Monthly Archives: June 2021

Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, two giants of 20th century science, espoused very different worldviews.

To Einstein, the world was ultimately rational. Things had to make sense. They should be quantifiable and expressible through a logical chain of cause-and-effect interactions, from what we experience in our everyday lives all the way to the depths of reality. To Bohr, we had no right to expect any such order or rationality. Nature, at its deepest level, need not follow any of our expectations of well-behaved determinism. Things could be weird and non-deterministic, so long as they became more like what we expect when we traveled from the world of atoms to our world of trees, frogs, and cars. Bohr divided the world into two realms, the familiar classical world, and the unfamiliar quantum world. They should be complementary to one another but with very different properties.

The two scientists spent decades arguing about the impact of quantum physics on the nature of reality. Each had groups of physicists as followers, all of them giants of their own. Einstein's group of quantum weirdness deniers included quantum physics pioneers Max Planck, Louis de Broglie, and Erwin Schrdinger, while Bohr's group had Werner Heisenberg (of uncertainty principle fame), Max Born, Wolfgang Pauli, and Paul Dirac.

Almost a century afterward, the debate rages on.

Two books one authored by Sean Carroll and published last fall and another published very recently and authored by Carlo Rovelli perfectly illustrate how current leading physicists still cannot come to terms with the nature of quantum reality. The opposing positions still echo, albeit with many modern twists and experimental updates, the original Einstein-Bohr debate.

I summarized the ongoing dispute in my book The Island of Knowledge: Are the equations of quantum physics a computational tool that we use to make sense of the results of experiments (Bohr), or are they supposed to be a realistic representation of quantum reality (Einstein)? In other words, are the equations of quantum theory the way things really are or just a useful map?

Einstein believed that quantum theory, as it stood in the 1930s and 1940s, was an incomplete description of the world of the very small. There had to be an underlying level of reality, still unknown to us, that made sense of all its weirdness. De Broglie and, later, David Bohm, proposed an extension of the quantum theory known as hidden variable theory that tried to fill in the gap. It was a brilliant attempt to appease the urge Einstein and his followers had for an orderly natural world, predictable and reasonable. The price and every attempt to deal with the problem of figuring out quantum theory has a price tag was that the entire universe had to participate in determining the behavior of every single electron and all other quantum particles, implicating the existence of a strange cosmic order.

Later, in the 1960s, physicist John Bell proved a theorem that put such ideas to the test. A series of remarkable experiments starting in the 1970s and still ongoing have essentially disproved the de Broglie-Bohm hypothesis, at least if we restrict their ideas to what one would call "reasonable," that is, theories that have local interactions and causes. Omnipresence what physicists call nonlocality is a hard pill to swallow in physics.

Credit: Public domain

Yet, the quantum phenomenon of superposition insists on keeping things weird. Here's one way to picture quantum superposition. In a kind of psychedelic dream state, imagine that you had a magical walk-in closet filled with identical shirts, the only difference between them being their color. What's magical about this closet? Well, as you enter this closet, you split into identical copies of yourself, each wearing a shirt of a different color. There is a you wearing a blue shirt, another a red, another a white, etc., all happily coexisting. But as soon as you step out of the closet or someone or something opens the door, only one you emerges, wearing a single shirt. Inside the closet, you are in a superposition state with your other selves. But in the "real" world, the one where others see you, only one copy of you exists, wearing a single shirt. The question is whether the inside superposition of the many yous is as real as the one you that emerges outside.

The (modern version of the) Einstein team would say yes. The equations of quantum physics must be taken as the real description of what's going on, and if they predict superposition, so be it. The so-called wave function that describes this superposition is an essential part of physical reality. This point is most dramatically exposed by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, espoused in Carroll's book. For this interpretation, reality is even weirder: the closet has many doors, each to a different universe. Once you step out, all of your copies step out together, each into a parallel universe. So, if I happen to see you wearing a blue shirt in this universe, in another, I'll see you wearing a red one. The price tag for the many-worlds interpretation is to accept the existence of an uncountable number of non-communicating parallel universes that enact all possibilities from a superstition state. In a parallel universe, there was no COVID-19 pandemic. Not too comforting.

