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Ions trapped nanoscale optical cavities could be used to distribute entangled quantum particles over large distances. That is the conclusion of Jonathan Kindem and colleagues at Caltech in the US, who showed that a trapped ion of ytterbium can remain entangled with a photon for long periods of time. Furthermore, the team showed that the ion’s quantum state can be read out when manipulated by laser and microwave pulses. Their achievement could lay the foundations for a future quantum internet.

Quantum computers are becoming a reality as research labs and companies roll out nascent devices. An important next step in this quantum revolution is creating a “quantum internet” across which quantum information can be shared. The delicate nature of quantum information, however, means that it is very difficult to connect quantum computers over long distances.

Most quantum computers encode quantum bits (qubits) of information into the quantum states of matter – trapped atoms or superconducting circuits, for example. However, the best way to transmit quantum information over long distances is to encode it into a photon of light. An important challenge is how to transfer quantum information from stationary matter-based qubits to photon-based “flying” qubits and then back again.

Step two of…

(Meanwhile in Bangladesh)


The ID2020 Alliance has launched a new digital identity program at its annual summit in New York, in collaboration with the Government of Bangladesh, vaccine alliance Gavi, and new partners in government, academia, and humanitarian relief.

The program to leverage immunization as an opportunity to establish digital identity was unveiled by ID2020 in partnership with the Bangladesh Government’s Access to Information (a2i) Program, the Directorate General of Health Services, and Gavi, according to the announcement.

Shane chats with former NSA spy and whistleblower Edward Snowden on the rise of authoritarianism during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The fossilised skulls of dinosaur embryos that died within their eggs about 200m years ago, have been digitally reconstructed by scientists, shedding new light on the animals’ development, and how close they were to hatching.

The rare clutch of seven eggs, some of which contain embryos, was discovered in South Africa in 1976, with the developing young found to be a species of dinosaur called Massospondylus carinatus.

The plant-eaters were ancestors of sauropod dinosaurs like diplodocus and, as fully-grown adults, would have walked on two legs, measured about five metres from nose to tail, and had long necks with small heads.

Sometimes, two dimensions are better than three.

In the three-dimensional world we live in, there are two classes of elementary particles: bosons and fermions. But in two dimensions, theoretical physicists predict, there’s another option: anyons. Now, scientists report new evidence that anyons exist and that they behave unlike any known particle. Using a tiny “collider,” researchers flung presumed anyons at one another to help confirm their identities, physicists report in the April 10 Science.

All known elementary particles can be classified either fermions or bosons. Electrons, for example, are fermions. Bosons include photons, which are particles of light, and the famed Higgs boson, which explains how particles get mass (SN: 7/4/12). The two classes behave differently: Fermions are loners and avoid one another, while bosons can clump together.

The role of automatic electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis in clinical practice is limited by the accuracy of existing models. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are models composed of stacked transformations that learn tasks by examples. This technology has recently achieved striking success in a variety of task and there are great expectations on how it might improve clinical practice. Here we present a DNN model trained in a dataset with more than 2 million labeled exams analyzed by the Telehealth Network of Minas Gerais and collected under the scope of the CODE (Clinical Outcomes in Digital Electrocardiology) study. The DNN outperform cardiology resident medical doctors in recognizing 6 types of abnormalities in 12-lead ECG recordings, with F1 scores above 80% and specificity over 99%. These results indicate ECG analysis based on DNNs, previously studied in a single-lead setup, generalizes well to 12-lead exams, taking the technology closer to the standard clinical practice.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has spread across the U.S., a number of states have extended their lockdown orders in an effort to combat the spread of the virus.

As of April 8, every U.S. state has reported confirmed coronavirus cases but the stay-at-home and shelter-in-place policies all came at different times. California was the first state to issue a stay-at-home order on March 19, while South Carolina was the most recent, issuing their statewide order on April 7. Some other states like Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota and Nebraska have yet to issue statewide stay-at-home orders.