The 15 Best Techno Tracks of November 2020 – Magnetic Magazine

Posted on by

November's techno chart wraps up the monthly series for 2020. It was a nutty year for sure but our favorite techno producers kept things relatively sane for us with their exciting and creative creations. This past month's highlights include a few album like Eats Everything's debut, Drumcomplex's third full-length, and Robert Hood's 10th ever album on Rekids! Lots to enjoy in this month's chart and beyond so go out and buy (or stream) these new albums to show your support.

See past techno charts here.

In the interest of letting the music speak for itself, an elusive producer from Berlin set up the alias, SYCUM to release two brilliant, new tunes via Kompakt Extra. Including this suspenseful piece of music that might fit well among the classic trance of the early '90s. To say the least, it's an absolute beauty that deserves your undivided attention.

Robert Hood's 10th L.P., Mirror Man is out now via Rekidsand it's a 16 track journey through various moods of techno. Some of the highlights include "The Cure" and "7 Mile Dog" which were previously released a couple of months ago on his Nothing Stops Detroit EP but other than that, the album is ripe with new techno including this brilliant one titled, "Falling Apart."

For just the 8th release on Charlotte De Witte's KNTXT imprint, she's invited Alignment back for a second outing that is outright stacked with huge tunes. Four in all are included and all are amazing but by process of elimination, I've chosen "Injection" as the one to go mental for.

These Drumcode all-stars linked up for the first time and the result was a three-track package that includes this next-level, genre-crosser which should reach multiple audiences.

Forthcoming on Dense & Pika's debut L.P., this Matthew Dear collaboration gets rinsed inside-out by Ryan James Ford and the result is this highly original banger. Turn it up.

Hardcore, industrial techno in full effect on this introspective banger courtesy of Sara Landry via CRISIS OF MAN.

Truesoul's most released artist returns to his welcome home with three varied tunes including this excellent one which is very easy on the ears.

This very intelligent piece of techno features on Drumcomplex's excellent, studio album, The Story Of Now.

Self-described as sci-fi techno, this psychedelic adventure features astronaut dialogue over hypnotic loops and repetitive rhythms.

Trance strikes again as yet another classic from the once shunned genre gets a beefy update to match today's sound. "Strange World" is the title of the tune from the year 2000 and Joyhauser does a spectacular job of bringing it up to date 20 years later. Bravo!

For his debut on 1605, Mark Reeve collaborated with the boss himself, UMEK! The track is titled, "Message" and it features a powerful kick drum that not only stutters, but punches hard as hell as well. Fasten your seatbelts, this track is large.

Scottish producer, Stephen Brown has been holding down Detroit style techno since the mid '90s when he was unleashing tunes on the famed Djax imprint. Here he is 25 years later doing his thing with a stellar remix on Anja Schneider's Sous Music imprint.

Ramon Tapia's remix of this classic trance record was getting a lot of attention so he gracefully sought out the publisher and was granted permission to release this banging, new version.

Eats Everything's debut album is out now via own imprint, EI8HT and it's aptly eight tracks deep. Highlights include a Felix Da Housecat collaboration and of course, this wonky, jacker playfully titled, "Moan."

After almost five years of cutting his teeth on stellar labels like Steyoyoke and Afterlife, Innellea makes his well-deserved debut on Diynamic via their Picture series. It's a mini-LP that features six cuts including this dizzying wonder he's titled, "Mar's Moon."

Stream November's techno chart uninterrupted via the playlist below:

Read this article:

The 15 Best Techno Tracks of November 2020 - Magnetic Magazine

9 fugas and Marygoround are the winning European titles at the Gijn Film Festival – Cineuropa

Posted on by

30/11/2020 - This years gathering, which was held purely online, has handed out its most high-profile awards to the Spanish production directed by Fon Cortizo and to Daria Woszeks Polish effort

9 fugas by Fon Cortizo and Marygoround by Daria Woszek

As announced in a previous article (see the news), for its 2020 edition, the Gijn International Film Festival was held on the FICX.TV, festhome and filmin platforms, and in addition, it split its official selection into three strands, dubbed Retueyos, Albar and Tierres en Trance. In Retueyos, the Best Film Award was split between 9 fugas[+see also: filmreviewfilmprofile] by Galician helmer Fon Cortizo and Marygoround[+see also: filmreviewtrailerinterview: Daria Woszekfilmprofile], the colouristic feature debut by Polands Daria Woszek (which also snagged the Best Actress Award for its lead, Grazyna Misiorowska), in accordance with the verdict of the jury, consisting of Pilar Monsell, Michael Zam and Mihai Chirilov. Furthermore, the Best Actor gong was conferred upon the lead in Poppy Field[+see also: filmreviewinterview: Eugen Jebeleanufilmprofile], Romanian thesp Conrad Mericoffer, while the Distribution Award went to Stray by Elizabeth Lo (USA).

In the Albar official selection, the jury made up of Carlos Marques-Marcet, Pilar Palomero and Isabel Orellana decided that the title deserving of the Best Feature Award was First Cow, the latest outing by the USAs Kelly Reichardt, while the Special Jury Prize was bestowed upon Austrian duo Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel for their work on Notes from the Underworld[+see also: filmreviewtrailerinterview: Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmelfilmprofile], and the Distribution Award was given to the Argentinian-French co-production Isabella[+see also: trailerfilmprofile], helmed by Matas Pieiro.

In Tierres en Trance, the FIPRESCI Awards ended up going to Chaco (Bolivia/Argentina) by Diego Moncada, which was deemed Best Feature in this sidebar, and La calle del agua (Spain), which earned Celia Viada Best Director. The latter filmmaker also picked up a further six trophies: the Alma Award for Best Screenplay for a Spanish Film, the DCP Deluxe Award, the RTPA Award for Best Asturian Feature, the Audience Award for Distribution in the Tierres en Trance competition, the main Audience Award and the Europa Joven Award.

In the Push-Play Work in Progress session, which rewards projects in development (see the news), Destello bravo by Ainhoa Rodrguez was singled out with the DCP Deluxe Award, while the recipient of the OpenECAM Award was La mala familia by Nacho A Villar and Luis Rojo. The FICX Pro-LAB prize-winners were as follows: the Asturias Paraso Natural Film Commission awarded an incentive to the project Manual de la siega by Samuel Fernandi, while the OpenECAM Award was presented to Sin voz, set to be directed by Ana Izarzugaza.

Here is the full list of award winners:

Retueyos Official Selection

Best Feature Award (ex aequo)Marygoround[+see also: filmreviewtrailerinterview: Daria Woszekfilmprofile] - Daria Woszek (Poland)9 fugas[+see also: filmreviewfilmprofile] - Fon Cortizo (Spain)

AISGE Award for Best ActressGrazyna Misiorowska Marygoround (Poland)

AISGE Award for Best ActorConrad Mericoffer - Poppy Field[+see also: filmreviewinterview: Eugen Jebeleanufilmprofile] (Romania)

Distribution AwardStray - Elizabeth Lo (USA)

Albar Official Selection

Best Feature AwardFirst Cow Kelly Reichardt (USA)

Special Jury Prize for Best DirectorTizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel Notes from the Underworld[+see also: filmreviewtrailerinterview: Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmelfilmprofile] (Austria)

Distribution AwardIsabella[+see also: trailerfilmprofile] Matas Pieiro (Argentina/France)

Tierres en Trance Official Selection

FIPRESCI Award for Best FeatureChaco Diego Moncada (Argentina/Bolivia)

FIPRESCI Award for Best DirectorCelia Viada Caso La calle del agua (Spain)

Youth Jury AwardComo el cielo despus de llover Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo (Colombia/Argentina)

Other awards

Spanish Film Jury Award for Best Spanish Feature in the Official Selections, Enfants Terribles and EsbillaBetween Dog and Wolf[+see also: filmreviewtrailerinterview: Irene Gutirrezfilmprofile] Irene Gutirrez (Spain/Cuba)Special MentionTransocenicas Meritxell Colell and Luca Vassallo (Spain/Argentina)

RCSERVICE Award for the Director of the Best Spanish FilmIrene Gutirrez Between Dog and Wolf

Alma Award for Best Screenplay for a Spanish FilmCelia Viada Caso La calle del agua

DCP DELUXE AwardCelia Viada Caso La calle del agua

CIMA Jury Award for Best Female-directed FeatureWildland[+see also: filmreviewtrailerinterview: Jeanette Nordahlfilmprofile] Jeanette Nordahl (Denmark)

(Translated from Spanish)

More:

9 fugas and Marygoround are the winning European titles at the Gijn Film Festival - Cineuropa

Harry, Meghan and memories of Princess Diana: The dark side of royalty – The Financial Express

Posted on by

A file photo of Britains Prince Harry and Meghan in Sydney, Australia (AP photo)

By Reya Mehrotra

Whatever they might do or not do, the British royals are rarely out of news. Diana continues to evoke interest years after her death, with BBC recently conducting an inquiry whether her famous interview to Martin Bashir in 1995 was secured through unethical means. Harry and wife Meghan shook the world when they renounced their royal duties and privileges, and with Meghans powerful article recently describing her miscarriage, the world is tuned to the royals yet again. The couples recent book, Finding Freedom, just reinforces that interest.

Diana had once told her son, You can be naughty. Just dont get caught. It seems Harry took only the first part of the advice seriously. Often caught partying and in the middle of troubles, Meghan bought much-needed balance in his world. In finding love, he found himself. The normalcy-craving prince and the girl from another normal world instantly bonded. The first few chapters of the book follow a Harry-in-trance as he meets Meghan and the dawn of their love before transcending into the trials and tribulations that are a part and parcel of the royal life, and the infamous Megxit.

Harry had grown in his mothers liberating shadow. Growing up, he had everything in the world, yet found joy in plastic Happy Meal toys. Often finding himself a misfit, he found a woman who, like his mother, mirrored his drive to support those on the margins of society. But when it became too much, he rebelled just like his mother.

As for Meghan, she was destined for greatness right from the start. Growing up, she dreamt of becoming the president of the US, and at 11, the sparkling young girl brought down a sexist TV commercial and made world leaders take note. Perfecting every role she slipped into, be it in the academia, as an actress or as the royal wife, she strived for excellence. Like him, revolting against convention as what she did. Her anonymous blog, The Working Actress was a tell-all about actors losing roles because of appearance rather than talent. Her tryst with racism had begun early on. When on The Wendy Williams Show, Meghan was labelled Prince Harrys girlfriend, Priyanka Chopra had quipped, Also Meghan Markle the actress, Suits, her achievements. And she, indeed, was much more than just the title the royal association brought along. Six years in Suits and the actress had a successful lifestyle website The Tig, named after her favourite wine Tignanello and close associations with the whos-who of Hollywood.

Written by royal journalists Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family comes across as just what it isa story that the world already knows, only with some fresh details, the story of the royal couples frustration with the media, the intrusion of their privacy and lack of support from the royal family. The book offers glimpses into their private meets, parties, getaways, associations and early dates that have been hidden away from the world, but the majority of the chapters focus and narrate what is already knownher growing up years, Harrys unshackled ways, his wild party phase, the hounding by the press, her transition, her fallout with her father and the growing quest for freedom from it all.

And because of this the book falls flat in retaining attention. The events narrated are rather too fresh in public memory to be read yet again. With The Crown playing out Dianas tryst with the media currently and the book describing in length Meghans own stereotypical, racist and discriminatory trial, the book can be read in the context of media and monarchy. One would rather hope for The Crown to extend one another season dedicated to the paradoxically opposite brothers.

Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal FamilyOmid Scobie & Carolyn DurandHarperCollinsPp 368, Rs 599

Get live Stock Prices from BSE, NSE, US Market and latest NAV, portfolio of Mutual Funds, calculate your tax by Income Tax Calculator, know markets Top Gainers, Top Losers & Best Equity Funds. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Financial Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel and stay updated with the latest Biz news and updates.

More:

Harry, Meghan and memories of Princess Diana: The dark side of royalty - The Financial Express

W&W iconic festival anthem ‘Lift Off!’ turns 8 years old – We Rave You

Posted on by

Everyone knows that duo W&W (consisting ofWillem van Hanegem and Ward van der Harst) are famous for producing some of the most energetic tracks in electronic dance music history. Every track they release is a surefire hit, and one of them wasLift Off!.

Lift Off! celebrates a massive anniversary this month as it has just turned eight years old. Released back in 2012 back when the duos career was well and truly lifting off, this track propelled them to fame and secured their spot as ones to watch. Cementing their signature style and making sure everyone knew all about it, this track did wonders in terms of streaming numbers. With well over 5 million hits on the radio edit version of the track on Spotify, it was also featured in such compilation albums asTrance Anthems Top 60andMiami 2013which was mixed byMYNC,R3HABandNari & Milani. Its fair enough to say that this track made a huge impact on the scene, and everyone was listening to it at the time, and even now it is still timeless and as fresh as ever.

The commanding bass sets the track up for the earth-destroying drop, which invites the listeners to jump up and down in rhythm to the track. Infectious and energetic, this is what W&W are all about, and the track was a perfect introduction to those that hadnt heard of them before. Do you remember when you heard this track for the first time? Let us know in the comments!

Image credit: Rukes.com

Read the original:

W&W iconic festival anthem 'Lift Off!' turns 8 years old - We Rave You

Timmy Trumpet: I love people and that’s what I miss the most about touring – We Rave You

Posted on by

In the world of electronic music, standing out isnt always easy. But there is perhaps no artist more unique, or more memorable than Australian trumpeter and DJ, Timmy Trumpet. His reputation speaks for itself, and has been built over the course of many stand-out performances all over the globe. The energy that Timmy Trumpet commands while on stage is second to none, and has earned him his position as one of the worlds most energetic performers within the electronic music community and beyond.

The classically trained jazz musician has thrived over the last few years, having amassed over 1.5 billion collective streams through a diverse discography that has formed the basis of his stellar artistic reputation. As a multi-platinum selling artist who has amassed a number of accolades during his time in the industry, Timmy Trumpet continues to prove exactly why his support continues to grow exponentially on a global basis. We caught up with Timmy Trumpet to talk isolation, his livestream proposal, and much more.

Hey Timmy, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. How have you been doing over the last few months? How has the pandemic affected your day-to-day life? Have you been able to take any positives from the current circumstances?

Im great! My family and loved ones are blessed with good health. Im one of the fortunate ones. My day to day life is very different without tour- ing but its been great to be home in Australia spending time with family and friends. There are positives. I try to find them in every situation. I think the biggest lesson of 2020 is to never take anything for granted.

Its great to hear that. The video for your recent hit Diamonds was shot completely in isolation, can you tell us a bit about your experience in creating the video, and the message behind it?

Image Credit: Timmy Trumpet (via Facebook)

Continued here:

Timmy Trumpet: I love people and that's what I miss the most about touring - We Rave You

What Are the Differences Between Trance and Techno? – One EDM

Posted on by

If you are interested in getting into the world of Trance, you may be wondering what exactly is the difference between Techno and Trance. While both of them can be considered to be similar, Techno is actually a more aggressive and harder type of Trance. Techno Trance is also often thought of as being more extreme.

Techno Trance is one that utilizes very fast beats. This is something that is often found in electronic music videos, but can also be used in more mainstream genres. Techno is often characterized by a fast tempo, although many tracks are still faster than normal. When listening to Techno, you will notice that there is less than usual ambient music in the mix, and this is what makes it such an intense experience.

Trance is a slower and more soothing type of music. The tempo of Trance is often slower as well, although some tracks can go up to almost triple time. Trance has more effects than Techno, but there is more space between each beat. Many people consider the genre to be somewhere in between heavy metal and jazz. There is also less emphasis on tempo, as in most tracks in the genre, there are a number of different notes played at once.

The differences between Techno and Trance are not only in tempo but in the music. While some Trance tracks utilize synthesizers, some tracks include only instruments. Many techno songs use drums and synthesizers, and sometimes, these songs use keyboards as well.

In general, the music that is most often found in Techno Trance is techno, although there are also many Trance tracks that use very similar sounds. This is because the synthesizers in Techno are usually played on their own. Although this is common, there are also tracks where a synthesizer plays back to the main drumbeat and this is considered to be techno as well. Some DJs may even mix the two genres together and combine them for a very unique sounding track.

There are also some major differences in the sound of Trance and Techno. Trance music is usually quiet and meditative. This is a key factor in the sound of Trance, because this type of music allows listeners to be more relaxed. Trance and allow themselves to become totally enveloped in the song.

Techno is typically louder and faster, but can also have some very fast rhythms. Because of this difference, many people think that Techno can be more intense than Trance. However, when listening to Techno, you will notice that there is less background sound as compared to trance. This is what makes it different from Trance as well.

Some DJs like mixing both types of music together for a unique sound. However, you will find that most of the Trance tracks that you hear are made exclusively for DJs and other producers. Techno is a bit harder and more intense compared to Trance. Although there are some Trance tracks that are very fast.

Techno is also a little different from Trance in the way that it tends to sound very loud. This is because the synthesizers are played so fast that they are easily heard over the main drumbeat. Many of the tracks that you hear on the radio are made by DJs who use these synthesizers for a very fast rhythm. It is this loud sound that makes many people think that Techno is loud as well.

Techno is often created with many different sounds such as heavy beats and different types of percussion. However, there are also times when only one instrument is used as a drumbeat. It is possible to use more than one drumbeat at a time in a Techno song, but this is not very common. Most tracks are just one or two drumbeat tracks being played at the same time.

In order to create a Trance track, you need to be able to listen to a lot of music. To produce a Trance track, a DJ needs to know a lot of different music and know which type of music will suit his or her music styles.

Trance is much harder than Techno. Therefore, many DJs prefer to only play tracks that are much harder and faster than normal. Although it takes more effort, many DJs believe that this is necessary for the Trance sound to stand out. They believe that the slower songs and slower tempo help to keep the energy in Trance.

Continued here:

What Are the Differences Between Trance and Techno? - One EDM

Suszynski: Knowing through imagination | VailDaily.com – Vail Daily News

Posted on by

During this time of year I get out early and ski for a few hours. The runs are quick, I cant say as much for the lines, and my patience is also on a short fuse. When the winter really begins, I can escape into those parts of the mountain that I know are quiet, where the trees and the distant stream under the snow are the only living things speaking to me.

I catch myself in these moods, stomping around in my ski boots at the end of my couple hours, returning home to the winter quiet a little peeved and then I promptly snap out of it. And the next day, I try to do better. I get on the mountain, I stand in line, but instead of focusing on the covered-up faces of the people around me, I look up. My day often begins when I enter the Gondola One maze and shift my attention to Pepis Face, how the snow has such a lopsided relationship with the angle of the slope.

The day progresses when I finally enter the gondola. I look off to the left and see the distinct rabbit figure of Riva and then below as the frontside chutes either look inviting or a little worse for wear. I have observed these runs for a long time and it takes discipline to look anew.

When it comes to learning from people of the mountain, there is no better teacher than Nan Shepherd. Shepherd lived most of her life close to the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland and toward the end of World War II, she wrote a slim, yet very wise book speaking to what she found in those mountains. This book, The Living Mountain, is special in its universality. She writes: Well, I have discovered my mountain its weathers, its airs and lights, its singing burns, its haunted dells, its pinnacles and tarns, its birds and flowers, its snow, its long blue distances.

I am young, but I have spent significant time on Vail Mountain in the winter. There is something soothing about sliding upon beaten-down snow in the early season. As I carve turns on groomers, concentrating on each sweep as I drive my outside ski, I am also traveling a path that a stranger tread before me. Or perhaps, not even a stranger, it could be my neighbor, or a friend. Their tracks, I am also adding to, layering them. And these people who are skiing before me and after me, experiences separated by days or maybe even seconds, while our thoughts are certainly singular, there are some we share, too. Shephard makes a familiar observation of the cold: cold air smacks the back of the mouth, the lungs crackle Frost stiffens the muscles of the chin Her words echo back to me as I breathe in that crisp sip.

In the early season, I like pushing myself in ways that I usually do not when the snow is good. How do I take different routes on a mountain I have been skiing my whole life when space is limited? Where can I find an unseen view of the Gore? Can I push my imagination and take a different run each time? Can I ski the same run five times and learn something new from each descent? Once I get to know the mountain in this way, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him, I think I get a sense of why Shepherd dedicated so much time to the Cairngorms.

It is therefore when the body is keyed to its highest potential and controlled to a profound harmony deepening into something that resembles trance, that I discover most nearly what it is to be. I have walked out of the body and into the mountain, Shepherd says.

I do my best skiing when I let go. When I focus on what I hear, what I touch, I can vibrate with that keyed frequency. In the early season, the abrupt transition from chalked snow to ice, the particular feeling of my neglected edges on that ice and the next day, the anchored speed of newly-tuned skis carrying me over those same rough patches with grace, these are the textures of December. All of those feelings require a sort of creativity, I think, and most definitely training. A sensitivity to being open to minute changes.

Knowing another is endless. And I have discovered that mans experience of them enlarges rock, flower and bird. The thing to be known grows with the knowing, Shepherd says.

This morning, I will not go through the motions. I will hoist my skis on my shoulder and walk to the gondola, pass through the maze, try to smell the storm in the trees, layer on yet another slice of memory over the old, click into my bindings, ascertain whether chair 3 or 4 has the longer line, and then ski. And do it again, carve, want to do it better. Only knowing the mountain when she is at her best is not truly knowing her. Any kind of frustration often means I am not engaging my imagination.

Anna Suszynski is a staff editor at the Vail Daily. She can be reached at asuszynski@vaildaily.com. Follow her on Instagram at annasuszynski or on Twitter at anna_suszynski.

Anna Suszynski is a staff editor at the Vail Daily. She can be reached at asuszynski@vaildaily.com. Follow her on Instagram at annasuszynski or on Twitter at anna_suszynski.

Read more:

Suszynski: Knowing through imagination | VailDaily.com - Vail Daily News

Notice of prolongation of redemption date and partial redemption of convertible bonds PKG5 – GlobeNewswire

Posted on by

AS Pro Kapital Grupp informs that it has prolonged the redemption date of 24 500 Pro Kapital Grupp convertible bond PKG5 29.11.2014 (in the registry under EEK 7.00 PRO KAPITAL GRUPP VAHETUSVLAKIRI PKG5 10-2020, hereinafter referred to as Convertible Bonds PKG5) by 2 years. The new redemption date of convertible bonds PKG5 is 29 November 2022 (hereinafter referred to as the redemption date).

AS Pro Kapital Grupp has submitted the relevant application to the Nasdaq Central Depository of Securities Estonian branch to change the redemption date of Convertible Bonds PKG5. In the process of issuing the second trance of new non-convertible bonds EUR 8.00 PRO KAPITAL GRUPP VLAKIRI 20-2024 on 27 November 2020 15 746 convertible bonds PKG5 were cancelled as they were used as payment when scubscribing for the new non-convertible bonds.

In total, Convertible Bonds PKG5 were prolonged with total value of 68 600 euros and 10 844 convertible bonds PKG5 are going to be redeemed with total value of 30 363.20 euros.

