Saturday serve: Can the Comets work in Canberra? Mike Valetta says yes

Posted on by

Saturday Serve

Michael Bevan of NSW, Jamie Cox of Tasmania, Darren Lehmann of South Australia, Paul Reiffel of Victoria, Adam Gilchrist of Western Australia, Rod Tucker of Canberra and Stuart Law of Queensland launch the 1999-2000 Mercantile Mutual Cup. Photo: Getty Images

Does anyone remember big Swervin' Mervin Hughes steaming in at Manuka Oval?

All zinked up, marvellous mo, a bit heavier than when he was in his prime, but the great man was still an Australian hero and the marquee man for the Canberra Comets.

Then there was young gun Brad Haddin, a brash Queanbeyan junior ready to take the cricket world by storm.

Merv Hughes in the field for the ACT Comets in 1997. Photo: Pat Scala

It's been 14 years of waiting, wondering and hoping, but the Comets are (almost) back sans big Merv, of course.

Advertisement

It's easy to get caught up in the romance of a sporting comeback, be it a legend coming out of retirement or a defunct team being revived after more than a decade.

Anyone in Canberra sport remembers the Comets, the Cannons and the Cosmos. Everyone in Canberra wants a cricket team, an NBL side and an A-League franchise.

See the original post here:

Saturday serve: Can the Comets work in Canberra? Mike Valetta says yes

Blue Comets top Cougars in three

Posted on by

ASHEBORO Southwestern Randolph and Asheboro High School are in the same county, the same town and the same conference.

So any time the schools face off, its tough to predict the outcome.

Thursday night, the varsity volleyball teams met at AHS and, in the end, the Blue Comets notched a 25-14, 25-20, 25-20 win to improve to 4-0 in the Mid-Piedmont Conference.

The competition was great, Asheboro coach Karen Blanchard said. There were a lot of rallies. The girls just practice hard every day. Im pleased with how they played together. Everybody played up to par and we were able to work in every offensive play.

The Blue Comets (7-1 overall) went on a 13-0 run in the first game and never looked back. The Cougars pulled to within 10, but couldnt come closer as Asheboro took a 1-0 match lead.

Southwestern Randolph responded with a 4-0 run to start the second game, but the Blue Comets went on a seven-point streak to go ahead 10-8. The Cougars came back to tie it at 16-all on an Anna Laton kill, but Asheboro scored the next five points and kept Southwestern Randolph at bay to go ahead 2-0 in the match.

The third game was less streaky, featuring seven lead changes and eight ties before the Blue

Comets grabbed a 12-11 lead on a Courtney King hit. Asheboro proceeded to go on a 4-0 run and grew its lead to as many as six. The Cougars pulled within four points twice, but couldnt get over the hump as King ended the game with a kill for the match point.

We have a lot of young ones who play really timid, Southwestern Randolph coach Darby Kennedy said. When we play stron teams, especially Asheboro, they feel like they get in each others way. They need to trust each other. A lot of its that its Asheboro.

King led the Blue Comets with 19 kills, while Salem Davidson added eight and Amy Yates chipped in seven. Yates had 16 points, and Hannah Ferguson and King each had eight. Gilliam Foscue dished out 28 assists and Ferguson had nine.

Read this article:

Blue Comets top Cougars in three

The Man Who Will Build Googles Elusive Quantum Computer

Posted on by

John Martinis is one of the worlds foremost experts on quantum computing, a growing field of science that aims to process information at super high speeds using strange physics of very tiny particles such as electrons and photons. And now, after years as a physics professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, hes headed for Google.

This week, the Google Quantum A.I. Lab announced that it hired Martinis and his Santa Barbara team to build a new breed of quantum computing hardware. Though Martinis will maintain his affiliation with UC Santa Barbara and continue to mentor his PhD students there, he will spend most of his time on his research at Google. The move proves that Google is serious about quantum computing, and given the companys vast influence and deep pockets, it could provide a serious shot in the arm for quantum computer research as a whole.

Google launched its Quantum A.I. Lab last year to test a machine called the D-Wave Two, an intriguing but controversial system that its makers bill as a quantum computer, and it believes quantum computing could play a key role in so many of its future ambitions, from self-driving cars and other robots to better predictive analytics systems for products like Google Now to things we havent even dreamed up yet. Thanks to whats called the superposition principle of quantum mechanics, it could process data for such projects at speeds that are exponentially faster than what you get from todays machines.

But the scientific community has greeted the D-Wave machine with skepticism, questioning whether the machine is actually a quantum computer at all, and whether it can actually provide something you cant get from conventional machines. In joining Google, Martinis lends new weight to the companys quantum ambitions.

Martinis is among those questioning D-Waves claims. Last June, Science published a paper co-authored by Martinis and several other scientists concluding that D-Waves machines arent actually faster than normal laptops and desktops. But hes no D-Wave hater. Martinis has been working with D-Waves machines for a few years now and says he has long been impressed with the work the company has done.