Bohm's team would say take things as they are. If you stepped out of the closet and someone saw you wearing a shirt of a given color, then this is the one. Period. The weirdness of your many superposing selves remains hidden in the quantum closet. Rovelli defends his version of this worldview, called relational interpretation, in which events are defined by the interactions between the objects involved, be them observers or not. In this example, the color of your shirt is the property at stake, and when I see it, I am entangled with this specific shirt of yours. It could have been another color, but it wasn't. As Rovelli puts it, "Entanglement is the manifestation of one object to another, in the course of an interaction, in which the properties of the objects become actual." The price to pay here is to give up the hope of ever truly understanding what goes on in the quantum world. What we measure is what we get and all we can say about it.

Both Carroll and Rovelli are master expositors of science to the general public, with Rovelli being the more lyrical of the pair.

There is no resolution to be expected, of course. I, for one, am more inclined to Bohr's worldview and thus to Rovelli's, although the interpretation I am most sympathetic to, called QBism, is not properly explained in either book. It is much closer in spirit to Rovelli's, in that relations are essential, but it places the observer on center stage, given that information is what matters in the end. (Although, as Rovelli acknowledges, information is a loaded word.)

We create theories as maps for us human observers to make sense of reality. But in the excitement of research, we tend to forget the simple fact that theories and models are not nature but our representations of nature. Unless we nurture hopes that our theories are really how the world is (the Einstein camp) and not how we humans describe it (the Bohr camp), why should we expect much more than this?

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The Einstein-Bohr legacy: can we ever figure out what quantum theory means? - Big Think

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Quantum Computing in Oil and Gas - Thematic Research" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Quantum computers are machines that use the properties of quantum physics to store data and perform computations. Use cases stretch from improved weather forecasting to cracking the codes used to encrypt all internet messaging. The company (or government) that owns the first at-scale quantum computer will be powerful indeed. Quantum computers are proving extremely difficult to build, and fully-fledged commercial computers are not expected for 10, 20, or even 30 years. However, within the next five to seven years, intermediate quantum computers are likely to become available that can offer a quantum advantage over classical computers in certain optimization applications across, for example, space warfare, logistics, drug discovery, and options trading.

Oil majors ExxonMobil, Total, Shell, and BP, are among the few industry participants to venture into quantum computing. Although these companies intend to use the technology to solve diverse business problems, quantum chemistry is emerging as the common focus area of research in the initial phase.

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2021 Thematic Research into Quantum Computing in Oil and Gas - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business Wire

The surface of A is impossible Black hole Decreases over time. Developed in 1971 by the famous physicist Einsteins theory of general relativity, this theory actually reflects a fundamental law of physics: the second law of thermodynamics, which states that only entropy (disorder) of a closed system can develop. Researchers are now confirming Hawkings theory using gravitational waves.

Entropy cannot decrease over time. However, the entropy of a black hole is proportional to its area; So both dimensions must inevitably increase. According to Hawkings interpretation of general relativity, the area of a black hole does not decrease as its mass increases and no object is thrown out of it.

But the area of the black hole decreases and it rotates by itself. The researchers wondered if a black hole could throw an object inside it to rotate fast enough to reduce its area. You can spin it more, but its not enough to balance the mass you just added. No matter what you do, the mass and rotation will ensure that you end up in a large area , Maximiliano IC summarizes, Astronomer at MIT and lead author of the study.

To confirm the famous theory, two giant researchers analyzed the space-time waves created 1.3 billion years ago. Black holes It quickly orbited each other and eventually merged into a large black hole. The surface of a black hole is limited by its event horizon the boundary from which nothing escapes the gravitational field of a black hole. According to surface theory, the event horizon of the newly formed black hole must be at least as large as the event horizons of the two real black holes.

