Deep Sea Mining: What are the risks?

During the launch event in Kiel, the project partners plan investigations to ecosystems around the manganese nodules. Photo: J. Steffen, GEOMAR

GEOMAR coordinates European cooperation for the risk assessment
01.29.2015 / Kiel. 50 specialists in deep-sea ecology, marine mining and deep-sea observation of 25 European research institutions meeting this week at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. This will free the start of a three-year research project to investigate the risks of potential ore mining on the seabed. The project called "JPI Oceans Ecological aspects of deep-sea mining" is coordinated at GEOMAR.

The world population is growing. This also means that more and more people need a home, want to work with computers and other electronic devices and consume energy. For the construction of houses for the manufacture of electronic goods, but also for the production of wind turbines will require significant amounts of various metals. Currently, all metal ores are promoted on almost a third of the earth's surface - on the continents. 

In some regions of the ocean manganese nodules are recorded in the Atlantic as here, close together on the ocean floors. Photo: Nils Brenke, CeNak

However, in recent decades engaged again, the other two thirds, the oceans, the focus of governments and resource companies. "Many questions about a potential ore mining in the deep sea, however, are still open," says Dr. Matthias Haeckel from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. He is the scientific coordinator of the "Ecological aspects of deep-sea mining" project to investigate the potential environmental risks in the next three years. A consortium of research ministries in eleven European countries promotes it as part of the Joint Programme Healthy and Productive Seas (JPI Oceans) initiative with a total of 9.5 million euros. 

 In the Clarion-Clipperton Zone are the largest known manganese nodule deposits. Here, the ISA has been awarded 13 research licenses. Image Reproduced from the GEBCO world map 2014

This week, the project starts with a kick-off meeting at GEOMAR. A total of 25 partner institutions from these eleven countries involved in the project. The focus is primarily known as manganese nodules. It is spherical or cauliflower-shaped Erzknollen, which are usually at depths below 4000 meters on the large abyssal plains. They consist not only from the eponymous manganese, but also contain iron and coveted metals such as copper, cobalt or nickel. Already in the 1970s, there were initial plans to reduce manganese nodules from the deep sea, but never came out on trials. The largest reserves are currently known from the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone in the central Pacific. As a result of these activities in international waters on the basis of the International Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the International Seabed Authority (International Seabed Authority, ISA) was founded in 1994. 

It manages the entire seabed beyond the exclusive economic zone (200 nautical miles) of individual states. To date, the ISA has awarded 13 research licenses for exploration of manganese nodule fields in the Pacific, including in Germany and other European countries. 

                     Sample of the seabed in DISCOL area with top resting manganese nodules. 
                                                    Photo: M. Haeckel, GEOMAR

"But there is no mining licenses, which would only be a next step," said Dr. Haeckel. Since the ISA also aims to ensure effective protection of the marine environment from the potential consequences of ocean mining, relevant research for the licensees are required. "Of course industrial activities on the ocean floor will have an impact, because they disturb the soil and the water column about it," says Dr. Haeckel. Therefore, it is important to know the ecosystems on the sea floor and its local, regional and national connections and interactions accurately. Already this year, several expeditions of the new German research vessel SONNE in the Pacific are planned. 

The first trips in March and April perform the participating scientists to the German, Belgian and French license areas and in a defined by the ISA reserve in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Further trips from July to October have the so-called DISCOL area in Peru Basin to the destination. There, in 1989, a very limited area of the seabed was plowed for research purposes. "The goal of this experiment is to recognize the long-term consequences of large-area device used for deep-sea sediments," explains Professor Jens Greinert from GEOMAR, who will lead one of the exits to DISCOL area. Now, a quarter century after the disturbance experiment, the scientists will examine the then machined seabed areas exactly compare with adjacent undisturbed areas to determine, can recover disturbed communities in the deep sea as fast. "We should get to know each other better before we start, a large area to intervene in the deep sea it easy," says project coordinator Dr. Haeckel. 

Source: GEOMAR

Quantum computer as detector shows space is not squeezed

As the Earth rotates every 24 hours, the orientation of the ions in the quantum computer/detector changes with respect to the Sun’s rest frame. If space were squeezed in one direction and not another, the energies of the electrons in the ions would have shifted with a 12-hour period. (Hartmut Haeffner image)

A new experiment by UC Berkeley physicists used partially entangled atoms — identical to the qubits in a quantum computer — to demonstrate more precisely than ever before that this is true, to one part in a billion billion.

The classic experiment that inspired Albert Einstein was performed in Cleveland by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley in 1887 and disproved the existence of an “ether” permeating space through which light was thought to move like a wave through water. What it also proved, said Hartmut Häffner, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of physics, is that space is isotropic and that light travels at the same speed up, down and sideways.

“Michelson and Morley proved that space is not squeezed,” Häffner said. “This isotropy is fundamental to all physics, including the Standard Model of physics. If you take away isotropy, the whole Standard Model will collapse. That is why people are interested in testing this.”

The Standard Model of particle physics describes how all fundamental particles interact, and requires that all particles and fields be invariant under Lorentz transformations, and in particular that they behave the same no matter what direction they move.