Convertible bonds PKG5 bear an annual interest of 7% and give the holders of the convertible bonds the right to exchange one convertible bond for one share of AS Pro Kapital Grupp. The issue price of each convertible bond is 2.80 euros.

In order to subscribe for the shares of AS Pro Kapital Gruppand exchange the bonds, the bondholder must submit an application to the Company at least 10 (ten) Business Days before the Exchange Date. The Exchange Date shall be each Business Day (a day other than (a) a Saturday, (b) a Sunday, (c) Estonian national holiday, (d) public holiday or (e) another day when the registrar of the Register does not register securities) until the expiration date of the Bond, i.e. until the date of its redemption.

Allan RemmelkoorMember of the Management BoardPhone: +372 614 4920Email: prokapital@prokapital.ee

Continue reading here:

Notice of prolongation of redemption date and partial redemption of convertible bonds PKG5 - GlobeNewswire

Bumps on the scalp: Causes, symptoms, and treatments – Medical News Today

Posted on by

A variety of health issues can cause bumps to form on the scalp, including folliculitis, acne, head lice, and eczema.

Many causes of bumps in this area are harmless, but receiving a prompt diagnosis and treatment can address any concerns and resolve the issue quickly.

In this article, learn about the health conditions that can lead to bumps on the scalp and when to contact a doctor.

Acne that forms on the scalp can be similar to acne in other areas. A person may have raised bumps, whiteheads, or blackheads, which may be itchy, sore, or tender.

Scalp acne occurs when pores or hair follicles become clogged with dead skin cells or oil. If a person has oily hair or adds certain products to their hair, they might be more susceptible to scalp acne.

Factors that may contribute to scalp acne include:

If scalp acne develops consistently, wash the hair more thoroughly, and try hypoallergenic hair products.

If the issue persists or gets worse, contact a dermatologist for specific guidance.

Learn more about treatments for scalp acne.

Folliculitis is a common infection that develops in hair follicles. It can look similar to acne and causes raised, round, inflamed, and itchy bumps.

The infection develops when bacteria enter damaged follicles, and the underlying cause may involve:

To relieve any pain and help the skin heal, apply a warm compress to the area three or four times a day, for 20 minutes at a time.

If the issue worsens, or the cause is unclear, contact a dermatologist.

Itchiness is the most common symptom of head lice, but bumps on the scalp can also indicate their presence.

Have someone closely examine the area for white eggs or moving lice.

Treatment for head lice typically involves using medicated shampoo and combing the area to kill and remove the bugs and their eggs.

Learn more about treatment for head lice here.

There are many types of eczema, and two that can affect the scalp include:

This type of eczema can develop anywhere on the body, including the scalp.

It causes the skin to become inflamed. On a person with darker skin, the affected areas may become darker, grayish, or purplish. On a person with lighter skin, the areas may redden.

In children, it typically affects the hands, backs of the knees, insides of the elbows, scalp, and face.

Adults with this chronic form of eczema on the scalp may notice color changes such as redness, as well as swelling and greasy scaling.

Beyond the scalp, seborrheic dermatitis can affect the:

For eczema on the scalp, try medicated shampoos, creams, or ointments.

Learn more about the treatments for scalp eczema.

Contact dermatitis occurs when the skin comes into contact with an allergen or irritant.

When this issue develops on the scalp, hair products containing fragrances or specific chemicals may be responsible.

When the scalp reacts to an irritant or allergen, such as a chemical, it can cause itchiness, a burning sensation, and sometimes blistering.

The reaction can occur within minutes of contact with the irritant.

It is important to avoid further contact with products that may be responsible. Also, a doctor may prescribe topical steroids.

These fluid-filled cysts most commonly develop on the scalp. They form in the hair follicles and contain excess keratin, a protein that occurs in the hair, nails, and skin.

The cysts are typically large and smooth, and they may be tender. Sometimes, more than one occurs in one area.

Pilar cysts typically go away on their own. To reduce the swelling and any tenderness, try applying a warm, clean washcloth to the area.

If a cyst becomes infected, a doctor may prescribe antibiotics. Also, a doctor may recommend the surgical removal of a cyst.

Learn more about the treatments for pilar cysts here.

Hives are a rash consisting of itchy, raised bumps. The rash forms as part of an allergic response, and it can affect any part of the body, including the scalp.

Hives usually go away on their own within a few days. However, a doctor can prescribe antihistamines or corticosteroids.

Learn more about the treatments for hives.

Ringworm is a fungal infection of the skin, and it can form on the scalp. Healthcare professionals may refer to this as tinea capitis.

Symptoms include:

Tinea capitis is more common in children than adults.

Creams, powders, and lotions do not work for ringworm on the scalp. Instead, a doctor prescribes an oral antifungal medication that a person must take for 13 months.

Melanomas can appear on the scalp, as can:

Unlike the other bumps or blemishes described above, lumps caused by skin cancer continue to change shape and size.

If any bumps on the scalp may indicate cancer, contact a dermatologist immediately.

After making a diagnosis, the doctor will describe the treatments, including surgical and nonsurgical options.

A person can treat most of the health issues that cause bumps on the scalp at home, with care strategies, such as using warm compresses or switching shampoos, and over-the-counter medications.

However, contact a healthcare provider about any unusual growths or symptoms of ringworm or atopic dermatitis.

Also, if any scalp issue persists or worsens, consult a dermatologist.

Bumps on the scalp can result from a variety of health issues, such as acne, eczema, psoriasis, pilar cysts, hives, or ringworm.

Some causes of bumps, such as skin cancer, require urgent medical attention. But often, a person can address the issue at home.

If any lump, bump, or blemish on the scalp is concerning, or if home care is ineffective, contact a dermatologist or another healthcare professional.

See more here:

Bumps on the scalp: Causes, symptoms, and treatments - Medical News Today

Physicists capture the sound of a perfect fluid – MIT News

Posted on by

For some, the sound of a perfect flow might be the gentle lapping of a forest brook or perhaps the tinkling of water poured from a pitcher. For physicists, a perfect flow is more specific, referring to a fluid that flows with the smallest amount of friction, or viscosity, allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics. Such perfectly fluid behavior is rare in nature, but it is thought to occur in the cores of neutron stars and in the soupy plasma of the early universe.

Now MIT physicists have created a perfect fluid in the laboratory, and found that it sounds something like this:

This recording is a product of a glissando of sound waves that the team sent through a carefully controlled gas of elementary particles known as fermions. The pitches that can be heard are the particular frequencies at which the gas resonates like a plucked string.

The researchers analyzed thousands of sound waves traveling through this gas, to measure its sound diffusion, or how quickly sound dissipates in the gas, which is related directly to a materials viscosity, or internal friction.

Surprisingly, they found that the fluids sound diffusion was so low as to be described by a quantum amount of friction, given by a constant of nature known as Plancks constant, and the mass of the individual fermions in the fluid.

This fundamental value confirmed that the strongly interacting fermion gas behaves as a perfect fluid, and is universal in nature. The results, published today in the journal Science, demonstrate the first time that scientists have been able to measure sound diffusion in a perfect fluid.

Scientists can now use the fluid as a model of other, more complicated perfect flows, to estimate the viscosity of the plasma in the early universe, as well as the quantum friction within neutron stars properties that would otherwise be impossible to calculate. Scientists might even be able to approximately predict the sounds they make.

Its quite difficult to listen to a neutron star, says Martin Zwierlein, the Thomas A. Frank Professor of Physics at MIT. But now you could mimic it in a lab using atoms, shake that atomic soup and listen to it, and know how a neutron star would sound.

While a neutron star and the teams gas differ widely in terms of their size and the speed at which sound travels through, from some rough calculations Zwierlein estimates that the stars resonant frequencies would be similar to those of the gas, and even audible if you could get your ear close without being ripped apart by gravity, he adds.

Zwierleins co-authors are lead author Parth Patel, Zhenjie Yan, Biswaroop Mukherjee, Richard Fletcher, and Julian Struck of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms.

Tap, listen, learn

To create a perfect fluid in the lab, Zwierleins team generated a gas of strongly interacting fermions elementary particles, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons, that are considered the building blocks of all matter. A fermion is defined by its half-integer spin, a property that prevents one fermion from assuming the same spin as another nearby fermion. This exclusive nature is what enables the diversity of atomic structures found in the periodic table of elements.

If electrons were not fermions, but happy to be in the same state, hydrogen, helium, and all atoms, and we ourselves, would look the same, like some terrible, boring soup, Zwierlein says.

Fermions naturally prefer to keep apart from each other. But when they are made to strongly interact, they can behave as a perfect fluid, with very low viscosity. To create such a perfect fluid, the researchers first used a system of lasers to trap a gas of lithium-6 atoms, which are considered fermions.

The researchers precisely configured the lasers to form an optical box around the fermion gas. The lasers were tuned such that whenever the fermions hit the edges of the box they bounced back into the gas. Also, the interactions between fermions were controlled to be as strong as allowed by quantum mechanics, so that inside the box, fermions had to collide with each other at every encounter. This made the fermions turn into a perfect fluid.

We had to make a fluid with uniform density, and only then could we tap on one side, listen to the other side, and learn from it, Zwierlein says. It was actually quite diffult to get to this place where we could use sound in this seemingly natural way.

Flow in a perfect way

The team then sent sound waves through one side of the optical box by simply varying the brightness of one of the walls, to generate sound-like vibrations through the fluid at particular frequencies. They recorded thousands of snapshots of the fluid as each sound wave rippled through.

All these snapshots together give us a sonogram, and its a bit like whats done when taking an ultrasound at the doctors office, Zwierlein says.

In the end, they were able to watch the fluids density ripple in response to each type of sound wave. They then looked for the sound frequencies that generated a resonance, or an amplified sound in the fluid, similar to singing at a wine glass and finding the frequency at which it shatters.

The quality of the resonances tells me about the fluids viscosity, or sound diffusivity, Zwierlein explains. If a fluid has low viscosity, it can build up a very strong sound wave and be very loud, if hit at just the right frequency. If its a very viscous fluid, then it doesnt have any good resonances.

From their data, the researchers observed clear resonances through the fluid, particularly at low frequencies. From the distribution of these resonances, they calculated the fluids sound diffusion. This value, they found, could also be calculated very simply via Plancks constant and the mass of the average fermion in the gas.

This told the researchers that the gas was a perfect fluid, and fundamental in nature: Its sound diffusion, and therefore its viscosity, was at the lowest possible limit set by quantum mechanics.

Zwierlein says in addition to using the results to estimate quantum friction in more exotic matter, such as neutron stars, the results can be helpful in understanding how certain materials might be made to exhibit perfect, superconducting flow.

This work connects directly to resistance in materials, Zwierlein says. Having figured out whats the lowest resistance you could have from a gas tells us what can happen with electrons in materials, and how one might make materials where electrons could flow in a perfect way. Thats exciting.

This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the NSF Center for Ultracold Atoms, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

More here:

Physicists capture the sound of a perfect fluid - MIT News

MIT Physicists Created a Perfect Fluid and Captured the Sound Listen Here – SciTechDaily

Posted on by

Scientists have captured the sound of a perfect fluid, which flows with the smallest amount of friction allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics. Credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT

The results should help scientists study the viscosity in neutron stars, the plasma of the early universe, and other strongly interacting fluids.

For some, the sound of a perfect flow might be the gentle lapping of a forest brook or perhaps the tinkling of water poured from a pitcher. For physicists, a perfect flow is more specific, referring to a fluid that flows with the smallest amount of friction, or viscosity, allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics. Such perfectly fluid behavior is rare in nature, but it is thought to occur in the cores of neutron stars and in the soupy plasma of the early universe.

