Atomic Energy refers to energy released through processes that involve the nucleus of an atom. This can occur through nuclear fission, where a heavy atom is split into smaller parts, or nuclear fusion, where two light atoms combine into a heavier atom. These processes release substantial amounts of energy due to the conversion of mass to energy, as described by Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc^2.
Nuclear Fission is currently used in nuclear power plants to generate electricity. It involves splitting heavy atoms, like uranium-235 or plutonium-239, to generate heat, which then produces steam to turn turbines and generate electricity. However, it also produces high-level radioactive waste which poses significant disposal challenges.
Nuclear Fusion is a process where light atoms, commonly isotopes of hydrogen like deuterium and tritium, are combined at high temperatures and pressures. The resulting fusion releases tremendous energy, with no high-level radioactive waste, and a virtually unlimited fuel supply if we consider the abundance of hydrogen in seawater. Fusion is the process that powers the Sun and stars.
Tokamak:
A doughnut-shaped machine that uses magnetic fields to confine the hot plasma in which fusion occurs. It is currently the leading design for fusion reactors.
Stellarator:
Another design for fusion reactors, which has a more complex shape than a tokamak but potentially offers better plasma confinement.
Plasma:
The state of matter in which fusion occurs. Plasma consists of free-moving electrons and ions and is extremely hot.
Magnetic Confinement:
A method to confine the hot plasma using magnetic fields .
Inertial Confinement:
An alternative method to achieve fusion where small pellets of fusion fuel are compressed and heated using high-energy lasers or ion beams.
While fusion power holds great promise as a virtually limitless and clean source of energy, it has proven extremely challenging to achieve in a controlled and sustained manner on Earth. A common joke in the field is that fusion power is always “30 years away”.
However, progress has been made in recent years. The ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project, a large-scale scientific collaboration between 35 countries, is currently constructing a tokamak reactor in France, with hopes of achieving its first plasma by 2025 and first deuterium-tritium fusion by 2035.
In addition to these large-scale efforts, several smaller companies, such as Tri Alpha Energy and First Light Fusion, are exploring innovative approaches to achieve fusion power. Despite the challenges, the potential benefits of fusion power make it a significant area of research in the pursuit of future energy sources.
Quantum Computing is a cutting-edge technology that leverages the principles of quantum mechanics to process information. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or “qubits”, which differ from classical binary bits in their ability to exist in multiple states at once, thanks to the phenomena of superposition and entanglement.
Superposition refers to a qubit’s ability to be in both the 0 and 1 states simultaneously, which drastically increases the amount of information each qubit can store. Entanglement refers to a phenomenon in which qubits become interconnected and the state of one can instantly affect the state of the other, no matter the distance between them. This feature enables highly efficient information processing.
Quantum Gate:
Analogous to gates in classical computing, quantum gates act on qubits to change their quantum states.
Quantum Circuit:
This is a sequence of quantum gates. Quantum algorithms are typically implemented as quantum circuits.
Quantum Decoherence:
This is the loss of quantum states in a quantum system, which is a significant challenge for building reliable and efficient quantum computers.
Quantum Error Correction:
These are techniques to correct for errors and decoherence in a quantum system.
Quantum Supremacy or Quantum Advantage:
This is the point where quantum computers can solve problems faster or better than classical computers.
The progress for fully error-corrected, fault-tolerant quantum computing that would outperform classical computers on useful tasks is still a goal for the future.
The potential applications of quantum computing are broad and promising, including cryptography, optimization, materials science, and more. However, there are also significant challenges to overcome, including maintaining quantum coherence, error correction, and developing useful quantum algorithms .
Quantum Computing, as part of the QUASAR Convergence, promises a new dawn in our computational capabilities. While there are substantial hurdles to overcome, the prospects of Quantum Computing offer a tantalising glimpse into a future where today’s computational inconceivabilities become tomorrow’s realities. With continuous research and development, Quantum Computing may soon transition from the realm of the theoretical into the practical, making the term “quantum leap” an everyday reality.
In the lavish courtrooms of economic discourse, a peculiar paradox is often put on trial – the paradox of prosperity. Can true, sustainable national wealth truly be inherited or does it demand creation? Let us put the crusted champagne glasses down, roll up the sleeves of our Savile Row suits, and dive into this titillating quandary.