Gravitational waves were discovered in 2015 based on calculations Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). By dividing the gravitational wave data before and after the merger into two time fractions, they were able to determine the mass and rotational speed of the two black holes over a period of time, allowing them to rise to the surface.

As a result, the area of the new black hole was found to be larger than the area of the two original black holes, which Hawkings area law confirmed with more than 95% confidence. This is the first time that scientists have been able to quantify this phenomenon. In other words, this team of physicists proves that the increase in area due to excess composite mass is always greater than the space lost during rotation.

The general theory of relativity, from which the law of surfaces derives, is effective in depicting black holes or any other large-scale object. However, things get complicated when quantum mechanics, which are described infinitely small, get involved: strange things happen, and some are completely contrary to the law of the surface.

Stephen Hawking has developed another theory, according to which a black hole must evaporate over a very long period of time (beyond the age of the universe). This theory, Hawking radiation The event of a black hole caused by strange quantum effects describes a small amount of radiation emitted near the horizon. Therefore, black holes cannot shrink according to general relativity, but they can shrink according to quantum mechanics.

Since this evaporation can occur on excessively long-term scales, it does not actually violate the law of short-term surfaces. But this contradiction still haunts physicists: Statistically, over a long period of time, the law is being violated , Emphasizes IC. The specialist makes an analogy of a pot of boiling water: If you limit yourself to seeing the water disappear inside, you may be tempted to say that the entropy of the pan decreases. If you consider the vapor, your overall entropy has increased. The same is true for black holes Neutrons .

Confirmation of the surface law suggests that the properties of black holes provide important clues about the hidden laws governing the universe. Researchers now plan to gather information from more gravitational waves to improve their understanding of these interesting and mysterious objects. I like them because of the paradox of these things. They are extremely mysterious and confusing, but at the same time we know they are the simplest things that exist. Said EC.

The goal is to understand the source of the contradiction between the two theories surface law, general relativity in general, and quantum mechanics perhaps leading to new physics.

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Stephen Hawking's study of the black hole surface theory confirms this - SwordsToday.ie

The University of Maryland is making a major investment to obtain the most technologically advanced equipment on campus for a broad range of research areas, from neuroimaging to next-generation quantum materials.

The investment of more than $10 million was made possible by the UMD Research Instrumentation Fund, launched in March and co-led by Interim Senior Vice President and Provost Ann G. Wylie and Vice President for Research Laurie E. Locascio, in partnership with President Darryll J. Pines. The program was created to support faculty and core facilities through significant investments to replace or upgrade research equipment.

The Research Instrumentation Fund awards will help catalyze new growth across the research enterprise and provide meaningful opportunities for education and engagement of students, researchers, and partners, said Pines. This significant investment in state-of-the-art equipment will further increase the impact of our research.

A distinguished scientific peer review panel assessed faculty proposals, and based upon these assessments, over $5 million in grants was awarded for new and upgraded equipment. The awards cover 50% of the cost of the research instrumentation, with matching funds contributed by each applicants department or college covering the balance of more than $5 million. Researchers from across campus will benefit from the new and upgraded equipment.

The following equipment investments were supported by the Research Instrumentation Fund awards:

State-of-the-Art Scanning X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy Microprobe for Research, Training and EducationKaren Gaskell, Associate Research ScientistCollege of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural SciencesDepartment of Chemistry and BiochemistryThe new X-ray photoelectron spectrometer (XPS) will be located in the Surface Analysis Center, a shared university core research facility and NanoCenter partner lab in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. XPS is an essential materials research tool for eight departments spanning the A. James Clark School of Engineering and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS). The materials that can be studied by XPS are truly diverse, with potential for strong impact in areas such as nanotechnology, energy storage and generation, among others, and the new state-of-the-art instrument will provide capabilities that the campus currently does not possess.

