with Epstein, he purposefully decided not to alert the Institute to Epstein's criminal record, choosing instead to allow mid-level administrators to process the donations without any formal discussion or diligence concerning Epstein."

Seth Lloyd is a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Photo:Dmitry Rozhkov | Wikipedia CC

Lloyd was put on paid leave after it was found that he "purposefully failed to" tell MIT that Epstein was the source of the two earliest donations to him.

The report also found that Lloyd had "received a personal gift of $60,000 from Epstein in 2005 or 2006, which he acknowledged was deposited into a personal bank account and not reported to MIT," the university said in a press statement.

Lloyd is an influential thinker in the field of quantum mechanical engineering.

Educated at Harvard College and Cambridge University in England, Lloyd was the first person to propose a "technologically feasible design for a quantum computer," according to his resume. His 2006 book, "Programming the Universe," argues that the universe is a giant quantum computer calculating its own evolution.

"In addition to his own donations, Epstein claimed to have arranged for donations to MIT from other wealthy individuals," the report said. "In 2014, Epstein claimed to have arranged for Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates to provide an anonymous $2 million donation to the Media Lab. He also claimed that same year to have arranged for a $5 million anonymous donation to the Media Lab from Leon Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management. Representatives of Bill Gates have told us that Gates flatly denies that Epstein had anything to do with Gates's donation to the Media Lab."

University President L. Rafael Reif had not been aware that MIT was accepting donations from Epstein, who killed himself in a Manhattan jail in August after being arrested the prior month on federal child sex trafficking charges, according to the report.

"But the review finds that three MIT vice presidents learned of Epstein's donations to the MIT Media Lab, and his status as a convicted sex offender, in 2013," the university said in a prepared statement.

"In the absence of any MIT policy regarding controversial gifts, Epstein's subsequent gifts to the Institute were approved under an informal framework developed by the three administrators, R. Gregory Morgan, Jeffrey Newton, and Israel Ruiz."

"Since MIT had no policy or processes for handling controversial donors in place at the time, the decision to accept Epstein's post-conviction donations cannot be judged to be a policy violation," the report said.

"But it is clear that the decision was the result of collective and significant errors in judgment that resulted in serious damage to the MIT community."

Reif, in a letter addressed to the university's community, said, "Today's findings present disturbing new information about Jeffrey Epstein's connections with individuals at MIT: how extensive those ties were and how long they continued. This includes the decision by a lab director to bring this Level 3 sex offender to campus repeatedly."

"That it was possible for Epstein to have so many opportunities to interact with members of our community is distressing and unacceptable; I cannot imagine how painful it must be for survivors of sexual assault and abuse," Reif said.

"Clearly, we must establish policy guardrails to prevent this from happening again."

The report notes, "While Epstein made charitable donations before his 2008 conviction, after that conviction he may have had a second motive for his donations: to launder his reputation by associating himself with reputable individuals and institutions."

See the original post:

Jeffrey Epstein scandal: MIT professor put on leave, he 'failed to inform' college that sex offender made donations - CNBC

The new decade will unfurl a bag of seismic shifts, predicts the creator of Cardano and Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson. And these changes will propel cryptocurrency and blockchain solutions to the forefront as legacy systems buckle, transform or dissolve.

In an ask-me-anything session uploaded on January 3rd, the 11th birthday of Bitcoin, Hoskinson acknowledges how the popular cryptocurrency gave him an eye-opening introduction to the world of global finance, and he recounts how dramatically official attitudes and perceptions have changed.

Every central bank in the world is aware of cryptocurrencies and some are even taking positions in cryptocurrencies. Theres really never been a time in human history where one piece of technology has obtained such enormous global relevance without any central coordinated effort, any central coordinated marketing. No company controls it and the revolution is just getting started.

And he expects its emergence to coalesce with other epic changes. In a big picture reveal, Hoskinson plots some of the major events he believes will shape the new decade.

2020 Predictions

Hoskinson says the consequences of these technologies will reach every government service and that cryptocurrencies will gain an opening once another economic collapse similar to 2008 shakes the markets this decade.

I think that means its a great opening for cryptocurrencies to be ready to start taking over the global economy.

Hoskinson adds that hes happy to be alive to witness all of the changes he anticipates, including a reorganization of the media.