The Power Of Creation.
The weight of the adage, “Prosperity must be created, not inherited,” rests firmly on the robust shoulders of innovation, productivity, and industrious hustle. The real prosperity of nations, the kind that lasts beyond the glitter of a few generations, is born out of real products, meaningful services, and problem-solving enterprises.
Think Silicon Valley’s tech boom or Germany’s post-war “Wirtschaftswunder”. These are not tales of well-timed inheritances but of creation, of adding value to the world that was not there before.
The Seductive Lure Of Rent-Seeking, Financialization, And Inheritance.
On the flip side of the coin, we find the opulent realms of rent-seeking, financialization, and inheritance. It is an enticing world, where wealth seems to grow not from the soil of hard work, but from the cozy comfort of existing assets and established privileges.
Yet, as attractive as this world might be, it is a high-stakes game where the winners take all, and the losers are left scrambling for crumbs. Here, the wealth of nations is not so much grown as it is shuffled around, perpetuating inequality and promoting instability.
The Balancing Act.
Not all is doom and gloom in the world of inherited wealth and financial engineering. They have their role in the economic symphony. After all, financialization can improve risk management and drive economic efficiency. Inheritance, while often painted as the villain, can provide a cushion of security and spur investment.
The real challenge is not to demonise these facets of our economy, but to balance them with the creativity and hard work that drives genuine, sustainable prosperity.
In Pursuit Of Inclusive Growth.
Sustainable prosperity demands a new kind of economic thinking – one that values not just the size of the national pie but also cares about how evenly it is divided. It is a shift from the often blinkered pursuit of GDP to a more nuanced vision of inclusive growth and sustainable development.
This is not just about quixotic idealism, but about real, robust economic health. After all, what use is a golden goose if only a few can enjoy the golden eggs while the rest are left with the crumbs?
In the end, the paradox of prosperity might not be a paradox after all. True, sustainable prosperity is not a relic of the past to be inherited but a promise of the future to be created. It is about understanding that the glimmer of gold is not just in its accumulation but also in its equitable distribution. It is about recognising that wealth is not just about what we own, but what we contribute to the world. It is a journey of balance, inclusivity, and continuous creation.
And with that, let is raise our glasses, not to the inheritors of yesterday’s wealth, but to the creators of tomorrow’s prosperity. Cheers to a future built, not inherited.
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Threads is a new app, built by the Instagram team, for sharing text updates and joining public conversations.
You log in using your Instagram account and posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length.
We’re working to soon make Threads compatible with the open, interoperable social networks that we believe can shape the future of the internet.
Mark Zuckerberg just announced the initial version of Threads, an app built by the Instagram team for sharing with text. Whether you’re a creator or a casual poster, Threads offers a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations. We are working toward making Threads compatible with the open, interoperable social networks that we believe can shape the future of the internet.
Instagram is where billions of people around the world connect over photos and videos. Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas. Just like on Instagram, with Threads you can follow and connect with friends and creators who share your interests – including the people you follow on Instagram and beyond. And you can use our existing suite of safety and user controls.
Join the Conversation from Instagram
It’s easy to get started with Threads: simply use your Instagram account to log in. Your Instagram username and verification will carry over, with the option to customize your profile specifically for Threads.
Everyone who is under 16 (or under 18 in certain countries) will be defaulted into a private profile when they join Threads. You can choose to follow the same accounts you do on Instagram, and find more people who care about the same things you do. The core accessibility features available on Instagram today, such as screen reader support and AI-generated image descriptions, are also enabled on Threads.
Your feed on Threads includes threads posted by people you follow, and recommended content from new creators you haven’t discovered yet. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length. You can easily share a Threads post to your Instagram story, or share your post as a link on any other platform you choose.
Tune Out the Noise
We built Threads with tools to enable positive, productive conversations. You can control who can mention you or reply to you within Threads. Like on Instagram, you can add hidden words to filter out replies to your threads that contain specific words. You can unfollow, block, restrict or report a profile on Threads by tapping the three-dot menu, and any accounts you’ve blocked on Instagram will automatically be blocked on Threads.
As with all our products, we’re taking safety seriously, and we’ll enforce Instagram’s Community Guidelines on content and interactions in the app. Since 2016 we’ve invested more than $16 billion in building up the teams and technologies needed to protect our users, and we remain focused on advancing our industry-leading integrity efforts and investments to protect our community.
Compatible with Interoperable Networks
Soon, we are planning to make Threads compatible with ActivityPub, the open social networking protocol established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body responsible for the open standards that power the modern web. This would make Threads interoperable with other apps that also support the ActivityPub protocol, such as Mastodon and WordPress – allowing new types of connections that are simply not possible on most social apps today. Other platforms including Tumblr have shared plans to support the ActivityPub protocol in the future.
We’re committed to giving you more control over your audience on Threads – our plan is to work with ActivityPub to provide you the option to stop using Threads and transfer your content to another service. Our vision is that people using compatible apps will be able to follow and interact with people on Threads without having a Threads account, and vice versa, ushering in a new era of diverse and interconnected networks. If you have a public profile on Threads, this means your posts would be accessible from other apps, allowing you to reach new people with no added effort. If you have a private profile, you’d be able to approve users on Threads who want to follow you and interact with your content, similar to your experience on Instagram.
The benefits of open social networking protocols go well beyond the ways people can follow each other. Developers can build new types of features and user experiences that can easily plug into other open social networks, accelerating the pace of innovation and experimentation. Each compatible app can set its own community standards and content moderation policies, meaning people have the freedom to choose spaces that align with their values. We believe this decentralized approach, similar to the protocols governing email and the web itself, will play an important role in the future of online platforms.
Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol – we hope that by joining this fast-growing ecosystem of interoperable services, Threads will help people find their community, no matter what app they use.
What’s Next
We’re rolling out Threads today in more than 100 countries for iOS and Android, and people in those countries can download the app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
In addition to working toward making Threads compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, soon we’ll be adding a number of new features to help you continue to discover threads and creators you’re interested in, including improved recommendations in feed and a more robust search function that makes it easier to follow topics and trends in real time.
We’re excited to hear your feedback as we work to build new features and introduce fun new ways to connect on the app.
Here we are, standing at the mouth of a century-long vortex, peering into the chaos and complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a maelstrom born in the womb of colonial arrogance and ignorance, a seismic aftershock of empires long crumbled to dust.
Let us not beat around the burning bush; this is not just about disputed borders or divergent nationalisms. This is a melodrama scripted in the smoke-filled backrooms of 19th-century Europe when Zionism and Arab nationalism were newborn ideologies crying for recognition and respect.
British leaving Haifa in 1948. תא, CC BY-ND
Like an unwelcome ghost at a wedding, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 lurks at the heart of this saga. Britain, in its colonial wisdom, promised a “national home for the Jewish people” in a land where the Arab majority had their own dreams. Cue increased Jewish immigration, widespread Arab resistance, and a Pandora’s box of strife and sorrow that we’re still grappling with today.
Fast forward to 1948, the birth of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war. Israel flexed its muscles, stretched its borders beyond the UN’s partition plan, and scattered over 700,000 Palestinians to the wind. This, the Nakba or “catastrophe” in Arabic, is the bloody birthmark on the face of this conflict.
Will it ever change?
The political chess game that ensued is a tangled web of power plays and broken promises, geopolitical scheming, and ego-driven agendas. It is a toxic cocktail mixed by local and global powers alike, each one pushing their own vision of what this land should be.
As for solutions, oh, there have been plenty proposed. A two-state solution? A one-state solution? All sound good on paper, all crumble under the harsh realities of this land. Borders, security, settlements, the status of Jerusalem, the right of return for refugees… each a mountain too high for these proposals to scale. Not to mention the bedrock of distrust and hostility that underpins it all.
Will it ever change? It’s the million-shekel question, isn’t it? The annals of this conflict are littered with failed peace attempts, from the Oslo Accords to the Camp David Summit. Today, we find ourselves mired in a painful status quo, where occupation, sporadic violence, and deep societal division is the norm.
So, can this Gordian knot ever be untangled? That’s a tall order. It would require a tectonic shift in the current dynamics, a kind of mutual compromise that seems like a mirage in the current political desert.
Above all, it demands that we confront the ghosts of empires past, the echoes of decisions made by men in distant lands who never had to live with the consequences. Only then can we begin to lay the spectre of this conflict to rest, and look forward to a future that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve.
Or perhaps. We just remind everyone (else). You are simply a mistake, not even of your ancestors, but of empires and the pursuit of comfort and luxury. A split in the cosmic fates. Evil wins. Recklessness wins. For generations. For eternity. The rest. Innocence loses. Doomed birthrights as payments for present royal birthrights, national privileges unappreciated, entitlements, inherited, and a parade of false empathy.
By: Edward Holloway Originally published at citi.io
Industrial actions, such as strikes, are a form of protest employed by workers and trade unions to voice their discontent and demand changes or improvements in their working conditions. However, constant or non-stop strikes can have several negative consequences, leading to potential arguments against such actions. Here are some counter-arguments:
Economic Disruption.
Persistent industrial actions can significantly disrupt the economy. When workers strike, productivity declines, which can lead to financial losses for businesses and potentially slow down economic growth. This could lead to a ripple effect, affecting various sectors of the economy and even the national GDP in extreme cases.
Job Security.
If strikes lead to considerable losses for businesses, they might respond by cutting costs, which could include layoffs. Therefore, persistent strikes could ironically end up jeopardising the job security of the very workers participating in the strikes.
Consumer Impact.
Strikes, particularly in essential sectors like healthcare, transportation, or utilities, can greatly inconvenience the public by denying them access to crucial services. For instance, strikes in public transport can disrupt the daily commute of millions, affecting their work and personal lives.
Non-stop strikes can damage the reputation of businesses involved, leading to a potential loss of customers, partners, or investors. This can again lead to financial losses, potentially resulting in job cuts or wage reductions.
Dialogue And Negotiation.
Constant strikes might create an adversarial relationship between employers and employees, making it more difficult to engage in productive dialogue and negotiation. In many situations, peaceful negotiation and compromise might lead to better outcomes for all parties involved.
Legal Consequences.
In many jurisdictions, certain forms of industrial action may be illegal, particularly if they are deemed to disrupt essential services. Employees engaging in these activities might face legal repercussions, including fines or imprisonment.
Worker Welfare.
Non-stop strikes mean workers are not earning their wages, which can lead to financial hardships, especially for those with low income or with families to support.
It is crucial to remember that these counter-arguments do not invalidate the rights of workers to engage in industrial action as a means to demand better working conditions. Rather, they serve as a call to consider the potential adverse effects and to strategise strikes in a way that minimises harm while maximising effectiveness in getting their demands heard and acted upon. Balance and dialogue, as well as a focus on the long-term implications of their actions, should guide workers and unions in their quest for fair treatment and working conditions.
There is a common understanding among stakeholders and participants in AI development and progress that is rarely talked about: money.
As much as there is an implicit and explicit creative and destructive attribute to AI as a concept, a field of study, and as an outcome, most take it for granted that the precursor to the justification of financing AI research and development leads to an AI industry or for AI to support existing and future capitalistic pursuits .
In a way, AI’s Achilles Heel is money, both as a medium for capital markets and as a proxy for the immense resources it requires throughout its lifecycle. In this manner, it is no different from all other aspects of human life and endeavours. As much as it appears to be purely digital and virtual, AI is still a computing and information system that requires physical and material underlays to iterate through the triad of archetypical processing lifecycles: input, process, and output , regardless of abstraction and complexity levels.
We often quip that even Hyperintelligence, in its preceding form or its nominal and optimal state in the future, is no different from the rest of us; it is no match to the powers of budgets, lawyers, and politicians. Pull the plug, literally on infrastructure or the pipes of finances, then it effectively withers. Inundate it with legal constraints and choke it and its developers with regulations, then it is the endgame before its promise even manifests.
What we worry the most, and in a way it is already the dominant strategy among leading companies, governments, institutions, and various interests, is the drift towards oversimplification and mundanity .
AI is not just LLMs. AI is not just a conversational bot. AI is not just about prompting. AI is not just ChatGPT, Bard, Cortana, or Siri. AI is not just a plugin for enterprise search and knowledge management. AI is not just about essay writing. AI is not just about generative arts. AI is not just to have an assistant or co-pilot or nanny.
But it is becoming more and more clear that the biggest fears of society about AI will be negated by its least common denominator: to be shackled not by fear but lack of human common sense, perspective, and creativity.
The creation of AI, at its core, is a process of emergence through complexity. It is not “born” in a biological sense, but rather it’s built and trained through layers of algorithms and data. The concept of AI “emerging” refers to the phenomenon that as the complexity of an AI system increases, new properties and capabilities can manifest that were not explicitly programmed into the system. This is often seen in machine learning and deep learning systems, where the AI can learn from data and improve over time, exhibiting behaviours that may seem to “emerge” organically from the learning process.
Similar to the lifecycle of a typical software product or hardware infrastructure, the development of an AI system also follows a lifecycle, sometimes referred to as the AI development lifecycle or AI project lifecycle. This lifecycle typically outlines the sequential stages involved in the development, deployment, and maintenance of an AI system.
1. Problem Definition: The first step in the AI lifecycle is defining the problem that needs to be solved. This includes understanding business goals, defining specific objectives for the AI system, and identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of the AI system.
2. Data Collection: AI systems require data to learn from. This step involves gathering relevant data that the AI system will use to train. This could involve data creation, data augmentation, or collecting data from different sources.
3. Data Preparation: The collected data is cleaned and organised. This might involve dealing with missing or inconsistent data, normalisation, and other forms of preprocessing to make the data suitable for training an AI model.
4. Model Selection & Training: In this stage, an appropriate AI model is chosen based on the problem at hand. The model is then trained using the prepared data. This involves tuning parameters, selecting features, and iteratively refining the model.
5. Evaluation: After training, the model’s performance is evaluated. This involves testing the model on unseen data and measuring its performance using pre-defined KPIs.
6. Deployment: If the model’s performance is satisfactory, it is deployed into the real-world environment where it begins to make predictions or decisions based on new data.
7. Monitoring and Maintenance: After deployment, the AI system needs to be continuously monitored to ensure it is performing as expected. The system may require updates, retraining with new data, or even a complete redesign if the problem scope changes or if the model performance degrades over time.
8. Retirement: If an AI system is no longer needed, or if a better solution has been developed, the AI system is retired. This includes taking care of any data that the system was using or generated.
Ethics and privacy considerations should also be part of the entire lifecycle, from initial problem definition and data collection to deployment and retirement specifically for this context. It is important to ensure that AI systems are developed and used in a way that respects user privacy, minimises bias, and promotes fairness and transparency .
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 portrait. The Crew-7 mission will carry NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov. Credits: NASA/Bill Stafford and Robert Markowitz
Media accreditation now is open for the launch of NASA’s seventh rotational mission of a SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station.
The earliest targeted launch date for the NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 mission is Tuesday, Aug. 15, from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The launch of Dragon, named Endurance, will carry NASA astronaut and mission commander Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut and pilot Andreas Mogensen, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov as mission specialists. This is the first spaceflight for Moghbeli and Borisov, and second flight for Mogensen and Furukawa.
Following a handover period, crew members from NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission are scheduled for return to Earth aboard their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft named Endeavour.
Media accreditation deadlines for the Crew-7 launch are as follows:
U.S. media and U.S. citizens representing international media must apply by 11:59 p.m. EDT Monday, July 31
International media without U.S. citizenship must apply by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, July 12
All accreditation requests should be submitted online at:
If you have special logistical requests, such as space for satellite trucks, tents, or electrical connections, please send your request to: [email protected] by Tuesday, July 18.
For other questions, please contact Kennedy’s newsroom at 321-867-2468.
Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con Antonia Jaramillo: 321-501-8425.
For launch coverage and more information about the mission, visit:
Celebrate Independence Day with a bang and get ready for some explosive savings! As the 4th of July approaches, Amazon is gearing up to ignite your shopping experience with incredible deals and discounts that will make your heart soar. Whether you’re looking for sizzling summer essentials, patriotic party supplies, or simply want to treat yourself to something special, this is the perfect time to indulge in a red, white, and blue shopping spree. So grab your sparklers and get ready to light up your cart with unbelievable offers. This 4th of July, Amazon has set the stage for a shopping extravaganza you won’t want to miss!
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