Now MIT physicists have created a perfect fluid in the laboratory, and found that it sounds something like this:

This recording is a product of a glissando of sound waves that the team sent through a carefully controlled gas of elementary particles known as fermions. The pitches that can be heard are the particular frequencies at which the gas resonates like a plucked string.

The researchers analyzed thousands of sound waves traveling through this gas, to measure its sound diffusion, or how quickly sound dissipates in the gas, which is related directly to a materials viscosity, or internal friction.

Surprisingly, they found that the fluids sound diffusion was so low as to be described by a quantum amount of friction, given by a constant of nature known as Plancks constant, and the mass of the individual fermions in the fluid.

This fundamental value confirmed that the strongly interacting fermion gas behaves as a perfect fluid, and is universal in nature. The results, published today in the journal Science, demonstrate the first time that scientists have been able to measure sound diffusion in a perfect fluid.

Scientists can now use the fluid as a model of other, more complicated perfect flows, to estimate the viscosity of the plasma in the early universe, as well as the quantum friction within neutron stars properties that would otherwise be impossible to calculate. Scientists might even be able to approximately predict the sounds they make.

Its quite difficult to listen to a neutron star, says Martin Zwierlein, the Thomas A. Frank Professor of Physics at MIT. But now you could mimic it in a lab using atoms, shake that atomic soup and listen to it, and know how a neutron star would sound.

While a neutron star and the teams gas differ widely in terms of their size and the speed at which sound travels through, from some rough calculations Zwierlein estimates that the stars resonant frequencies would be similar to those of the gas, and even audible if you could get your ear close without being ripped apart by gravity, he adds.

Zwierleins co-authors are lead author Parth Patel, Zhenjie Yan, Biswaroop Mukherjee, Richard Fletcher, and Julian Struck of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms.

To create a perfect fluid in the lab, Zwierleins team generated a gas of strongly interacting fermions elementary particles, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons, that are considered the building blocks of all matter. A fermion is defined by its half-integer spin, a property that prevents one fermion from assuming the same spin as another nearby fermion. This exclusive nature is what enables the diversity of atomic structures found in the periodic table of elements.

If electrons were not fermions, but happy to be in the same state, hydrogen, helium, and all atoms, and we ourselves, would look the same, like some terrible, boring soup, Zwierlein says.

Fermions naturally prefer to keep apart from each other. But when they are made to strongly interact, they can behave as a perfect fluid, with very low viscosity. To create such a perfect fluid, the researchers first used a system of lasers to trap a gas of lithium-6 atoms, which are considered fermions.

The researchers precisely configured the lasers to form an optical box around the fermion gas. The lasers were tuned such that whenever the fermions hit the edges of the box they bounced back into the gas. Also, the interactions between fermions were controlled to be as strong as allowed by quantum mechanics, so that inside the box, fermions had to collide with each other at every encounter. This made the fermions turn into a perfect fluid.

We had to make a fluid with uniform density, and only then could we tap on one side, listen to the other side, and learn from it, Zwierlein says. It was actually quite diffult to get to this place where we could use sound in this seemingly natural way.

The team then sent sound waves through one side of the optical box by simply varying the brightness of one of the walls, to generate sound-like vibrations through the fluid at particular frequencies. They recorded thousands of snapshots of the fluid as each sound wave rippled through.

All these snapshots together give us a sonogram, and its a bit like whats done when taking an ultrasound at the doctors office, Zwierlein says.

In the end, they were able to watch the fluids density ripple in response to each type of sound wave. They then looked for the sound frequencies that generated a resonance, or an amplified sound in the fluid, similar to singing at a wine glass and finding the frequency at which it shatters.

The quality of the resonances tells me about the fluids viscosity, or sound diffusivity, Zwierlein explains. If a fluid has low viscosity, it can build up a very strong sound wave and be very loud, if hit at just the right frequency. If its a very viscous fluid, then it doesnt have any good resonances.

From their data, the researchers observed clear resonances through the fluid, particularly at low frequencies. From the distribution of these resonances, they calculated the fluids sound diffusion. This value, they found, could also be calculated very simply via Plancks constant and the mass of the average fermion in the gas.

This told the researchers that the gas was a perfect fluid, and fundamental in nature: Its sound diffusion, and therefore its viscosity, was at the lowest possible limit set by quantum mechanics.

Zwierlein says in addition to using the results to estimate quantum friction in more exotic matter, such as neutron stars, the results can be helpful in understanding how certain materials might be made to exhibit perfect, superconducting flow.

This work connects directly to resistance in materials, Zwierlein says. Having figured out whats the lowest resistance you could have from a gas tells us what can happen with electrons in materials, and how one might make materials where electrons could flow in a perfect way. Thats exciting.

Reference: Universal sound diffusion in a strongly interacting Fermi gas by Parth B. Patel, Zhenjie Yan, Biswaroop Mukherjee, Richard J. Fletcher, Julian Struck and Martin W. Zwierlein, 4 December 2020, Science.DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz5756

This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the NSF Center for Ultracold Atoms, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Read the rest here:

MIT Physicists Created a Perfect Fluid and Captured the Sound Listen Here - SciTechDaily

How Scientists Have Learned To Work With the Quantum World – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Posted on by

In last weeks podcast, Enrique Blair on quantum computing, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks talks with fellow computer engineer Enrique Blair about why quantum mechanics is so strange. But scientists have learned to work with QM, despite many questions, like how to work with particles that can be in two different places (quantum superposition):

[Starts at approximately 13:16.] The Show Notes and transcript follow.

Excerpts from the transcript:

Robert J. Marks: Whats superposition? Whats going on there?

Enrique Blair: Quantum superposition is really a mathematical description. We use wave functions to describe these particles. Theres a wave function for the photon going through Slit One and a wave function for the photon going through Slit Two. To describe it going through both slits, we have a linear combination of those two wave functions and so you have a more general wave function. Thats the heart of quantum computing because in classical computing, we have bits like zero or one. And in quantum computing, we like to use these superpositions of zero and one. Its not one or the other, its something of both.

Robert J. Marks: Its kind of like Invisible Boy (pictured) in Mystery Men. When you dont look, zero and one are both there.

Note: Invisible Boy is a resident of Champion City who spent most of his adolescent life ignored even by his own father. Eventually he discovered that after years of being overlooked, he had developed the power of invisibility, but it only works as long as no one (including himself) is looking at him. Mystery Men Fan Wiki

Enrique Blair: Thats right. Oddly enough, there is no mathematical definition that rigorously describes measurement. Its one we havent quite figured out yet.

Robert J. Marks: Tell us what a wave function is.

Enrique Blair: A wave function describes the state of a quantum system and it contains everything we can know about that quantum system. But we manipulate these things or we extract meaning from them using quantum mechanical operators. These operators describe things like time evolution or the total energy of the system, or some observable quantity like position or momentum.

The wave function itself is not the probability density. You have to take the magnitude squared. And then you get probabilities.

Note: It amounts to doing mathematics with probabilities rather than exact figures. In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But the atoms or the elementary particles themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts. ( Werner Heisenberg, a quantum mechanics pioneer, Physics and Philosophy, p. 186)

Enrique Blair (pictured): Okay. The wave functionwhen you take its magnitude squared you get the probabilities of various outcomes for measurement when you also use an operator. But really, the stunning thing is thats all you get.

You get probabilities for outcomes. You cant predict with certainty which outcome is going to result when you make a measurement. Thats the subject of one of the papers we wrote recently, just using quantum mechanics to make something thats a truly random number generator.

You know well that computers cant generate random numbers because theyre deterministic.

Robert J. Marks: Which is really surprising because you see random numbers used a lot in gaming machines, like in casinos.

And theyre not random numbers, theyre pseudo-random numbers. They actually use an algorithm.

Physics and engineering professor Craig Lent has talked about randomness and the ability of quantum mechanics to generate true randomness. In fact, this is the only pure source of randomness there is. He said you can go to amazon.com and buy yourself a random number generator based on quantum mechanics that really spits out 100% random numbers. Thats amazing.

Note: Heres a random number generator (RNG) for sale at Amazon. Why cant we just think up and write down random numbers? That doesnt really work because humans always think in patterns, whether we notice them or not. And if we try to write an algorithm to produce random numbers, that is a pattern too. Quantum mechanics can, however, generate random numbers because there is no specific prior position.

Robert J. Marks: In the quantum world, when you measure something, you kind of mess around with the wave equation when you measure it. And then it collapses in accordance to its probability. Is that kind of the way it is?

Enrique Blair: Yeah, thats true. Like I said, the Schrdinger equation describes the time evolution of the system if you dont measure it or dont look at it or dont interact with it. But then once you measure it, you get one of these probabilities and you radically change the wave function and its in the state that corresponds to the result that you got. Previous to that, its a quantum superposition of many different states.

Note: Is quantum mechanics practical? Quantum computers, as their name implies, operate on the bizarre principles of quantum mechanics to manipulate information, and are poised to revolutionize our computing capabilities. With companies like IBM and Google already building the first prototypes, they are expected to propel technology forward with greater speed, accuracy, and security by completing tasks that would be otherwise impossible for ordinary computers to handle. Advanced Science News More on how that works later.

Next: The final ambiguous truth about Schrdingers cat. Schrdinger came up with the cat illustration to explain quantum mechanics to interested people who were not physicists. We dont see quantum paradoxes outside the lab because everything we see consists of far too many quantum subsystems for any one particle to stand out.

Here are the earlier discussions:

How scientists have learned to work with the quantum world.Its still pretty weird, though. Wave function mathematics can work with particles that may be in different places (quantum superposition). QM can also generate truly random numbers we can use.

Heres why the quantum world is just so strange. It underlies our universe but it follows its own rules, which dont make sense to the rest of us. Computer engineer Enrique Blair explains to Robert J. Marks the simple experiment that shows why so many scientists find the quantum world mind-blowing.

Podcast Transcript Download

Here is the original post:

How Scientists Have Learned To Work With the Quantum World - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Titanium Atom That Exists in Two Places at Once in Crystal to Blame for Unusual Phenomenon – USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Posted on by

The position of the titanium atoms in BaTiS3 seems to occupy two positions simultaneously leading to ultra-low, glass-like thermal conductivity. The image shown is an electron microscopy image of the BaTiS3 crystal with the Titanium atoms (purple spheres; yellow sphere in schematic) and Barium atoms (yellow spheres; blue sphere in schematic). Image/Arashdeep Thind/Rohan Mishra (Washington University at St. Louis)

The crystalline solid BaTiS3 (barium titanium sulfide) is terrible at conducting heat, and it turns out that a wayward titanium atom that exists in two places at the same time is to blame.

The discovery, made by researchers from Caltech, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and the Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), was published on November 27 in the journal Nature Communications. It provides a fundamental atomic-level insight into an unusual thermal property that has been observed in several materials.

The work is of particular interest to researchers who are exploring the potential use of crystalline solids with poor thermal conductivity in thermoelectric applications, in which heat is directly converted into electric energy and vice versa.

We have found that quantum mechanical effects can play a huge role in setting the thermal transport properties of materials even under familiar conditions like room temperature, says Austin Minnich, professor of mechanical engineering and applied physics at Caltech and co-corresponding author of the Nature Communications paper.

Crystals are usually good at conducting heat. By definition, their atomic structure is highly organized, which allows atomic vibrationsheatto flow through them as a wave. Glasses, on the other hand, are terrible at conducting heat. Their internal structure is disordered and random, which means that vibrations instead hop from atom to atom as they pass through.

BaTiS3 belongs to a class of materials called Perovskite-related chalcogenides. Jayakanth Ravichandran, an assistant professor in USC Viterbis Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and his team have been investigating them for their optical properties and recently started studying their thermoelectric applications.

