In the News

Interesting, Uplifting, and Frightening

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These days, the so-called mainstream media usually only ever focus upon clickbait stories, nonsense twisted beyond anything still resembling worthwhile news. ‘Alternative’ media often does the same, though typically delving into even more absurdity. Social media combines the two, leaving rational people bereft of any reliable source who just want to hear of some interesting or curious events happening around the world. To try to cut into the noise, here I bring three stories—one interesting, one uplifting, and one frightening—you might not have caught on your regular platforms.

Interesting - Quantinuum quantum computer advancement?

A lot of posts talk about the future moving toward quantum computing, but they rarely discuss how or when that will happen. Indeed, among the reasons is that quantum computing is in its early stages and stands little chance of entering mainstream use anytime soon. It suffers from two primary, but related, shortfalls: the necessity for cryogenic cooling and information error rates.

In an effort to keep this closer to news than an academic discourse, allow me to describe very briefly the basic operation of a quantum computer. Traditional computers move information in the form of bits—1s and 0s. Bits essentially represent information in one of two states, positive or negative—or true or false. Quantum computers, on the other hand, move information through qubits, which are subatomic particles capable of existing in a state of superposition. In effect, qubits can exist in the state of 1 or 0 at the same time, or any position in between, exponentially increasing the outputs available in a given time frame. It is only after the qubits are ‘measured’ do they ‘collapse’ into a single state. Scientists can entangle two or more qubits which allows them to instantly determine the state of all the qubits entangled together simply by measuring any one of them. Albert Einstein described this as “spooky action at a distance.”

The problem with this otherwise incredible phenomenon is a feature called ‘decoherence.’ Decoherence occurs when environmental factors cause the relatively frail qubits to decay and eventually disappear. This causes errors in computational output. Heat is the main cause of decoherence, so to reduce or eliminate errors quantum computer cores must be kept at temperatures very near absolute zero (-459° F / -273°C). Nonetheless, these are electronic devices (computers), so the supercooled area must still interact with other hardware elements that generate heat, thereby requiring a greater consumption of energy to maintain these extremely low temperatures. The continued battle of coolant energy consumption versus electronics generating heat results in a rather unstable system.

Working together, Microsoft and Quantinuum engineers developed a clever workaround that they claim has reduced errors to zero in a small sample, and comparatively few in larger ones. Upon generating thirty ‘standard’ qubits, researchers created a more stable version they call a ‘logical’ qubit. They did this by employing Quantinuum’s H2 trapped-ion processor that adopts an internal error-correction system. Microsoft’s added software allowed the team to ultimately produce four logical qubits. According to their report:

The software diagnoses errors and corrects them while calculations are underway without destroying the logical qubits via its active syndrome extraction technique. The technique involves learning details about the qubits regarding noise, rather than measuring them.

Purportedly, extended testing resulted in an error rate of 1 in 100,000. This reflects an orders of magnitude improvement over previous calculation error testing, but quantum algorithms require around 10¹² operations each; a rate of 1 in 100,000 for that many operations equals errors numbering near ten million. The team asserts that their error-correcting system can scale up. Whether this will allow an even smaller error margin of a larger set, one that results in a “fault-tolerant” system, remains to be seen. Still, if replicated, this will prove to be a significant advancement in the field.

Uplifting - Innovation Saving Lives in Africa

In 2022, 249 million people suffered from malaria, and of them around 608,000 died—most of them children. This is part of a trend of rising cases and deaths. The world pays little attention, probably because 95% of casualties occur in Africa. Nonetheless, the World Health Organization (WHO) pushed the rollout of a new vaccine back in 2021, and it is saving thousands of lives.

