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Quantum Metal Workflow¶

A visual gallery of the Quantum Metal components now — browse the whole library as thumbnails and jump to the docs for each, instead of digging through code. https://qiskit-community.github.io/qiskit-metal/workflow.html.

Quantum Metal Workflow.

Vision.

Quantum Metal is the open-source chip-design layer for superconducting quantum hardware: a Python library where you build a chip from QComponents, attach analyses, and hand the result to whichever solver / fab / orchestrator you want. The library itself is solver-agnostic; the renderers are the integration layer with the outside world (GDS, HFSS, Q3D, gmsh, Elmer, AWS Palace, …).

We sit inside a broader open-source ecosystem — design discovery (SQuADDS), Palace simulation wrappers (SQDMetal, pypalace), mesh utilities, quantization tools. Full map: Ecosystem doc (rendered on the docs site). Items below are about Metal’s own direction; ecosystem-level coordination is tracked alongside.

Two things shape the next year:

1. Lite-by-default. import qiskit_metal should be fast, dependency-light, and never assume Qt / AEDT / gmsh / Palace are present. Heavy backends are opt-in extras.

Continue reading “Quantum Metal Workflow¶” | >

Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration Is a National Priority

Chuck Brooks is the president of Brooks Consulting International and one of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Experts.

From a primarily scientific endeavor, quantum computing is developing into a technology that could have significant effects on cybersecurity, national security, economic competitiveness and the safeguarding of vital infrastructure. The United States cannot afford to wait until a quantum computer capable of cracking popular public-key cryptography exists in order to start safeguarding its most sensitive data.

Understanding the quantum threat is no longer the only challenge. It is carrying out one of the most intricate cryptographic transitions in contemporary IT history. Technological advancements bring about both extraordinary opportunities and consequential risks. As I explained in my book Inside Cyber: How AI, 5G, IoT, and Quantum Computing Will Transform Privacy and Our Security, quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize advanced computing, scientific research, materials engineering and medicine. Additionally, it might compromise cryptographic systems that safeguard sensitive personal data, military networks, financial transactions, government communications and intellectual property.

Improving the Perfusability of the Brain After Legal Death | Carrie Radomski | BP Summit 2026

Carrie Radomski, Director at Biomedical Research & Longevity Society, Resurgence Biomedical Science, and Biostasis Technologies, presents on how existing standby, stabilization, and transport (SST) procedures may help maintain the perfusability of the brain after death at the Brain Preservation Summit 2026, September 19–20, 2026, at the Sparks HQ in Salem, Oregon.

0:00 Standby, stabilization, and transport after legal death.
1:21 Mechanisms that impair brain perfusion.
2:10 Keeping the perfusability window open.
2:22 Anticoagulation, washout, edema, oxygenation, and cooling.
3:08 Temperature and vascular breakdown.
3:38 Postmortem clotting and flow obstruction.
4:17 Small-vessel constriction and no-reflow.
4:54 Vascular breakdown, edema, and perfusion failure.
5:38 Balancing perfusion pressure against vessel damage.
6:16 Quantifying ischemia across cases.
6:54 Potential improvements to SST protocols.
7:19 Measuring flow and studying perfusability.
8:04 Real-time imaging during perfusion.
8:57 Q&A: Can SST be performed in hospitals?
9:46 Q&A: Developing SST services in Canada.
11:07 Q&A: Medical assistance in dying and planned cases.
12:24 Q&A: Expanding services across Canada.
13:23 Q&A: Why hospitals restrict preservation procedures.

Working with academic communities to build scientific understanding

OpenAI has announced three extraordinary AI-generated research results that could reshape mathematics, computer science, and theoretical physics.

1. Mathematics: A proof of the local smoothing conjecture in all spatial dimensions, with implications for the Kakeya and Stein restriction conjectures.

2. Computer Science: A Lean-formalized refutation of the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a longstanding conjecture about the computational difficulty of solving certain problems.

3. Theoretical Physics: Claimed rigorous existence proofs for quantum field theories, including quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and Yang–Mills theory.

Independent experts are now being brought in to examine, verify, and explain these potentially historic results. The claims are extraordinary—but their full scientific significance will depend on rigorous scrutiny by the research community.