We had a hunch that BaTiS3 will have low thermal conductivity, but the value was unexpectedly low. Our study shows a new mechanism to achieve low thermal conductivity, so the next question is whether the electrons in the system flow seamlessly unlike heat to achieve good thermoelectric properties, says Ravichandran.

The team discovered that BaTiS3, along with several other crystalline solids, possessed glass-like thermal conductivity. Not only is its thermal conductivity comparable to those of disordered glasses, it actually gets worse as temperature goes down, which is the opposite of most materials.In fact, its thermal conductivity at cryogenic temperatures is among the worst ever observed in any fully dense (nonporous) solid.

The team found that the titanium atom in each BaTiS3 crystal exists in what is known as a double-well potentialthat is, there are two spatial locations in the atomic structure where the atom wants to be. The titanium atom existing in two places at the same time gives rise to what is known as a two-level system.

In this case, the titanium atom has two states: a ground state and an excited state. Passing atomic vibrations are absorbed by the titanium atom, which goes from the ground to the excited state, then quickly decays back to ground state. The absorbed energy is emitted in the form of a vibration and in a random direction.

The overall effect of this absorption and emission of vibrations is that energy is scattered rather than cleanly transferred. An analogy would be shining a light through a frosted glass, with the titanium atoms as the frost; incoming waves deflect off of the titanium, and only a portion make their way through the material.

Two-level systems have long been known to exist, but this is the first direct observation of one that was sufficient to disrupt thermal conduction in a single crystal material over an extended temperature range, measured here between 50 and 500 Kelvin.

The researchers observed the effect by bombarding BaTiS3 crystals with neutrons in a process known as inelastic scattering using the Spallation Neutron Source at ORNL. When they pass through the crystals, the neutrons gain or lose energy. This indicates that energy is absorbed from a two-level system in some cases and imparted to them in others.

It took real detective work to solve this mystery about the structure and dynamics of the titanium atoms. At first it seemed that the atoms were just positionally disordered, but the shallowness of the potential well meant that they couldnt stay in their positions for very long, says Michael Manley, senior researcher at ORNL and co-corresponding author of the Nature Communications paper.

Thats when Raphael Hermann, researcher at ORNL, suggested doing quantum calculations for the double well. That atoms can tunnel is well known, of course, but we did not expect to see it at such a high frequency with such a large atom in a crystal. But the quantum mechanics is clear: if the barrier between the wells is small enough, then such high-frequency tunneling is indeed possible and should result in strong phonon scattering and thus glass-like thermal conductivity, Manley says.

The conventional approach to creating crystalline solids with low thermal conductivity is to create a lot of defects in those solids, which is detrimental to other properties such as electrical conductivity. So, a method to design low-thermal-conductivity crystalline materials without any detriment to electrical and optical properties is highly desirable for thermoelectric applications. A small handful of crystalline solids exhibit the same poor thermal conductivity, so the team next plans to explore whether this phenomenon is to blame in those materials as well.

The Nature Communications article is titled High frequency atomic tunneling yields ultralow and glass-like thermal conductivity in chalcogenide single crystals. Co-authors include Bo Sun, Jaeyun Moon, and Nina Shulumba of Caltech; Shanyuan Niu, Boyang Zhao, JoAnna Milam-Guerrero, Ralf Haiges, Brent C. Melot, and Matthew Mecklenburg of USC; Raphael P. Hermann, Katharine Page, and Barry Winn of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Arashdeep S. Thind and Rohan Mishra of Washington University in St. Louis; Krishnamurthy Mahalingam and Brandon M. Howe of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; Young-Dahl Jho of Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea; and Ahmet Alatas of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

This research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Link Foundation.

Continue reading here:

Titanium Atom That Exists in Two Places at Once in Crystal to Blame for Unusual Phenomenon - USC Viterbi School of Engineering

[Tuning in] Physicist Yangyang Cheng on not to define things with ‘success’ and ‘failure’ – KrASIA

Posted on by

Yangyang Cheng is a physicist based in the US. Apart from her scientific research in the field of experimental particle physics, she is also a columnist who discusses social and culture issues in international publications like the New York Times.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Kr: Do you reject the use of success or failure in defining people or things?

YC: Yes. Ill give the example of Pan Jianwei, Chinas preeminent quantum scientist. He has won so many national and international awards. Hes also an alumni of my alma mater, USTC.

He said that when he was an undergraduate, his grades were mediocre. In particular, he almost failed his first quantum physics test. While he did study using the textbook and problem sets, he found himself very much intrigued by the science behind these existing well-solved, well-defined problems. So he spent a lot of time thinking, overthinking and did badly on the test day itself. He almost failed the test. However, because he possessed that wrong curiosity and drive, which was problematic for passing a test, he became an accomplished scientist later on through these very same qualities. I think its critical to understand, original research thrives on curiosity and drive.

To continue reading, clickhereto hop on to Oasis, the brainchild ofKrASIA.

See the original post here:

[Tuning in] Physicist Yangyang Cheng on not to define things with 'success' and 'failure' - KrASIA

The next phase of the proton puzzle – Chemie.de

Posted on by

Alexey Grinin and Dery Taray working on the vacuum system of teh 1S-3S experiment.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) have succeeded in testing quantum electrodynamics with unprecedented accuracy to 13 decimal places. The new measurement is almost twice as accurate as all previous hydrogen measurements combined and moves science one step closer to solving the proton size puzzle. This high accuracy was achieved by the Nobel Prize-winning frequency comb technique, which debuted here for the first time to excite atoms in high-resolution spectroscopy.

Physics is said to be an exact science. This means that predictions of physical theories exact numbers can be verified or falsified by experiments. The experiment is the highest judge of any theory. Quantum electrodynamics, the relativistic version of quantum mechanics, is without doubt the most successful theory to date. It allows extremely precise calculations to be performed, for example, the description of the spectrum of atomic hydrogen to 12 decimal places. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and at the same time the simplest with only one electron. And still, it hosts a mystery yet unknown.

The electron in the hydrogen atom "senses" the size of the proton, which is reflected in minimal shifts in energy levels. For many decades, countless measurements on hydrogen have yielded a consistent proton radius. But Spectroscopic investigations of the so-called muonic hydrogen, in which the electron was replaced by its 200 times heavier twin - the muon revealed a mystery. The measurements were performed in 2010 in collaboration with Randolf Pohl, at that time group leader in the Laser Spectroscopy Department of Prof. Hnsch (MPQ) and now professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. The value for the proton radius that can be derived from these experiments is four percent smaller than that of ordinary hydrogen. If all the experiments are thought to be correct, a contradiction to the theory of quantum electrodynamics arises as all measurements in muonic and ordinary hydrogen must report the same proton radius, when all theoretical terms are correct. In consequence, this "proton radius puzzle" motivated new precision measurements all over the world. However, while new measurements from Garching and Toronto confirmed the smaller proton radius, a measurement from Paris again supported the previous larger value.

Science thrives on independent comparisons. That's why the Garching team led by Alexey Grinin, Arthur Matveev and Thomas Udem from Theodor Hnsch's Laser Spectroscopy Department wanted to measure the same transition as in Paris using a completely different and thus complementary method. Using the so-called Doppler-free two-photon frequency comb spectroscopy, they have now succeeded in improving the accuracy by a factor of four. The result for the proton radius was now twice as accurate as all the previous measurements on hydrogen together. It is the first time that quantum mechanics is checked to the thirteenth decimal place. The value for the proton radius determined this way confirms the smaller proton radius and thus excludes the theory as cause. Because for the same transition, the experimental results must agree, regardless of the theory. The following figure (fig. 1) shows the current situation.

In this figure, different results for the proton radius are compared in femtometer [fm], i.e. 10^(-15)m. The new value from the 1S-3S transition in ordinary hydrogen is closer to the value obtained from the 2S-2P transition in muonic hydrogen. Although this exotic atom can only be produced for the short time of two millionths of a second, it is particularly "sensitive" to the proton radius. It therefore bears the smallest measurement errors (horizontal black error bars). Evaluations on the validity of quantum electrodynamics are possible only with several independent measurements being compared. If the theory and its application holds true, and all experiments are conducted correctly, the values for the proton radius must agree with each other within the bounds of the experimental uncertainty. But this isnt the case, as we can see in the picture. The disclosure of this discrepancy the proton puzzle opened up the possibility that quantum electrodynamics, the most precise physical theory, may be carrying a fundamental flaw. The new result however suggests that the problem is of experimental rather than fundamental nature. And quantum electrodynamics would have succeeded once again.

The success of the frequency comb spectroscopy performed in this project also means an important milestone in science for another reason. Precision spectroscopy on hydrogen and other atoms and molecules has so far been performed almost exclusively with continuous wave lasers. In contrast, the frequency comb is generated by a pulsed laser. With such lasers it is possible to penetrate to much shorter wavelengths up to the extreme ultraviolet range. With continuous wave lasers, this seems to be a hopeless endeavor. Highly interesting ions, such as the hydrogen-like helium ion, have their transitions in this spectral range, but even more than 100 years after the development of the first quantum theory, they cannot be studied precisely, which means with laser light. The experiment now presented is an essential step to change this unsatisfactory situation. In addition, it is hoped that these ultraviolet frequency combs will allow biologically and chemically important elements such as hydrogen and carbon to be cooled directly by laser enabling science to study them with even higher precision.

'+_msgObj.message+'

'+_msgObj.message+'

'+_msgObj.message+'

'+_msgObj.message+'

'+_msgObj.message+'

You are currently not logged in to my.chemeurope.com .Your changes will in fact be stored however can be lost at all times.

Go here to see the original:

The next phase of the proton puzzle - Chemie.de

Meet the Women Telling Their Sterilization Stories on TikTok – Daily Beast

Posted on by

Some people unbox beauty products on TikTok; Sadie shows off surgical scars. At home in front of a bathroom mirror, wearing floral printed leggings and a chestnut brown sweater, Sadie pointed out three tiny incision marks coming on their belly button, and both sides of the hip.

Yep, you fucking heard it, Sadie (@sadieanneliza), a 26-year-old Uber driver from Denver who uses they/them pronouns, said in the video. Their voice slurredthey admitted to being fucking zooted off of pain medicationas they talked about the sterilization procedure theyd had earlier in the day.

They didnt just tie my tubes either, they fucking took them, Sadie went on. They took them from me, never, ever to be pregnant. Im fucking stoked. (Sadie asked that The Daily Beast keep their last name private.)

Sadie grew up in a religious family in Texas. They speak in the patient, lilting tone of a summer camp counselor. I was told that children are what fill up your life and make it worthwhile, they said. Youre not really a woman until you have children. As a kid, they always wanted to be a mom.

But then life got in the way. Sadie was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) during infancy, and spent their life taking harsh medications known to induce miscarriages. The unthinkable happened when Sadie was 16, got pregnant, and ultimately lost their twins. Years later at age 22, they were in a fluorescent doctors office, asking for a sterilization.

Sadie says the gynecologist said they would need permission from their then-husband to go through with the procedure; he declined. Were not married for that reason, and other reasons, Sadie said. When the marriage ended, Sadie moved to Colorado. On their way to town, they got in a serious car accident that caused an immune system flare up unlike the ones they were used to from RA.

Sadie felt strands of hair fall out by the fistful and noticed blotchy patches sprout all over their skin. Their nails turned black, then withered away. They finally saw another doctor, received another diagnosis: lupus, a particularly debilitating autoimmune disease.

At that point, I realized that if I were to get pregnant, it could literally kill me, Sadie said. Even if I were able to go to term, I would need a cardiologist, neurologist, rheumatologist, gynecologist, and I would still be high-risk.