A key difficulty with malaria is not the treatment (if given in time), but the diagnosis. Medical professionals have effective treatment mechanisms even for severe cases, but the peculiar traits of the affliction make accurate and timely diagnosis a challenge, especially in many areas of Africa lacking sufficient medical facilities. People get malaria by mosquito bites that transmit a parasite into the victim. The exoerythrocytic stage of infection occurs when the disease-causing parasite reproduces inside the victim’s liver. Upon maturation, these offspring emerge by rupturing their host hepatocytes (liver cells) and pour into the bloodstream. This occurs approximately one week after the initial infecting mosquito bite. Dispersion across the bloodstream makes identifying these parasites challenging, even when an expert conducts a blood test and analysis. Once this proliferation happens, cases typically grow more severe, or deadly, particularly in children.

Ugandan inventor Brian Gitta, who developed a substantially simpler, but accurate, diagnostic process, described the issue with identifying positive malaria cases:

Doctors use a blood test and it takes time to get a diagnosis. People can be queuing for hours. It takes a skilled doctor to do the analysis and they can be sitting there all day staring down a microscope. I wanted to figure out how we can make that process easier, how we can take the patients’ pain away and how to do it quickly. It isn’t just the diagnosis: while people are queuing, they aren’t going to school, they aren’t going to work, they aren’t earning money.

We did lots of research and found that when a person is infected with malaria, the parasite that causes the disease changes the physical and chemical composition of their blood cells. It also creates a crystal-like structure in the bloodstream.

Gitta is now working to put his process into widespread use. Misdiagnosis is dangerous in both directions. As the condition mimics many other afflictions, it is often attributed to some other cause. Incorrect negative diagnoses lead to proliferation of the parasite in the blood stream as described above. On the flip side, improperly diagnosing someone with malaria who in fact does not have it can lead to the prescription of unnecessary dangerous drugs and contributes to the parasites’ resistance to malaria drugs generally.

Two new vaccines are helping to mitigate the problem. The RTS,S/AS01 and R21/Matrix-M vaccines are not panaceas. Their effective rate of prevention lies at around 39% in all cases, and 29% of serious cases. Regardless, a years-long pilot program in three countries led to a 13% reduction in child mortality. Both vaccines basically target the “pre‐erythrocytic stage in the liver,” the period before the parasitic offspring develop inside of the hepatocytes. This reduces the “number of times a child gets malaria, including severe, life‐threatening malaria, and it reduces child mortalities.” Children vaccinated by one or the other saw a 70% reduction in hospitalizations upon receiving antimalarial medications when sick, even in severe cases.

Inoculation remains complicated in Africa, as many people harbor beliefs that cause them to avoid taking them. Education programs will help mitigate this, as will increased investment and funding in medical services across African countries. Researchers also found success when providing various incentives to encourage parents to vaccinate their children. Moreover, as survival rates increase, and instances of extremely severe cases decrease, many are hopeful participation numbers will rise over time. Gitta’s diagnostic tool and the advent of these two vaccines assuredly will help reduce malaria deaths.

Frightening - Oceans are Heating at Speeds Stunning Even Scientists

Ninety percent of global warming occurs in the oceans. As surface and atmospheric temperatures rise, the oceans absorb that heat thereby raising their own temperatures. Atmospheric heat is one among several factors that contribute to oceanic warming, but many of these additional factors themselves are the result of overall climate change. The image below shows the wild divergence of heating trends in 2023 and 2024 from previous years’ temperatures. Scientists have called them “off the charts.” Gregory C. Johnson, a NOAA oceanographer, told CNN they are seeing the “equivalent to about two decades’ worth of warming in a single year.” Between 1971 and 2018, the ocean had gained 396 zettajoules of heat—the equivalent energy of 25 billion Hiroshima atomic bombs. Last year and now this year indicate an astonishing acceleration.

Sourced from Vox.

Warming oceans will lead to a wide variety of calamities, some that are already starting or will imminently occur. A key indicator of already-ongoing trouble is the migration of a number of fish and mammals. Plankton, a favorite food of many whale species, continue to be found further north, prompting the whales to follow them. Likewise, some species of fish have traveled to new feeding grounds following their prey that themselves are escaping uncomfortably warming waters. Some of these fish species have also grown smaller over just a few generations. Such movement and size diminishment threatens the fishing industry and critical food and economic sources for many communities, and wreak havoc on existing ecosystems.