Häffner and his team conducted an experiment analogous to the Michelson-Morley experiment, but with electrons instead of photons of light. In a vacuum chamber he and his colleagues isolated two calcium ions, partially entangled them as in a quantum computer, and then monitored the electron energies in the ions as Earth rotated over 24 hours.

If space were squeezed in one or more directions, the energy of the electrons would change with a 12-hour period. It didn’t, showing that space is in fact isotropic to one part in a billion billion (1018), 100 times better than previous experiments involving electrons, and five times better than experiments like Michelson and Morley’s that used light.

The results disprove at least one theory that extends the Standard Model by assuming some anisotropy of space, he said.

Häffner and his colleagues, including former graduate student Thaned Pruttivarasin, now at the Quantum Metrology Laboratory in Saitama, Japan, will report their findings in the Jan. 29 issue of the journal Nature.

Entangled qubits

Häffner came up with the idea of using entangled ions to test the isotropy of space while building quantum computers, which involve using ionized atoms as quantum bits, or qubits, entangling their electron wave functions, and forcing them to evolve to do calculations not possible with today’s digital computers. It occurred to him that two entangled qubits could serve as sensitive detectors of slight disturbances in space.

“I wanted to do the experiment because I thought it was elegant and that it would be a cool thing to apply our quantum computers to a completely different field of physics,” he said. “But I didn’t think we would be competitive with experiments being performed by people working in this field. That was completely out of the blue.”

He hopes to make more sensitive quantum computer detectors using other ions, such as ytterbium, to gain another 10,000-fold increase in the precision measurement of Lorentz symmetry. He is also exploring with colleagues future experiments to detect the spatial distortions caused by the effects of dark matter particles, which are a complete mystery despite comprising 27 percent of the mass of the universe.

“For the first time we have used tools from quantum information to perform a test of fundamental symmetries, that is, we engineered a quantum state which is immune to the prevalent noise but sensitive to the Lorentz-violating effects,” Häffner said. “We were surprised the experiment just worked, and now we have a fantastic new method at hand which can be used to make very precise measurements of perturbations of space.”

Other co-authors are UC Berkeley graduate student Michael Ramm, former UC Berkeley postdoc Michael Hohensee of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and colleagues from the University of Delaware and Maryland and institutions in Russia. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Source: UC Berkeley

Graphene Is Strongest Material in the World Even with Defects

Graphene remains the strongest material ever measured and, as Professor Hone once put it, so strong that "it would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.” —Illustration by Andrew Shea for Columbia Engineering

In a new study, published in Science May 31, 2013, Columbia Engineering researchers demonstrate that graphene, even if stitched together from many small crystalline grains, is almost as strong as graphene in its perfect crystalline form. This work resolves a contradiction between theoretical simulations, which predicted that grain boundaries can be strong, and earlier experiments, which indicated that they were much weaker than the perfect lattice.

Graphene consists of a single atomic layer of carbon, arranged in a honeycomb lattice. “Our first Science paper, in 2008, studied the strength graphene can achieve if it has no defects—its intrinsic strength,” says James Hone, professor of mechanical engineering, who led the study with Jeffrey Kysar, professor of mechanical engineering. “But defect-free, pristine graphene exists only in very small areas. Large-area sheets required for applications must contain many small grains connected at grain boundaries, and it was unclear how strong those grain boundaries were. This, our second Science paper, reports on the strength of large-area graphene films grown using chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and we’re excited to say that graphene is back and stronger than ever.”

The study verifies that commonly used methods for post-processing CVD-grown graphene weaken grain boundaries, resulting in the extremely low strength seen in previous studies. The Columbia Engineering team developed a new process that prevents any damage of graphene during transfer. “We substituted a different etchant and were able to create test samples without harming the graphene,” notes the paper’s lead author, Gwan-Hyoung Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in the Hone lab. “Our findings clearly correct the mistaken consensus that grain boundaries of graphene are weak. This is great news because graphene offers such a plethora of opportunities both for fundamental scientific research and industrial applications.”

                                              Profs. James Hone and Jeffrey Kysar
In its perfect crystalline form, graphene (a one-atom-thick carbon layer) is the strongest material ever measured, as the Columbia Engineering team reported in Science in 2008—so strong that, as Hone observed, “it would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.” For the first study, the team obtained small, structurally perfect flakes of graphene by mechanical exfoliation, or mechanical peeling, from a crystal of graphite. But exfoliation is a time-consuming process that will never be practical for any of the many potential applications of graphene that require industrial mass production.

Currently, scientists can grow sheets of graphene as large as a television screen by using chemical vapor deposition (CVD), in which single layers of graphene are grown on copper substrates in a high-temperature furnace. One of the first applications of graphene may be as a conducting layer in flexible displays.

“But CVD graphene is ‘stitched’ together from many small crystalline grains—like a quilt—at grain boundaries that contain defects in the atomic structure,” Kysar explains. “These grain boundaries can severely limit the strength of large-area graphene if they break much more easily than the perfect crystal lattice, and so there has been intense interest in understanding how strong they can be.”

The Columbia Engineering team wanted to discover what was making CVD graphene so weak. In studying the processing techniques used to create their samples for testing, they found that the chemical most commonly used to remove the copper substrate also causes damage to the graphene, severely degrading its strength.