And if they had a baby? Just think about all the extra loads of laundry Id be doing, the car seat Id have to carry, the stroller Id push, Id have to pick up my kid, take them to practice, and be able to financially provide for them. It makes less and less sense the more you think of it.

Sadie describes a grieving period, where they came to terms with a child-free future. But the hardest part was yet to comeSadie never knew how difficult it would be to ask doctors to sterilize them.

Ive seen seven or eight doctors, they said. I had to fight for it for several years.

Sadie is not alonetheir video quickly hit over 34,000 views on TikTok, with thousands of women taking to the comments to party along with herand maybe project a little envy, too.

I want this soooo bad, one said. But my gynecologist doesnt want to...Been asking this for the past 4 years now.

Please tell me the secret to convincing a doctor to accept that you want to be surgically sterilized, another begged. How did you do it?!?!?!?

#Sterilization has been viewed on TikTok over 29.5 million times. #FemaleSterilization has nearly 930,000 views. #ChildfreeByChoice, a related hashtag, has almost 6 million.

Sadie describes a community on TikTok and Reddit of women and non-binary people tired of getting turned down by doctors for the sterilization procedures they desirean undiscussed facet of the pro-choice movement.

The r/Childfree subreddit, a page which refers to those who do not have and do not ever want children (whether biological, adopted, or otherwise) boasts 1.3 million members. The page links to a much-loved, regularly-updated Childfree friendly doctors list that breaks down practices in each state where women have had success getting sterilizations.

Sadie added their OBGYN, Dr. Lindsay Eun of Westside Womens Care in Denver, to the list. I felt on top of the world [post-op], they said. I felt validated, liberated, seen, and listened to. But the more I thought about that, I got pretty angry. This procedure in my life should not have been some grand victory. Its nothing more than adequate healthcare.

One of the risks for sterilization is the potential for regret.

Sadie ended up getting a bilateral salpingectomy, or the surgical removal of both fallopian tubes. Thats a different procedure than a tubal ligation, colloquially known as getting ones tubes tied, where the fallopian tubes are cut, tied, or otherwise blocked.

But both types of sterilization have the same, permanent, desired outcome: the prevention of pregnancyforever.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) cites sterilization as the most common form of contraception for married couples. The CDC found that 18.6 percent of American women age 15-49 have been sterilized, with the rates increasing with age. Just over 4 percent of women between 20 and 29 had had the procedure. But 21.6 percent of women age 30-39 were sterilized, compared with 39.4 percent of women age 40-49.

The procedure is frequently scheduled postpartum if a woman decides she does not want to have any more children. One study found that 700,000 surgeries are performed annually, half of which are performed 48 hours post-partum. Ten percent of births in this country are followed by a sterilization. When done correctly, it is a normalized, basic procedure.

But given the United States shameful history of compulsory sterilizations and eugenics aimed to reduce the rate of certain mental and physical disordersprocedures that unfairly targeted the poor or people of colormany gynecologists are hesitant to sterilize women under 30.

This week, the Dutch government apologized to trans and intersex people impacted by a law that ran from 1985 to 2014 that required they agree to sterilization before being able to legally change their gender. The victims were awarded a compensation of 5,000 euros (around $6,000) each. In 2018, Sweden issued a similar payout.

In the U.S., a woman must be 21 to get a sterilization covered by federal funds such as Medicaid or the Indian Health Service. (That age restriction does not apply to those with private insurance.) The procedure can cost up to $6,000a vasectomy, for men, runs about $1,000.

ACOGs official guidelines encourage doctors to discuss the risk of regret with patients. A survey cited by ACOG followed women for 14 years after the operation and asked how they felt about their sterilization. Around 20 percent of women who got the procedure before they were 30 reported feeling regretful; only 6 percent of those above that age felt the same.

I want to be very, very clear: I do not mean that everyone who gets a sterilization when theyre younger regrets it, Jennifer Villavicencio, MD, MPP, an ob-gyn and the Darney-Landy Fellow at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told The Daily Beast. But as with any treatment you engage in, there are risks and benefits. And one of the risks for sterilization is the potential for regret.

When any patient asks Dr. Villavicencio for a sterilization, she asks them to start from the beginning.

I want them to tell me about themselves, and I want to get to know them and understand why theyre coming to this decision, she said. I ask a lot of questions and try to get a sense of where theyre at.

We have an unfortunate trend in this country of not really trusting women or people with reproductive capacity to make decisions about their reproduction.

Dr. Jenniver Villavicencio

But Dr. Villavicencio acknowledges that not all doctors feel similarly. Ive had patients who have come to me saying three doctors would not do the procedure, she said. We have an unfortunate trend in this country of not really trusting women or people with reproductive capacity to make decisions about their reproduction.

Its common for doctors to tell young women who ask for sterilizations to consider therapy. Its frankly absurd to suggest that just because someone is 21 and doesnt want children needs therapy, Dr. Villavicencio said. That being said, given this is a permanent procedure, I have a conversation with patients about the context in which theyre seeking this decision.

Shes seen patients requesting sterilization who have a history of severe depression, or who are experiencing domestic violence in their relationship. Permanent contraception might make sense in those circumstances, but it will not fix the underlying problem.

There have been scenarios where Ive said, do you think it makes sense for you to speak to a therapist before we move forward? Its not a recommendation, but its something Ive brought up when the context suggests it could be helpful, Dr. Villavicencio said.

Women who are on Medicaid are required to wait up to 30, but no more than 180 days, after their consultation before getting a sterilization. This federal law theoretically prevents low-income women from undergoing compulsory procedures. But women with private insurance have no such restriction, which makes many see the waiting period as discriminatory.

Any time individuals face barriers to receiving care, it is under-resourced and marginalized communities who bear the brunt of that, Dr. Villavicencio said. Young people fall into that category. There are so many thoughts, opinions, and beliefs about what they should be doing with their bodies.

Dr. Jennifer Lincoln is an OBGYN in Portland, Oregon, and something of a sex ed influencer with 1.4 million followers on TikTok. She has made videos on the app debunking the myth that a womans spouse must consent to her sterilization procedure. In an interview, she said that doctors cannot hold someones fertility hostage until theyre 30 as long as the patient understands all risks.

Its great to see that people are talking about it on TikTok and opening up about the right to their fertility, Dr. Lincoln said. Its not that you need to be a woman with kids in order to be a good member of societyyou are in charge of your own fertility.

In a few days, Lindsay Hull (@lindsayloohoooo) will celebrate the one-,year anniversary of her sterilization. She found her Phoenix, Arizona gynecologist on the r/Childfree list. You would think it would be easy to go ask for something like that, but I had to go to three or four different doctors before I found one who actually listened to me when I talked, Hull, who is 26 and works as a videographer, said. It wasnt the easiest thing to do.

It was the same thing every timedoctors telling her she was too young, she should wait a few years, with some even asking What would your future husband think?

The answer: He wouldnt be my future husband if he didnt agree with me on this subject, Hull said. I grew up in a really small town where everyone had this thing where they would follow the same template of what you need to do in your lifego to college, do a career, get married, have kids. I decided I didnt want that.

Hull is currently engaged to a supportive fianc. Back when she was dating around, the topic of sterilization would most definitely come up. In your late twenties, people start thinking about getting serious and having kids, she said. I always let whoever I was seeing know that I dont want kids and that was not something I was going to budge on. One person thought I was going to change my mind, but I wasnt.

Before her sterilization, Hull took birth control for about 10 years. Sometimes she forgets about her procedure and thinks, Oh, its time for me to take my birth controlwait, I dont have to do that anymore.

Hull says its common for her to receive unsolicited commentary from people she tells about her procedure. People have told her, to her face, that shell regret her decision.

They ask, What if you change your mind? Then I say, What if I got pregnant, and I tell you Im going to have the childwould you say the same thing, that I was going to regret it or change my mind? No, you would never say that. So why are you doing it this way, now? Hull explained.

None of the people who spoke with The Daily Beast for this story said they ever regretted their decision to go through with a sterilization.

Montana Blum (@toiletbowlgod), 24, lives in Northern Virginia, and is a full-time college student studying business management. (Blum is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.)

For me, having kids just isnt in the picture, and Ive been saying that ever since I was 15, Blum said. A lot of people laughed it off and said theyd change your mind. A lot of us non-binary people get a partial hysterectomy for our dysphoria. After I did a lot of research and learned the loopholes Id have to jump through, I managed to get my tubes removed at 21. But Im still currently looking for a doctor to do my hysto. (A hysterectomy is the surgical removal of the uterus.)

Its hard for trans and non-binary people to get reproductive health care. A lot of doctors either invalidate it or ignore it, thinking well change our minds. In their eyes, its a mental illness to not want children.

Montana Blum

Blum currently sees a therapist who is on board with providing a gynecologist with a note that supports their decision to get a hysterectomy. Its hard for trans and non-binary people to get reproductive health care, Blum said. A lot of doctors either invalidate it or ignore it, thinking well change our minds. In their eyes, its a mental illness to not want children.

Though Blums family is on the conservative side of things, their mother has supported the choice to be child-free. When people ask about my choice, I say, Why on earth are you worrying about my fertility? Blum said. Its odd. People think that they are owed insight on your family planning. Its the same for those who want to be a parent, too. People dont have a right to those things.

Though their work on TikTok, Reddit, and various Facebook groups, Blum says theyve helped over 40 trans, non-binary, and cis people get sterilization procedures. I have cried about it, they said. It has made me really happy. A lot of people have been trying for 10 years, seen over 30 doctors, and finally found one through me. It helps a lot knowing they have this option.

Blum recommends people searching for sterilizations to try teaching hospitalsthose tend to be more progressive. Obviously womens clinics and anywhere that is queer-friendly is a good start, too. In conservative states, access can be limited. But liberal bastions are not quite havens for sterilizations, either.

I helped someone who wants a procedure recently who lives in California, Blume said. A lot of gynecologists there tell people to just keep having abortions, that thats empowering. My friend had five gynos who fed her that propaganda. When she finally found a doctor [who would perform her sterilization], they said, Thats the reputation for California. They are very liberal, and just pro-abortion.

Feminists dont like to admit it, but feminism is rooted in cishetero-normativity, Blume said. Pro-choice only focuses on abortion. Nobodys saying thats a bad thing, but there are other health-care issues, too. I myself as a childfree person has been criticised by conservatives but also by feminists who are pro-choice. Theres a lot of hypocrisy.

When anyone with a reproductive system chooses permanent contraception, they reject the age-old ideal that has been thrust upon women since the Virgin Birth: being a mother is their highest calling. Of course, that is not true for everyone. Still, those who desire sterilization before experiencing parenthood are encouraged to wait it out, just in case.

Sadies partner is a 23-year-old man who knew his whole life he never wanted to have children. This year, he asked his doctor for a vasectomy.

He went to one doctor, one single doctor, and said, I want a permanent, irreversible vasectomy, Sadie said. They were like, Cool, sign the papers. They had him in and out in 30 days. No one raised an eyebrow. Hes three years younger than I was when I got my sterilization. When I was his age, I was begging doctors for a similar procedure and they looked at me like I was crazy.

View original post here:

Meet the Women Telling Their Sterilization Stories on TikTok - Daily Beast

Moore’s law | computer science | Britannica

Posted on by

Moores law, prediction made by American engineer Gordon Moore in 1965 that the number of transistors per silicon chip doubles every year.

Moore's law. Gordon E. Moore observed that the number of transistors on a computer chip was doubling about every 1824 months. As shown in the logarithmic graph of the number of transistors on Intel's processors at the time of their introduction, his law was being obeyed.

Britannica Quiz

Computers and Technology Quiz

Computers host websites composed of HTML and send text messages as simple as...LOL. Hack into this quiz and let some technology tally your score and reveal the contents to you.

