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Tufts Joins Major Effort to Build the Next Generation of Quantum Computers – Tufts Now

Posted: September 2, 2020 at 1:57 am


Tufts is joining a major U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded center called the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA), led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The center hopes to create the next generation of quantum computers and apply them to the study of some of the most challenging problems in physics, chemistry, materials science, and more.

The QSA is one of five new DOE Quantum Information Science research centers announced on Aug. 26, and will be funded with $115 million over five years, supporting dozens of scientists at 15 institutions.

Peter Love, an associate professor of physics, will lead Tufts participation in the project. We have long been interested in using quantum computers for calculations in physics and chemistry, said Love.

A large-scale quantum computer would be a very powerful instrument for studying everything from the structure of large molecules to the nature and behavior of subatomic particles, he said. The only difficulty is that the quantum computers we need dont exist yet.

Quantum computers employ a fundamentally different approach to computing than those existing now, using quantum states of atoms, ions, light, quantum dots or superconducting circuits to store information.

The QSA will bring together world-class researchers and facilities to develop quantum systems that could significantly exceed the capability of todays computers. Multidisciplinary teams across all the institutions will work toward advancing qubit technologythe manner and materials in which information is stored in a quantum state, and other components of quantum computers.

Loves research will focus on developing simulation algorithms in areas such as particle and nuclear physics, which will be run by the new quantum computers. It is important to work hard on the algorithms now, so we are ready when the hardware appears, he said. Love is also part of a National Science Foundation-funded effort to develop a quantum computer and applications to run on it.

Quantum computing is an important and growing area of research at Tufts. Tom Vandervelde, an associate professor in electrical and computer engineering, Luke Davis, an assistant professor of chemistry, and Cristian Staii, an associate professor of physics, are exploring new materials capable of storing qubits.

Philip Shushkov, Charles W. Fotis Assistant Professor of Chemistry, has research focused on theoretical modeling of qubit materials, while Misha Kilmer, William Walker Professor of Mathematics, and Xiaozhe Hu, associate professor of mathematics, study quantum-inspired algorithms relevant to their research in linear algebra. Bruce Boghosian, professor of mathematics, also made some fundamental contributions to quantum simulation in the late 1990s.

Mike Silver can be reached at mike.silver@tufts.edu.

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Tufts Joins Major Effort to Build the Next Generation of Quantum Computers - Tufts Now

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September 2nd, 2020 at 1:57 am

Posted in Quantum Computing

The Quantum Dream: Are We There Yet? – Toolbox

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The emergence of quantum computing has led industry heavyweights to fast track their research and innovations. This week, Google conducted the largest chemical simulation on a quantum computer to date. The U.S. Department of Energy, on the other hand, launched five new Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers. Will this accelerate quantum computings progress?

Quantum technology is the next big wave in the tech landscape. As opposed to traditional computers where all the information emails, tweets, YouTube videos, and Facebook photos are streams of electrical pulses in binary digits, 1s and 0s; quantum computers rely on quantum bits or qubits to store information. Qubits are subatomic particles, such as electrons or photons which change their state regularly. Therefore, they can be 1s and 0s at the same time. This enables quantum computers to run multiple complex computational tasks simultaneously and faster when compared to digital computers, mainframes, and servers.

Introduced in the 1900s, quantum computing can unlock the complexities across different industries much faster than traditional computers. A quantum computer can decipher complex encryption systems that can easily impact digital banking, cryptocurrencies, and e-commerce sectors, which heavily depend on encrypted data. Quantum computers can expedite the discovery of new medicines, aid in climate change, power AI, transform logistics, and design new materials. In the U.S., technology giants, including IBM, Google, Honeywell, Microsoft, Intel, IonQ, and Rigetti Computing, are leading the race to build quantum computers and gain a foothold in the quantum computing space. Whereas Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei are leading companies in China.

For a long time, the U.S. and its allies, such as Japan and Germany, had been working hard to compete with China to dominate the quantum technology space. In 2018, the U.S. government released the National Strategy Overview for Quantum Information Science to reduce technical skills gaps and accelerate quantum computing research and development.

In 2019, Google claimed quantum supremacy for supercomputers when the companys Sycamore processor performed specific tasks in 200 seconds, which would have taken a supercomputer 10,000 years to complete. In the same year, Intel rolled out Horse Ridge, a cryogenic quantum control chip, to reduce the quantum computing complexities and accelerate quantum practicality.

Tech news: Is Data Portability the Answer To Anti-Competitive Practices?

Whats 2020 Looking Like For Quantum Computing?

In July 2020, IBM announced a research partnership with the Japanese business and academia to advance quantum computing innovations. This alliance will deepen ties between the countries and build an ecosystem to improve quantum skills and advance research and development.

More recently, in June 2020, Honeywell announced the development of the worlds highest-performing quantum computer. AWS, Microsoft, and several other IaaS providers have announced quantum cloud services, an initiative to advance quantum computing adoption. In August 2020, AWS announced the general availability of its Amazon Braket, a quantum cloud service that allows developers to design, develop, test, and run quantum algorithms.

Since last year, auto manufacturers, such as Daimler and Volkswagen have been leveraging quantum computers to identify new methods to improve electric vehicle battery performance. Pharmaceutical companies are also using the technology to develop new medicines and drugs.