The general consensus now, he says, is that the D-Wave computers do exhibit some quantum behavior. The real question, he explains, is whether this behavior actually speeds up the D-Wave computers. And although his team will be working separately from D-Wave at Google, he thinks their work may eventually help D-Wave take better of advantage of that quantum behavior. Were taking some of the basic ideas of D-Wave and combining that with what the [Google] Quantum AI team has learned operating the machine, he says.

Martinis and his team have been focused on stability of quantum computers, one of the biggest issues in this field of research. Quantum computers rely on particles that are in whats called a quantum state, meaning that they can be two different states at once, or even some combination of the two. The problem is that these particles, called qubits, typically stay in a quantum state for only a fraction of a second, and interference from other particles can easily be knocked out of this state.

Researchers call this loss of quantum information decoherence, and its made it hard to make any reliable calculations with a quantum computer. But Martinis and company are making some progress in this area. Last April, Nature published a paper detailing their work creating a five qubit computer that can maintain quantum information using superconductive materials and an error correction system that creates back-up qubits for each piece of information store. Now, theyve managed to scale it up into a nine qubit machine, and hope to double the number of qubits each year.

Meanwhile, D-Wave has been mostly focused on trying to build machines with as many qubits as possible, but it hasnt focused much on the problem of decoherence, Martinis says. By combining D-Waves work on achieving scale with their own work on stability, Martinis and his team think they can push the whole field of quantum computing further.

Martinis says that joining Google has a few distinct advantages. One is that the Google Quantum A.I. Lab Team team has developed some real-world applications for quantum computing, so Martinis and company will have some real problemssuch as complex route planningto sink their teeth into. Another is that it will enable him to build a full-time, permanent team, as opposed to a staff of grad students and post-doctoral students who come and go every couple years.

See the original post here:

The Man Who Will Build Googles Elusive Quantum Computer

Super-secure quantum-based data encryption for everyone

Posted on by

With a new device set to make unbreakable, quantum-based cryptographic security available for everyone for the very first time, ordinary people will be able to use cryptographic systems that until recently only existed as experiments in the most advanced physics laboratories.

Using technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and incorporating the quantum mechanics of random photon polarization, the new device generates random numbers and creates cryptographic keys so fast and so securely that the technology is said to revolutionize high-speed cryptography and offer a completely new commercial platform for real-time encryption at high data rates.

This claimed breakthrough is made possible by taking advantage of the various spin states of photons. In line with quantum wave theory, a photon exists in all spin states at once. However, if a photon is passed through a polarizing filter that rejects given spin states, the photon can be made to exhibit just one of four possible states of spin vertical, horizontal, left, or right.

In this way, random filters may be applied to photons, which in turn, represent ones or zeroes of binary data, dependent on the state of spin selected and the binary notation attributed to it.

However, in accordance with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, once the photon is polarized we can not then accurately measure it again, unless we apply a filter to it at the end of its journey just like the one it went through at the start to measure its spin state. This means that provided you know the filter sequence required to decode the incoming photon stream only the receiver can then read off the encoded data.

More importantly, anyone attempting to intercept the resulting data stream cannot eavesdrop on the transmission because any attempted observation of a quantum system also alters it, and the quantum state changes resulting from attempted unauthorized reading would be immediately detected.

LANL has partnered with Whitewood Encryption Systems to market this device which, when released, may well effectively render any other conventional random number generation system system obsolete. Current systems based on mathematical formulas that can be broken by a computer with sufficient speed and power will not be able to compete with a system that is built on a truly random system that cannot be second-guessed.

"Quantum systems represent the best hope for truly secure data encryption because they store or transmit information in ways that are unbreakable by conventional cryptographic methods," said Duncan McBranch, Chief Technology Officer at LANL. "This licensing agreement with Whitewood Encryption Systems, Inc. is historic in that it takes our groundbreaking technical work that was developed over two decades into commercial encryption applications."

Purported to be simple and small enough to be made into a USB key drive or similarly-sized unit, the LANL device is also claimed to be exceptionally inexpensive to manufacture, meaning that quantum-based random photon polarization encryption could be made available to anyone. Personal data transmission security would then become cheap, pervasive, and ubiquitous.

But more than this, if this device is successfully brought to market and implemented on a worldwide scale, quantum key distribution technology could one day guarantee truly secure commerce, banking, communications, and data transfer on an unprecedented scale.

Originally posted here:

Super-secure quantum-based data encryption for everyone

Health tips, Whole Health, Emotional health through mercy, stress management, Christian Spirituality – Video

Posted on by


Health tips, Whole Health, Emotional health through mercy, stress management, Christian Spirituality
Health tips, Whole Health, Emotional health through mercy, stress management, Christian Spirituality.

By: Stan Lang

Excerpt from:

Health tips, Whole Health, Emotional health through mercy, stress management, Christian Spirituality - Video

Impact of spirituality on mental illness and developmental disabilities topic of Sept. 13 forum

Posted on by

KALAMAZOO, MI -- A panel discussion on the impact of spirituality on people with mental illness and/or a developmental disability will be held from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13 at the Kalamazoo Public Library's downtown facility.

The event is sponsored by Emerging Hope, an organization that serves under-resourced individuals and families in Kalamazoo County. The organization is headed by Pamela and Curtis Robinson.

The panelists include Karl Wallace, pastor of VISIONS of Victory Church of God; Sherrill Cotton, associate minister of Emmanuel Covenant Church International; the Rev. Barrett Lee, paster of Norther Presbyterian Church; Dorla Bonner-Coleman, minister in training at Galilee Baptist Church, and Kalamazoo City Commissioner Stephanie Moore.

The moderator will be Mona Lisa Watson. The Robinsons will serve as facilitators.

People planning to attend are asked by RSVP by emailing emerginghope@gmail.com by Wednesday, Sept. 10.

More here:

Impact of spirituality on mental illness and developmental disabilities topic of Sept. 13 forum

Earth's Moon The Focus Of International Observe The Moon Night On September 6

Posted on by

September 5, 2014

Kimberly Newton, Marshall Space Flight Center

Media and the public are invited to celebrate International Observe the Moon Night on Saturday, Sept. 6, from 5:30-8:30 p.m. CDT/6:30-9:30 EDT at NASAs Education Training Facility in Huntsville, Alabama. The free event will include moon-related exhibits and hands-on activities for children and adults. An inflatable planetarium show will allow visitors to learn more about the moons shape, colors, and terrain. Several large amateur telescopes will be set up to view the moon, stars, and other visible planets. Visitors can also take a virtual 3-D trip to the moon with the astronomy van, offering a magnified, command-module-like view of the lunar surface.

From 6:15-7 p.m. CDT/7:15-8 p.m. EDT a lunar science discussion will be held with planetary scientists Dr. Renee Weber and Dr. Barbara Cohen to learn more about the moons origin and surface features including craters, mountains and lava flows that can be observed with the naked eye, through telescopes and by orbiting cameras.

The lunar science discussion will be shown live via U-stream. To watch live, visit: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc

Questions can be asked during the event by attendees or via Twitter or Ustream using the hashtag #moonnight.

News media interested in covering the event should contact Kim Newton in the Marshall Public & Employee Communications Office at 256-544-0371 no later than 3 p.m. CDT/4 p.m. EDT Sept. 5, 2014. Media must report to NASAs Education Training Facility to participate in the event.

Directions: Take Interstate 565 to exit 15 for Madison Pike toward Sparkman Drive/Bob Wallace Avenue. Keep right at the fork, follow signs to the Space & Rocket Center. Take the first left after the Marriott entrance.

For more information, follow Marshall Space Flight Centers social media channels:

http://www.facebook.com/nasamarshallcenter

Read the original here:

Earth's Moon The Focus Of International Observe The Moon Night On September 6

Engineers Conduct Low Light Test On Webb Telescope Component

Posted on by

NASA engineers inspect a new piece of technology developed for the James Webb Space Telescope, the micro shutter array, with a low light test at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Developed at Goddard to allow Webb's Near Infrared Spectrograph to obtain spectra of more than 100 objects in the universe simultaneously, the micro shutter array uses thousands of tiny shutters to capture spectra from selected objects of interest in space and block out light from all other sources.

The James Webb Space Telescope is a large space telescope, optimized for infrared wavelengths. It is scheduled for launch later in this decade.

Webb will find the first galaxies that formed in the early universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way galaxy.

Webb will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own solar system.

See more here:

Engineers Conduct Low Light Test On Webb Telescope Component

Red Bluff City Council approves raises for department heads, managers

Posted on by

By Andre Byik

abyik@redbluffdailynews.com @andrebyik on Twitter

RED BLUFF >> The Red Bluff City Council approved 4.5 percent raises for department heads and midmangement employees at its meeting Tuesday, bucking a 3 percent increase initially requested by the city manager.

City Manager Richard Crabtree told council members that city employees represented by the city's four bargaining groups such as police, firefighters and others have or will receive 4.5 percent raises during the city's 2014-2015 fiscal year.

The unrepresented managers who oversee those employees, however, were not scheduled to receive any raises this year per the city's budget, Crabtree said. He added that the recommended 3 percent salary increase came "out of fairness to these employees who supervise people who have received 4.5 percent raises."

The City Council last year approved 3 percent raises for management and midmangement employees, and council members Tuesday initially considered a request for 3 percent raises, retroactively effective July 1, 2014.

Eighteen positions, of which five are listed vacant, including the positions of the Red Bluff fire chief, fire marshal, associate and assistant civil engineers and a building official, would have received raises that were estimated to cost the city about $15,400 annually.

The approved 4.5 percent increases bumped that number to about $23,100 per year.

The request came on the heels of a positive budget update presented to the City Council in August, when the city's finance director, Sandy Ryan, said the city's general fund balance at the end of next June was estimated to be about $1 million. The figure was a jump from an earlier estimate that pegged the city's general fund balance next June at about $500,000.

"If the employees got 4.5 percent, why aren't their managers getting 4.5 percent?," Councilman Clay Parker said, adding that while the managers didn't bargain for raises, "They are still doing a great job, and they're good employees. Why wouldn't we give them 4.5 instead of 3?"

Read more from the original source:

Red Bluff City Council approves raises for department heads, managers