#ArtificialIntelligence #mathematics #physics #computerscience

Continue reading “Working with academic communities to build scientific understanding” | >

Single X-ray pulse reveals plasma nanostructures across scales with one camera

Understanding instabilities and turbulence in plasmas is one of the key challenges across a wide range of plasma research fields, including nuclear fusion, astrophysics and laser-plasma physics. In plasmas, slight disturbances can grow due to instabilities, and energy is transferred between structures of various sizes due to turbulence. These phenomena give rise to structures ranging from very small to large, which significantly influence the overall motion and energy flow of the plasma.

Since structures generated by instabilities and turbulence vary with even slight differences in conditions, it is not easy to reproduce the same state in every experiment. Therefore, there is a need for “spatially multiscale single-shot measurements” that can simultaneously capture structures of a wide range of sizes in a single measurement. In particular, in high-energy-density plasmas, instabilities grow in an extremely short time, so high temporal and spatial resolution is also required to capture their initial stages.

By combining the newly developed “beamstop-free X-ray small-angle scattering method” with an X-ray free-electron laser and a microscale rod assembly target, an international research group, led by Assistant Professor Masato Ota of the National Institute for Fusion Science (then a graduate student at the Graduate School of Science, Osaka University), Associate Professor Yoichi Sakawa of the Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University, succeeded in measuring the structural collapse and rarefaction processes of high-energy-density plasma across a wide range of spatial scales—from 10 nm to 500 nm—with sub-picosecond temporal resolution.

Diamond defects confirm 80-year-old theory of crystal stress

For the first time, researchers in Japan have directly mapped several components of the stress field surrounding an atomic-scale flaw in the crystal structure of diamond. Led by Tokuyuki Teraji at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science, the team achieved its result using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, whose spin states respond differently to stress depending on how they are oriented relative to the stress field.

Published in Applied Physics Letters, the technique validates an 80-year-old theory about how miniature stress fields are distributed in diamond. It could also help improve the processes used to manufacture the high-quality diamond demanded by emerging technologies.

Metalens microscope switches focus with voltage, not moving optics

Just as it is difficult for a camera to keep both a nearby flower and a distant mountain sharply focused at the same time, conventional optical microscopes face a similar challenge when imaging structures located at different depths inside the body. Tighter focusing of light improves spatial resolution, but at the same time reduces the depth range over which the image remains sharply focused.

A joint research team led by professors Junsuk Rho and Chulhong Kim at POSTECH has developed a dual-focus metalens-based photoacoustic microscopy system that can switch between different imaging depths simply by controlling an applied voltage, without mechanically moving any optical components. The study is published in Light: Science & Applications.

Tunable gate electrodes could help semiconductors operate at lower voltages

Smartphones and computers process information by switching the current that flows inside semiconductors on and off. The gate electrode delivers the signal that controls this switching. Until now, gate electrodes have typically been made from metals whose electronic properties are fixed.

A KAIST-led joint research team has now built working semiconductor electrodes from a new material that combines metals and organic molecules. The study provides a basis for designing electrodes to meet the requirements of different semiconductors. It is also expected to support the development of low-power semiconductors that operate at lower voltages.

The study is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Physicists reveal new paradigm for fiber growth in neurodegenerative diseases

Some proteins that are linked to neurodegenerative diseases can form both liquid droplets and amyloid fibers. But how are these two states connected, and where do the fibers grow? Leiden physicists Liru Feng and Louise Jawerth have discovered a counter-intuitive mechanism.

“We wanted to answer an open question: What happens to protein droplets as they age?” assistant professor Jawerth explains. “They look just like drops of oil in water, but they are droplets of proteins inside cells, also called condensates. Scientists have only relatively recently come to understand how they develop. Our findings on how they age— published in Nature Physics today—add an important piece to the puzzle.”

The droplets are very complex materials; they are liquid-like and can turn into solids that are glassy or fibrous. Jawerth states, “For 10 years or so, we have known that there is a link between fiber growth from these proteins and neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease or ALS. Our goal was to visualize, quantify and model this aging process, and we succeeded in doing so.”