Last week, the Google AI Quantum team used their quantum processor, Sycamore, to simulate changes in the configuration of a chemical molecule, diazene. During the process, the computer was able to describe the changes in the positions of hydrogen accurately. The computer also gave an accurate description of the binding energy of hydrogen in bigger chains.

If quantum computers develop the ability to predict chemical processes, it would advance the development of a wide range of new materials with unknown properties. Current quantum computers, unfortunately, lack the augmented scaling required for such a task. Although todays computers are not ready to take on such a challenge yet, computer scientists hope to accomplish this in the near future as tech giants like Google invest in quantum computing-related research.

Tech news: Will Googles Nearby Share Have Anything Transformative to Offer?

It, therefore, came as a relief to many computer scientists when the U.S. Department of Energy announced an investment of $625 million over the next five years for five newly formed Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers in the U.S. The newly formed hubs are an amalgam of research universities, national labs, and tech titans in quantum computing. Each of the research hubs is led by the Energy Departments Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermi National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; powered by Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Riggeti, and ColdQuanta. This partnership aims to advance quantum computing commercialization.

Chetan Nayak, general manager of Quantum Hardware at Microsoft, says, While quantum computing will someday have a profound impact, todays quantum computing systems are still nascent technologies. To scale these systems, we must overcome a number of scientific challenges. Microsoft has been tackling these challenges head-on through our work towards developing topological qubits, classical information processing devices for quantum control, new quantum algorithms, and simulations.

At the start of this year, Daniel Newman, principal analyst and founding partner at Futurum Research, predicted that 2020 will be a big year for investors and Silicon Valley to invest in quantum computing companies. He said, It will be incredibly impactful over the next decade, and 2020 should be a big year for advancement and investment.

Quantum computing is still in the development phase, and the lack of suppliers and skilled researchers might be one of the influential factors in its establishment. However, if tech giants, and researchers continue to collaborate on a large scale, quantum technology can turbocharge innovation at a large scale.

What are your thoughts on the progress of quantum computing? Comment below or let us know on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. Wed love to hear from you!

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The Quantum Dream: Are We There Yet? - Toolbox

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September 2nd, 2020 at 1:57 am

Posted in Quantum Computing

Bipartisan Bill Calls for Government-Led Studies Into Emerging Tech Impacts – Nextgov

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Commerce Department and Federal Trade Commission-led studies diving deep into Americas pursuit, use and governance of multiple emerging technologiesand resulting in tips for national strategies to advance each and secure supply chainswould be required under a bipartisan bill introduced Friday.

The American Competitiveness on More Productive Emerging Tech Economy, or COMPETE Act, set forth by Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Bobby Rush, D-Ill., is a legislative package of several other previously-introduced bills focused on boosting Congress grasp of the tech landscape.

If passed, it would mandate new research into confronting online harms, and advancing eight buzzy areas of on-the-rise emerging technology: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain, new and advanced materials, unmanned delivery services, 3D printing, the internet of things, and IoT in manufacturing.

Such tech has expanded the horizons of humankind, drastically changing the way we exchange information and interact with the world around us, Rush said in a statement, adding that, as these technologies develop and become more prolific, it is imperative that the U.S. take the lead in appreciating both the benefits and risks associated with [them], and ensure that we remain competitive on the world stage.

Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce upon introduction, the 36-page bill incorporates the Advancing Blockchain Act, initially introduced by Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., the Advancing Quantum Computing Act from Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., and almost 10 other pieces of previously put forward legislation calling for research into contemporary technologies impact on commerce and society. The bill calls for year-long, agency-led investigations into each of the listed burgeoning technological industries and areaswith explicit instructions for the type of information the agencies would need to report back to Congress. The work would entail developing lists of public-private partnerships promoting the various techs adoption, exploring standards and policies implemented by those tapping into each, identifying near- and long-term risks among supply chains, pinpointing tech industry impacts on the U.S. economy and much more.

Studies are studies and from a Congressional standpoint they are generally used to inform oversight and legislative activity. Thats likely the case here, Mike Hettinger, founder of Hettinger Strategy Group and former House Oversight Committee staffer told Nextgov Tuesday. On [its] face, the bill is not going to change any existing policy related to any of the areas on which it is focused. That said, the more we know, the better off we will be.

Agencies involved in producing the reports would also need to craft recommendations for policies and legislation that would advance the expeditious adoption of the said technologies, according to the act.

Hettinger noted that the bill could signal that the participating lawmakers are teeing up potential legislative action.

Thats the thing to watch because for the most part when you have emerging technology you want to be very careful not to over-regulate it in a way that would hinder innovation, he said, noting that what we need more than anything in these areas is continued robust federal investment in related research and development.

You hope that by studying these areas in-depth first, youll avoid any knee-jerk regulation that could harm innovation, he added.

On top of honing in on each specific emerging technology, the bill also includes a section that Hettinger said hes particularly intrigued by, which is the full text of what was originally introduced as the Countering Online Harms Act. In the COMPETE Act, the portion mandates a study to consider whether and how artificial intelligence may be used to identify, remove, or take any other appropriate action necessary to address online harms, like manipulated content such as deepfakes used to mislead people, disinformation campaigns, fraudulent content intended to scamand beyond.

The issue of deceptive content and deepfakes is front and center today as the 2020 election moves into full swing, Hettinger said. Being able to identify what content is authentic and what has been manipulated is increasingly critical for protecting the integrity of our electoral process.

