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upstart writes:

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ordered to pay $4.1m over false Sandy Hook claims:

The jury in Alex Jones's defamation trial on Thursday ordered the far-right conspiracy theorist to pay $4.1m in damages over his repeated claims that the deadly Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.

Jurors in Austin, Texas, gave their verdict after deliberating about one hour Wednesday and seven hours Thursday at the end of a nine-days-long trial. The verdict levied against Jones was far below the $150m or more the plaintiffs had requested that jurors award them.

In a statement on behalf of the parents of a six-year old Sandy Hook victim whose lawsuit set the trial in motion, the attorney Mark Bankston said: "Mr Jones ... will not sleep easy tonight."

Bankston said his clients Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis were "thrilled with the result and look forward to putting Mr Jones's money to good use".

In a separate phase on Friday, jurors are to determine whether Jones owes any punitive damages in addition to the compensation he was ordered to pay on Thursday. "With punitive damages still to be decided and multiple [other pending legal matters], it is clear that Mr Jones's time on the American stage is finally coming to an end," Bankston added.

Heslin and Lewis, whose son Jesse Lewis was killed during the mass shooting, took the stand during the trial and detailed the mental suffering, death threats and harassment they weathered from fringe conservatives after Jones went on the rightwing conspiratorial outlet Infowars as well as his other media platforms to trumpet lies that the 20 children and six adults murdered in the 2012 Connecticut school massacre never actually died.

Instead, Jones claimed for years that the victims and their loved ones were "crisis actors" carrying out an elaborate ruse to force gun control.

In his own testimony, Jones apologized and conceded that the 2012 massacre at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, was "100% real".

Ten of 12 jurors signed Thursday's verdict, which was the minimum number needed for a decision because the case was civil rather than criminal.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A decent explanation of Shor's algorithm

Shor, I'll do it:

I've been talking a lot recently about how quantum algorithms don't work. But last week JR Minkel, an editor at Scientific American, asked me to write a brief essay about how quantum algorithms do work, which he could then link to from SciAm's website."OK!" I replied, momentarily forgetting about the quantum algorithm tutorials that are already on the web. So, here's the task I've set for myself: to explain Shor's algorithm without using a single ket sign, or for that matter any math beyond arithmetic.

Alright, so let's say you want to break the RSA cryptosystem, in order to rob some banks, read your ex's email, whatever. We all know that breaking RSA reduces to finding the prime factors of a large integer N. Unfortunately, we also know that "trying all possible divisors in parallel," and then instantly picking the right one, isn't going to work. Hundreds of popular magazine articles notwithstanding, trying everything in parallel just isn't the sort of thing that a quantum computer can do. Sure, in some sense you can "try all possible divisors" — but if you then measure the outcome, you'll get a random divisor, which almost certainly won't be the one you want.

What this means is that, if we want a fast quantum factoring algorithm, we're going to have to exploit some structure in the factoring problem: in other words, some mathematical property of factoring that it doesn't share with just a generic problem of finding a needle in a haystack.

Fortunately, the factoring problem has oodles of special properties. Here's one example: if I give you a positive integer, you might not know its prime factorization, but you do know that it has exactly one factorization! By contrast, if I gave you (say) a Sudoku puzzle and asked you to solve it, a priori you'd have no way of knowing whether it had exactly one solution, 200 million solutions, or no solutions at all. Of course, knowing that there's exactly one needle in a haystack is still not much help in finding the needle! But this uniqueness is a hint that the factoring problem might have other nice mathematical properties lying around for the picking. As it turns out, it does.

The property we'll exploit is the reducibility of factoring to another problem, called period-finding. OK, time for a brief number theory digression. Let's look at my favorite sequence of integers since I was about five years old: the powers of two.

2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, ...

Now let's look at the powers of 2 "mod 15": in other words, the remainder when 15 divides each power of 2.

2, 4, 8, 1, 2, 4, 8, 1, 2, 4, ...