For a special issue of the journal Electronics, Moore was asked to predict developments over the next decade. Observing that the total number of components in these circuits had roughly doubled each year, he blithely extrapolated this annual doubling to the next decade, estimating that microcircuits of 1975 would contain an astounding 65,000 components per chip. In 1975, as the rate of growth began to slow, Moore revised his time frame to two years. His revised law was a bit pessimistic; over roughly 50 years from 1961, the number of transistors doubled approximately every 18 months. Subsequently, magazines regularly referred to Moores law as though it were inexorablea technological law with the assurance of Newtons laws of motion.

What made this dramatic explosion in circuit complexity possible was the steadily shrinking size of transistors over the decades. Measured in millimetres in the late 1940s, the dimensions of a typical transistor in the early 2010s were more commonly expressed in tens of nanometres (a nanometre being one-billionth of a metre)a reduction factor of over 100,000. Transistor features measuring less than a micron (a micrometre, or one-millionth of a metre) were attained during the 1980s, when dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips began offering megabyte storage capacities. At the dawn of the 21st century, these features approached 0.1 micron across, which allowed the manufacture of gigabyte memory chips and microprocessors that operate at gigahertz frequencies. Moores law continued into the second decade of the 21st century with the introduction of three-dimensional transistors that were tens of nanometres in size.

The rest is here:

Moore's law | computer science | Britannica

Were not prepared for the end of Moores Law | MIT …

Posted on by

Moores argument was an economic one. Integrated circuits, with multiple transistors and other electronic devices interconnected with aluminum metal lines on a tiny square of silicon wafer, had been invented a few years earlier by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor. Moore, the companys R&D director, realized, as he wrote in 1965, that with these new integrated circuits, the cost per component is nearly inversely proportional to the number of components. It was a beautiful bargainin theory, the more transistors you added, the cheaper each one got. Moore also saw that there was plenty of room for engineering advances to increase the number of transistors you could affordably and reliably put on a chip.

Soon these cheaper, more powerful chips would become what economists like to call a general purpose technologyone so fundamental that it spawns all sorts of other innovations and advances in multiple industries. A few years ago, leading economists credited the information technology made possible by integrated circuits with a third of US productivity growth since 1974. Almost every technology we care about, from smartphones to cheap laptops to GPS, is a direct reflection of Moores prediction. It has also fueled todays breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and genetic medicine, by giving machine-learning techniques the ability to chew through massive amounts of data to find answers.

But how did a simple prediction, based on extrapolating from a graph of the number of transistors by yeara graph that at the time had only a few data pointscome to define a half-century of progress? In part, at least, because the semiconductor industry decided it would.

Wikimedia

Moore wrote that cramming more components onto integrated circuits, the title of his 1965 article, would lead to such wonders as home computersor at least terminals connected to a central computerautomatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment. In other words, stick to his road map of squeezing ever more transistors onto chips and it would lead you to the promised land. And for the following decades, a booming industry, the government, and armies of academic and industrial researchers poured money and time into upholding Moores Law, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that kept progress on track with uncanny accuracy. Though the pace of progress has slipped in recent years, the most advanced chips today have nearly 50 billion transistors.

Every year since 2001, MIT Technology Review has chosen the 10 most important breakthrough technologies of the year. Its a list of technologies that, almost without exception, are possible only because of the computation advances described by Moores Law.

For some of the items on this years list the connection is obvious: consumer devices, including watches and phones, infused with AI; climate-change attribution made possible by improved computer modeling and data gathered from worldwide atmospheric monitoring systems; and cheap, pint-size satellites. Others on the list, including quantum supremacy, molecules discovered using AI, and even anti-aging treatments and hyper-personalized drugs, are due largely to the computational power available to researchers.

But what happens when Moores Law inevitably ends? Or what if, as some suspect, it has already died, and we are already running on the fumes of the greatest technology engine of our time?

Its over. This year that became really clear, says Charles Leiserson, a computer scientist at MIT and a pioneer of parallel computing, in which multiple calculations are performed simultaneously. The newest Intel fabrication plant, meant to build chips with minimum feature sizes of 10 nanometers, was much delayed, delivering chips in 2019, five years after the previous generation of chips with 14-nanometer features. Moores Law, Leiserson says, was always about the rate of progress, and were no longer on that rate. Numerous other prominent computer scientists have also declared Moores Law dead in recent years. In early 2019, the CEO of the large chipmaker Nvidia agreed.

In truth, its been more a gradual decline than a sudden death. Over the decades, some, including Moore himself at times, fretted that they could see the end in sight, as it got harder to make smaller and smaller transistors. In 1999, an Intel researcher worried that the industrys goal of making transistors smaller than 100 nanometers by 2005 faced fundamental physical problems with no known solutions, like the quantum effects of electrons wandering where they shouldnt be.

For years the chip industry managed to evade these physical roadblocks. New transistor designs were introduced to better corral the electrons. New lithography methods using extreme ultraviolet radiation were invented when the wavelengths of visible light were too thick to precisely carve out silicon features of only a few tens of nanometers. But progress grew ever more expensive. Economists at Stanford and MIT have calculated that the research effort going into upholding Moores Law has risen by a factor of 18 since 1971.

Likewise, the fabs that make the most advanced chips are becoming prohibitively pricey. The cost of a fab is rising at around 13% a year, and is expected to reach $16 billion or more by 2022. Not coincidentally, the number of companies with plans to make the next generation of chips has now shrunk to only three, down from eight in 2010 and 25 in 2002.

Finding successors to todays silicon chips will take years of research.If youre worried about what will replace moores Law, its time to panic.

Nonetheless, Intelone of those three chipmakersisnt expecting a funeral for Moores Law anytime soon. Jim Keller, who took over as Intels head of silicon engineering in 2018, is the man with the job of keeping it alive. He leads a team of some 8,000 hardware engineers and chip designers at Intel. When he joined the company, he says, many were anticipating the end of Moores Law. If they were right, he recalls thinking, thats a drag and maybe he had made a really bad career move.

But Keller found ample technical opportunities for advances. He points out that there are probably more than a hundred variables involved in keeping Moores Law going, each of which provides different benefits and faces its own limits. It means there are many ways to keep doubling the number of devices on a chipinnovations such as 3D architectures and new transistor designs.

These days Keller sounds optimistic. He says he has been hearing about the end of Moores Law for his entire career. After a while, he decided not to worry about it. He says Intel is on pace for the next 10 years, and he will happily do the math for you: 65 billion (number of transistors) times 32 (if chip density doubles every two years) is 2 trillion transistors. Thats a 30 times improvement in performance, he says, adding that if software developers are clever, we could get chips that are a hundred times faster in 10 years.

Still, even if Intel and the other remaining chipmakers can squeeze out a few more generations of even more advanced microchips, the days when you could reliably count on faster, cheaper chips every couple of years are clearly over. That doesnt, however, mean the end of computational progress.

Neil Thompson is an economist, but his office is at CSAIL, MITs sprawling AI and computer center, surrounded by roboticists and computer scientists, including his collaborator Leiserson. In a new paper, the two document ample room for improving computational performance through better software, algorithms, and specialized chip architecture.

One opportunity is in slimming down so-called software bloat to wring the most out of existing chips. When chips could always be counted on to get faster and more powerful, programmers didnt need to worry much about writing more efficient code. And they often failed to take full advantage of changes in hardware architecture, such as the multiple cores, or processors, seen in chips used today.

Go here to see the original:

Were not prepared for the end of Moores Law | MIT ...

Moore’s Law: The rule that really matters in tech – CNET

Posted on by

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore speaking in 2007 at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Stephen Shankland/CNET

Year in, year out, Intel executive Mike Mayberry hears the same doomsday prediction: Moore's Law is going to run out of steam. Sometimes he even hears it from his own co-workers.

But Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who 47 years ago predicted a steady, two-year cadence of chip improvements, keeps defying the pessimists because a brigade of materials scientists like Mayberry continue to find ways of stretching today's silicon transistor technology even as they dig into alternatives. (Such as, for instance, super-thin sheets of carbon graphene.)

Oh, and don't forget the money that's driving that hunt for improvement. IDC predicts chip sales will rise from $315 billion this year to $380 billion in 2016. For decades, that revenue has successfully drawn semiconductor research out of academia, through factories, and into chips that have powered everything from a 1960s mainframe to a 2012 iPhone 5.

The result: Moore's Law has long passed being mere prognostication. It's the marching order for a vast, well-funded industry with a record of overcoming naysayers' doubts. Researchers keep finding ways to maintain a tradition that two generations ago would have been science fiction: That computers will continue to get smaller even as they get more powerful.

"If you're only using the same technology, then in principle you run into limits. The truth is we've been modifying the technology every five or seven years for 40 years, and there's no end in sight for being able to do that," said Mayberry, vice president of Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group.

Plenty of other industries aren't as fortunate. You don't see commercial supersonic airplane travel, home fusion reactors, or 1,000-mile-per-gallon cars. But the computing industry has a fundamental flexibility that others lack: it's about bits, not atoms.

"Automobiles and planes are dealing with the physical world," such as the speed of sound and the size and mass of the humans they carry, said Sam Fuller, chief technology officer of Analog Devices, a chipmaker that's been in the electronics business even longer than Intel. "Computing and information processing doesn't have that limitation. There's no fundamental size or weight to bits. You don't necessarily have the same constraints you have in these other industries. There potentially is a way forward."

That means that even if Moore's Law hits a wall and chip components stop shrinking, there are other ways to boost computer performance.

Before we get too carried away with lauding Moore's Law, be forewarned: Even industry optimists, Moore included, think that about a decade from now there could be trouble. Yes, all good things come to an end, and at some point those physical limits people have been predicting will turn out to be real.

To understand those limits and how they may be overcome, I talked to researchers at the big chip companies, academics, and industry gurus. I wanted to go beyond what what most of us think we know about semiconductors and hear it from the experts. Do they have doubts? What are they doing about those doubts? The overwhelming consensus among the chip cognescenti, I found, was, yes, there's a stumbling block a decade or so from now. But don't be surprised if we look back at that prediction 20 years from now and laugh.

For related coverage, see what would happen if Moore's Law fizzled and a Q&A with Intel's Mike Mayberry.

Strictly speakingMoore's Law is named after Gordon Moore, who in a 1965 paper in Electronics Magazine observed an annual doubling in the number of chip elements called transistors. He refined his view in 1975 with a two-year cycle in an updated paper. "I didn't think it would be especially accurate," Moore said in 2005, but it has in fact proved to be. And now, Intel times its tick-tock clock to Moore's Law, updating its chip architecture and its manufacturing technology on alternating years.

Here's a very specific illustration of what Moore's Law has meant. The first transistor, made in 1947 at Bell Labs, was assembled by hand. In 1964, there were about 30 transistors on a chip measuring about 4 square millimeters. Intel's "Ivy Bridge" quad-core chips, the third-generation Core i7 found found in the newest Mac and Windows PCs, has 1.4 billion transistors on a surface area of 160 square millimeters -- and there are chips with even more.

A transistor is the electrical switch at the heart of a microprocessor, similar to a wall switch that governs whether electric current will flow to light a lamp. A transistor element called a gate controls whether electrons can flow across the transistor from its "source" side to its "drain" side. Flowing electrons can be taken logically as a "1," but if they don't flow the transistor reads "0." Millions of transistors connected together on a modern chip process information by influencing each other's electrical state.

In today's chips, a stretch of silicon connects the source to the drain. Silicon is a type of material known as a "semiconductor" because, depending on conditions, it'll either act as a conductor that transmits electrons or as an insulator that blocks them. Applying a little electrical voltage to the transistor's gate controls whether that electron current flows.