The bills included in the legislative bundle were put forth prior by several other lawmakersall of whom contributed to what Hettinger suggested marks a unique approach. He pointed out that outside of the Smart IoT Act, most pieces of legislation included in COMPETE were formerly introduced on the same date this summerMay 19and their language is strikingly similar, at times nearly identical.

This suggests to me that this was a coordinated approach from the outset, and part of an innovation agenda, Hettinger said. I dont know the behind the scenes posturing thats going on, but we do expect to see a lot of legislative activity between now and the end of the year so I assume the plan is to try and pass this combined package in the House before Congress adjourns for the year.

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Bipartisan Bill Calls for Government-Led Studies Into Emerging Tech Impacts - Nextgov

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September 2nd, 2020 at 1:57 am

Posted in Quantum Computing

Two Pune Research Institutes Are Building India’s First Optical Atomic Clocks – The Wire Science

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Students of IISER Pune next to the strontium-based optical atomic clocks setup. Photo: IISER Pune.

Pune/Bengaluru: Two Pune-based premier research institutes, the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), have joined hands to build Indias first two optical atomic clocks.

The institutes will build one clock each, with help from the Government of India. If the project is successful, India will join a small global club of countries with the ability to build these ultra-precise timekeeping devices.

According to the scientists involved, the clocks will only skip one second in more than 13.8 billion years, which is the approximate age of our universe.

Since the middle of the 20th century till now, there have been tremendous efforts in the field of atomic clocks, making time the most accurately measured physical quantity, the authors of a paper published in 2014 wrote.

Optical atomic clocks themselves have a few well-known applications. Foremost of course is accurate timekeeping which in turn has multiple applications of its own, according to Subhadeep De, an associate professor and expert in optical physics at IUCAA and one of the members of the project.

For example, GPS satellites use radar signals to determine the position of an object on the ground. However, there is a time lag both due to time taken for the signals to move between the ground and the satellites and because the satellites are in motion relative to the object while they move through Earths gravitational field, incurring really tiny but significant time delays arising from the theories of relativity.

The worlds prevailing frequency standard for measuring time is derived from caesium atomic clocks. Here, caesium atoms are imparted energy by different means in different designs and forced to jump from one energy level to a slightly higher one, called the atoms hyperfine ground states. Shortly after, the atom drops back to its previous state by emitting microwave radiation at 9,192,631,770 Hz.

Hz here is hertz, the SI unit of frequency, defined as per second. So when a detector measures 9,192,631,770 waves from crest to trough of this microwave emission, coming from the caesium atoms, one second will have passed.

According to the Mechatronics Handbook (2002), all timekeeping machines have three parts: an energy source, a resonator and a counter. In a household wall clock, the energy source is a AA or AAA battery; the resonator, in this case the clocks gears, is the system that moves in a periodic manner; and the counter is the display. The energy and resonator are together called an oscillator.

In atomic clocks, the oscillator is, say, a laser imparting energy to a caesium atom ticking between the two hyperfine ground states. The radiation the atom releases is the resonator. The detector is the counter.

The clocks being built by IUCAA and IISER have the same underlying principle but use more advanced technologies. Indeed, optical atomic clocks are considered to be the next step in the evolution of atomic clocks and are likely to replace caesium atomic clocks as the worlds time standard in future. A glimpse of the underlying engineering shows us why.

First, confining the atoms or ions is very difficult. To keep the clock precise, its operators need to ensure the atoms dont combine to form molecules, bump into each other and/or dont react with the containers walls. So instead of confining them in material containers, the IUCAA and IISER teams are using optical and electromagnetic traps.

Specifically, neutral atoms are confined in an optically created storage basket known as an optical lattice, which is created by interfering two counter-propagating laser beams, Umakant Rapol, an associate professor at IISER, said. The ions are confined by oscillating electric fields.

Second, once the particles have been confined, they will be laser-cooled to nearly absolute zero (the coldest temperature possible, 0 K or -273.15 C). In their simplest form, laser-cooling techniques force atoms to lose their kinetic energy and come very nearly to a still. Since the temperature of a macroscopic body is nothing but the collective kinetic energy of its atoms, a container of nearly-still atoms is bound to feel very cold. And once more of the atoms kinetic energy has been removed, their quantum physical effects become more noticeable, allowing the clock to be more precise.

The choice of atoms to use in the clock is dictated by whether they can be cooled to a few microkelvin above absolute zero using laser-cooling, and if their switching between the two energy states is immune to stray magnetic fields, electric fields, the temperature of the background, etc., Rapol said.

Ytterbium and strontium atoms check both these boxes. IUCAA will be building a ytterbium-ion clock. In this clock, a single ytterbium ion will be used to produce the resonating radiation. Using multiple ions gives rise to an effect called a Coulomb shift, which interferes with the clock design. IISER will be building a strontium-atom clock.

When a caesium atom swings between the two hyperfine ground states, it emits a specific amount of energy as microwave radiation. When the ytterbium and strontium atoms swing between two of their energy states, they emit energy as optical radiation. Both these elements have highly stable optical emissions at wavelengths of 467 nm and 698.4 nm corresponding to 642,121,496,772,645 Hz and 429,228,066,418,009 Hz for ytterbium-ion and strontium atom, respectively.

These high frequencies two orders of magnitude higher than the microwave radiation in caesium clocks is the source of the clocks ability to miss less than one second in 13.8 billion years.