As you can see, taking the powers of 2 mod 15 gives us a periodic sequence, whose period (i.e., how far you have to go before it starts repeating) is 4. For another example, let's look at the powers of 2 mod 21:

2, 4, 8, 16, 11, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, ...

This time we get a periodic sequence whose period is 6.

You might wonder: is there some general rule from which we could predict the period? Gee, I wonder if mathematicians ever thought of that question...

Well, duh, they did, and there's a beautiful pattern discovered by Euler in the 1760's. Let N be a product of two prime numbers, p and q, and consider the sequence

x mod N, x2 mod N, x3 mod N, x4 mod N, ...

Then provided x is not divisible by p or q, the above sequence will repeat with some period that evenly divides (p-1)(q-1).

So for example, if N=15, then the prime factors of N are p=3 and q=5, so (p-1)(q-1)=8. And indeed, the period of the sequence was 4, which divides 8. If N=21, then p=3 and q=7, so (p-1)(q-1)=12. And indeed, the period was 6, which divides 12.

Now, I want you to step back and think about what this means. It means that, if we can find the period of the sequence

x mod N, x2 mod N, x3 mod N, x4 mod N, ...

then we can learn something about the prime factors of N! In particular, we can learn a divisor of (p-1)(q-1). Now, I'll admit that's not as good as learning p and q themselves, but grant me that it's something. Indeed, it's more than something: it turns out that if we could learn several random divisors of (p-1)(q-1) (for example, by trying different random values of x), then with high probability we could put those divisors together to learn (p-1)(q-1) itself. And once we knew (p-1)(q-1), we could then use some more little tricks to recover p and q, the prime factors we wanted.

So what's the fly in the ointment? Well, even though the sequence

x mod N, x2 mod N, x3 mod N, x4 mod N, ...

will eventually start repeating itself, the number of steps before it repeats could be almost as large as N itself — and N might have hundreds or thousands of digits! This is why finding the period doesn't seem to lead to a fast classical factoring algorithm.

Aha, but we have a quantum computer! (Or at least, we're imagining that we do.) So maybe there's still hope. In particular, suppose we could create an enormous quantum superposition over all the numbers in our sequence: x mod N, x2 mod N, x3 mod N, etc. Then maybe there's some quantum operation we could perform on that superposition that would reveal the period.

The key point is that we're no longer trying to find a needle in an exponentially-large haystack, something we know is hard even for a quantum computer. Instead, we're now trying to find the period of a sequence, which is a global property of all the numbers in the sequence taken together. And that makes a big difference.

Look: if you think about quantum computing in terms of "parallel universes" (and whether you do or don't is up to you), there's no feasible way to detect a single universe that's different from all the rest. Such a lone voice in the wilderness would be drowned out by the vast number of suburb-dwelling, Dockers-wearing conformist universes. What one can hope to detect, however, is a joint property of all the parallel universes together — a property that can only be revealed by a computation to which all the universes contribute.

(Note: For safety reasons, please don't explain the above to popular writers of the "quantum computing = exponential parallelism" school. They might shrivel up like vampires exposed to sunlight.)

So, the task before us is not hopeless! But if we want to get this period-finding idea to work, we'll have to answer two questions:

1. Using a quantum computer, can we quickly create a superposition over x mod N, x2 mod N, x3 mod N, and so on?
2. Supposing we did create such a superposition, how would we figure out the period?

Let's tackle the first question first. We can certainly create a superposition over all integers r, from 1 up to N or so. The trouble is, given an r, how do we quickly compute xr mod N? If r was (say) 300 quadrillion, would we have to multiply x by itself 300 quadrillion times? That certainly wouldn't be fast enough, and fortunately it isn't necessary. What we can do instead is what's called repeated squaring. It's probably easiest just to show an example.

Suppose N=17, x=3, and r=14. Then the first step is to represent r as a sum of powers of 2:

r = 23 + 22 + 21.

Then

Also, notice that we can do all the multiplications mod N, thereby preventing the numbers from growing out of hand at intermediate steps. This yields the result

314 mod 17 = 2.

OK, so we can create a quantum superposition over all pairs of integers of the form (r, xr mod N), where r ranges from 1 up to N or so. But then, given a superposition over all the elements of a periodic sequence, how do we extract the period of the sequence?

Well, we've finally come to the heart of the matter — the one part of Shor's quantum algorithm that actually depends on quantum mechanics. To get the period out, Shor uses something called the quantum Fourier transform, or QFT. My challenge is, how can I explain the QFT to you without using any actual math? Hmmmm...

OK, let me try this. Like many computer scientists, I keep extremely odd hours. You know that famous experiment where they stick people for weeks in a sealed room without clocks or sunlight, and the people gradually shift from a 24-hour day to a 25- or 26- or 28-hour day? Well, that's just ordinary life for me. One day I'll wake up at 9am, the next day at 11am, the day after that at 1pm, etc. Indeed, I'll happily 'loop all the way around' if no classes or appointments intervene. (I used to do so all the time at Berkeley.)

Now, here's my question: let's say I tell you that I woke up at 5pm this afternoon. From that fact alone, what can you conclude about how long my "day" is: whether I'm on a 25-hour schedule, or a 26.3-hour schedule, or whatever?

The answer, of course, is not much! I mean, it's a pretty safe bet that I'm not on a 24-hour schedule, since otherwise I'd be waking up in the morning, not 5pm. But almost any other schedule — 25 hours, 26 hours, 28 hours, etc. — will necessarily cause me to "loop all around the clock," so that it'd be no surprise to see me get up at 5pm on some particular afternoon.

Now, though, I want you to imagine that my bedroom wall is covered with analog clocks. These are very strange clocks: one of them makes a full revolution every 17 hours, one of them every 26 hours, one of them every 24.7 hours, and so on for just about every number of hours you can imagine. (For simplicity, each clock has only an hour hand, no minute hand.) I also want you to imagine that beneath each clock is a posterboard with a thumbtack in it. When I first moved into my apartment, each thumbtack was in the middle of its respective board. But now, whenever I wake up in the "morning," the first thing I do is to go around my room, and move each thumbtack exactly one inch in the direction that the clock hand above it is pointing.

Now, here's my new question: by examining the thumbtacks in my room, is it possible to figure out what sort of schedule I'm keeping?

I claim that it is possible. As an example, suppose I was keeping a 26-hour day. Then what would happen to the thumbtack below the 24-hour clock? It's not hard to see that it would undergo periodic motion: sure, it would drift around a bit, but after every 12 days it would return to the middle of the board where it had started. One morning I'd move the thumbtack an inch in this direction, another morning an inch in that, but eventually all these movements in different directions would cancel each other out.

On the other hand — again supposing I was keeping a 26-hour day — what would happen to the thumback below the 26-hour clock? Here the answer is different. For as far as the 26-hour clock is concerned, I've been waking up at exactly the same time each "morning"! Every time I wake up, the 26-hour clock is pointing the same direction as it was the last time I woke up. So I'll keep moving the thumbtack one more inch in the same direction, until it's not even on the posterboard at all!

It follows, then, that just by seeing which thumbtack travelled the farthest from its starting point, you could figure out what sort of schedule I was on. In other words, you could infer the "period" of the periodic sequence that is my life.

And that, basically, is the quantum Fourier transform. Well, a little more precisely, the QFT is a linear transformation (indeed a unitary transformation) that maps one vector of complex numbers to another vector of complex numbers. The input vector has a nonzero entry corresponding to every time when I wake up, and zero entries everywhere else. The output vector records the positions of the thumbtacks on the posterboards (which one can think of as points on the complex plane). So what we get, in the end, is a linear transformation that maps a quantum state encoding a periodic sequence, to a quantum state encoding the period of that sequence.

Another way to think about this is in terms of interference. I mean, the key point about quantum mechanics — the thing that makes it different from classical probability theory — is that, whereas probabilities are always nonnegative, amplitudes in quantum mechanics can be positive, negative, or even complex. And because of this, the amplitudes corresponding to different ways of getting a particular answer can "interfere destructively" and cancel each other out.

And that's exactly what's going on in Shor's algorithm. Every "parallel universe" corresponding to an element of the sequence contributes some amplitude to every "parallel universe" corresponding to a possible period of the sequence. The catch is that, for all periods other than the "true" one, these contributions point in different directions and therefore cancel each other out. Only for the "true" period do the contributions from different universes all point in the same direction. And that's why, when we measure at the end, we'll find the true period with high probability.

Obviously there's a great deal I've skipped over; see here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here for details.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 24th, 2007 at 2:34 am and is filed under Complexity, Quantum, Speaking Truth to Parallelism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The average cost of a data security breach has hit another record-high of $4.35 million per incident, growing 12.7% over the past two years. And some businesses are passing the buck to customers, even as the cost of products and services has climbed amidst inflation and supply chain constraints. 

This year's figure was up 2.6% from last year's $4.24 million per breach, according to IBM's 2022 Cost of Data Breach report, which further revealed that 83% of companies surveyed had experienced more than one data breach. Conducted by Ponemon Institute, the report analysed 550 organisations across 17 global markets that were impacted by data breaches between March 2021 and March 2022.

Just 17% said this was their first breach. In addition, 60% said they increased the price tag on their products and services due to losses suffered from the data breach. They also continued to chalk up losses long after the breach, where almost half of such costs were incurred more than a year after the incident. 

Organisations in the US saw the highest average cost of a breach, which climbed 4.3% to $9.44 million, followed by the Middle East region where the average cost clocked at $7.46 million this year, up from $6.93 million in 2021. Canada, the UK, and Germany rounded up the top five pack, chalking at average losses of $5.64 million, $5.05 million, and $4.85 million per breach, respectively. 

Six markets, including Japan, South Korea, and France, amongst the 17 markets analysed saw a dip in their respective average breach cost. 

Across the board, companies took an average of 207 days to identify the breach and 70 days to contain it, down overall from last year's average of 212 days to identify and 75 days to contain the breach.

Some 19% of breaches were the result of supply chain attacks, costing an average $4.46 million and clocking a lifecycle of 26 days longer than the global average of 277 days, which measured the combined time to identify and contain a data breach. Supply chain breaches were due to a business partner being the initial point of compromise. 

Human errors, which encompassed negligent actions of employees or external contractors, accounted for 21% of incidents, while IT failures--the result of disruption or failure in a company's IT systems that led to data loss--were behind 24% of breaches. The latter included errors in source codes or process failures, such as automated communication errors. 

Some 11% of breaches were ransomware attacks, up from 7.8% last year and at a growth rate of 41%, but the average cost of such attacks dropped slightly to $4.54 million from $4.62 million in 2021. 

Attacks from stolen or compromised credentials remained the most common cause of a data breach, accounting for 19% of all incidents this year, the report found. Breaches from stolen or compromised credentials cost an average $4.5 million per incident and had the longest lifecycle of 243 days to identify and 84 days to contain the breach. 

Phishing was the second-most common cause of a data breach, accounting for 16% for overall attacks, but the costliest with an average $4.91 million in losses. 

[...] Amongst organisations that suffered ransomware attacks, those that paid up clocked $610,000 lower breach costs--excluding cost of ransom--compared to those that chose not to pay.

In addition, 62% of companies that said they were insufficiently staffed to support their cybersecurity needs saw an average $550,000 higher breach costs than those that were adequately staffed.

Original Submission

A random post by some AC provided a link to a video https://twitter.com/i/status/1553709678089146368

That video was interesting, but doesn't really provide details, so a search led me to Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb1MVFDy_tw

This incorporates elements of George Floyd, and many other infamous police interactions with citizens. "I can't breathe" "I have a medical condition" "My wife is pregnant" "I'm a federal agent", and maybe best of all, when ordered to get on the ground, "It ain't happening!" SURPRISE!! IT HAPPENED!

News2Share has obtained previously unreleased footage of a July 7, 2020 incident in which ATF Agent James Burk attempted to make contact with a member of the Columbus, Ohio community, who then called 911.

When Columbus PD officers Joseph Fihe and Kevin Winchell arrived, Agent Burk did not comply with their commands, even at gunpoint. The officers tased Agent Burk in the process of subduing him.

Agent Burk - who in 2015 was charged with shoplifting wine from a Kroger grocery story - is now suing the officers for excessive force.

NO REUSE WITHOUT PERMISSION Please contact Ford Fischer at fordfischer@news2share.com or call (573) 575-NEWS to license video. Photos and additional footage may be available upon request.

Additional links:
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/crime/2020/12/10/atf-agent-accuses-columbus-police-officers-excessive-force/6505667002/

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/delhi-township/james-burk-atf-agent-charged-with-stealing-wine-from-kroger

DEERFIELD TWP., Ohio – A federal agent is charged with stealing wine from a Kroger store after employees grew suspicious and alerted authorities.

Police say ATF agent James Burk took expensive wine to the self-checkout lane and charged himself a small percent of the cost.

Burk was charged by the Warren County Sheriff's Office for stealing more than $200 in wine from the Landen Kroger.

According to deputies, they caught Burk going to the self-checkout in August and paying $19 for four bottles of wine that had a total price tag of $222.

The report says Burk bought bottles of Stag's Leap Wine priced at $62.99 and $33.99, but the code he entered charged him only $4.99.

According to the report, Kroger employees had grown suspicious of Burk and began watching him. They said he did the same thing multiple times.

https://redoubtnews.com/2021/02/when-feds-think-they-are-above-the-law/

When Feds Think They Are Above The Law
Throughout the entire encounter, Burk screamed multiple excuses as to why he should not be treated the way the Feds treat regular people every day.

And, none of the above addresses the issue of ATF agents knocking on doors, demanding to see your weapons, without a warrant. Similar instances have been documented around the country, but in most cases the agents are cooperating with local or state cops in uniform, as opposed to showing up in civilian clothes, claiming to be a federal agent.

Agent Burk is an embarrassment to any non-Nazi, non-fascist law enforcement agency.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The "glass ceiling" is a metaphor for the barriers facing women and various minorities in the workplace when they strive for promotion or other improvements in their career. Research published in the International Journal of Services and Operations Management, compares the phenomenon in the European Union and the U.S.

Saška Gavrilovska and Balasundram Maniam of the Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, U.S., have found that the glass ceiling has been raised somewhat in recent times with many women and members of minority groups achieving higher mid-level positions at many companies and institutions. However, the barrier is still very much in evidence in terms of limited opportunities to break through the glass ceiling to top-level management positions. The team suggests that personality differences, discrimination, and the challenges of motherhood and childcare often reinforce the glass ceiling.

Earlier work and common experience suggest that there remain significant inequities between men and women and between majority and minority groups. Pay and grade disparities remain strong. To reduce workplace discrimination and promote gender and equality in general, there is a need for improved rights and policies, which should be adopted by companies and enacted in law. The EU and U.S. do have in place policies to improve rights, but there are many gaps, oversights, and loopholes that mean the glass ceiling, while slightly higher than in the past, remains a major barrier for women and minority groups.

Citation:Saška Gavrilovska et al, The glass ceiling phenomenon in the US and EU labour market: a comparative study, International Journal of Services and Operations Management (2022). DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2022.124282

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Instances of phishing attacks leveraging the Microsoft brand increased 266 percent in Q1 compared to the year prior.

The bloom is back on phishing attacks with criminals doubling down on fake messages abusing popular brands compared to the year prior. Microsoft, Facebook and French bank Crédit Agricole are the top abused brands in attacks, according to study on phishing released Tuesday.

According to the report by researchers at Vade, phishing attacks abusing the Microsoft brand increased 266 percent in the first quarter of 2022, compared to the year prior. Fake Facebook messages are up 177 percent in the second quarter of 2022 within the same timeframe.

The study by Vade analyzed unique instances of phishing URLs used by criminals carrying out phishing attacks and not the number of phishing emails associated with the URLs. The report tallied the 25 most commonly targeted companies, along with the most abused industries and days of the week for phishing emails.

Other top abused brands in phishing attacks include Credit Agricole, WhatsApp, and French telecommunications company Orange. Popular brands also included PayPal, Google and Apple (see chart).

Through the first half of 2022, 34 percent of all unique phishing attacks tracked by the researchers impersonated financial services brands. The next most popular industry for criminals to abuse is cloud and the firms Microsoft, Google and Adobe. Social media was also a popular target with Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram leading the list of brands leveraged in attacks.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Today, if a parent smacks a child mid-tantrum in the supermarket, they are likely to get looks of disapproval from other shoppers. Smacking is not as socially acceptable as it used to be.

Recent research shows only 15% of people aged 16–24 view physical discipline as necessary to properly raise children. This compares with 38% of people over 65.

But it still happens—and it is very harmful to children. So we need to help parents find alternative methods of discipline.

In 2017, the royal commission into child sexual abuse recommended a national study on how common child abuse is in Australia. Early findings released last month revealed 61% of those aged 16–24 said they were physically hit for discipline four or more times during their childhood.

The research also found those who were hit had almost double the risk of depression and anxiety. This partly because those who had been smacked as a child may have also experienced other forms of mistreatment, such as harsh parental reactions, neglect or insufficient support.

This fits with other research showing negative consequences if children are smacked or hit. A 2016 review of more than 70 international studies showed it was linked to reduced compliance with parents' instructions over time, children having increased aggression and antisocial behavior, mental health problems, and lower self-esteem.

In adulthood, it is also linked to antisocial behavior and being either a victim or perpetrator of intimate partner violence.

Currently, the use of reasonable force for the purpose of discipline in the home remains lawful under criminal law provisions or common law principles made by courts. This is despite the fact it is illegal in most Australian states and territories in other settings such as schools, or between adults—where it is classed as assault.

Many countries are changing their laws because they understand the harms and because it is a violation of children's right to live a life free from violence. Already, 63 countries have banned corporal punishment for children, including New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, South Korea, Wales, Scotland, France and Japan.

[...] The good news is there are evidence-based alternatives to smacking. These are strategies that aim to help children understand what behaviors are expected, teach them to work through their feelings and learn how to repair a situation or solve a problem.

These approaches lead to much better outcomes for parents and children, including more realistic expectations on the part of the parent and a better relationship between the parent and child. They also improve a child's well-being and mental health.

Here are some approaches to consider with your child:

• Children need to know how you want them to behave and for this to be clear. An example might be: "It's not OK to hit your brother" or "You can't take lollies off the supermarket shelves without asking me first."

• Anger is contagious, so try not to lose your temper in front of your kids. Instead, pause before you react: take three deep breaths, have a cold drink of water, or step outside for a moment.

• Parents need to show how they manage their own emotions—or make amends when they act in less-than-ideal ways. Parents should be brave enough to say "I'm sorry I got angry and shouted at you. I wasn't very patient."

• Kids can be uncertain or confused by their emotions. So, try and help them understand their feelings. This could include saying something like "I can see you felt left out and jealous."

• Also validate their emotions because this helps them feel accepted by you while learning to understand and manage their feelings. For example, say "It's difficult when this happens."

• When they are calmer, you could explore other feelings behind their actions.

• This is about separating feelings (jealousy, frustration) from behavior (hitting). All feelings are okay, but not all behaviors.

• No one can think, talk or listen properly if they are upset. Take time to do some breathing or something soothing with your child. Or perhaps they need a run around to release strong feelings.

• When everyone is calmer, help them work out the solution or next step. This teaches them how to resolve situations, repair relationships and take responsibility for their behavior. You might say something like, "It can be embarrassing saying sorry to someone you've been angry with. What do you think might help?"

• If something is broken, children might need to fix it, use pocket money to replace it, or explore what might make the situation better.

• Children need family rules about behavior and it can be useful to discuss what should happen if these are broken.

Getting discipline right is not easy as a parent, grandparent or caregiver. And this can be especially difficult if you were brought up with smacking (and have older relatives telling you it is "fine").

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found a way to build powerful magnets smaller than before, aiding the design and construction of machines that could help the world harness the power of the sun to create electricity without producing greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

The scientists found a way to build high-temperature superconducting magnets that are made of material that conducts electricity with little or no resistance at temperatures warmer than before. Such powerful magnets would more easily fit within the tight space inside spherical tokamaks, which are shaped more like a cored apple than the doughnut-like shape of conventional tokamaks, and are being explored as a possible design for future fusion power plants.

Since the magnets could be positioned apart from other machinery in the spherical tokamak's central cavity to corral the hot plasma that fuels fusion reactions, researchers could repair them without having to take anything else apart. "To do this, you need a magnet with a stronger magnetic field and a smaller size than current magnets," said Yuhu Zhai, a principal engineer at PPPL and lead author of a paper reporting the results in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity. "The only way you do that is with superconducting wires, and that's what we've done."

[...] High-temperature superconducting magnets have several advantages over copper magnets. They can be turned on for longer periods than copper magnets can because they don't heat up as quickly, making them better suited for use in future fusion power plants that will have to run for months at a time. Superconducting wires are also powerful, able to transmit the same amount of electrical current as a copper wire many times wider while producing a stronger magnetic field.

The magnets could also help scientists continue to shrink the size of tokamaks, improving performance and reducing construction cost. "Tokamaks are sensitive to the conditions in their central regions, including the size of the central magnet, or solenoid, the shielding, and the vacuum vessel," said Jon Menard, PPPL's deputy director for research. "A lot depends on the center. So if you can shrink things in the middle, you can shrink the whole machine and reduce cost while, in theory, improving performance."

Original Submission

_{from the percipient Polistes dept.}

Paper wasps form abstract concept of 'same' and 'different':

In a series of studies over more than 20 years, University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Tibbetts and her colleagues have demonstrated that paper wasps, despite their tiny brains, have an impressive capacity to learn, remember and make social distinctions about others.

The researchers showed that paper wasps recognize individuals of their species by variations in their facial markings and that they behave more aggressively toward wasps with unfamiliar markings.

They established that paper wasps have surprisingly long memories and base their actions on what they remember of previous social interactions with other wasps. And they provided the first evidence of transitive inference—a behavior that resembles logical reasoning—in a nonvertebrate animal, the lowly paper wasp.

[...] "Abstract concepts are thought to be associated with high levels of cognitive sophistication, so there has been much interest in which species can form and use them. This is the first time anyone has shown that wasps can form abstract concepts."

Historically, only primates were thought to be capable of same-different concept learning. But subsequent research found evidence of same-different concepts in many animals, including crows, pigeons, parrots, dolphins, ducklings and honeybees.

Journal Reference:
Chloe Weise, Christian Cely Ortiz, and Elizabeth A. Tibbetts, Paper wasps form abstract concept of 'same and different', P Roy Soc B-Biol Sci, 2022. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1156