Light Sheet Instrument for Multiscale Cell DynamicsWolfgang Losert, ProfessorCollege of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural SciencesDepartment of Physics & Institute for Physical Science and TechnologyTo achieve a competitive edge in life science research, advanced imaging facilities and instruments are essential for investigation of the dynamic processes that govern living systems. With this instrument, as well as the existing dual-inverted selective plane illumination microscope, the Imaging Incubator in the Physical Sciences Complex will become a regional hub for light sheet imaging, enabling researchers to carry out innovative imaging projects with high potential for impact in multiple areas of the life sciences. To promote further applications of the instrument, the Imaging Incubator facility will develop hands-on training geared toward students and postdocs and leverage considerable synergies with existing collaborations involving the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the Brain and Behavior Institute, and the UMD-National Cancer Institute partnership for integrative cancer research, among others.

Advanced Thin-Film Deposition Suite for Next-Generation Quantum MaterialsJohnpierre Paglione, Professor & DirectorCollege of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural SciencesDepartment of Physics; Quantum Materials CenterThe new pulsed laser thin-film deposition system will enable atomic layer-by-layer deposition of advanced quantum materials. This instrumentation will support advanced research projects and foster advanced education and training of undergraduate students, graduate students and postdocs within UMDs large network. The equipment will be located in the Quantum Materials Center, a multidisciplinary research center that includes the Departments of Physics, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Materials Science Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty, as well as affiliate members from across the globe.

Upgrading the MRI in the Maryland Neuroimaging CenterElizabeth Quinlan, Professor & DirectorCollege of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural SciencesDepartment of Biology; Brain and Behavior InstituteGregory Ball, Professor & DeanCollege of Behavioral and Social SciencesThe upgrade to the magnetic resonance imagining (MRI) equipment at the Maryland Neuroimaging Center will substantially enhance UMD research programs, allowing expansion in new directions currently not possible. The hardware improvements will substantially improve both spatial and temporal resolution of the imaging. With a current user base of eight laboratories across multiple colleges (including CMNS, the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the College of Education, the Clark School and the School of Public Health), improving these MRI capabilities will allow UMD to engage in national collaborations and longitudinal research studies related to brain and behavioral development.

The upgrade will immediately enhance MR image quality, and advance all neuroscience research by Brain and Behavior Institute faculty who perform human brain imaging, Quinlan said.

Leading the Structural Sciences Through New Single Crystal X-ray InstrumentationEfrain Rodriguez, Associate ProfessorCollege of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural SciencesDepartment of Chemistry and BiochemistryPeter Zavalij, DirectorCollege of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural SciencesX-ray Crystallography CenterNew instrumentation with state-of-the-art measurement capabilities for structure determination will help UMDs X-ray Crystallographic Center (XCC) further establish itself as a national leader in quantum materials science, structural biology, organic/inorganic chemistry, and materials science and engineering. Currently, the XCC supports the scientific research of multiple PIs from the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Physics, Materials Science and Engineering, and other units in the Clark School. The XCC also collaborates with federal laboratories, including the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and other universities and colleges, including Morgan State University.

Acquisition of an Aberration Corrected Transmission Electron Microscope for Research and EducationLourdes Salamanca-Riba, ProfessorA. James Clark School of EngineeringDepartment of Materials Science and EngineeringAn aberration-corrected scanning/transmission electron microscope with cold-field emission gun, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy detectors will be used to acquire images and elemental composition at the true atomic level. This new equipment will be used in research related to new sources of energy, quantum materials, and nanotechnologythree areas that hold significant promise to bring substantial economic and employment benefits to the state. The new equipment will be housed in the Advanced Imaging and Microscopy Laboratory in the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building and managed by the UMD Nanocenter for maintenance, scheduling and training.

The new microscope supported by this award will greatly benefit our research in clean sources of energy, such as solar cells, solid oxide fuel cells and batteries, as well as in quantum materials for computing and storage, and advance our capabilities for in-situ imaging and chemical analysis of materials at the atomic level during electron beam irradiation, Salamanca-Riba said.