WATCH VIDEO
Click on the Video to watch Prof. James Hone take us on a tour of his synthesis lab in the Northwest Corner Building, where he grows graphene and nanotubes.

Their experiments demonstrated that CVD graphene with large grains is exactly as strong as exfoliated graphene, showing that its crystal lattice is just as perfect. And, more surprisingly, their experiments also showed that CVD graphene with small grains, even when tested right at a grain boundary, is about 90% as strong as the ideal crystal.

“This is an exciting result for the future of graphene, because it provides experimental evidence that the exceptional strength it possesses at the atomic scale can persist all the way up to samples inches or more in size,” says Hone. “This strength will be invaluable as scientists continue to develop new flexible electronics and ultrastrong composite materials.”

Strong, large-area graphene can be used for a wide variety of applications such as flexible electronics and strengthening components—potentially, a television screen that rolls up like a poster or ultrastrong composites that could replace carbon fiber. Or, the researchers speculate, a science fiction idea of a space elevator that could connect an orbiting satellite to Earth by a long cord that might consist of sheets of CVD graphene, since graphene (and its cousin material, carbon nanotubes) is the only material with the high strength-to-weight ratio required for this kind of hypothetical application.

The team is also excited about studying 2D materials like graphene. “Very little is known about the effects of grain boundaries in 2D materials,” Kysar adds. “Our work shows that grain boundaries in 2D materials can be much more sensitive to processing than in 3D materials. This is due to all the atoms in graphene being surface atoms, so surface damage that would normally not degrade the strength of 3D materials can completely destroy the strength of 2D materials. However with appropriate processing that avoids surface damage, grain boundaries in 2D materials, especially graphene, can be nearly as strong as the perfect, defect-free structure.”

The study was supported by grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

—by Holly Evarts

Source: Columbia University

How to Learn math without fear, Stanford expert says

Stanford Prof. Boaler finds that children who excel in math learn to develop "number sense," which is much different from the memorization that is often stressed in school.
Image Credit: THEPLANETWALL STOCK

Students learn math best when they approach the subject as something they enjoy, according to a Stanford education expert. Speed pressure, timed testing and blind memorization pose high hurdles in the youthful pursuit of math.

"There is a common and damaging misconception in mathematics – the idea that strong math students are fast math students," said Jo Boaler, a Stanford professor of mathematics education and the lead author on a new working paper. Boaler's co-authors are Cathy Williams, cofounder of Stanford'sYouCubed, and Amanda Confer, a Stanford graduate student in education. 

Curriculum timely

Fortunately, said Boaler, the new national curriculum standards known as the Common Core Standards for K-12 schools de-emphasize the rote memorization of math facts. Maths facts are fundamental assumptions about math, such as the times tables (2 x 2 = 4), for example. Still, the expectation of rote memorization continues in classrooms and households across the United States.

While research shows that knowledge of math facts is important, Boaler said the best way for students to know math facts is by using them regularly and developing understanding of numerical relations. Memorization, speed and test pressure can be damaging, she added.

On the other hand, people with "number sense" are those who can use numbers flexibly, she said. For example, when asked to solve the problem of 7 x 8, someone with number sense may have memorized 56, but they would also be able to use a strategy such as working out 10 x 7 and subtracting two 7s (70-14).

"They would not have to rely on a distant memory," Boaler wrote.

In fact, in one research project the investigators found that the high-achieving students actually used number sense, rather than rote memory, and the low-achieving students did not.

The conclusion was that the low achievers are often low achievers not because they know less but because they don't use numbers flexibly.

"They have been set on the wrong path, often from an early age, of trying to memorize methods instead of interacting with numbers flexibly," she wrote. Number sense is the foundation for all higher-level mathematics, she noted. 

Role of the brain

Boaler said that some students will be slower when memorizing, but still possess exceptional mathematics potential.

"Math facts are a very small part of mathematics, but unfortunately students who don't memorize math facts well often come to believe that they can never be successful with math and turn away from the subject," she said.

Prior research found that students who memorized more easily were not higher achieving – in fact, they did not have what the researchers described as more "math ability" or higher IQ scores. Using an MRI scanner, the only brain differences the researchers found were in a brain region called the hippocampus, which is the area in the brain responsible for memorizing facts – the working memory section.

But according to Boaler, when students are stressed – such as when they are solving math questions under time pressure – the working memory becomes blocked and the students cannot as easily recall the math facts they had previously studied. This particularly occurs among higher achieving students and female students, she said.

Some estimates suggest that at least a third of students experience extreme stress or "math anxiety" when they take a timed test, no matter their level of achievement. "When we put students through this anxiety-provoking experience, we lose students from mathematics," she said.

Boaler contrasts the common approach to teaching math with that of teaching English. In English, a student reads and understands novels or poetry, without needing to memorize the meanings of words through testing. They learn words by using them in many different situations – talking, reading and writing.

"No English student would say or think that learning about English is about the fast memorization and fast recall of words," she added.

Strategies, activities 

In her paper, "Fluency without Fear," Boaler provides activities for teachers and parents that help students learn math facts at the same time as developing number sense. These include number talks, addition and multiplication activities, and math cards.

Importantly, she said, these activities include a focus on the visual representation of number facts. When students connect visual and symbolic representations of numbers, they are using different pathways in the brain, which deepens their learning, as shown by recent brain research.