(The makers of an optical strontium clock reported in 2014 that their device wouldnt miss one second in 15 billion years!)

Also read: Experimenting with Cold, Magnetic Materials in Indore

However, taking advantage of this stable emission means accurately detecting the high-frequency optical radiation. That is, if researchers need to build optical atomic clocks, they also need to be able to build and operate state-of-the-art frequency measurement systems. These devices in the form of frequency combs constitute the third feature of the IUCAA and IISER clocks.

A frequency comb is an advanced laser whose output radiation lies in multiple, evenly-spaced frequencies. This output can be used to convert high-frequency optical signals into more easily countable lower-frequency microwave signals like in the diagram shown below (source).

The principal challenge before India is to build all these devices from scratch. Rapol said the teams plan to develop most of the required technologies in Pune. They require expertise in the fields of optics, instrumentation, electronics, ultra-high vacuums, and mechanical and software engineering, among others.

National collaborations such as [us] working together with our next-door neighbour IISER will be beneficial, De said. Rapol mirrored this opinion: We are going to share expertise with IUCAA and are already working [together] to create an ion trap.

Rapol also said one clock is half-ready: We have laser-cooled the strontium atoms and are ready to load these atoms into one-dimensional chains, to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, and will have the optical clock soon, he said. They are also waiting to fit in the frequency comb.

He estimated that once the funds and equipment have been procured, it should take two years or less to build the clock at IISER. The IUCAA clock is expected to be ready in four or five years.

Once both clocks are operational, they will be linked together.

Grander applications

There are multiple open problems in physics at the moment. Four of the more prominent ones include the search for new physics, the reconciliation of quantum mechanics and relativity, an explanation for what happened to the universes antimatter, and the nature of dark matter.

De noted that various experiments designed to help answer these questions and others besides require researchers to be able to measure time in different contexts with increasingly higher precision and accuracy.

Rapol also expressed excitement about measuring changes in the values of fundamental constants. Constants are called so because their values dont change but the values of some constants could be changing too slightly for existing clocks to notice.

For example, the fine-structure constant is a number that determines the strength with which a charged particle, like an electron or a ytterbium ion, couples with an electromagnetic field. If this number increases or decreases with time, there could be implications for the whole universe everywhere charged particles interact with each other.

According to De, the ytterbium ion is more sensitive to the fine structure constant than strontium atoms. So if the constants value changes with time, the ytterbium clocks transition frequency will vary at a much faster rate relative to that of the strontium clock. This [difference] will eventually allow us to measure time variation of the fundamental constant, if there is any at all.

For a different example, physicists who study particles called neutrinos sometimes need to beam these particles from a source to a detector hundreds of kilometres away, through the atmosphere (these particles are entirely harmless). In 2011, physicists in Italy found that some neutrinos that had been beamed from a facility near Geneva and detected at their instrument, called OPERA, had travelled faster than light. The claim became a major source of controversy because faster-than-light travel violates the special theory of relativity.

The problem was found a few months later: the OPERA master clock had glitched, and measured the neutrinos time of arrival wrong by just 75 nanoseconds.

Other applications of atomic clocks include GPS systems, gravity-aided navigation, astronomy and geology.

Also read: Listen | Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Say Hello To the Doomsday Clock

More immediate concerns

The clocks also bring deeper opportunities for Indias scientists and engineers.

In 2017, the Department of Science and Technology had mooted its Quantum-Enabled Science & Technology programme. Its aim, the principal scientific adviser had told The Print in 2019, was to ramp up research and development activities related to quantum computing. In the 2020 Union budget, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the Centre would invest Rs 8,000 crore in the next five years under a new national mission for quantum technologies.

So as such, there are both interest and funds available at the moment to develop concepts and technologies to address a variety of applications. At present, we are using conventional technologies in our daily life for commercial and navigational purposes, De said. The world is moving towards the quantum computers, quantum communication systems and quantum internet.

In this regard, we can import the clock, but [operating it] will need highly skilled professionals. On the other hand, being able to build optical atomic clocks could help us become self-sustained and develop skilled human resources in the process, De noted.

And of course, theres the pride. A few years ago, a team at the National Physical Laboratory of India, New Delhi, led by Poonam Arora built Indias first atomic clock with caesium atoms (the authors of the 2014 paper quoted earlier). This clock is Indias current frequency standard the machine that defines how time is measured in the country. The researchers acknowledge in their paper that they expect optical frequency standards will replace the [caesium fountain clock] as primary frequency standards in the next few years.

De, Rapol and their colleagues and students at IUCAA and IISER are now attempting to bring India to this next threshold.

Japan is the only country in the Asia-Pacific to have built [optical atomic clocks], and China is working hard among other nations like Australia, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore and Russia, according to De.

Himanshu N. is a freelance journalist. Vasudevan Mukunth is editor, The Wire Science.

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Two Pune Research Institutes Are Building India's First Optical Atomic Clocks - The Wire Science

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September 2nd, 2020 at 1:57 am

Posted in Quantum Computing

Vitalik Buterin highlights major threats to Bitcoin BTC and Ethereum ETH – Digital Market News

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Bitcoin BTC, Ethereum ETH, and the rest of the crypto-market is off to a good start. But the major concern is, what might prevent Bitcoin and Ethereum from surging. Well, the Co-Founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin holds the answer to that question.