Multi-Chamber Plasma Etching and Deposition SystemEdo Waks, ProfessorA. James Clark School of EngineeringDepartment of Electrical & Computer Engineering; Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied PhysicsPlasma processing systems are important research instruments widely used by faculty from a broad range of disciplines for making devices ranging from transistors to quantum circuits to biosensors. This new plasma etching and deposition system will allow faculty from across campus to conduct a wide variety of nanofabrication tasks, while providing indispensable tools for cutting-edge research and student training in many fields of science and engineering. The Nanocenter Fab Lab is the centralized facility that offers industry-standard etching and deposition tools for the UMD research community.

For more information about the University of Maryland research enterprise, visit umd.edu/research or sign up to receive the Research Roundup newsletter.

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UMD Invests Over $10M in Research Equipment to Drive Discovery, Innovation - Maryland Today

In recent years, there have been two independent but related developments in the study of irrelevant deformations in two dimensional quantum field theories (QFTs). The first development is the deformation of a two dimensional QFT by the determinant of the energy momentum stress tensor, commonly referred to asTTdeformation. The second development is in two dimensional holographic field theories which are dual to string theory in asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetimes. In this latter development, the deformation is commonly referred to as single-traceTTdeformation.

The single-trace TTdeformation corresponds in the bulk to a string background that interpolates between AdS spacetime in the infrared (IR) and a linear dilaton spacetime (vacuum of little string theory (LST)) in the ultraviolet (UV). It serves as a useful tool and guide to better understand and explore holography on asymptotically AdS and non-AdS spacetimes in a controlled setting. In particular, it is useful to gain insights into holography in flat spacetimes.

In this talk I present new results in the study of single-trace TTdeformation and its single-trace generalizations in theories with U(1)currents, namelyTJand JTdeformations, in the context of gauge/gravity duality. I discuss two point correlation functions in single-traceTTdeformation, and entanglement entropy and entropicc-function in single-traceTT,JTand TJdeformations. I show that two point functions in position space have both real parts and imaginary parts. I also show that the imaginary parts are non-perturbative. Iobtain exactresult for entanglement entropy associated with a spatial region of finite size. I also show that in the UV for a particular combination of the deformation couplings the leading order dependence of the entanglement entropy on the size is given by a square root but not logarithmic function. Such power law dependence of the entanglement entropy on the size is quite distinct and interesting. I also give exactresultfor the entropic c-function and show that it is regularization schemes independent, positive and monotonic, which are similar to the behaviors observed in conventional local QFTs. I also discuss its distinctive features in the UV.

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Asrat Demise's PhD Thesis Defense | Department of Physics | The University of Chicago - UChicago News

In the century or so since its founding as Israels first university, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has acquired a reputation as a driving force of Israeli innovation.

Four Nobel Prize winners and several recipients of the prestigious Israel Prize are among its more than 100,000 graduates and faculty not to mention creators of billion-dollar companies, life-saving medical technologies, and too many startups and innovative technologies to count.

So whats the schools secret sauce?

Thats the question that longtime Technion professor Shlomo Maital, senior research fellow at the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research, recently set out to discover. For his project, he teamed with Israeli high-tech pioneer Rafi Nave, a Technion graduate who spent 21 years at Intel Israel leading development of the companys math co-processors, managing its Haifa Design Center and working on the second-generation Pentium processor.

Together they spent much of the COVID year conducting interviews via Zoom with more than 100 notable Technion graduates asking them about their life journeys, innovations and how it all came about.

The result is a new book, Aspiration, Inspiration, Perspiration: How Technion Faculty and Graduates Fuse Creativity and Technology to Change the World. It may serve as a useful guide for anyone trying to figure out how to achieve success through a combination of out-of-the-box thinking and exceptional hard work and discipline.

There are bookshelves full of learned tomes on innovators, innovation and creativity. I wrote several myself, said Maital, who has worked with some 200 companies and over 1,000 managers and entrepreneurs, and is the former academic director of TIM-Technion Institute of Management. But there are rather few that tell the innovators stories in their own words in response to standard, specific, focused questions.

At noon ET Thursday, Maital will host a public webinar with Nave and David Perlmutter, former chief product officer and executive vice president of Intel, to talk about what they learned and to offer practical insights for those seeking to implement creative ideas.

