GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Quantum Simulator Becomes Accessible to the World

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Science Daily

26February2011 4:00amEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: ScienceDaily  — Experimental physicists have put a lot of effort in isolating sensitive measurements from the disruptive influences of the environment. In an international first, Austrian quantum physicists have realized a toolbox of elementary building blocks for an open-system quantum simulator, where a controlled coupling to an environment is used in a beneficial way. This offers novel prospects for studying the behavior of highly complex quantum systems.

The researchers have published their work in the scientific journal Nature.

Many phenomena in our world are based on the nature of quantum physics: the structure of atoms and molecules, chemical reactions, material properties, magnetism and possibly also certain biological processes. Since the complexity of phenomena increases exponentially with more quantum particles involved, a detailed study of these complex systems reaches its limits quickly; and conventional computers fail when calculating these problems. To overcome these difficulties, physicists have been developing quantum simulators on various platforms, such as neutral atoms, ions or solid-state systems, which, similar to quantum computers, utilize the particular nature of quantum physics to control this complexity.

In another breakthrough in this field, a team of young scientists in the research groups of Rainer Blatt and Peter Zoller at the Institute for Experimental Physics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Innsbruck and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have been the first to engineer a comprehensive toolbox for an open-system quantum computer, which will enable researchers to construct more sophisticated quantum simulators for investigating complex problems in quantum physics. (read full report)

"GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is an intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, it's partners or affiliates. All opinions presented are those of the author, and not necessarily those of GCIS or it's partners.

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Brain's 'Radio Stations' Have Much to Tell Scientists

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Science Daily

09February2011 7:32pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Like listeners adjusting a high-tech radio, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have tuned in to precise frequencies of brain activity to unleash new insights into how the brain works.

"Analysis of brain function normally focuses on where brain activity happens and when," says Eric C. Leuthardt, MD. "What we've found is that the wavelength of the activity provides a third major branch of understanding brain physiology."

Researchers used electrocorticography, a technique for monitoring the brain with a grid of electrodes temporarily implanted directly on the brain's surface. Clinically, Leuthardt and other neurosurgeons use this approach to identify the source of persistent, medication-resistant seizures in patients and to map those regions for surgical removal. With the patient's permission, scientists can also use the electrode grid to experimentally monitor a much larger spectrum of brain activity than they can via conventional brainwave monitoring. (read full report)

 

 

 

"GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is an intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, it's advertisers or affiliates. All opinions presented are those of the author, and not necessarily those of GCIS or it's partners.

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: As armor against criticism, corp. social responsibility no substitute for product quality

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: PhysOrg

03February2011 2:34pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: More than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies commit themselves to corporate social responsibility initiatives in order to protect themselves against negative information. But these moves don't serve as a strong insurance policy against bad press and criticism, according to a report in the current edition of the Journal of Service Research.

The authors found that general corporate social responsibility in and of itself will not shield a company from criticism or negative information because consumers separate ethical/social issues from product or service quality issues in their minds, according to the researchers, who surveyed more than 800 firms and 100 individuals.

The protection corporate social responsibility offers is largely limited to social or ethical issues with the company. It does little to combat negative information relating to a company's product or service quality. To do so, a firm must make itself more service quality oriented and focus its concern on the final outcome of a product or service. (read full report)

 

 

 

"GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is an intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, it's advertisers or affiliates. All opinions presented are those of the author, and not necessarily those of GCIS or it's partners.

GCIS TECHNOLOGY BRIEFING: Supercomputer probes answer to "life, the universe and everything"

 

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Sunday Mercury

03February2011 2:03pmEST

GCIS TECHNOLOGY UPDATE: A new supercomputer is being launched today which scientists hope will answer questions about the origins of the universe.

Reminiscent of Deep Thought, the fictional computer which was designed to find the answer to "life, the universe and everything" in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books by Douglas Adams, the SCIAMA is aimed at finding out how our universe began.

The new supercomputer, which has the power of 1,000 desktop computers, has been installed at the University of Portsmouth to receive and process large amounts of astronomical data.

It is capable of doing a billion calculations every second and will be used to expand our knowledge of galaxies and gravity.

Researchers at the university's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) will use the supercomputer to simulate vast regions of the universe, investigate the properties of hundreds of millions of galaxies and solve complex cosmological problems. (read full report)

 

 

 

"GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is an intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, it's advertisers or affiliates. All opinions presented are those of the author, and not necessarily those of GCIS or it's partners.

GCIS TECHNOLOGY BRIEFING: Naturally forming crystals the future of invisibility tech?

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: POPSCI

01February2011 9:58pmEST

GCIS TECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Metamaterials have long been thought the key to creating the working, visible spectrum “invisibility cloak” promised us by sci-fi, but it might be time for metamaterials to move over. Two independent labs—one at the University of Birmingham in the UK, the other at MIT—have used naturally forming calcite crystals to render visible objects (as in large enough to see with the naked eye) invisible, something metamaterials haven’t come close to doing.

Metamaterials have achieved a measure of invisibility, but not in any practical sense; they can bend certain wavelengths of light to conceal an object at the microscopic level, but so far they have not been able to work well at the macro scale or in the visible spectrum. It turns out researchers may not have needed such an exotic medium.

Calcite, an abundant crystalline form of calcium carbonate that forms naturally (it’s the primary stuff of sea shells), has long been known to have peculiar light-bending properties, and if the Birmingham and MIT findings are any indication it might have a future in cloaking devices. (read full report)

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Learn more quickly by transcranial magnetic brain stimulation

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: PHYSORG

31January2011 5:14pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: What sounds like science fiction is actually possible: thanks to magnetic stimulation, the activity of certain brain nerve cells can be deliberately influenced. What happens in the brain in this context has been unclear up to now. Medical experts from Bochum under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Klaus Funke (Department of Neurophysiology) have now shown that various stimulus patterns changed the activity of distinct neuronal cell types. In addition, certain stimulus patterns led to rats learning more easily.

he knowledge obtained could contribute to cerebral stimulation being used more purposefully in future to treat functional disorders of the brain. The researchers have published their studies in the Journal of Neuroscience and in the European Journal of Neuroscience. (read full report)

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Social Networking Provides Insights Into Leadership, Trust and Mobility

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Science Daily

31January2011 4:09pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: The rise of social media has allowed people to connect and re-connect with friends, colleagues and family from across the world. A new paper by University of Minnesota computer scientists in the College of Science and Engineering provides insights into how the analysis of our social networking interactions could discover things like the emergence or decline of leadership, changes in trust over time, and migration and mobility within particular communities online.

The paper, "Computational Modeling of Spatio-temporal Social Networks: A Time-Aggregated Graph Approach," was co-authored by computer science and engineering professor Shashi Shekhar and research assistant Dev Oliver. The researchers recently presented the paper at a national workshop hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation and Army Research Center.

In most cases, social network analysis today is limited to discovering friend connections, community leaders and outlines, influential people and personal friend recommendations using a static or snap-shot method. The authors say that if new factors could be taken into consideration, specifically changes across time and space, this could help social network analysis better understand why, when and how we are "friends" with people. (read full report)