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Recently, Buterin was on What Bitcoin Did podcast, where he weighed in some threats to Bitcoin and the rest of the market, may encounter soon. Buterin seemed quite curious while speaking about quantum computing.

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Buterin said:

So the thing that I tend to worry about I mean one is that theres always this kind of black swan risk of technical failure. What if the NSA comes out with a quantum computer out of the blue and just steals a bunch of coins before you can do anything about it?

[Theres also] political failure. So what if governments banned Bitcoin, commandeered the mining pools, and use that to do what I call a 51% spawn camping attack attacking the chain over and over again until it becomes non-viable? And meanwhile, the prices are low because the things banned and theres a crisis of confidence?

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Especially for Bitcoin, he was concerned about the fact that whether Bitcoin will keep attracting investors interest in the long run.

Buterin added:

Bitcoin doesnt have what I call functionality escape velocity. So basically, sufficient functionality to serve as a trustless base layer for a lot of different applications. As a result of this, theres a possibility that over time people will find Bitcoin less and less interesting and other platforms more interesting.

He further addressed the notions about BTC/USD and ETH/USD becoming the norm and being used as the new form of money. Although Bitcoin and Ethereum have outplayed the bashing community and proved its importance, it depends on ones definition of what makes a currency.

Buterin further added:

The word money does combine a lot of different concepts. For example, people talk about the unit of account, a medium of exchange, store of value. For the unit of account, ETH is not that and BTC is not that either. For the medium of exchange, Bitcoin is used like that, and ETH is used as that sometimes ETH has a store of value. That is something that people use ETH for.

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Vitalik Buterin highlights major threats to Bitcoin BTC and Ethereum ETH - Digital Market News

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September 2nd, 2020 at 1:57 am

Posted in Quantum Computing

Pod of the Planet Ep. 9: Not Everyone is Greta, and That’s OK – Pod of the Planet – State of the Planet

Posted: at 1:56 am


George Bernard Shaw, who once quipped that youth is wasted on the young, couldnt be more wrong when it comes to climate activism. The world young people build today is the world they will inherit tomorrow.

In this episode we talk about climate and sustainability education for young activists and educators. Cassie Xu, the director of the office of education and outreach at the Earth Institute, speaks with high school students Lily Liu from Brooklyn, New York (15:34) and Sophia Kianni from McLean, Virgina (28:00). They talk about their passion for climate change activism in their communities and their hopes for the future.

We also hear from Cassie about the K-12 education program and the upcoming pre-college programs that might interest high school students about how to bring more climate change activism efforts into their schools and communities. In fall 2020, one of the pre-college offerings is Let the Youth Lead, which is an experiential workshop that will invite current and future youth leaders to enhance their existing practices, enthusiasm, motivation, and knowledge to support and further their roles as change agents in local and global community efforts. Jon Lopez, the lead instructor for this workshop and a researcher at AC4 joined us in the podcast to talk about the workshop and his own experiences working with youth leaders all over the world (2:30). The one common thread, he says? Young people are not too happy with the older folks.

You can find Pod of the Planet wherever you listen to podcasts, onApple iTunes,Spotify,Soundcloud, andStitcher.

Please send feedback or questions to podoftheplanet@gmail.com.

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Pod of the Planet Ep. 9: Not Everyone is Greta, and That's OK - Pod of the Planet - State of the Planet

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September 2nd, 2020 at 1:56 am

Posted in Bernard Shaw

Opinion | Why writing is harder than you think – Livemint

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Armed with an arsenal of big words and quotable quotes, I started carpet-bombing. Nobody was plain hungry in my essays, they were always ravenously hungry. George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein appeared regularly. And it worked. Teachers loved the writing, my grades improved and I scored the highest marks in English in the Mumbai Board. Buoyed by this validation, I told my parents I wanted to be a writer. In response, they invoked images of Khadi-clad, jhola-swinging people to scare my 16-year-old self. So we settled for commerce and then I opted to become a chartered accountant. I learnt a lot about numerical creativity but literary creativity, if any, was relegated to Notes to Accounts.

Once I took up investing as a profession, I was resigned to the fact that my writing dreams were buried, till I discovered some excellent investment writing by the likes of Warren Buffett and Howard Marks. My colleague Amay Hattangadi and I started writing an investor newsletter called Connecting The Dots and the then managing editor of Mint, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, was kind enough to grant us op-ed space. But that wasnt writing" either. A typical column would have a hypothesis followed by arguments for and against it, weighing their relative merits and a conclusion. One could insert a couple of charts which spoke for themselves and they anchored your piece. It was left-brained and clinical but it wasnt writing".

When I green-lit creative writing as one of the activities to pursue during my year-long sabbatical, I thought it would be a breeze. A mutual friend introduced me to the US-based author Manjula Padmanabhan as a potential writing guru and although I have never met her in person, our wavelengths matched.

Just as hibernating sportspeople go through a training camp before tournaments, we decided to do three weeks of warm-ups and stretches before I plunged into short-story writing. Padmanabhan sent writing assignments that seemed cute but took half a day to complete. Imagine a conversation between two shadows that meet on a wall (500 words)" was one such.

As the camp progressed, I practised writing contemporary Indian adaptations of classic short stories. We started with O. Henrys The Gift Of The Magi and graduated to Somerset Maughams Rain. I started my version of Gift of Magi with Dilshad looked pensively out of the little window". Padmanabhan was brutal with it. When does a character not look pensively out of a window?" she asked. Lose the adverb and the adjective."