This is the last decade of traditional organized media, in my view. Were probably going to have less CNNs and Fox Newses and Bloombergs and Wall Street Journals and more Joe Rogans, especially as we enter the 2025s and beyond. And I think our space in particular is going to fundamentally change the incentives of journalism. And well actually move to a different way of paying for content, curating content.

Check Latest News Headlines

Featured Image: Shutterstock/Liu zishan

See the original post:

Charles Hoskinson Predicts Economic Collapse, Rise of Quantum Computing, Space Travel and Cryptocurrency in the 2020s - The Daily Hodl

Questions about how to best implement breast density notification laws and their overall efficacy have been swirling over the past few years. What do women need to know, whats the best mechanism for informing them, and what language should be used?

To date, only 38 states have breast density notification laws, and they are all different. That means women nationwide arent receiving the same information in a uniform way. This variation resulted in several recent investigations, analyzing whether this type of legislation is effective.

Research Shows a Lack of Efficacy

A study published in the Jan. 8 Journal of General Internal Medicine revealed the laws and the notification letters are falling short of their intent to increase womens understanding of why breast density is important in catching and combatting breast cancer.

In a survey of nearly 2,000 women, investigators evaluated a womans reported history of increased breast density, her knowledge of the increased breast cancer risk accompanying dense breasts, her understanding of how dense breasts can hide cancers on mammography, and her anxieties over the disease.

According to results, dense breast notification laws did succeed in helping some women understand they have dense breasts. The impact was seen most among women who post-high school education.

However, they didnt improve womens understanding of the dense breast-breast cancer link or that dense breasts reduce mammographys detection capability. In fact, among participants, only 23 percent of women located in both states with and without dense breast notification legislation reported understanding that increased breast density is associated with a higher risk of breast cancer. Sixty-eight percent understood the dense-breast effect on mammograms.

Investigators pointed to the disparity in education as a potential culprit for the limited impact of notification legislation.

We know that women with less education are less likely to receive high-quality breast cancer screening and treatment, said senior author Cary Gross, M.D., a Yale University professor of medicine and member of the Yale Cancer Center, in a press release. Our study underscores one potential mechanism for this disparity. Ensuring that notifications are written in simple language may help improve understanding of breast density for all women.

Additional research also points to another contributing factor. In a recently published study in Academic Radiology, investigators report that online patient education material focused on breast density is largely written at a level too difficult for more patients to fully comprehend and process.

The American Medical Association currently recommends patient education materials be written at a 6th-grade reading level. But, this study of 41 websites dedicated to providing patient-focused, breast-density information including academic, non-profit, commercial, and government sources identified the sites were written at levels ranging from an 8th-grade to advanced-college. Eleventh grade was the average level. Nearly half included diagrams, and very few offered video content to aid in explanations.

The result, researchers wrote, is that patients arent able to find resources online to help them further understand any breast density notifications.

Readability of currently available online patient-education materials on breast density may be written at a level too difficult for the general public to comprehend, which may represent a barrier to educational goals of newly passed federal breast density legislation, they wrote.

A Different Patient Path to Information

JoAnn Pushkin, executive director of patient information website DenseBreast-info.org, disagreed. Instead, she said, the researchers reviewed sources that werent created with patients in mind.

While the challenge of balancing patient readability with the necessity of including medical terminology is one which we appreciate, Pushkin said, the study included and analyzed content from industry publications and manufacturer content which was not necessarily developed for a patient audience.

The conundrum surrounding the efficacy of these patient education websites likely centers on the vernacular researchers used when evaluating resources. Instead of the term breast density, which investigators used to select sites, she said, patient notification letters include the terms dense breasts or dense breast tissue. Consequently, women could be searching for and accessing breast density information differently.

Ultimately, though, she said, patients and providers should not rely solely on online materials and notificaiton letters to ensure women fully understand the risks associated with having dense breasts. They are only part of the solution to educating women about breast density.

While inform laws were intended to raise a womans awareness about dense breasts, they were not intended to be a substitute for a conversation with her provider, Pushkin said. They do, though, result in a need for medically sources, patient-friendly resources to educate and inform that patient/provider conversation.

Read this article:
Breast Density Laws: Are They Working? Do Online Education Resources Help? - Diagnostic Imaging