Weather and the ocean are codependent, so an effect on one influences the other. Like some of the mighty rivers everyone knows—the Nile, Amazon, and Ganges, for example—the sky contains some of its own, and they are among the world’s largest in terms of water volume. Called atmospheric rivers, these are “narrow bands of moisture in the atmosphere that extend from the tropics to higher latitudes. These rivers in the sky can transport 15 times the volume of the Mississippi River.” In the western United States, these sky rivers have caused at least $1.1 billion in flood damages per year and more than 80% of the totality of flood costs. One study found that these atmospheric waterways will grow about 25% longer and 25% wider over the next few years, based on their previous growth correlation with increasing global temperatures. Marine scientist Deborah Brosnan anticipates the financial cost of atmospheric-river-driven storms to exceed $1 trillion in the coming decades.

More moisture in the atmosphere means severer storms as well. In addition to increased rainfall and flooding, this is resulting in higher winds, and longer durations. A study exhibited this, finding that unusual ocean heat in 2017 strengthened hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Across the world, scientists measure the global accumulated cyclone energy—a measure of storms' collective power—and found it at twice the normal level in June of 2023. As if to illustrate the point, 2023’s Tropical Cyclone Freddy proved to be the longest-lasting cyclone ever recorded. Jet streams, fueled and directed by the evaporation cycle between land and ocean-based moisture, continue to follow aberrant patterns year-upon-year. Not only can they, too, exacerbate wild weather, misaligned jet streams cause extreme, unusual cold in some places, and extraordinary heat waves or ‘domes’ in others.

Curiously, stronger storms contribute to a self-feeding cycle because they ‘push’ heat deeper into the oceans over which they form leading to further warming. Currents well below the surface then spread warmer water over thousands of miles. In one instance, scientists tracked warm water pushed below the surface spreading from the Philippine Sea all the way to the coast of California. Waters warmed in this fashion can maintain elevated temperatures for decades.

Conclusion

The world is littered with events that are horrible, wonderful, weird, and fascinating. Unfortunately, it seems that our increasingly click-driven media tend to focus only on those drawing the most emotional interest. Cool items—those with positive news or simply of intellectual interest—get buried deep down below the noise, if they are reported at all. Even concerning stories of legitimate interest, such as the utter disintegration of American politics, the tendency is to provide important narratives in fragmented pieces, thereby forcing consumers to keep returning (and keep clicking) rather than providing truly informative, comprehensive work. On this site, I attempt to avoid that as much as possible. As an avid reader of topics of all types, and a follower of really amazing science and technology communicators, my goal is to share the things I think people care to or should know, in a way that is helpful toward accurately comprehending it. I don’t rhythmically follow any one single issue or field—the world contains too many inspiring concepts to engage in such limitation as that.

So, if you enjoy following the meanderings of my mind, I encourage you to share my platform with others who might. Thanks for reading!

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I am a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Certified Crime Analyst, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Financial Crimes Investigator with a Juris Doctor and a Master’s degree in history. I spent 10 years working in the New York State Division of Criminal Justice as Senior Analyst and Investigator. Today, I teach Cybersecurity, Ethical Hacking, and Digital Forensics at Softwarica College of IT and E-Commerce in Nepal. In addition, I offer training on Financial Crime Prevention and Investigation. I am also Vice President of Digi Technology in Nepal, for which I have also created its sister company in the USA, Digi Technology America, LLC. We provide technology solutions for businesses or individuals, including cybersecurity, all across the globe. I was a firefighter before I joined law enforcement and now I currently run a non-profit that uses mobile applications and other technologies to create Early Alert Systems for natural disasters for people living in remote or poor areas.