"Math fluency" is often misinterpreted, with an over-emphasis on speed and memorization, she said. "I work with a lot of mathematicians, and one thing I notice about them is that they are not particularly fast with numbers; in fact some of them are rather slow. This is not a bad thing; they are slow because they think deeply and carefully about mathematics."

She refers to the famous French mathematician, Laurent Schwartz, who wrote in his autobiography that he often felt stupid in school, as he was one of the slowest math thinkers in class.
Math anxiety and fear play a big role in students dropping out of mathematics, said Boaler.

"When we emphasize memorization and testing in the name of fluency we are harming children, we are risking the future of our ever-quantitative society and we are threatening the discipline of mathematics. We have the research knowledge we need to change this and to enable all children to be powerful mathematics learners. Now is the time to use it," she said.

Source: Standford Unversity

On the ups and downs of the seemingly idle brain

Cortical colors Inhibitory cells abound in the barrel cortex of the mouse, where three main types were labeled to fluoresce in different colors: PV (red), SOM (blue), and 5HT3aR, which includes VIP and NPY, (green). Image: Connors lab/Brown University

Even when it seems not to be doing much, the brain maintains a baseline of activity in the form of up and down states of bustle and quiet. To accomplish this seemingly simple cycle, it maintains a complex balance between the activity of many excitatory and inhibitory cells, Brown University scientists report in the Journal of Neuroscience.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Even in its quietest moments, the brain is never “off.” Instead, while under anesthesia, during slow-wave sleep, or even amid calm wakefulness, the brain’s cortex maintains a cycle of activity and quiet called “up” and “down” states. A new study by Brown University neuroscientists probed deep into this somewhat mysterious cycle in mice, to learn more about how the mammalian brain accomplishes it.

In addition to an apparent role in maintaining a baseline of brain activity, the up and down cycling serves as a model for other ways in which activity across the cortex is modulated, said Garrett Neske, graduate student and lead author. To study how the brain maintains this cycling, he found, is to learn how the brain walks a healthy line between excitement and inhibition as it strives to be idle but ready, a bit like a car at a stoplight.

Garrett Neske To study how the brain maintains up and down cycles is to learn how the brain strives to be idle but ready, a bit like a car at a stoplight. Photo: David Orenstein/Brown University

“It is very important to regulate that balance of excitation and inhibition,” said senior author Barry Connors, professor and chair of neuroscience at Brown. “Too much excitation relative to inhibition you get a seizure, too little you become comatose. So whether you are awake and active and processing information or whether you are in some kind of idling state of the brain, you need to maintain that balance.”

The cycling may seem simple, but what Neske and Connors found in their investigation, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, is that it involves a good deal of complexity. They focused on five different types of cells in a particular area of the mouse cortex and found that all five appear to contribute uniquely to the ups and downs.

Cells in a barrel

Specifically the researchers, including Saundra Patrick, neuroscience research associate and second author, looked at the activity of excitatory pyramidal cells and four kinds of inhibitory interneurons (PV, SOM, VIP and NPY) in different layers of the barrel cortex. That part of the cortex is responsible for processing sensations on the face, including the whiskers.

Neske induced up and down cycles in slices of tissue from the barrel cortex and recorded each cell type’s electrical properties and behaviors, such as its firing rate and the amounts of excitation and inhibition they received from other neurons.

The picture that emerged is that all types of interneurons were active. This included the most abundant interneuron subtype (the fast-spiking PV cell), and the various more slowly spiking subtypes (SOM, VIP, NPY). In fact, Connors said, the latter cells were active at levels similar to or higher than neighboring excitatory cells, contributing strong inhibition during the up state.

One way such findings are important is in how they complement recent ones by another research group at Yale University. In that study scientists looked at a different part of the cortex called the entorhinal cortex. There they found that only one inhibitory neuron, PV, seemed to be doing anything in the up state to balance out the excitement of the pyramidal neurons. The other inhibitory neurons stayed virtually silent. In his study, Neske replicated those results.

Taken together, the studies indicate that even though up and down cycles occur throughout the cortex, they may be regulated differently in different parts.

“It suggests that inhibition plays different roles in persistent activity in these two regions of cortex and it calls for more comparative work to be done among cortical areas,” Neske said. “You can’t just use one cortical region as the model for all inhibitory interneuron function.”

From observation to manipulation

Since observing the different behaviors of the neuron types, Neske has moved on to manipulating them to see what role each of them plays. Using the technique of optogenetics, in which the firing of different neuron types can be activated or suppressed with pulses of colored light, Neske is experimenting with squelching different interneurons to see how their enforced abstention affects the up and down cycle.

When the work is done, he should emerge with an even clearer idea of the brain’s intricate and diligent efforts to remain balanced between excitation and inhibition.

The National Institutes of Health (grants NS-050434, MH-086400, and T32NS062443) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (grant DARPA-BAA-09-27) supported the research.

Source: Brown University

Einstein's 'spooky' theory may lead to ultra-secure Internet

Could new research into Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance' pave the way for a new ultra-secure quantum Internet? Credit: © Serg Nvns / Fotolia

Einstein's skepticism about quantum mechanics may lead to an ultra-secure Internet, suggests a new paper by researchers from Swinburne University of Technology and Peking University.

Associate Professor Margaret Reid from Swinburne's Centre for Quantum and Optical Science said Einstein's reservations about quantum mechanics were highlighted in a phenomenon known as "'spooky' action at a distance."

In 1935, Einstein and researchers highlighted a 'spooky' theory in quantum mechanics, which is the strange way entangled particles stay connected even when separated by large distances.

"Until now the real application of this has been for messages being shared between two people securely without interception, regardless of the spatial separation between them," Professor Reid said.

"In this paper, we give theoretical proof that such messages can be shared between more than two people and may provide unprecedented security for a future quantum Internet."

In the 1990s, scientists realised you can securely transmit a message through encrypting and using a shared key generated by Einstein's strange entanglement to decode the message from the sender and receiver. Using the quantum key meant the message was completely secure from interception during transmission.

Sending Einstein's entanglement to a larger number of people means the key can be distributed among all the receiving parties, so they must collaborate to decipher the message, which Professor Reid said makes the message even more secure.

"We found that a secure message can be shared by up to three to four people, opening the possibility to the theory being applicable to secure messages being sent from many to many.

"The message will also remain secure if the devices receiving the message have been tampered with, like if an iPhone were hacked, because of the nature of Einstein's spooky entanglement.

"Discovering that it can be applied to a situation with more parties has the potential to create a more secure Internet -- with less messages being intercepted from external parties."

Source: Swinburne University of Technology

Volunteers can now help scientists seek Ebola cure in their (computer's) spare time

The Scripps Research Institute’s Professor Erica Ollmann Saphire is leading the new effort against Ebola. Credit: Photo courtesy of The Scripps Research Institute.

Although some medical therapies show promise as treatments for Ebola, scientists are still looking urgently for a definitive cure.

For the first time, anyone with access to a computer or Android-based mobile device can help scientists perform this critical research -- no financial contribution, passport or PhD necessary. In fact, volunteers can be asleep, traveling or on a coffee break when they help researchers search for an Ebola cure.

Beginning today, anyone can download a safe and free app that will put their devices to work when the machines would otherwise be idle. With their collective processing power, the computers will form a virtual supercomputer to help The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) screen millions of chemical compounds to identify new drug leads for treating Ebola. 

Meanwhile, the devices will remain fully available for normal use by their owners.

This citizen science effort is possible through a partnership with IBM's (NYSE: IBM) World Community Grid, which has been making similar data-driven health and sustainability initiatives possible for 10 years as a free, philanthropic service to the science community. 

The "Outsmart Ebola Together" volunteer computing project announced today is being run by the Ollmann Saphire laboratory at TSRI, which has mapped the structures and vulnerabilities of the proteins comprising the Ebola virus.

The best candidate compounds that emerge from this crowdsourced effort will be physically tested in the lab to pinpoint their effectiveness against real virus infection. The most promising compounds will then be modified to perform even better, at lower concentrations, and with fewer side effects. Subsequent drug trials could ultimately lead to an approved medicine.

Crowdsourcing this citizen science effort will dramatically accelerate the process of identifying a cure. The speed and scale of a drug search is essential, as this particularly lethal disease continues to spread and mutate. Once believed to be less of a widespread public health risk than other communicable diseases because of its existence in mainly isolated regions, Ebola now carries a higher risk of spreading farther because people are more mobile than ever before.

"Our molecular images of the Ebola virus are like enemy reconnaissance," said Dr. Erica Ollmann Saphire of TSRI, one of the largest private biomedical research institutes in the United States. "These images show us where the virus is vulnerable and the targets we need to hit. In the Outsmart Ebola Together project, we will be able to harness World Community 

Grid's virtual supercomputing power to find the drugs we need to aim at these targets."

IBM's World Community Grid has successfully run other projects that search for drug candidates for both high- and low-profile diseases -- such as AIDS, cancer, malaria, Dengue fever, and influenza. It has enabled multiple breakthroughs, such as helping the Chiba Cancer Center in Japan discover seven new drug candidates to fight childhood neuroblastoma. The IBM-managed program also hosts projects that have led to important scientific advances in renewable energy and water purification technology.

"It is a privilege to partner with The Scripps Research Institute to advance the process of identifying an Ebola cure," said Stanley S. Litow, IBM's vice president of Corporate Citizenship and president of the IBM International Foundation. "It is only fitting that IBM's World Community Grid 10-year anniversary of accomplishments coincide with the launch of perhaps one of the most critical scientific and humanitarian efforts."

Conceived and managed by IBM, and powered by IBM's reliable and secure SoftLayer cloud technology, World Community Grid provides computing power to scientists by harnessing the unused, surplus cycle time of volunteers' computers and mobile devices. The software receives, completes, and returns small computational assignments to scientists. The combined power contributed by hundreds of thousands of volunteers has created one of the fastest virtual supercomputers on the planet, advancing scientific work by hundreds of years.

Nearly three million computers and mobile devices used by more than 680,000 people and 460 institutions from 80 countries have contributed virtual supercomputing power for vitally important projects on World Community Grid over the last 10 years. Since the program's inception, World Community Grid volunteers have powered more than 20 research projects, donating more than one million years of computing time to scientific research, and enabled important scientific advances in health and sustainability. IBM invites researchers to submit research project proposals to receive this free resource, and invites members of the public to donate their unused computing power to these efforts at worldcommunitygrid.org.

TSRI also invites members of the public to support Dr. Saphire's crowdfunding campaign at www.crowdrise.com/CUREEBOLA to secure resources needed to analyze the enormous volume of data generated by Outsmart Ebola Together.

The software used for screenings in the Outsmart Ebola Together project is called AutoDock and AutoDock VINA, developed by the Olson laboratory at TSRI.

World Community Grid is enabled by software developed in 2002 by Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) at the University of California, Berkeley and with support from the National Science Foundation. The BOINC project choreographs the technical aspects of volunteer computing.

Source: Scripps Research Institute

Video game teaches kids how to code

A screen shot for the video game. Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - San Diego

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego have successfully funded on Kickstarter a new and improved version of CodeSpells, a first-person player game they developed that teaches players how to code.

The game's previous iteration, developed by UC San Diego computer science Ph.D. students Sarah Esper and Stephen Foster, has been in use in dozens of schools throughout the world for more than a year. The researchers have been using the game as a platform to learn about the best ways to teach children how to code. They have presented their findings at a wide range of academic conferences, including the upcoming Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research Nov. 20 to 23 in Koli, Finland.

In this latest paper, "CodeSpells: Bridging Educational Language Features with Industry-Standard Languages," the researchers demonstrate that after playing CodeSpells for either four hours over four weeks or 10 hours over seven days, children ages 8 to 12 were able to write code by hand in Java.

"It is the goal of CodeSpells to provide a rich experience of computer science education to students who may not have access to an educator," Esper said.

Researchers now want to make the game more attractive and more fun to play. But they need funds to improve the game's graphics and coding interface. Enter Kickstarter, where the project has already met and exceeded its $50,000 fundraising goal.

"We want the game to be educational, but our biggest goal is to make sure it's fun," Foster said.

He and Esper have co-founded ThoughtSTEM, along with UC San Diego biochemistry Ph.D. 

student Lindsey Handley, to teach children ages 8 to 18 how to code, via onsite classes and video games, including CodeSpells and Minecraft.

In its previous iteration, CodeSpells sent players on quests, which helped them master spells, written in Java. This new version is more open-ended much like Minecraft -- a so-called sandbox game. The players are wizards that can modify the world around them at will. They can build mountains and valleys, levitate objects and start fires. They do so by using Blocky, a visual programming language created by Google, or Javascript.

The hope is that players will come up with their own quests. Researchers also hope that as players tinker with the game, they'll come up with their own exciting spells and share those. The goal is to create a vibrant online community, much like the one that has developed around Minecraft.

The game will feature several modes out of the box, but players will be able to create their own modes too. They'll have the tools to create everything from modes to survive in the wilderness to modes to balance an eco-system. They can even create multi-player magic-based sports to play with their friends.

The game will feature four elements: earth, fire, water and air, which the players can manipulate via spells. So far, computer scientists have completed an early version of gameplay for earth magic. The Kickstarter will fund the development of magic for fire, air and water, with an alpha version to be released on Christmas Day 2014, a beta version in June 2015, and the final copy of the game's creative mode to be released September 2015.

If the Kickstarter exceeds its $50,000 goal, the game's multiplayer functions will be enhanced. In addition, the game will add a fifth element, life, which would give wizards control over animals and plants within the game. That feature would be released in summer 2016. By early 2017, players would be able to create their own species and custom characters within the game.

Rewards for the Kickstarter range from a digital copy of CodeSpells for a $10 donation to access to district-wide licenses for CodeSpells in alpha and beta versions and computational thinking courses to a teacher at each school within a school district for a $5,000 donation.

Source: University of California - San Diego

'Topological insulators' promising for spintronics, quantum computers

Purdue University doctoral student Yang Xu, lead author of a new research paper on "topological insulators," an emerging class of materials that could make possible "spintronic" devices and practical quantum computers far more powerful than today's technologies, is shown here inspecting devices made from topological insulators under a microscope before electrical measurements.
Credit: Purdue University photo / Ting-fung Chung

Researches have uncovered "smoking-gun" evidence to confirm the workings of an emerging class of materials that could make possible "spintronic" devices and practical quantum computers far more powerful than today's technologies.

The materials are called "topological insulators." Unlike ordinary materials that are either insulators or conductors, topological insulators are in some sense both at the same time -- they are insulators inside but always conduct electricity via the surface. Specifically, the researchers have reported the clearest demonstration of such seemingly paradoxical conducting properties and observed the "half integer quantum Hall effect" on the surface of a topological insulator.

"This is unambiguous smoking-gun evidence to confirm theoretical predictions for the conduction of electrons in these materials," said Purdue University doctoral student Yang Xu, lead author of a paper appearing this week in the journal Nature Physics.

Yong P. Chen, a Purdue associate professor of physics and astronomy and electrical and computer engineering, led a team of researchers from Purdue, Princeton University and the 

University of Texas at Austin in studying the bismuth-based material.

"This experimental system provides an excellent platform to pursue a plethora of exotic physics and novel device applications predicted for topological insulators," Chen said.

For example, by further combining topological insulators with a superconductor, which conducts electricity with no resistance, researchers may be able to build a practical quantum computer. Such a technology would perform calculations using the laws of quantum mechanics, making for computers much faster than conventional computers at certain tasks such as database searches and code-breaking.

"One of the main problems with prototype quantum computers developed so far is that they are prone to errors," Chen said. "But if topologically protected, there is a mechanism to fundamentally suppress those errors, leading to a robust way to do quantum computing."

The topological insulators were synthesized at Purdue and fabricated into electrical devices at the Birck Nanotechnology Center in the university's Discovery Park.

The researchers for the first time demonstrated a three-dimensional material with an electrical resistance not dependent on the thickness of the material, a departure from conventional behavior. Whereas electrons usually have a mass, in the case of topological insulators the conducting electrons on the surface have no mass and are automatically "spin polarized," leading to the unique half-integer quantum Hall effect observed and also making the material promising for various potential applications.

Topological insulators could bring future computing platforms based on "spintronics." Conventional computers use the presence and absence of electric charges to represent ones and zeroes in a binary code needed to carry out computations. Spintronics, however, uses the "spin state" of electrons to represent ones and zeros.

"Compounds based on bismuth, antimony, telluride and selenide are the cleanest and most intrinsic topological insulators demonstrated so far, with no measurable amount of undesirable conduction inside the bulk that often spoils the topological conduction properties in earlier topological insulator materials," Chen said.

The researchers also found evidence consistent with the conduction of electrons being "topologically protected," meaning its surface is guaranteed to be a robust conductor. Studying thin-slab-shaped samples cut from this material down to ever decreasing thickness while observing the conductance, the researchers found that the conductance -- which occurs always and only at the surface -- barely changes.

"For the thinnest samples, such topological conduction properties were even observed at room temperature, paving the way for practical applications," Xu said.

The paper was authored by Xu; Purdue research scientist Ireneusz Miotkowski, who created the high-quality materials; Princeton postdoctoral research associate Chang Liu; Purdue postdoctoral research associate Jifa Tian; UT Austin graduate student Hyoungdo Nam; Princeton graduate student Nasser Alidoust; Purdue graduate student Jiuning Hu; Chih-Kang Shih, Jane and Roland Blumberg Professor at UT Austin; M. Zahid Hasan, a Princeton professor of physics; and Chen.

In addition to the material growth and electrical measurements performed by the Purdue researchers, the Princeton and UT Austin groups contributed to this study by performing advanced characterizations that further confirmed important properties of the material as a topological insulator.

The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which supports a Purdue-led program with participation from Princeton and other institutions aiming to develop energy efficient electronic devices based on topological insulators. The electrical measurements revealing the signature half-integer quantum Hall effect were performed at the National Science Foundation's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. UT Austin's contribution to this study was supported the Welch Foundation and U.S. Army Research Office.

Source: Purdue University

New records set for silicon quantum computing

Artist impression of an electron wave function (blue), confined in a crystal of nuclear-spin-free 28-silicon atoms (black), controlled by a nanofabricated metal gate (silver).
Credit: Stephanie Simmons, UNSW

Two research teams working in the same laboratories at UNSW Australia have found distinct solutions to a critical challenge that has held back the realisation of super powerful quantum computers.

The teams created two types of quantum bits, or "qubits" -- the building blocks for quantum computers -- that each process quantum data with an accuracy above 99%. The two findings have been published simultaneously today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

"For quantum computing to become a reality we need to operate the bits with very low error rates," says Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, who is Director of the Australian National 

Fabrication Facility at UNSW, where the devices were made.

"We've now come up with two parallel pathways for building a quantum computer in silicon, each of which shows this super accuracy," adds Associate Professor Andrea Morello from UNSW's School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications.

The UNSW teams, which are also affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology, were first in the world to demonstrate single-atom spin qubits in silicon, reported in Nature in 2012 and 2013.

Now the team led by Dzurak has discovered a way to create an "artificial atom" qubit with a device remarkably similar to the silicon transistors used in consumer electronics, known as MOSFETs. Post-doctoral researcher Menno Veldhorst, lead author on the paper reporting the artificial atom qubit, says, "It is really amazing that we can make such an accurate qubit using pretty much the same devices as we have in our laptops and phones."

Meanwhile, Morello's team has been pushing the "natural" phosphorus atom qubit to the extremes of performance. Dr Juha Muhonen, a post-doctoral researcher and lead author on the natural atom qubit paper, notes: "The phosphorus atom contains in fact two qubits: the electron, and the nucleus. With the nucleus in particular, we have achieved accuracy close to 99.99%. That means only one error for every 10,000 quantum operations."

Dzurak explains that, "even though methods to correct errors do exist, their effectiveness is only guaranteed if the errors occur less than 1% of the time. Our experiments are among the first in solid-state, and the first-ever in silicon, to fulfill this requirement."

The high-accuracy operations for both natural and artificial atom qubits is achieved by placing each inside a thin layer of specially purified silicon, containing only the silicon-28 isotope. This isotope is perfectly non-magnetic and, unlike those in naturally occurring silicon, does not disturb the quantum bit. The purified silicon was provided through collaboration with Professor Kohei Itoh from Keio University in Japan.

The next step for the researchers is to build pairs of highly accurate quantum bits. Large quantum computers are expected to consist of many thousands or millions of qubits and may integrate both natural and artificial atoms.

Morello's research team also established a world-record "coherence time" for a single quantum bit held in solid state. "Coherence time is a measure of how long you can preserve quantum information before it's lost," Morello says. The longer the coherence time, the easier it becomes to perform long sequences of operations, and therefore more complex calculations.

The team was able to store quantum information in a phosphorus nucleus for more than 30 seconds. "Half a minute is an eternity in the quantum world. Preserving a 'quantum superposition' for such a long time, and inside what is basically a modified version of a normal transistor, is something that almost nobody believed possible until today," Morello says.

"For our two groups to simultaneously obtain these dramatic results with two quite different systems is very special, in particular because we are really great mates," adds Dzurak.

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Source: University of New South Wales

A new, tunable device for spintronics

Tunable spin Hall angle device based on GaAs through field induced intervalley repopulation.
Credit: Copyright Jairo Sinova

An international team of scientists including physicist Jairo Sinova from the University of Mainz has developed a tunable spin-charge converter made of GaAs.

Spin-charge converters are important devices in spintronics, an electronic which is not only based on the charge of electrons but also on their spin and the spin-related magnetism. Spin-charge converters enable the transformation of electric into magnetic signals and vice versa. Recently, the research group of Professor Jairo Sinova from the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in collaboration with researchers from the UK, Prague, and Japan, has for the first time realised a new, efficient spin-charge converter based on the common semiconductor material GaAs. Comparable efficiencies had so far only been observed in platinum, a heavy metal. In addition, the physicists demonstrated that the creation or detection efficiency of spin currents is electrically tunable in a certain regime. This is important when it comes to real devices. The underlying mechanism, that was revealed by theoretical works of the Sinova group, opens up a new approach in searching and engineering spintronic materials. These results have recently been published in the journal Nature Materials.

Spintronics does not only make use of the electron's charge to transmit and store information but it takes also advantage of the electron's spin. The spin can be regarded as a rotation of the electron around its own axis, and generates a magnetic field like a small magnet. In some materials, electron spins spontaneously align their direction, leading to the phenomenon of ferromagnetism which is well known e.g. in iron. Additionally, "spin-up" or "spin-down" directions can be used to represent two easily distinguishable states -- 0 and 1 -- used in information technology. This is already used for memory applications such as computer hard discs.

Making use of electron spin for information transmission and storage, enables the development of electronic devices with new functionalities and higher efficiency. To make real use of the electron spin, it has to be manipulated precisely: it has to be aligned, transmitted and detected. The work of Sinova and his colleagues shows, that it is possible to do so using electric fields rather than magnetic ones. Thus, the very efficient, simple and precise mechanisms of charge manipulation well established in semiconductor electronics can be transferred to the world of spintronic and thereby combine semiconductor physics with magnetism.

Spin-charge converters are essential tools for that. They can transform charge currents into spin currents, and vice versa. The main principle behind these converters is the so called spin-Hall effect. Jairo Sinova had already been involved in the prediction and discovery of this relativistic phenomenon in 2004.

The spin-Hall effect appears when an electric field drives electrons through a (semi-) conductor plate. Taking a look at the classical Hall effect that is known from undergraduate physics, the interaction of moving electrons and an external magnetic field forces the electrons to move to one side of the plate, perpendicular to their original direction. This leads to the so called Hall voltage between both sides of the plate. For the spin-Hall effect electron-spins are generated by irradiating the sample with circularly polarised light. The electron spins are then parallel or antiparallel, and their direction is perpendicular to the plate and the direction of movement. The moving electron spins are now forced to one or the other side of the plate, depending on the spin orientation. The driving force behind this is the so called spin-orbit coupling, a relativistic electromagnetic effect which influences moving electron spins. This leads to the separation of both spin orientations.

To make practical use of this effect, it is essential to get a highly efficient spin separation. Up to now, platinum has been the most efficient spin-charge converter material, as it is a heavy metal, and the spin-orbit coupling of heavy metals is known to be especially strong due to the large amount of protons (positive charge) in their core.

Now, Sinova and his colleagues have shown that gallium-arsenide (GaAs), a very common and widely used semiconductor material, can be an as efficient spin-charge converter as platinum, even at room temperature, which is important for practical applications. Moreover, the physicists have demonstrated for the first time that the efficiency can be tuned continuously by varying the electric field that drives the electrons.

The reason for this -- as theoretical calculations of the Sinova group have shown -- lies in the existence of certain valleys in the conduction band of the semiconductor material. One can think of the conduction band and its valleys as of a motor highway with different lanes, each one requiring a certain minimum velocity. Applying a higher electric field enables a transition from one lane to the other.

Since the spin-orbit coupling is different in each lane, a transition also affects the strength of the spin-hall effect. By varying the electric field, the scientists can distribute the electron spins on the different lanes, thus varying the efficiency of their spin-charge converter.

By taking into account the valleys in the conduction band, Sinova and his colleagues open up new ways to find and engineer highly efficient materials for spintronics. Especially, since current semiconductor growth technologies are capable of engineering the energy levels of the valleys and the strength of spin-orbit coupling, e.g. by substituting Ga or As with other materials like Aluminum.

Source: Universität Mainz