Maital spoke to us recently about his project and some of his main takeaways. The following interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

You refer to the 100 innovators as having their head in the clouds, feet on the ground. What exactly does that mean, and how did these people find the intersection between science and industry?

Head in the clouds means zoom out. Actively seek wild ideas, far out of the box. Harvest them and cultivate them. Feet on the ground means zoom in. Sort the ideas, analyze them and find the ones that are feasible, capable of being implemented, even if that task is immensely difficult.

Technion provides students with state-of-the-art, enabling science and technology this is part of feet on the ground. Our students, imbued with Israeli culture, then generate the wild ideas head in the clouds and fuse the two.

So many of your interviewees speak of the importance of following ones passion and finding joy in work despite obstacles. Why is this an important message for today, especially at a time when many young people face economic uncertainties?

Resources fuel startups, but the underlying driving force is passion: the near-obsessive goal of entrepreneurs to make meaning not money to create real value and change the world. This is why so many Technion graduates leave high-paying jobs to launch startups, despite formidable odds and 24/7 work hours.

Shlomo Maitals new book is called Aspiration, Inspiration, Perspiration: How Technion Faculty and Graduates Fuse Creativity and Technology to Change the World. (Technion)

The Israeli culture of risk taking, resilience and lots of chutzpah is a recurring theme in your book.

We Israelis are perceived as rude, arrogant and impulsive. Maybe. But Israel has endured and prevailed because of the innate ability to improvise creatively and stubbornly. Israel has low power distance the perceived gap between those with authority and those without. Our students tire of being told what to do by those they think are less smart than they are and go off to launch their own ideas.

Startup entrepreneurship is driven by national culture, and the cultures of nations differ widely. I believe that even when Technion graduates seek to build startups abroad, they still retain the cultural DNA they acquired as Israelis.

How can a university prepare student scientists and engineers to lead and manage companies and organizations after graduation?

I actually researched this question. In a web survey, we asked Technion graduates who had launched startups what they had learned at Technion that proved helpful in starting a business. About half mentioned experiential events hackathons, three-day startups, Biz-Tech competitions. But half said they werent prepared. I wish Technion would offer a compulsory one-semester course on basic business tools: economics, accounting, marketing.

These are skills students need to become the leaders of tomorrow, and I think the Technion is realizing how important these skills are. Now, rather than competing with global industries, the Technion is bringing leading companies like software giant PTC to campus, so students and researchers alike can benefit from firsthand access to technology and information from some of the worlds most cutting-edge companies.

Some of your interviewees emphasized the importance of diving deep into ones own discipline, while others encouraged a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach. Which is better?

The future lies with interdisciplinary thinking. It is one of the 10 key future skills that employers mention. For example, Nobel laureate Arieh Warshel (a Technion graduate) combined chemistry, biology, computer science, and classical and quantum mechanics.

Technion is moving away from traditional disciplinary silos with joint degree programs. One of Technions hotbeds of interdisciplinary innovation is biomedical engineering, a faculty that integrates science and engineering for the advancement of medicine.

Its important always to be mindful of the ethical and social responsibilities of their work, many interviewees said. Some also recommended studying the humanities even while focusing on science and technology.

This is a sore point, alas. Studying physics, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry and physics at a world-class level in three or four years is really hard. And we do put our students feet to the fire. Historically this has left little time to study literature, history, philosophy or even ethics. But this is changing. The Technion is now working on ways to provide students with the necessary tools so that they can crystallize for themselves a broad perspective of society, ethics, environment and so forth. It would be a unique aspect of liberal arts, and an interface with science and engineering.

On the other hand, Technion graduates startups do focus on the major dilemmas facing Israel and the world and seek to resolve them. So there is heightened awareness of things like the climate crisis, hunger, poverty and inequality. And after army service and the customary tour-the-world trip afterward, our students enter their studies older and more mature and aware of global challenges.

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This is the secret to how Israel's leading technology institute manages to drive so much innovation - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency