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Monthly Archives: January 2022
5 Things We Learned From Verizon’s 5G Ultra Show – Complex
Posted: January 9, 2022 at 4:10 pm
As the first carrier in the world to launch a 5G network back in April 2019, Verizon has always been ahead of the curve. Now stepping into 2022, the telecom giant is continuing to push the way we communicate towards the future.
Providing up to 10 times faster speeds than median Verizon 4G LTE speeds, 5G Ultra Wideband will reach 100 million soon after it launches in the coming weeks. From the ability to watch High Definition content on the go to streaming console-quality games, the new technology promises to be a game-changer in more significant ways.
To celebrate the launch, actress Elizabeth Banks hosted Verizons 5G Ultra Show, a star-powered live stream that aired on January 4th. In case you missed the event, here are a few key things we took away from the half-hour presentation.
Basketball games or enormous music festivals can slow down connection speeds to a crawl with so many people downloading and uploading various content. With that in mind, it made sense for the 5G Ultra Show to provide an example of how practical 5G Ultra Wideband can be when you are connected to it in extremely crowded areas.
Taking viewers to Sofi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, ESPN SportsCenter anchor Hannah Storm gave insight into how 5G Ultra Wideband will change the sporting event experience. When connected to 5G Ultra Wideband, visitors of Sofi can stream videos, text, and make phone calls even when in a crowd.
When thousands of fans and even more devices connect all at the same time, stadium operations could change forever, Storm shared.
This includes the ability for ticketless entry to become the norm, touchless sales at concession stands, and even AR Wayfinding to locate seats or bathrooms with the shortest lines.
Before using a bus, subway, or even plane, most smartphone users find it easier to download standard-definition video on WiFi before heading out into the open world instead of relying on cellular data to stream content. Having up to 10 times faster speeds through 5G Ultra Wideband, however, opens the door for more reliable streaming.
The same goes for video conferencing over cellular networks, according to Andrea Caldini, Verizons VP of Product & Technology, who explains, Video chats, business calls and FaceTimes will be able to stream live with HD video and audio with fewer frozen faces or stuttering.
Public WiFi found in places like coffee shops, hotels, airports, parks, malls,and restaurants allow people to stay connected to social media or, most importantly, work on the go. According to reports, 82% of U.S. residents say they use public WiFi when available.
That said, too many individuals on a given WiFi network can slow things down too much to even be useful. Not to mention using public networks can be risky thanks to Man-in-the-Middle attacks and WiFi snooping. Individuals concerned with cyber security on public WiFi usually have to use VPNs for an added layer of digital protection. Verizon hopes to change all of that through 5G Ultra Wideband.
Verizon VP of Network Engineering Philip French says 5G Ultra Wideband could deliver the industrys biggest hotspot. This means that business owners like jewelry designer Lauren Harwell Godfrey can download huge graphic files and talk to customers through high definition video conferencing software efficiently without worrying about sensitive information being exposed, which is a win-win for everyone.
Mobile gaming has quickly taken a little over half of the overall video game industry. Between better smartphone hardware technology and faster connection speeds, the segment is inching closer to providing console-quality gaming.
Greg Borrud, the General Manager for developer Niamic Studios, says that 5G Ultra Wideband allows them to take augmented reality used in games theyve developed like Pokemon Go to the next level. He even mentioned how their development platform Lightship can change mobile gaming through the new connection speeds Verizon is enabling.
Experiences that feel less like a game and more like another reality that is layered onto and woven into our own, Borrud explains. 5G and edge Compute will allow those games to be richer, more cinematic multiplayer experiences that gamers can explore with incredibly low latency.
Depending on where one lives or conducts business, their broadband internet options can be limited. Over the years, Verizon has done their part to provide quality service for its consumers via Fios. Now, Verizon is providing even more options for broadband connectivity with the introduction of their 5G Home router and 5G Business Internet, which is all powered by 5G Ultra Wideband.
Actor and PC gaming enthusiast Terry Crews displayed how all users of 5G Home have to do is plug in the router and follow Verizons self-set-up guide. Adding the cherry on top is the lack of an annual contract. Through 5G Home, users can have speedy internet access without fumbling wires or going through annoying set-ups.
Verizon 5G Business Internet also has a self-set up option for select plans that makes it easy for business owners to get started and get ultra fast speeds. All of this is provided with a 10-year price guarantee with no long-term contract. Crews even gifted popular Los Angeles bookstore Malik Books with their very own 5G Business Internet router during the 5G Ultra Show.
If that doesnt get you pumped for what 5G Ultra Wideband has in store, you can check out the full event here.
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Inside group of scuba-diving sleuths who have cracked 7 cold cases in 2 months as they reveal how they f… – The US Sun
Posted: at 4:10 pm
A CRACK team of scuba-diving sleuths has solved a staggering seven cold cases in just two months, bringing much-needed closure to heartbroken families who had been left without answers for years.
The group, known as Chaos Divers, operates out of Southern Illinois and is comprised of divers Jacob Grubbs and Eric Bussick, and head of logistics Lindsey Bussick.
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Between October and December of last year, the trio managed to solve seven missing persons cases in a number of different states, including in Illinois, Oregon, Kentucky, and Texas.
Their most recent discovery came on December 5 when the group found the remains of Jeff Anthony Shepherd in a pickup truck submerged in Strunk, KY, pond.
Shepherd had been missing for more than three years, having last been seen leaving a bar in Winfield on March 18, 2018. He had called his mother letting her know he was on his way home but never made it back.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Jacob Grubbs, 33, revealed that he, Eric, and Lindsey never anticipated becoming independent cold case investigators but were inspired to do so following a chance discovery made by a friend in 2019.
Jacob, a keen fisherman, started scuba diving a few years ago so he could help to clean trash out of river systems, lakes, and local swimming holes.
While doing so, the former coal miner said he started finding all kinds of items - from discarded iPhones to lost wallets - and decided to set up a YouTube page to document his interesting discoveries.
"I used to watch a lot of videos about it on Youtube and I honestly thought they were fake until I started doing it, and then I was like, wow!," Jacob told The Sun.
He quickly amassed a large social media following on YouTube and befriended a number of other divers uploading similar videos to him.
One of those divers was Jared Leisek, who runs the YouTube page Adventures with Purpose.
Leisek made headlines in December 2019 when he happened across a car with a body inside during a dive in Oregon and ended up accidentally solving a cold case single-handedly.
Jacob drove up to St. Louis to assist Leisek with the dive where they recovered the body of Nathan Ashby from the Missouri River.
The 22-year-old had been missing since July 31, 2019, when he vanished while driving his 1994 Chevy Silverado to work around 6.45am.
After the incredible discovery was made, Jacob said he felt "compelled" to continue investigating cold cases in the Southern Illinois area.
Families searching for missing loved ones then started reaching out to him directly, and he decided to take the venture up as his full-time job.
"In the last two months, we've brought seven people home by ourselves," Jacob told The Sun in late December.
And during a road trip with Adventures With Purpose and other groups in the fall, Chaos Divers helped to solve a further 16 cases in 45 days.
"I'm still in awe of being able to help so many families in such a short time," he said.
"It's been an amazing feeling, particularly when we were able to solve a case after 23 years in October."
During their road trip with Adventures With Purpose (AWP) back in October, Chaos Divers helped to solve the disappearance of 20-year-old Samantha Jean Hopper, who vanished with her one-year-old daughter Courtney Esther Danielle Holt on the night of September 11, 1998.
According to police, Hopper, who was eight months pregnant at the time, had plans to drop off her daughter with a family member before heading to a concert in Little Rock in her blue Ford Tempo.
However, she never made it to either location, and neither Hopper nor Courtney was seen ever alive again.
Hopper also left behind another daughter, Dezarea Carpenter, who is now an adult and lives in Florida.
Chaos Divers and AWP met with Dezarea, along with Hopper's mother and best friend to learn more about her and her last known whereabouts.
Working from clues about Samanthas habits and the events of that day in 1998, the two dive teams split up to scan multiple locations in the area of Lake Dardanelle.
Divers with AWP took a route along Mill Creek, while Jacob and the rest of Chaos Divers searched the Illinois Bayou near Pleasant View Road.
Around an hour into the search, Chaos Divers made a discovery in the Illinois Bayou after picking up images of a small, overturned car eight feet below the surface of the water on a sonar scanner.
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After entering the water, Choas Divers matched the vehicle to Hopper's blue Tempo. Human remains were also found inside.
Hooper's family members were present at the scene when the car was lifted from the water.
Weeks later, investigators with the Arkansas State Crime Lab in Little Rock positively identified the remains as Hopper and Courtney's.
Jacob described the discovery as a bittersweet gut-punch.
"That one hit me hard," Jacob said. "But I was glad to be able to bring her other daughter answers as to where her mother and sister had been for the last 23 years.
"I am super proud of the team and myself for being able to do that."
Lindsey Bussick is in charge of determining which cases Chaos Divers are able to investigate and those they aren't.
Family members and friends of missing people regularly reach out to the group seeking their help to find a long-lost loved one.
Police departments across the country that otherwise lack the technological resources to conduct such searches also sometimes request their expertise, she said.
"We get as many details as we can, from where they were last seen, where they were headed and the location of the last ping of their cellphone," Lindsey told The Sun.
"From there, we kind of map out their last known movements and identify any waterways they may have passed before vanishing.
"If there aren't any waterways then we can't help," she continued. "Everything we do is based off water. Also, if there isn't a vehicle involved we also can't help, because our sonar is set up to see cars or other vehicles beneath the water."
While the group takes on as many cases as they can, going out on the road almost every week, Lindsay said the work doesn't come without its emotional challenges.
Such challenges often arise in the wake of solving a case, Lindsay said, where the team's initial elation is almost immediately displaced by feelings of sadness for the subject's family.
"It is a heartbreaking moment to have to look someone in the eye and say, 'We've found them. They are gone,'" she said.
"But at the same time as these tears are rolling down their face you're watching this weight be lifted off of them, because for the first time and however many months, years, or decades, they know where their loved one is and they don't have to wonder anymore, they don't have to worry.
"So it's heartbreaking, but it's heartwarming at the same time; it's very surreal because you just gave them the worst news but at the same time, they're just so grateful that somebody did something for them."
Lindsey described the feeling of closing a case as a bittersweet "gut-wrenching sensation that you never want to give up."
Jacob added: "It's also about helping to put rumors to bed.
"Quite often with these cases, the time that has passed without answers allows rumors to fly, and before you know it, people are offering up theories of a murder or drug deal gone wrong.
"But then in actuality, it was an accident. And now the family has answers, they have closure. They finally know where their loved one is, and so we help put those rumors to rest."
Another family Chaos Divers helped to provide answers were relatives of Brian Goff and Joni Davis, who they found in the Ohio Valley in November 2021, three years after the couple vanished.
The group originally arrived in the region to search in the Hancock County area of the Ohio River for Karen Adams,who was last seen at a nearby casino on March 11, 2007.
They searched three different locations across three consecutive days for Karen but came up empty-handed.
While in the area, they got a tip from another diver group about the case of Goff and Davis, who pointed them to a body of water in Jefferson County that had not yet been searched.
"They told us there was one spot that kind of bothered them about the case, which was around a mile south of where Brian's cellphone last pinged.
"They weren't sure whether it had been searched, or how well it had been searched, so we decided to go there to kind of alleviate any doubt over whether they might be there or not."
Joni Davis, 56, and her longtime boyfriend and caregiver, 65-year-old Brian Goff, disappeared in June 2018.
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At aged 35, Joni suffered a huge seizure in her sleep and was hospitalized in a coma for several months. While she eventually re-learned how to walk, speak and feed herself, Joni was left permanently brain damaged and required full-time care.
"They were extremely meticulous in their daily routine: they ate at the same places on the same days, went to the same gas station to fill up their tank - everything was laid out and organized for them, kind of like OCD," Jacob said.
"So when they went missing, almost instantly alarm bells started going off for everyone who knew them."
Brian's car was last sighted by a gas station surveillance camera heading north in Belmont County, not long after the couple had dined at a local Pizza Hut - as they always did on Sundays.
The last ping from Goffs cellphone was in neighboring Jefferson County. After that, all traces of the couple ceased.
Chaos Divers retraced the couple's steps in the early morning hours of November 11. They were driving past Rushman Road, near where the couple's phone last registered, which runs adjacent to the Ohio River.
"We were driving that path when we noticed this one spot, an opening by the water that didn't have a guardrail in front of it, nor any weeds or reeds or anything like that," Jacob said.
"There was just this one little tree there, and for some reason that stood out in my mind. It was almost like a light was shining down on it."
Jacob put on his dive gear and entered the water at 3am. Within minutes, he'd found a light blue Oldsmobile 88 in a shallow portion of the river.
The license plate of the car matched one registered to Brian.
Inside the vehicle, police later found two sets of human remains strapped into the front seats. They were confirmed to belong to Brian and Joni.
While it remains unclear whether the couple entered the river accidentally or intentionally, Jacob and Lindsay say their relatives were just grateful to know where they were.
"We met with Johnny's sister, and brother in law and brother in law and then three members of Brian's family, and they were heartbroken," Lindsey said. "But at the same time, so incredibly grateful."
"There were lots of hugs and tears," she added. "They just wanted us to know how appreciative we were that we were able to bring them home."
Choas Divers say they intend to continue working year-round to help solve other cold cases in and around Illinois.
As they did last fall, they intend to set out on the road later this year with Adventures with Purpose to solve more cases in quick succession.
The team do not charge families for their recovery efforts and fund their trips entirely from revenue generated from the social media pages, independent donations, and merchandise sales on their website.
To donate to Chaos Divers click here.
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Power Moves: Meet the newest faces on the DMV’s quantum computing scene – Technical.ly
Posted: at 4:09 pm
Power Movesis a column where we chart the comings and goings of talent across the region. Got a new hire, new gig or promotion? Email us at dc@technical.ly.
This week, Leesburg, Virginia company Quantum Computing added former board member William McGann as its new COO and CTO. According to Quantum Computing, hell lead the team as it continues to advance and innovate its quantum optimization software.
As a leader, I look forward to establishing an exciting, fast-paced business rhythm that is customer-focused and leading through innovation, McGann said in a statement. We will aspire to be the best in all that we do and endeavor to become the preeminent leader in delivering quantum solutions to the market that advance customer business and application outcomes.
William McGann. (Photo via LinkedIn)
The company also added Michael Turmelle, a former chairman of Ideal Power, to its board of directors.
And following its uber-successful IPO in 2021, College Park, Maryland quantum firm IonQ has pulled some power players into its fold.
On the leadership side, IonQ has added two new members. Ariel Braunstein, the cofounder of Pure Digital Technology and a former product lead at Cisco and Googles AV/VR department will join as senior VP of product management. Dean Kassman, former senior director at Blue Origin, was also named as VP of research and development.
Additionally, the company added Inder Singh, executive VP and CEO at Arm, a British semiconductor firm, to its board.
It is an incredibly exciting time to join IonQs Board, having watched the company grow from a startup to the quantum computing industry leader it is today, said Singh in a statement. Government, business and society as a whole are quickly recognizing quantums ability to solve previously impossible problems, and they are turning to IonQ for counsel and strategic partnership. I could not be more excited to be joining the Board and helping the team potentially shape the next frontiers of technology.
Inder Singh. (Photo via LinkedIn)
In the past month, Fairfax, Virginia software developer 3Pillar has made a ton of hiring moves, including adding three members to its C-suite.
In mid-December, the company added Ken Krtiz as senior VP of banking and insurance, Chris Hansen as senior VP of communications and Kim Mirazimi as senior VP of commercial sector clients.
At the top, 3Pillar promoted its chief delivery officer David Sawatzky to the role of COO. Jamie Whitacre, previously the senior VP of talent, was also bumped up to the role of chief people officer. And just this week, 3Pillar appointed Jeff Sperber as its new CFO. Sperber was previously the CFO for companies including Class Valuation, TalentReef, NetDocuments and Accenture Mortgage Cadence.
Im thrilled to continue my journey at 3Pillar as we expand our global presence and scale our culture, said Whitacre in a statement. Our next phase of growth is critical in helping us attain our vision of becoming the employer of choice in digital product development services.
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Power Moves: Meet the newest faces on the DMV's quantum computing scene - Technical.ly
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Expect smarter apps, quantum leaps, deeper space exploration, nanovaccines and more in 2022 – Cyprus Mail
Posted: at 4:09 pm
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Super-Resolution Imaging of a Single Cold Atom on a Nanosecond Timescale – SciTechDaily
Posted: at 4:09 pm
The team of academician GUO Guangcan of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made important progress in the research of cold atom super-resolution imaging. The team achieved super-resolution imaging of a single ion in an ion trap system. The results were published in Physical Review Letters.
The cold atom system is an ideal experimental platform for studying quantum physics, as well as an important physical system for experimental research on quantum simulation, quantum computing, and quantum precision measurement. One of the core experimental techniques in the cold atom system is high-resolution single-particle imaging. In the past ten years, the microscopic imaging technology of the cold atom system has developed rapidly. However, the newly developed technologies are still limited by the fundamental optical diffraction limit, and the resolution can only reach the order of optical wavelength. It is difficult to study quantum phenomena related to the details of the wave function. To study such problems requires optical super-resolution imaging.
Optical super-resolution imaging has developed into a mature tool in the fields of chemistry and biology. However, due to the complexity of cold atom experiments, it is extremely challenging to apply super-resolution imaging technology to cold atom systems. Prior to this, the world has not yet made progress on the direct super-resolution imaging of single atoms (ions).
In this study, the researchers adopted the main idea of the Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy in the classical super-resolution imaging field, and combined it with the atomic quantum state initialization and reading technology of the cold atom system. They realized super-resolved imaging of a single cold atom (ion) directly for the first time.
Experimental results showed that the spatial resolution of the imaging method can exceed the diffraction limit by more than one order, and the imaging resolution of 175 nm can be achieved by using an objective lens with a numerical aperture of only 0.1.
To further demonstrate the time resolution advantage of this method, the researchers achieved both a time resolution of 50 ns and a single ion positioning accuracy of 10 nm, and used this method to clearly capture the rapid harmonic oscillations of the ion in the trap. Theoretically, by increasing the numerical aperture of the imaging objective and the center extinction ratio of the depleted light (the doughnut spot), the spatial resolution can be further improved to below 10 nm.
This experimental technique can be extended to the multi-body and correlation measurement of cold atom systems, and has good compatibility with other cold atom systems. It can be applied to optical lattices, neutral atom optical tweezers, and cold atom-ion hybrid systems.
Reference: Super-resolved Imaging of a Single Cold Atom on a Nanosecond Timescale by Zhong-Hua Qian, Jin-Ming Cui, Xi-Wang Luo, Yong-Xiang Zheng, Yun-Feng Huang, Ming-Zhong Ai, Ran He, Chuan-Feng Li and Guang-Can Guo, 23 December 2021, Physical Review Letters.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.263603
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Will Innovation Make Us Better Off? – Forbes
Posted: at 4:09 pm
Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research, standing in front of IBM Q System One on October 18, 2019 at ... [+] the company's research facility in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
In the past year the share price of Apple AAPL has outperformed Bitcoin, and Tesla's TSLA share price which has hitherto been umbilically linked to bitcoin, has been far more jumpy (over the last two years it has had 29 one day moves of more than 10% as compared to a mere 17 for bitcoin).
These insights beg lots of questions, about market functioning, investor appetiteand simply, whether bitcoin is now old and dull. There is a debate that instead of being a risky asset across the spectrum of broad asset classes (bonds, equities etc), bitcoin is simply a safe asset within a highly volatile crypto world, though the fact that bitcoin has fallen 15% since I started writing this note nods to the former.
More importantly, it might be that bitcoin isout of fashion and is being replaced in the mindsets of investors by other speedy innovations. Recall the memorableline from a Davos speech by Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau where he said 'The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.
Exponential
The spirit of this phrase is caught by the many year ahead forecasts from futurologists, economists and thinkers. Having made my own forecasts before Christmas I have the benefit of sitting back and reading others, one excellent example being Azeem Azars weekly Exponential email, and a growing number of other notes that try to summarise what is bubbling up.
What is noticeable is that there is a strong sense of the Roaring 20s in threads of structural trends that analysts see taking place in the aftermath of a pandemic. Chief amongst them is a focus on nuclear power as a substitute to fossil fuels, not to mention the entire greentech complex.
If the forecasts and thought pieces I have mentioned are a good representation of where capital will flow, then a new, exciting infrastructure is being built in computing, logistics and finance to name a few sectors that happen to be united by data intensity. I might say that having witnessed the dot.com bubble, the only value of an asset bubble is that it leaves behind it an important infrastructure (telecoms in this case).
MetaVerse
My three key takeaways from parsing many reports, is that whilst on one hand exciting, the central message of the new emerging technologies is that they will lead to a historic and potentially overwhelming challenge to humanity, and in particular to our minds and sociability, with potentially very impactful health related benefits.
Without exaggerating, I feel that 2022 is a threshold year when innovative technologies make our bodies healthier but invade our mental spaces.
To first take a collection of the most popular trends, they cluster around web 3.0, NFTs, metaverse, social media and crypto currencies. In a brutal way that means that we will all spend more time out of the light, hunched over phones and doubting whether the people and things we have encountered in the metaverse are real at all, and whether it was worth investing USD 10,000 in a metaverse apartment.
This trend is historic because for the first time, and with only the force of religion (and maybe politics) as a rival, humans will spend time and enjoy experiences in an unreal world, and for some this will come to dominate their existence. Two very obvious side-effects will be sociability and mental health.
Quantum
In previous bulletins I have remarked that mental health needs to become a core pillar of how health services are reimagined, and it may be that the metaverse is the trigger (ironically it is used to help soldiers overcome post traumatic stress disorder).
Also on the positive side, the enormous advances in medicine and health tech much of it spurred by the coronavirus crisis, will have a positive effect on humans pending at least two factors, that the bounty of these advances can be as widely spread as possible, and that the ways in which they are delivered is rethought in the sense that healthcare systems need to change.
One inspiration here, and my second point, is that the rising attention that technologies like blockchain have cast on decentralized autonomous organisations effectively organisations run by a coded relationships between disparate parties, as opposed to a centralized or even hierarchical bureaucracy (i.e. healthcare systems). While it is a stretch to imagine that todays healthcare systems and other institutional arrangements can be quickly replaced by decentralized forms, there is much that blockchain can do to cut that bureaucracies (closer relationships between doctors, patients, billing and other parties like pharmacists).
DAO
A third related, threshold change in technological influence that is getting a lot of attention and capital, quantum computing (70% of startup level investment in tech hardware goes to quantum computing projects). Governments, notably China and the European Union are also spending heavily on it. In brief quantum computing is revolutionary in that it uses different arrangements of bits to produce more powerful processing. Though there are not yet many applications of quantum computing it has the capacity to dramatically change aspects of healthcare, finance and industrial sectors like chemicals.
Having already witnessed historic, positive changes that resulted from the pandemic the general patience and obeisance of the worlds population, the acceptance of working from home and the power of vaccines, we are now crossing a threshold in terms of how technology will change our bodies, as well as our minds and the ways we relate to the world.
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Creating the Heart of a Quantum Computer: Developing Qubits – SciTechDaily
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By Shannon Brescher Shea, U.S. Department of EnergyJanuary 3, 2022
A computer is suspended from the ceiling. Delicate lines and loops of silvery wires and tubes connect gold-colored platforms. It seems to belong in a science-fiction movie, perhaps a steam-punk cousin of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But as the makers of that 1968 movie imagined computers the size of a spaceship, this technology would have never crossed their minds a quantum computer.
Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that conventional computers cant. Conventional computer chips can only process so much information at one time and were coming very close to reaching their physical limits. In contrast, the unique properties of materials for quantum computing have the potential to process more information much faster.
These advances could revolutionize certain areas of scientific research. Identifying materials with specific characteristics, understanding photosynthesis, and discovering new medicines all require massive amounts of calculations. In theory, quantum computing could solve these problems faster and more efficiently. Quantum computing could also open up possibilities we never even considered. Its like a microwave oven versus a conventional oven different technologies with different purposes.
But were not there yet. So far, one company has claimed its quantum computer can complete a specific calculation faster than the worlds fastest conventional supercomputers. Scientists routinely using quantum computers to answer scientific questions is a long way off.
To use quantum computers on a large scale, we need to improve the technology at their heart qubits. Qubits are the quantum version of conventional computers most basic form of information, bits. The DOEs Office of Science is supporting research into developing the ingredients and recipes to build these challenging qubits.
DOEs Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is using a sophisticated cooling system to keep qubits the heart of quantum computers cold enough for scientists to study them for use in quantum computers. Credit: Image courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
At the atomic scale, physics gets very weird. Electrons, atoms, and other quantum particles interact with each other differently than ordinary objects. In certain materials, we can harness these strange behaviors. Several of these properties particularly superposition and entanglement can be extremely useful in computing technology.
The principle of superposition is the idea that a qubit can be in multiple states at once. With traditional bits, you only have two options: 1 or 0. These binary numbers describe all of the information in any computer. Qubits are more complicated.
Imagine a pot with water in it. When you have water in a pot with a top on it, you dont know if its boiling or not. Real water is either boiling or not; looking at it doesnt change its state. But if the pot was in the quantum realm, the water (representing a quantum particle) could both be boiling and not boiling at the same time or any linear superposition of these two states. If you took the lid off of that quantum pot, the water would immediately be one state or the other. The measurement forces the quantum particle (or water) into a specific observable state.
Entanglement is when qubits have a relationship to each other that prevents them from acting independently. It happens when a quantum particle has a state (such as spin or electric charge) thats linked to another quantum particles state. This relationship persists even when the particles are physically far apart, even far beyond atomic distances.
These properties allow quantum computers to process more information than conventional bits that can only be in a single state and only act independently from each other.
But to get any of these great properties, you need to have fine control over a materials electrons or other quantum particles. In some ways, this isnt so different from conventional computers. Whether electrons move or not through a conventional transistor determines the bits value, making it either 1 or 0.
Rather than simply switching electron flow on or off, qubits require control over tricky things like electron spin. To create a qubit, scientists have to find a spot in a material where they can access and control these quantum properties. Once they access them, they can then use light or magnetic fields to create superposition, entanglement, and other properties.
In many materials, scientists do this by manipulating the spin of individual electrons. Electron spin is similar to the spin of a top; it has a direction, angle, and momentum. Each electrons spin is either up or down. But as a quantum mechanical property, spin can also exist in a combination of up and down. To influence electron spin, scientists apply microwaves (similar to the ones in your microwave oven) and magnets. The magnets and microwaves together allow scientists to control the qubit.
Since the 1990s, scientists have been able to gain better and better control over electron spin. Thats allowed them to access quantum states and manipulate quantum information more than ever before.
To see where thats gone today, its remarkable, said David Awschalom, a quantum physicist at DOEs Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago as well as Director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange.
Whether they use electron spin or another approach, all qubits face major challenges before we can scale them up. Two of the biggest ones are coherence time and error correction.
When you run a computer, you need to be able to create and store a piece of information, leave it alone, and then come back later to retrieve it. However, if the system that holds the information changes on its own, its useless for computing. Unfortunately, qubits are sensitive to the environment around them and dont maintain their state for very long.
Right now, quantum systems are subject to a lot of noise, things that cause them to have a low coherence time (the time they can maintain their condition) or produce errors. Making sure that you get the right answer all of the time is one of the biggest hurdles in quantum computing, said Danna Freedman, an associate professor in chemistry at Northwestern University.
Even if you can reduce that noise, there will still be errors. We will have to build technology that is able to do error correction before we are able to make a big difference with quantum computing, said Giulia Galli, a quantum chemist and physicist at DOEs Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago.
The more qubits you have in play, the more these problems multiply. While todays most powerful quantum computers have about 50 qubits, its likely that they will need hundreds or thousands to solve the problems that we want them to.
The jury is still out on which qubit technology will be the best. No real winner has been identified, said Galli. [Different ones] may have their place for different applications. In addition to computing, different quantum materials may be useful for quantum sensing or networked quantum communications.
To help move qubits forward, DOEs Office of Science is supporting research on a number of different technologies. To realize quantum computings enormous scientific potential, we need to reimagine quantum R&D by simultaneously exploring a range of possible solutions, said Irfan Siddiqi, a quantum physicist at the DOE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley.
Superconducting Qubits
Superconducting qubits are currently the most advanced qubit technology. Most existing quantum computers use superconducting qubits, including the one that beat the worlds fastest supercomputer. They use metal-insulator-metal sandwiches called Josephson junctions. To turn these materials into superconductors materials that electricity can run through with no loss scientists lower them to extremely cold temperatures. Among other things, pairs of electrons coherently move through the material as if theyre single particles. This movement makes the quantum states more long-lived than in conventional materials.
To scale up superconducting qubits, Siddiqi and his colleagues are studying how to build them even better with support from the Office of Science. His team has examined how to make improvements to a Josephson junction, a thin insulating barrier between two superconductors in the qubit. By affecting how electrons flow, this barrier makes it possible to control electrons energy levels. Making this junction as consistent and small as possible can increase the qubits coherence time. In one paper on these junctions, Siddiqis team provides a recipe to build an eight-qubit quantum processor, complete with experimental ingredients and step-by-step instructions.
Qubits Using Defects
Defects are spaces where atoms are missing or misplaced in a materials structure. These spaces change how electrons move in the materials. In certain quantum materials, these spaces trap electrons, allowing researchers to access and control their spins. Unlike superconductors, these qubits dont always need to be at ultra-low temperatures. They have the potential to have long coherence times and be manufactured at scale.
While diamonds are usually valued for their lack of imperfections, their defects are actually quite useful for qubits. Adding a nitrogen atom to a place where there would normally be a carbon atom in diamonds creates whats called a nitrogen-vacancy center. Researchers using the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, a DOE Office of Science user facility, found a way to create a stencil just two nanometers long to create these defect patterns. This spacing helped increase these qubits coherence time and made it easier to entangle them.
But useful defects arent limited to diamonds. Diamonds are expensive, small, and hard to control. Aluminum nitride and silicon carbide are cheaper, easier to use, and already common in everyday electronics. Galli and her team used theory to predict how to physically strain aluminum nitride in just the right way to create electron states for qubits. As nitrogen vacancies occur naturally in aluminum nitride, scientists should be able to control electron spin in it just as they do in diamonds. Another option, silicon carbide, is already used in LED lights, high-powered electronics, and electronic displays. Awschaloms team found that certain defects in silicon carbide have coherence times comparable to or longer than those in nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds. In complementary work, Gallis group developed theoretical models explaining the longer coherence times.
Based on theoretical work, we began to examine these materials at the atomic scale. We found that the quantum states were always there, but no one had looked for them, said Awschalom. Their presence and robust behavior in these materials were unexpected. We imagined that their quantum properties would be short-lived due to interactions with nearby nuclear spins. Since then, his team has embedded these qubits in commercial electronic wafers and found that they do surprisingly well. This can allow them to connect the qubits with electronics.
Materials by Design
While some scientists are investigating how to use existing materials, others are taking a different tack designing materials from scratch. This approach builds custom materials molecule by molecule. By customizing metals, the molecules or ions bound to metals, and the surrounding environment, scientists can potentially control quantum states at the level of a single particle.
When youre talking about both understanding and optimizing the properties of a qubit, knowing that every atom in a quantum system is exactly where you want it is very important, said Freedman.
With this approach, scientists can limit the amount of nuclear spin (the spin of the nucleus of an atom) in the qubits environment. A lot of atoms that contain nuclear spin cause magnetic noise that makes it hard to maintain and control electron spin. That reduces the qubits coherence time. Freedman and her team developed an environment that had very little nuclear spin. By testing different combinations of solvents, temperatures, and ions/molecules attached to the metal, they achieved a 1 millisecond coherence time in a molecule that contains the metal vanadium. That was a much longer coherence time than anyone had achieved in a molecule before. While previous molecular qubits had coherence times that were five times shorter than diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers times, this matched coherence times in diamonds.
That was genuinely shocking to me because I thought molecules would necessarily be the underdogs in this game, said Freedman. [It] opens up a gigantic space for us to play in.
The surprises in quantum just keep coming. Awschalom compared our present-day situation to the 1950s when scientists were exploring the potential of transistors. At the time, transistors were less than half an inch long. Now laptops have billions of them. Quantum computing stands in a similar place.
The overall idea that we could completely transform the way that computation is done and the way nature is studied by doing quantum simulation is really very exciting, said Galli. Our fundamental way of looking at materials, based on quantum simulations, can finally be useful to develop technologically relevant devices and materials.
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2022 Technology Predictions for AI in the Enterprise – EnterpriseAI
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The global use and further development of AI continued to grow in 2021 as enterprises found more ways to deploy it and developers discovered new ways to capture its possibilities for business users.
So, what might 2022 bring for AI and a wide range of related IT fields from MLOps to security, cloud and edge computing, open source, the metaverse and more?
To answer that question, we received a wide range of predictions from IT industry experts who shared their thoughts with EnterpriseAI. We are publishing them here, edited for clarity and brevity, to give our readers an early look at what may come in 2022 in enterprise AI and related technologies.
Rodrigo Liang, the CEO and co-founder of AI platform vendor SambaNova Systems, said he sees companies moving away from DIY AI and linking up with vendors who can help them better reach their business goals.
Organizations recognize the talent shortage and internal inertia to technology advancements adds significant performance risk, said Liang. As a result, traction for AI-as-a-Service expands allowing for investment in applying insights over creating those insights. How many companies are going to be able to afford to hire hundreds of people just to manage one model and have thousands of GPUs interconnected to run one thing?
Rodrigo Liang, of SambaNova
In addition, business verticals including banking, financial services, insurance and manufacturing will further deploy AI in transformative ways to bolster their performance and operations and will never look back, said Liang. Just like how the internet changed every facet of commercial transactions, AI will have the same level if not more of an impact. These industries will move from test deployments to production and will earn the returns promised with AI.
Mark Brayan, the CEO of machine learning data training vendor Appen, said that in 2022 he sees the idea of responsible AI shifting from an aspiration to a foundational requirement for most AI projects.
In 2021, responsible AI was one of the hottest topics in the AI industry, but adoption remained relatively low, he said. In 2022, however, the stakes become much higher, as businesses recognize that responsible AI leads to better business outcomes. The principles of responsible AI are now well-established: unbiased data, fair treatment on the data collection and labeling side of the industry, and a recognition that AI projects should promote the social good, or at least avoid the potential for social harm. Implementing these principles ensures that AI projects work as expected and protects the brand.
In addition, said Wilson Pang, Appens CTO, the new year will also see model evaluation and tuning going mainstream for enterprises.
Wilson Pang of Appen
In 2022, the need for regular model evaluation and tuning becomes AI program table stakes, said Pang. Machine learning models are dynamic they cannot be deployed and forgotten. ML models in production need to be updated and retrained based on a variety of factors, including the ongoing results, as well as changes in infrastructure, data sources and business models.
Bill Scudder, the AIoT (artificial intelligence of things) general manager at industrial optimization software vendor AspenTech, said he sees AIs maturation into industrial AI reach full bloom in 2022, graduating to real-world product deployments with concrete time-to-value.
To achieve this, we will see more industrial organizations make a conscious shift from investments in generic AI models to morefit-for-purpose, precise industrial AI applicationsthat help them achieve their profitability and sustainability goals, said Scudder. This means moving away from AI models that are trained on large volumes of [facility] data that cannot cover the full range of potential operations, to more specific industrial AI models that leverage domain expertise for interpreting and predicting with deep analytics and machine learning. Industrial data will be transformed into successful business outcomes across the full asset lifecycle.
Scudder said he also expects to see progress as executive buy-in and cultural change within organizations accelerate industrial AI deployments.
Digital executives like chief digital officers(CDOs) will be crucial to overcoming these obstacles, he said. CDOs will have a unique role to play in shepherding digital transformation and industrial AI through their organization bridging the gap between legacy systems and new technologies, fostering collaboration across silos, and shifting from mass data collection to strategic industrial data management. All these duties will be essential to ensure that an industrial organization can execute a digital transformation plan that sees wider adoption of, and strategy around, fit-for-purpose industrial AI applications.
Omer Har, the co-founder and CTO ofexternal data platform vendor Explorium, said he sees MLOps (machine learning ops) move from the periphery to the center of DevOps, data and ML practices.
The pandemic gave many large organizations the push they needed to embrace AI and analytics, said Har. These predictive models have assumed critical importance in industries ranging from insurance to consumer packaged goods. The key to their predictive power is a constantly refreshed stream of external training data. That means the models must be frequently retrained and seamlessly redeployed to production. For many DevOps professionals, this process has become as mission-critical as traditional SaaS deployments and require the same level of instrumentation and careful tool selection. MLOPs is no longer a sideshow. In many organizations, it is quickly becoming the main show.
Ali Siddiqui of BMC
Ali Siddiqui, the chief product officer for BMC Software, said he sees similar progress for AIOps (AI operations) inside enterprises this year.
AIOps will grow in 2022 as businesses adapt to be successful in delivering the digital experiences customers demand as they move to hybrid cloud environments, said Siddiqui. AIOps will provide organizations with insights into their data to help them identify pain points, reduce noise, provide visibility to issues before they impact the business and meet business objectives while saving time and money. AIOps also eliminates the need to analyze thousands of events and transforms large amounts of data into actionable information which is key for business success and efficiency.
Matt Watts the chief technology evangelist atdata-centric software vendor NetApp, said he expects to see more progress in AI adoption at the edge in the new year.
"The adoption of AI technology at the edge of networks will continue to accelerate across the manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, entertainment and hospitality industries, he said. For example, the agriculture and food processing industries will use AI for harvesting and packaging. An explosion in tiny machine learning chipsets for low-cost and resource-constrained devices such as remote sensors that can collect and process data at the edge will drive this trend. These chipsets will fuel the ever-growing edge-core-cloud data pipeline, which industries will need to access and leverage to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
In addition, Watts said he expects to see more forward progress in the use of quantum computing in 2022. Quantum computing will accelerate as major IT players and startups use the technology for complex tasks such as drug discovery, financial risk calculation, automotive battery design, and supply chain optimization, he said. Organizations will be more vocal about their quantum computing strategy in 2022, sharing how they will deliver quantum computing as a service to their customers and overcome challenges such as building a data pipeline into the quantum computing cloud.
Peak co-founder and CEO Richard Potter said he sees the nascent field of decision intelligence, which he called the commercial application of AI to decision-making processes, as the most important B2B movement of a generation. We are at the stage of narrow AI, where machine learning and AI can make predictions and categorizations for specific purposes. But to solve the biggest business challenges, AI needs to be focused on an outcome, on delivering against business objectives and driving tangible results. Businesses that make great decisions consistently win. That is why decision intelligence is how most businesses will adopt AI.
Alicia Frame of Neo4j
Alicia Frame, the director of product management for data science at graph database vendor Neo4j, said that in 2022 companies must embrace the role of the citizen data scientist for employees whose primary job functions lie outside the field of data science and analytics. The data science field is one of the fastest growing, and with the workforce currently experiencing The Great Resignation, companies will need to make data science more accessible to help fill gaps on their teams, said Frame. Over the past five years, the inquiry volume of clients striving to learn about digital ethics has more than tripled. Graphs are built for providing context to systems, which allows for increased explainability in AI/ML systems. As more organizations explore the different technologies to reach this point, 2022 will be a turning point for many organizations as they leverage graph technology to enhance their ability to address bias and create more ethical AI/ML systems.
Steven Mih, the co-founder and CEO at Ahana, which provides managed Presto services on AWS to help simplify open data lakes analytics, said he expects to see investments and adoption of managed services for open source to soar in the new year. More companies will adopt managed services for open source in 2022 as more cloud-native open source technologies become mainstream, including Spark, Kafka, Presto, Hudi and Superset, he said. Open source companies offering easier-to-use, managed service versions of installed software enable companies to take advantage of these powerful systems without the resource overhead so they can focus on business-driven innovation.
Manjusha Madabushi, the chief technology officer at Talentica Software, said he sees big changes coming in the world of metaverses in 2022. "With Facebook renaming itself as Meta and starting to build the metaverse, we will see big investments and innovation in virtual world-based online gaming, social networking and virtual reality based products like virtual conference platforms. Expect new applications that enable meetings with characters in the virtual world filling the place of corresponding human entities.
Disruptions will come in 2022 when it comes to cyberattacks on already-pressured companies including chipmakers, said James Carder, the chief security officer and vice president of labs at IT security vendor LogRhythm. A leading country producing semiconductor chips will have its supply-chain compromised, resulting in major shortages of critical materials, said Carder. As we have seen with the pandemic, cybercriminals will take advantage of periods of societal disruption to manipulate companies and governments for financial gain.The global chip shortage, whichshows no sign of slowing down is another period of disruption that hackers will soon exploit.As countries seek to ramp up production, one country will be caught attempting to corner the market by using fraudulent methods to gain access to the production and supply of the leading chip-producing countries.
Carder also predicts that the supply chain of a major vaccinemanufacturerwill be halted by ransomware. In 2021, ransomware attacks crippled Colonial Pipeline and JBS. In 2022, cybercriminals will set their sights on conducting a ransomware attack against one of the pharmaceutical companies producing the COVID-19 vaccine. This will interrupt the production of critical booster shots and keep other lifesaving drugs from reaching patients. The resulting fallout will fan the flame for foreign and domestic vaccine disinformation campaigns.
Murli Thirumale of Pure Storage
Murli Thirumale, the vice president and general manager of the cloud native business unit at flash storage vendor Pure Storage, said he sees 2022 as the year when containers will become a technology staple of mid-market companies and not just used by huge corporations with large IT staffs. Previously, Global 2000 companies were those that could afford to experiment and deploy newer technologies like containers. After all, they have the means to staff talented DevOps teams and invest in multi-year transformation initiatives. However, as containers move past the stages of initial innovation and adoption, and the industry moves into early maturity, mid-market companies will begin deploying and experimenting with this technology even more. Not only will containers work better out of the box, they will be delivered as a service and consumed with ease.
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7.5 Drug Policy and the War on Illegal Drugs Social Problems
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Learning Objectives
For many decades, the United States has used several strategies to try to deal with drugs. These strategies generally fall into four categories: treatment, prevention, harm reduction, and, for certain drugs, criminalization and the use of the criminal justice system, or, as we will call it, the war on illegal drugs. We now turn to these strategies.
Treatment programs are intended for people who already are using drugs, perceive they have a drug problem, and want to reduce or eliminate their drug use. This strategy is probably familiar to most readers, even if they have not used drugs themselves or at least have not had the benefit of a treatment program. Treatment programs often involve a group setting, but many drug users also receive individual treatment from a psychiatrist, psychologist, or drug counselor. Perhaps the most famous treatment program is Alcoholics Anonymous, a program that involves alcoholics meeting in a group setting, acknowledging their drinking problem and its effects on family members and other loved ones, and listening to each other talk about their situations. Other group settings are residential settings, sometimes called detox units. In these settings, people check themselves into an institution and stay there for several weeks until they and the professionals who treat them are satisfied. Perhaps the most famous residential treatment program is the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California; this center was established by and named after an acknowledged alcoholic who was the wife of President Gerald Ford.
The Betty Ford Center is a residential detox unit for people with alcohol and other drug problems.
In addition to or in conjunction with group treatment programs, individual treatment for drug addiction may involve the use of good drugs designed to help wean addicts off the drug to which they are addicted. For example, nicotine gum, patches, and other products are designed to help cigarette smokers stop smoking.
The various forms of treatment can be very effective for some addicts and less effective or not effective at all for other addicts; most treatment programs have a high failure rate (Goode, 2012). A sociological perspective suggests that however effective treatment might be for some people, the origins of drug use ultimately lie in the larger societyits social structure, social interaction, and the drug cultureand that these roots must be addressed for serious reductions in drug use to occur.
Because it is always best to try to prevent a problem before it begins, an important strategy to deal with drug use involves prevention. The major prevention strategies involve drug education or drug testing (Faupel et al., 2010). Many education-based prevention programs focus on children and adolescents. This focus reflects the fact that use of most drugs begins during adolescence, and that if adolescents do not begin using drugs during this period of their lives, they are much less likely to do so when they become adults. Some education strategies follow what is called an informational model: they involve public-service advertising, the distribution of drug pamphlets in medical offices, and other such efforts. Several studies question the effectiveness of strategies based on this model (Faupel et al., 2010).
Other education programs take place in the secondary school system and on college campuses. The most famous such program is almost certainly DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which involves police officers speaking to middle-school children. DARE programs have been carried out in more than 7,000 schools across the nation. However, several studies find that DARE programs do not generally reduce subsequent drug use among the children who attend them compared to children who do not attend them (Faupel et al., 2010).
Drug testing is very common in todays society, and you may well have been required to have a drug test as part of an application for a job, involvement in a school sport, or other activity. At least half of US workplaces now perform required drug tests. Drug testing is expensive, and many critics say it is not cost-effective in view of the low prevalence of illegal drug use in the United States (Faupel et al., 2010).
A third strategy involves harm reduction. As this term implies, this strategy attempts to minimize the harm caused by drugs. It recognizes that many people will use drugs despite efforts to prevent or persuade them from doing so and despite any punishment they might receive for using illegal drugs. Our nation is currently using a harm reduction approach with regard to alcohol and tobacco. It recognizes that tens of millions of people use these products, and designated-driving programs and other efforts try to minimize the considerable harm these two drugs cause.
A specific harm reduction strategy with regard to illegal drugs is the provision of clean, sterile needles for people who inject themselves with heroin, cocaine/crack, or other drugs. Many of these users share needles, and this sharing spreads HIV, hepatitis, and other diseases. If they have a supply to sterile needles, the reasoning goes, the transmission of these diseases will be reduced even if use of the drugs with the aid of the needles does not reduce. Critics say the provision of sterile needles in effect says that drug use is OK and may even encourage drug use. Proponents reply that needle-based drug use will occur whether or not sterile needles are provided, and that the provision of sterile needles does more good than harm. Other nations have adopted this type of harm reduction much more extensively than the United States.
Another harm reduction strategy involves the use of drug courts, which began in the 1990s and now number more than 2,500 across the United States. In these courts, drug offenders who have been arrested and found guilty are sentenced to drug treatment and counseling rather than to jail or prison. Evaluation studies show that the courts save much money compared to imprisoning drug offenders and that they are more effective than imprisonment in reducing the offenders drug habit (Stinchcomb, 2010).
Law Enforcement against Prohibition
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is an organization of current and former police and other criminal justice professionals, including prosecutors, judges, and FBI agents, who advocate for the legalization of illegal drugs. Because many of these professionals were on the front lines in the war against drugs and often put their lives in danger, their views about drug policy cannot be dismissed lightly.
One of their members is MacKenzie Allen, a 65-year-old deputy sheriff who worked in Los Angeles and Seattle, including time as an undercover agent who bought illegal drugs and made countless arrests for drug offenses. Although Allen strongly disapproves of drug use, his many years in law enforcement led him to realize that the drug problem is best understood as a public health problem, not a legal problem. He notes that the United States has lowered cigarette use through public education and without outlawing cigarettes. Can you imagine the mayhem had we outlawed cigarettes? he writes. Can you envision the cigarette cartels and the bloodbath that would follow? Yet, thanks to a public awareness campaign weve made a huge dent in tobacco use without arresting a single cigarette smoker.
Allen adds that most of the problems associated with illegal drug use are actually the result of the laws against drugs. These laws create a huge illegal market, much of it involving violent cartels, he says, that promises strong profits for the manufacturers and sellers of illegal drugs. He is also critical of other aspects of the war on drugs:
Another LEAP member is Joseph D. McNamara, the former police chief of San Jose, California. McNamara also criticizes the violence resulting from the laws against drugs. Like an increasing number of law enforcers, he writes specifically about marijuana, I have learned that most bad things about marijuanaespecially the violence made inevitable by an obscenely profitable black marketare caused by the prohibition, not by the plant. He continues, Al Capone and his rivals made machine-gun battles a staple of 1920s city street life when they fought to control the illegal alcohol market. No one today shoots up the local neighborhood to compete in the beer marketHow much did the [Mexican] cartels make last year dealing in Budweiser, Corona or Dos Equis? Legalization would seriously cripple their operations.
As these statements indicate, the legal war on drugs has had many costs. It is difficult to know what to do about illegal drugs, but in bringing these costs to the attention of elected officials and the American public, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is making a difference. For further information about LEAP, visit copssaylegalizedrugs.com.
Sources: Allen, 2001; Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, 2011; McNamara, 2010
The most controversial drug strategy involves the criminalization of many drugs and the use of the police and the rest of the criminal justice system to apprehend and punish the users, manufacturers, and sellers of illegal drugs. As the brief history of drug use at the beginning of this chapter indicated, the United States has banned certain drugs since the late nineteenth century, and it accelerated this effort during the 1970s and 1980s as concern grew about heroin, crack, and other drugs.
In judging the war on illegal drugs, two considerations should be kept in mind (Meier & Geis, 2007). One consideration is the philosophical question of the extent to which the government in a free society should outlaw behaviors that may be harmful even if people (lets assume we are talking about legal adults) want to engage in them. Americans do all kinds of things that may harm themselves and that may directly or indirectly harm other people. For example, many Americans eat high amounts of candy, ice cream, potato chips, hamburgers, and other fat food that causes obesity, great harm to individual health, premature death and bereavement, and tens of billions of dollars in health costs and lost productivity annually. Although obesity almost certainly causes more harm overall than illegal drugs, no one is about to say that the use of fat food should be banned or restricted, although some schools and workplaces have removed candy and soda machines. Americans also engage in many other activities that can be very harmful, including downhill skiing, contact sports, skydiving, and any number of other activities, but no one is about to say that we should be prohibited from engaging in these efforts. Where is the logic, then, in allowing all these behaviors and in not allowing the use of certain drugs? A philosophical argument can be made that all drug use should, in fact, be allowed in a free society (Husak, 2002), and perhaps this is an issue that you and your classmates will want to discuss.
The second consideration is the social science question of whether laws against drugs do more good than harm, or more harm than good. In a rational society, if a law or policy does more good than harm, then we should have the law or policy. However, if it does more harm than good, however much good it might do, then we should not have it, because the harm outweighs the good.
In considering this issue, critics of drug laws say they do much more harm than good, and they often cite Prohibition as an example of this dynamic. Prohibition was repealed because our society decided it was doing much more harm than good and was thus a triumphant failure, as one author has called this period of our history (Okrent, 2011, p. 67). Prohibition caused several harms: (1) the rise of organized crime to earn illegal profits from the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcohol; (2) the violence and murder among organized crime gangs that fought each other over drug turf; (3) the wounding and death of innocent bystanders from gunfights between organized crime gangs; (4) the wounding and murder of police officers who enforced Prohibition; (5) rampant corruption among police officers and political officials who took money from organized crime to ignore violations of Prohibition; and (6) the expenditure of much time, money, and energy by the criminal justice system to enforce Prohibition.
Prohibition did reduce drinking and the violence associated with drinking. But some scholars say that the organized crime violence caused by Prohibition was so common and deadly that the homicide rate grew during Prohibition rather than lessening (Jensen, 2000), though other scholars dispute this finding (Owens, 2011). In yet another problem, many people during Prohibition became sick and/or died from drinking tainted liquor. Because alcohol was no longer regulated, illegal alcohol often contained, by accident or design, dangerous substances. As an example, 15,000 people in the Midwest became sick with a severe neurological problem after drinking an illegal alcohol laced with a paint thinner chemical (Genzlinger, 2011).
Critics of todays war on illegal drugs say that it has reproduced the same problems that Prohibition produced. Among these problems are the following:
One of the harms associated with the war on drugs is that police officers die in the line of duty when they are killed by drug sellers or users.
Because of all these problems, drug law critics say, the United States should legalize marijuana, the most benign illegal drug, and seriously consider legalizing some or all other illegal drugs.
Proponents of the drug war reply that if drugs were legalized or decriminalized (still against the law, but violations would be treated like traffic offenses), many more people would use the newly legal drugs, and the problems these drugs cause would increase. Responding to this argument, drug law critics say it is not at all certain that drug use would increase if drugs were legalized. To support their view, they cite two pieces of evidence.
First, illegal drugs are relatively easy to obtain and use without fear of arrest. If people have decided not to use illegal drugs now, it is unlikely they will use them if the drugs were legalized. Support for this argument comes from national data on high school seniors (Johnston, OMalley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2011). In 2010, 82 percent of seniors said they could easily obtain marijuana, and 35.5 percent said they could easily obtain cocaine. Despite these numbers, only 35 percent had used marijuana in the past year, and only 3 percent had used cocaine in the past year.
Second, marijuana use in the United States decreased in the 1970s and 1980s after several states decriminalized it. As we noted earlier, marijuana use also declined in the Netherlands after they decriminalized the drug in the 1970s. Moreover, even though use of marijuana is legal in the Netherlands, its rate of marijuana use is no higher than the rate of marijuana use in the United States (Drug Policy Alliance, 2012). In another international comparison, Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs in 2001; after it did so, teenage drug use declined (see Note 7.28 Lessons from Other Societies).
At this point, it is impossible to know how much, if at all, the use of illegal drugs would rise if they were legalized. Critics of the drug war say that even if the use of drugs did rise, the benefits of legalizing or decriminalizing them would still outweigh the disadvantages (Feiling, 2010).
What Happened after the Netherlands and Portugal Decriminalized Drugs?
As the United States ponders its drug policy, the experience of the Netherlands and Portugal provides some provocative lessons.
The Netherlands decriminalized drugs in 1976. Under the Netherlands policy, although criminal penalties remain for possessing hard drugs (cocaine, heroin, etc.) and large quantities of marijuana, drug users are not normally arrested for possessing drugs, but they must receive drug treatment if they are arrested for another reason. Drug sellers are not normally arrested for selling small amounts of drugs, but they may be arrested for selling them in large. Marijuana use in the Netherlands dropped in the immediate years after it was decriminalized. Although it increased somewhat since then, as in some other nations, it remains much lower than the US rate. According to the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 23 percent of Dutch residents ages 1564 have used cannabis at least once in their lives, compared to 40 percent of Americans ages 12 and older (2005 figures). Dutch use of cocaine and heroin also remains much lower than American use. Reflecting the Netherlands experience, most of the nations in Western Europe have also decriminalized marijuana possession and use, and their rates of marijuana use also remain lower than the US rate.
In 2001, Portugal became the first European nation to remove all criminal penalties for drug possession. Portugal took this step because it reasoned that fear of arrest keeps drug addicts from seeking help and because it recognized that drug treatment costs far less than imprisonment. Anyone convicted of drug possession is sent for drug treatment, but the person may refuse treatment without any penalty.
In the first five years after Portugal decriminalized all drug possession, teenaged illegal drug use declined, new HIV infections from sharing needles declined, and the prison population also declined. Meanwhile, the number of drug addicts receiving treatment increased by 41 percent. A researcher who reported these trends commented, Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success. It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does. A Portuguese drug official agreed, The impact [of drugs] in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization, and noted that police are now freer to spend more time and energy on high-level dealers. Adult drug use in Portugal has risen slightly since 2001, but so has adult drug use in other European nations that did not decriminalize drugs. Portugals increase has not been higher than these other nations increase.
Although the Netherlands, Portugal, and other Western European nations certainly differ from the United States in many ways, their experience strongly suggests that decriminalization of drugs may cause much more good than harm. If so, the United States has important lessons to learn from their experiences.
Sources: Hughes & Stevens, 2010; Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2008; Reinarman & Hendrien, 2004; Szaalavitz, 2009; Tracey & Jahromi, 2010
Allen, M. (2011, February 23). Why this cop asked the President about legalizing drugs. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mackenzie-allen/why-this-cop-asked-the-pr_b_827338.html.
Blow, C. M. (2011, June 11). Drug bust. New York Times, p. A21.
Drug Policy Alliance. (2012). Drug policy around the world: The Netherlands. Retrieved from http://www.drugpolicy.org/facts/drug-facts/marijuana-facts#medical.
Faupel, C. E., Horowitz, A. M., & Weaver., G. S. (2010). The sociology of American drug use. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2011). Crime in the United States, 2010. Washington, DC: Author.
Genzlinger, N. (2011, October 1). Bellying up to the time when America went dry. New York Times, p. C1.
Goode, E. (2012). Drugs in American society (8th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Hughes, C. E., & Stevens, A. (2010). What can we learn from the Portuguese decriminalization of illicit drugs? British Journal of Criminology, 50(6), 9991022.
Husak, D. (2002). Legalize this! The case for decriminalizing drugs. New York, NY: Verso Books.
Jensen, G. F. (2000). Prohibition, alcohol, and murder: Untangling counterveiling mechanisms. Homicide Studies, 4, 1836.
Johnston, L. D., OMalley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2011). Monitoring the future. National results on adolescent drug use: Overview of key findings, 2010 Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. (2011). Ending the Drug War: A Dream Deferred. Medford, MA: Author.
McNamara, J. D. (2010, July 25). Legalize pot, former San Jose police chief says. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/25/IN1K1EGQRJ.DTL.
McVay, D. A. (n.d.). Drug War Facts (6th ed.). Retrieved from http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms.
Meier, R. F., & Geis, G. (2007). Criminal justice and moral issues. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2008). FAQ drugs: A guide to drug policy. Retrieved from http://www.minbuza.nl.
Okrent, D. (2011). Last call: The rise and fall of prohibition. New York, NY: Scribner.Owens, E. G. (2011, October 2). The (not so) roaring 20s. New York Times, p. SR12.
Reinarman, C., Cohen, P. D. A., & Hendrien, K. L. (2004). The limited relevance of drug policy: Cannabis in Amsterdam and in San Francisco. American Journal of Public Health, 94, 836842.
Stinchcomb, J. B. (2010). Drug courts: Conceptual foundation, empirical findings, and policy implications. Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy, 17(2), 148167.
Szaalavitz, M. (2009, April 20). Drugs in Portugal: Did decriminalization work? Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,1893900.html.
Tracey, M., & Jahromi, N. (2010, December 15). Importing the Portuguese model of drug reform. The Nation. Retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/article/157124/importing-portuguese-model-drug-reform.
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7.5 Drug Policy and the War on Illegal Drugs Social Problems
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The War On Drugs Drop Opening Acts, Adjust Tour Schedule Due To Omicron – Stereogum
Posted: at 4:08 pm
The War On Drugs are scheduled to head out on tour this winter in support of I Dont Live Here Anymore, this websites favorite album of 2021. The tour is still happening, but due to the ongoing COVID surge thanks to the Omicron variant, the band has adjusted its plans.
In a message on the groups official website, Adam Granduciel explains that the War On Drugs have cancelled their Feb. 5 and 6 shows in Toronto due to the government of Ontarios indoor capacity restrictions. Those gigs have been replaced by gigs in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, and Granduciel promises the band will make it to Toronto later this year to continue the bands treasured relationship with the city.
Granduciel is also kindly requesting that everyone wear a mask to the shows. I know were all over masks but for one, it makes me more at ease cuz now I dont get self conscious (and dark) when I see yall yawn out there, he writes, but also because we want our fans, our crew and our band to stay healthy so we can honor the commitments weve made to every city on this tour.
Finally, in order to exist within the tightest possible tour bubble, there will be no support acts on the tour. Granduciel shared extensive appreciations of each of the artists who are being booted from the shows, including Lo Moon, Caroline Kingsbury, Rosali, Joseph Shabason, and TOMI. It sounds like he has genuine affection for both Toronto and the no-longer-opening bands.
Heres the full message:
Hi all, just wanted to give a quick update about our US tour that begins in Austin on January 19th.
First off, were disappointed to announce that due to the government of Ontarios indoor capacity restrictions, our Toronto shows on February 5 and 6 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre have unfortunately been cancelled. Automatic refunds will be issued to all ticket holders in the next 30 days.
Weve always loved playing for you in Toronto and have had some of our most memorable nights as a band there playing like a hurricane at Massey Hall in 2017, the power going out an hour before our show at Lees Palace in 2014, playing two sweaty, sold out horseshoe Tavern shows, the massive Slave Ambient artwork/window display that the folks at Soundscapes made for us (that I still cherish). Were so disappointed to be doing this, but we promise well make it up to you in 2022 (and beyond). Wheels are already in motion as they say
Weve added a show in Pittsburgh (Feb 5) as well as a show in Cincinnati (Feb 6). Yay! Tickets for those are available on our website. Obviously, were beyond excited for these additions.
Were also requesting that as many of you as possible wear a mask when you come see us play this tour especially if youre in the first few (50) rows. I know were all over masks but for one, it makes me more at ease cuz now I dont get self conscious (and dark) when I see yall yawn out there but also because we want our fans, our crew and our band to stay healthy so we can honor the commitments weve made to every city on this tour. Seriously, we would really appreciate it.
Second, due to this latest Covid surge and our need to exist within the tightest possible tour bubble, there will be no support acts on this run. We know how excited all of the opening acts were for this tour and we sincerely appreciate them being so fn understanding.
Lo Moon was scheduled to be with us through Atlanta. We met years ago when Charlie was asked to play on their wonderful and CLASSIC debut record, Lo Moon. We became fast friends and theyll still be joining us as MAIN SUPPORT on our EU/UK tour in March and April. Were beyond excited to travel around with them. Their new song Dream Never Dies is out now!
Caroline Kingsbury wrote me out of the blue on Instagram asking to open our tour when we announced it back in July. I had never heard of her but I listened to a few songs and I knew SHE NEEDED TO PLAY MADISON SQUARE GARDEN. Big songs, big voice. Great hooks. I loved it. Please check her out and support her when she comes through your town. I know that well be doing some shows together this year one way or another.
Our friend Rosali from Philly was going to play all the midwest shows with us since she has relocated to the rural calm of Michigan. Every one of her records is on heavy rotation at one point or another and her latest record, No Medium is a true stunner. She makes singing and writing songs sound easy and effortless. maybe it iswhat a life. we love you Rosali! Were gonna miss playing Birds of Paradise and Because the Night with you every night :((((
We became instant friends with Toronto native Joseph Shabason when we opened for Destroyer in 2011 on the most epic 7 week tour Ive ever been on 6 months before Slave Ambient came out. Basically Chris Koltay was forcing us to go to Culvers to eat butter biscuits and Joseph was also DYING to go to Culvers So he ditched the comforts of the Destroyer tour bus and enjoyed some of the biscuits that Koltay had ordered for the table. Weve been close ever since. Honestly this guys got a million great records to his name. We suggest you check them all out. He also played saxophone on the outro of Eyes to the Wind.
Finally, when Shawn and I were mixing our record into some sort of strange mush back in late 2020 I remember hearing 3 songs on repeat coming from his kitchen. Having no luck with Shazam I asked his wife what I was listening to. It was rough mixes of what would become TOMIs Sweet, Sweet Honey EP and I fell in love with it immediately. I was really looking forward to hearing her sing these songs down the west coast but thatll have to wait until some other time!!
okwow, king of social media. thank you and we love you all. We cant wait to see you. Its been a long road. Were beyond excited. Take care of one another xoxo
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The War On Drugs Drop Opening Acts, Adjust Tour Schedule Due To Omicron - Stereogum
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