It was the time of the year when shop-owners appropriated the footpaths outside their shops for displaying their wares and irate pedestrians and honking cars jostled with each other on the narrow street," my story continued. Why the suspense?" asked Padmanabhan Just say what time of the year it was and let the reader imagine...and shorter sentences please."

Adapting Rain proved harder. Getting the five central characters right and transporting them to contemporary India was difficult for me. I faced two challenges: not to reduce the characters to a caricature and not let my bias as a writer creep in. Even after three days and 2,000 words, I couldnt finish my version of Rain.

Since boyhood, Ruskin Bond has been my favourite writer and thanks to him, I had this romantic notion that creativity abounds in the hills. I headed to the beautiful Taj hotel in Rishikesh for a month of writing, confident that plots and words would flow as freely as the Ganga. I can read 30 pages of fiction in an hour with a variability of 10%. I used a similar input-output approach to conclude that I could write 15,000 words in a month. I estimated that I could also continue my yoga practice and finish reading Ray Dalios Principles. Eventually, I eked out less than 8,000 words, managed to do a few sun salutations and didnt read a single page of Principles.

I realized that no matter how picturesque the setting, creativity cannot be summoned. I stared at the blinking cursor for hours before giving up and scrolling down the rabbit hole of Instagram. There were days when I could not manage even a tweets worth of writing. I had assumed that if you sit for 5 hours in front of a screen, you will produce 2,000 words like clockwork. It doesnt work like that. At least for me it didnt. When it comes to writing or any other creative pursuit, showing up is a necessary but not sufficient condition for output. I struggled to accept that for a while but eventually made peace with it.

The idea for the story which eventually became Khushroos Canteen did come to me in a bathtub. I let my imagination run wild and egged on by fragrant bathing salts, I had a six-part series ready in my head. I wrote a short sketch and shot a breathless mail to Padmanabhan, hoping for her to say that this was going to be better than Sacred Games. On the phone that evening, she said: Theres a lot of masala there but no meat. Where is the story?" I felt deflated and angry but took her advice. I reworked the story, including the point of view from which it was being narrated. If I may say so myself, it made the story smoother. Khushroos Canteen will probably be published as a multi-part series soon.

Writers are frequently told to Kill your darlings". You fall in love with a character, a sentence or just a phrase and force-fit it into the storyline. It does nothing to take the story forward. Most times it actually detracts. In the short story Nostalgia, I had one such darling. Food and sexWhat else does a man live for! And if there is a severe shortage in one department, the other has to compensate." It was a loose end but I had fallen in love with it and persisted till the fourth draft. I could see that it was unnecessary but didnt have the heart to chop it. Thats where an experienced mentor helps. Padmanabhan recognized it was a darling but never said it in as many words. She just kept asking, How are you going to close the loop on that one?" With a heavy heart, I edited it out. I had to eat two dollops of ice cream that night (you can read Nostalgia here).

In one of our sessions, Padmanabhan asked me whether I wanted to be writer. It sounded like a loaded question and I asked her what she meant. Being a writer," she said, is a life-long occupation. You observe all your experiences. Consciously." I wasnt sure I understood. But once I started writing, I realized that I was actually tapping into a reservoir of experiences I didnt even know I had recorded. They came back as I wrote about characters, places and situations. I dont know if it will become instinctive but I look forward to experiences now, knowing that even the bad ones could have an upshot; the germ of a story. Nobody had told me that is the first step to becoming a good writer. I wouldnt have wasted my afternoons underlining editorials.

Swanand Kelkar works in the asset management industry and is currently on a one-year sabbatical.

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Opinion | Why writing is harder than you think - Livemint

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September 2nd, 2020 at 1:56 am

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Stellar Lumens (XLM) Community Fund 2.0 to be a New and Improved Version – The Cryptocurrency Analytics

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Open source makes it possible for the Stellar ecosystem and community to collaborate and build a truly decentralized network, thus innovating diverse solutions, which one will not be able to discover alone.

To fulfill the vision of greater financial inclusion for everyone, SDF understands that monetary support is crucial. Lumens are distributed by grants and funds to teams and projects independently to support developers in their projects.

They have completed five funding rounds and they have worked well and with each time, they are helping tweak and adjust the funding. The New and improved Stellar Community Fund 2.0.

Stellar tweeted: A while back, we launched the Stellar Community Fund so our community could help fund their favorite projects. Today, SCF will re-launch as Stellar Community Fund 2.0, designed to be better and fairer for our community and participants.

Sydney Ifergan, the crypto expert tweeted: Bernard Shaw said those who cannot change their mind cannot change anything. Stellar Development Foundation Knew Change is necessary and so, SCF 2.0.

SCF is undergoing a structural change, because they have learnt that the fund has not been fully optimized to fully benefit the community. They were also able to see that the voting process was straining the community and that there was susceptibility to bad actors. Therefore, several deserving projects were getting pushed out of the final rounds.

The current change is necessary to refine the already existing voting system. Two separate voting rounds caused voter fatigue and irregular participation from voters.

The awards had to be balanced between two developing categories in projects. This is to avoid overpaying one project and underpaying another project. It was necessary to be business ready and to develop smaller and experimental projects.

The new changes are bringing in a nomination panel and quadratic voting. Thus, the burden of participation in voting is reduced. They have built a test voting interface to demonstrate the concept. However, they have given an equation Cost to voter = (number of votes) as to be best demonstrating the concept. The more someone cares about the project, the more willingly they have to invest in voting for it.

SCF 2.0 now has funds to provide for different projects. In the past the participants generally fell in two buckets. One were those who were ready to build their business and those who were experimenting within the ecosystem. To better cater to those audiences, SCF will be split into two funds: a Seed Fund and a Lab Fund.

Good the SCF acknowledges the importance of the Lab Fund, which is that which leads to the process where someone gets ready to build their business.

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Stellar Lumens (XLM) Community Fund 2.0 to be a New and Improved Version - The Cryptocurrency Analytics

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September 2nd, 2020 at 1:56 am

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Television: C-SPAN offered some of the best convention coverage – The Delaware County Daily Times

Posted: at 1:56 am


The usual suspects ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and NBC were all ripe and ready to show the Republican National Convention.

Failing them, YouTube was in reserve.

Meandering between them for the Democrats pageant the week before and found too much interruption, too much commentary that was either biased or unnecessary given that I just heard the speaker and, pardon the heresy, could make up my own mind about what they said.

I was reinforced when I heard the pull quotes Lester Holt, Norah ODonnell, or, heaven forbid, George Stephanopoulos, chose. They were often the most bland and vapid.

If I had to give a prize, Id send it CBSs way. ODonnell is the most businesslike and fairest of the bunch, with Holt second, and the cable stations and ABC lagging behind.

To get the purity I wanted, I made the executive decision to skip the cable and network folks and watch RNCs show on C-SPAN.

That decision was a blessing. All I saw were the speakers and the set packages producers put together. Nothing was happening in the background, I didnt have to hope a station would finally focus on a speaker, I didnt have to endure people I disdain more than respect spoonfeeding me what I could glean without them, and had the chance to see and judge what the GOP put together as if I was in the room with the speakers.

Both parties did a good job with their conventions. Each set forth a tone and mood that put its campaign in perspective. Each used television judiciously, if differently, to create the image and message it wanted to convey.

The viewing public seemed more interesting in what the Democrats had to say. Once the tallies of people watching each station were made, the Dems drew about two million people more per night that the Republicans did. Interestingly, the great equalizer for the GOP was not President Trump, who spoke for more than an hour, but the First Lady, Melania Trump, who garnered an audience as big as the Democrats received.

As in the Emmys, and in peoples esteem these days, the cable news teams attracted more audience than the traditional networks did. Unsurprisingly, MSNBC topped the polls during the Democrats affair while Fox News Channel had the most viewers for the GOP fete.

I prefer to ponder the differences between the two parties approaches and what happened on camera as the conventions unfolded.

The most striking difference to me was how much the Democrats seemed like a political party while the Republicans concentrated on one person, Donald Trump, and his administration.

Something I mentioned last week was quite apparent as speakers headed towards microphones at Washingtons Constitution Hall, Fort McHenry, or the White House. The Democrats had their top guns of the last 30, or more, years on site while the Republicans stayed in present tense and had few, if any, of the leading lights one associates with that party.

Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, and even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all spoke the Democrats audience, not to mention the nominees, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and Jill Biden. They spoke passionately and stressed a return to normality and stewardship while hinting at big policies to come, policies its interesting to note Joe Biden has not completely endorsed or signed off on.

George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Jon Huntsman, and others who could be regarded as the GOP celebrities were conspicuously absent from the convention broadcasts. Some were not invited. Some chose not to come.

The question is whether they were missed.

Id say no. The Democrats gained firepower from the performances of the Obamas, Mrs. Clinton, and Mrs. Biden, but not having their cognates, except for Melania Trump, didnt seem odd or negative. The GOP stars were unneeded.

Some who filled in, such as the Trump children, their spouses, and partners, did not provide much. Except they all exuded a love for their father and an endorsement for the work he was doing.

Sure. What else would they say?

Then, again, sincerity lets say genuine sincerity - is not the hallmark of your average politician. All of them play an angle, even when they do it as elegantly as Michelle Obama and as eloquently as Barack Obama.

Yet while, the Democrats cast came out as passionate, committed, and on a mission to restore dignity and probity to the Oval Office, it was, ironically, the GOP speakers who exuded warmth and conveyed sincerity.

Forget the Trump children. They spoke well and had gorgeous clothes, but their touting their Dad was as consequential and unsurprising as it is when Nancy Pelosi criticizes him.

Thats when you see politics on naked display.

The part the GOP got right and did better than the Democrats was the testimonials and endorsements of the rank and file, the people who came before the camera and spoke about how the Trump Administration saved their job, realized the unfairness of a long prison sentence, cut red tape, and took action to handle matters and solve problems the speakers say others had neglected or put aide after lip service.

The impression was that the President and his team was strong in constituent services, that people who were disappointed by other, more traditional politicians, were heard and responded to by Donald Trump.

The message was amazing positive, and I wonder if it would have been as clear and noticeable if I had been watching a news network rather than C-SPAN.

Unadorned by commentary, and able to be viewed at all considering even Fox would not give air time to all the factory workers, mourning parents, ex-convicts, and people restored to jobs who came to speak on behalf of Mr. Trump.

Nothing offspring, bound to loyalty and praise by virtue of their relationship and the benefits they derive from it, could compare with the legions of folks, of all kinds and creeds, who came to tell how Donald Trump did for them what no one else seemed able to do.

An administration that is usually ridiculed and derided for being all fanfare, smoke, and mirrors, suddenly had substance. Concrete, admirable substance.

The GOP did a fine job in expression it was doing a job. Who cares if its recognized by mainstream media, people who regard the President as a punch line? These speakers had something new and unexpected to say and they provided sincerity and good fellow feeling beyond the hoopla and braggadocio that is part and parcel of any political event, in particular a convention.

If not for C-SPAN, I might have missed the human core of the GOPs convention message, one that made it seem effective, down-to-earth, and geared on work on behalf of the common man.

Im talking about an image, not historic or factual accuracy. At both conventions, at any political gathering, its best to take your feet off the floor lest your shoes get fouled with the crap being unloaded. I laughed when I heard GOP speakers talk about harnessing the coronavirus. I could spot a lie or two.

Yet I was grateful to hear speakers excoriate the violence in American streets that are too often accepted under the rosier name of protest. Both parties were going for the support of the people. The Democrats reached for the soul. The Republicans, including a rambling President Trump, touched the heart. How? I dont know. But he did it.

Also, while the GOP lacked its stars of pre-Trump years, it displayed a few new stars, the most impressive being Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who matched any Democrat in eloquence and substance. Former Ambassador to the United Nations and one-time governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, also made an impression, even when she declared America is not racist.

Another who scored big was Kentuckys Attorney General, David Cameron, who made a cogent case for the diversity within the Black population and why no vote of any group should be taken for granted.

As I said, both sides did well, but the Republicans had the advantage Shakespeare gave Marc Antony in Julius Caesar, the advantage of being the last to speak. Brutus has the crowd on his side, but all changes when Antony talks to them. Joe Biden, and the Democrats, had right to expect momentum from their convention. Yet, in the last week, with President Trump getting the last word, betting odds that were double digits apart now favor Mr. Biden by five points and are trending in Mr. Trumps favor. The gap between those predicted to vote for Mr. Biden and those for Mr. Trump has also narrowed considerably.

Conventions are done. The campaign is here. It will be interesting to see those polls veer one way or the other. Election Day is November 3. I predict the next two months will be fascinating.

Brian Cox has been in the news a lot lately.

Last years Emmy winner as Best Actor in a Drama for Succession is up for the same award this year, and could easily score a second consecutive win (as much as I would like to see the prize go to Jason Bateman for Ozark.

Cox also spoke recently about his bout with COVID-19.

Now the actor is joining with another major star, Marsha Mason, to help New Hopes Bucks County Playhouse and bring a delightful theater piece, Dear Liar, to TV audiences via streaming.

Dear Liar is a play by Jerome Kilty that uses the 40-year correspondence between the great mind of his age, George Bernard Shaw, and the lauded actress, Mrs. Patrick Campbell.

It streams tomorrow at 7 p.m. and can be accessed via http://www.bcptheater.org. Tickets are $35, which goes to the Playhouse, another of the arts venues getting creative to keep alive in this era when its doors are ordered to be shut.

Having Brian Cox and Marsha Mason anywhere is a pleasure beyond description. To have them in your living room, or on your wrist, is perfect.

Neal Zoren's television column appears every Monday.

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September 2nd, 2020 at 1:56 am

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My Heart’s in the Highlands: Today is William Saroyan’s 112th birth anniversary – Public Radio of Armenia

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August 31 is the birthday ofgreat American Armenian writer William Saroyan.

William Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908 inFresno, Californiato Armenak and Takoohi Saroyan,Armenianimmigrants from Bitlis,Ottoman Empire. His father came to New York in 1905 and started preaching in Armenian Apostolic Churches.

At the age of three, after his fathers death, Saroyan, along with his brother and sister, was placed in an orphanage inOakland, California. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno.

Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of his fathers writings. A few of his early short articles were published inOverland Monthly. His first stories appeared in the 1930s.

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness. William Saroyan,My Hearts in the Highlands

Among these was The Broken Wheel, written under the name Sirak Goryan and published in the Armenian journalHairenikin 1933. Many of Saroyans stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of theSan Joaquin Valleyor dealt with the rootlessness of the immigrant. The short story collectionMy Name is Aram(1940), an international bestseller, was about a young boy and the colorful characters of his immigrant family. It has been translated into many languages.

As a writer, Saroyan made his breakthrough inStorymagazine withThe Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze(1934), the title taken from the nineteenth centurysong of the same title. The protagonist is a young, starving writer who tries to survive in a Depression-ridden society.

It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give. William Saroyan

Saroyan published essays and memoirs, in which he depicted the people he had met on travels in the Soviet Union and Europe, such as the playwrightGeorge Bernard Shaw, the Finnish composerJean Sibelius, andCharlie Chaplin. In 1952, Saroyan publishedThe Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills, the first of several volumes ofmemoirs.

Saroyan died in Fresno, ofcancerat age 71. Half of his ashes were buried in California and the remainder in Armenia atKomitas Pantheonnear film directorSergei Parajanov.

The Fresno home where the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright lived out his final years opened to the public as an interactive museum in 2018.

On that occasion the Fresno City Council issued a proclamation declaring Friday August 31st, 2018 as William Saroyan Day in the City of Fresno.

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My Heart's in the Highlands: Today is William Saroyan's 112th birth anniversary - Public Radio of Armenia

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