To keep up with Moore's Law, engineers must keep shrinking the size of transistors. Intel, the leader in the race, currently uses a manufacturing process with 22-nanometer features. That's 22 billionths of a meter, or roughly a 4,000th the width of a human hair. For contrast, Intel's first chip, the 4004 from 1971, was built with a 10-micron (10,000-nanometer) process. That's about a tenth the width of a human hair.

Intel's Ivy Bridge generation of processors is an example of how hard it can be to sustain that process.

To make the leap from the earlier 32nm process to today's 22nm process, Intel had to rework the basic "planar" transistor structure. Previously, the electrons traveled in a flat silicon channel laid flat into the plane of the silicon wafer and with the gate perched on top. To work around the limits of that approach, Intel flipped the planar transistor's silicon on its side into a fin that juts up out of the plane of the chip. The gate straddles this fin the way a person might straddle a low fence with both legs. To improve performance, Intel can put as many as three of these fins in a single transistor.

The result is a "tri-gate" chip design that shrinks without suffering debilitating new levels of "leakage," which takes place when current flows even when a transistor is switched off. And it means Intel has one more "shrink" of the chip manufacturing process under its belt.

Developing the tri-gate transistors wasn't easy: Intel researchers built the company's first finned transistor in 2002, nine years before it was ready for mass-market production. And it wasn't the only challenge; other fixes include making gates out of metal, connecting transistors with copper rather than aluminum wires, and using "strained" rather than ordinary silicon for the channel between source and drain.

In 2013, Intel plans another shrink to a 14nm process. Then comes 10nm, 7nm, and, in 2019, 5nm.

And it's not just Intel making up these numbers. In the chip business, a fleet of companies depend on coordinated effort to make sure Moore's Law stays intact. Combining academic research results with internal development and cross-industry cooperation, they grapple with quantum-mechanics problems such as electron tunneling and current leakage -- a bugaboo of incredibly tiny components in which a transistor sucks power even when it's switched off.

Doom and gloomGiven the engineering challenges, a little pessimism hardly seems out of place.

A 2005 Slate article bore the title, "The End of Moore's Law." In 1997, the New York Times declared, "Incredible Shrinking Transistor Nears Its Ultimate Limit: The Laws of Physics," and in another piece quoted SanDisk's CEO forecasting a "brick wall" in 2014. In 2009, IBM Fellow Carl Anderson predicted continuing exponential growth only for a generation or two of new manufacturing techniques, and then only for high-end chips.

Even Intel has fretted about the end by predicting trouble ahead getting past 16nm processes.

In decades past, Moore himself was worried about how to manufacture chips with features measuring 1 micron, then later chips with features measuring 0.25 microns, or 250 nanometers. A human hair is about 100 microns wide.

Yes, there are fundamental limits -- for example, quantum mechanics describes a phenomenon called tunneling where the position of an electron can't be pinned down too precisely. From a chip design point of view, that turns out to mean that an electron can essentially hop from source to drain, degrading a chip with leakage current.

So is there an end to Moore's Law? In a 2007 interview, Moore himself said, "There is." He continued:

Now playing: Watch this: Father of Moore's Law on the future of microprocessing

0:42

That was five years ago, and few seem to want to venture too much farther beyond Moore's prediction.

"I think we have at least a decade before we start getting into issues," said Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "I still give it another decade," added Robert Mears, founder and president of Mears Technologies, which has developed a technology called MST CMOS designed to improve the performance of the conventional silicon channel.

Beyond siliconAlthough Moore's Law might not continue if transistors can't be shrunk, the post-silicon future shouldn't be overlooked. When traditional silicon transistors eventually run out of gas, there are plenty of alternatives waiting in the wings.

"The most probable outcome is that silicon technology will find a way to keep scaling, some way continue to deliver more value with succeeding generations," said Nvidia Chief Scientist Bill Dally.

One likely candidate keeps the same basic structure as today's transistors but speeds them up by breaking out of today's constraints in the periodic table of the elements. In transistors now, the source, drain, and channel are made from silicon, which inhabits a column of the periodic table called group IV.

But it's possible to use indium arsenide, gallium arsenide, gallium nitride or other so-called III-V materials from group III and group V. Being from different groups on the periodic table means transistor materials would have different properties, and the big one here is better electron mobility. That means electrons move faster and transistors therefore can work faster.

"You can imagine staying with fairly traditional transistors, moving to silicon-germanium, then III-V structures," Fuller said. But that's mostly a stopgap. "There is some potential future in that, but it pretty quickly runs into similar limits that hit silicon. There may be [performance improvement] factors of two, four, maybe eight to be gained."

Another tweak could replace the silicon channel with "nanowires," super-thin wires made of various semiconductor materials (including, it so happens, lowly silicon itself). More exotic and more challenging is the possibility of using carbon nanotubes instead. These are made of a cylindrical mesh of interlinked carbon atoms that can carry current, but there are lots of difficulties: connecting them to the rest of the transistor, improving their not-so-hot semiconductor properties, and ensuring the nanotubes are sized and aligned correctly.

Glorious grapheneWhich brings us to one of the most promising post-silicon candidates: graphene, a flat honeycomb lattice of carbon that resembles atomic chicken wire. If you roll up a sheet of graphene, you get a nanotube, but it turns out the flat form also can be used as a semiconductor.

One advantage graphene holds over carbon nanotubes is the possibility that it can be manufactured directly as a step in the wafer processing that goes on in chip factories, instead of being fabricated separately and added later. (This is a very big deal in the intricate and minutely choreographed business of chip manufacture.) Another is that it's got fantastically high electron mobility, which could make for very fast switching speeds if graphene is used to connect source and drain in a transistor.

"I think graphene is very promising," Fuller said.

But graphene has plenty of challenges. First on the list: it lacks the good "band gap," a separation in energy levels that determines whether a semiconductor conducts electrons or insulates. Graphene by itself has a band gap of zero, meaning that it just conducts electricity and fails as a semiconductor.

"Graphene has some very nice properties, but as it stands at the moment, it doesn't have a proper band gap," Robert Mears, president of Mears Technologies. "It's not really a replacement for silicon or other semiconductor materials. It's a good connect medium, conductor, but not necessarily a good switch at the moment."

Here's how Fuller describes an ideal transistor: "When you turn on, it comes on strong, and when you turn it off, it consumes almost no power. That's what you want for a great logic gate." The problem so far, though. is that "the graphene transistors today have been hard to turn off."

But there are ways to give the material a band gap, including using two separated strips of graphene fabricated as "nanoribbons." Varying the placement of the transistor gate or gates also can help. If scientists work out the challenges, the result could be a transistor that's not necessarily smaller, but that is a lot faster.

"We're in the early days of exploring the use of graphene, like we were with silicon a long time ago -- in the 1950s, maybe," Fuller said.

But wait, there's moreAnother radical approach is called spintronics, which relies on information being transmitted within a chip using a property of electrons called spin.

"If you could use spin to store a 1 or a 0, rather than charge or absence of charge, it doesn't have the same thermodynamic limits that moving charge around does," Fuller said. "You probably wouldn't run into the same power limits."

Silicon photonics, in which light rather than electrons carry information, could be involved in future chips.

"That can be a great partial solution between chips, or even on chips," Fuller said. Today, a large fraction of a chip's power is used to keep the chip components marching lockstep by broadcasting ticks of the chip's clock, but there are promising research projects to do that with optical links.

There are limits to how short optical links get, said Mears, who by the way invented the erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) technology that vastly improved fiber-optic network capacity. The problem: the wavelength of light is inconveniently large compared to chip components, he said.

"In spite of it having been one of my main research subjects, I'm not a great fan of optics on a chip," Mears said. "Any kind of optical waveguide on a chip will look huge compared to the kinds of devices you can put on a chip."

Fuller concurred. "What makes it great for communicating over long distances makes it difficult to make a logic gate out of them: photons don't interact with each other. If you want to build a NOR gate or NAND gate [two forms of basic logic gates out of which chips are assembled], you need to switch from photons to electrons for the gate, then back to photons to transmit the data," he said.

Mayberry is keeping an eye on so-called spintronics, but as with many technologies he's cautious. "A spin wave travels at a slower rate than an electron wave," he notes. There are also numerous manufacturing challenges.

Beyond that, there's a wide range of even more exotic research under way -- quantum computing, DNA computing, spin wave devices, exitonic field-effect transistors, spin torque majority gates, bilayer pseudospin field-effect transistors, and more. An industry consortium called the "Nanoelectronics Research Initiative" is monitoring the ideas.

"There are something like 18 different candidates they're keeping track of. There's no clear winner, but there are emerging distinctive trends that will help guide future research," Mayberry said.

It's certainly possible that computing progress could slow or fizzle. But before getting panicky about it, look at the size of the chip business, its importance to the global economy, the depth of the research pipeline, and the industry's continued ability to deliver the goods.

"There's an enormous amount of capital that's highly motivated to make sure this continues," said Nvidia's Dally. "The good news is we're pretty clever, so we'll come through for them."

Continued here:

Moore's Law: The rule that really matters in tech - CNET

Tenured UH music prof. dismissed by Board of Regents – The Cougar – The Daily Cougar

Posted on by

By Cristobella Durrette December 5, 2020

The UH System Board of Regents approved a recommendation for the dismissal of tenured Moores School of Music professor Lawrence Wheeler on the grounds of substantial and manifest neglect of professional or academic responsibilities.

The viola and chamber music professor came under fire for refusing to teach his assigned courses for Fall 2018 and Fall 2019 and failing to meet the faculty workload requirement of three undergraduate courses per semester, according to a statement of charges.

There is no doubt that on multiple occasions, professor Wheelers willful and unprofessional conduct not only interfered with the instructional and administrative functions of his home department, but also led to diminished student confidence in the Moores School of Music and by extension, the University of Houston, said Mark Clarke, associate provost for faculty affairs and development.

Wheeler has previously been subject to a hearing before the University faculty grievance committee. The tribunal provided a unanimous recommendation for Wheelers dismissal, Clarke said. Dismissal proceedings began in February 2019.

Wheeler pushed back against Clarkes claims, arguing that his termination after 44 years of service to the University follows a decade of discrimination by administrators, including Kathrine G. McGovern College of Arts dean Andrew Davis.

He said Davis leveled adverse administrative actions against him after he reported Davis for conducting an alleged improper relationship with a graduate student while Davis was the graduate studies director of the Moores School of Music. These claims have not been substantiated.

Outside of the alleged departmental administrative prejudice, Wheeler believes the call for his termination is in part a retaliation to his appearance before the Board of Regents in May 2017. At the time, he reported that UH was allegedly breaking the law by withholding faculty workload and salary information.

My dismissal is not the result of due process and fair and equal treatment, but bad faith, unethical and dishonest actions, discrimination and retaliation by various University administrators who represent you, the Board of Regents, Wheeler said.

Clarke reported that Wheelers claims were false.

The faculty hearing tribunal found his allegations to be baseless and lacking any evidence to support them, Clarke said.

Wheeler attributed his refusal to teach one of his assigned courses, a music fundamentals class, in Fall 2018 and Fall 2019 to the subject being outside of his area of expertise and to a difficulty reading the text required for the course. He has taught the course a total of seventeen times.

That course was assigned not because there were others who wanted to teach it, it was done deliberately to humiliate me and to put me in a situation where I might refuse to teach it, Wheeler said.

Chairman Tillman Fertitta pushed back on Wheelers claim.

I think that I could probably teach anything after seventeen times of practicing it, Fertitta said. If youre a professional, you learn to present something.

[emailprotected]

Tags: Board of Regents, Moores School of Music

Read the rest here:

Tenured UH music prof. dismissed by Board of Regents - The Cougar - The Daily Cougar