Month: December 2021

Enlarge / Google's Sycamore processor. (credit: Google)

Recently, when researchers were testing error correction on Google's quantum processor, they noted an odd phenomenon where the whole error-correction scheme would sporadically fail badly. They chalked this up to background radiation, a combination of cosmic rays and the occasional decay of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope.

It seemed like a bit of an amusing aside at the time—Google having accidentally paid for an extremely expensive cosmic ray detector. But the people behind the processor took the problem very seriously and are back with a new paper that details exactly how the radiation affects the qubits. And they conclude that the problems caused by cosmic rays happen often enough to keep error-corrected quantum computations from working unless we figure out a way to limit the rays' impact.

It’s a shame about the rays

Cosmic rays and radioactivity cause problems for classical computing hardware as well. That's because classical computers rely on moving and storing charges, and cosmic rays can induce charges when they impact a material. Qubits, in contrast, store information in the form of the quantum state of an object—in the case of Google's processor, a loop of superconducting wire linked to a resonator. Cosmic rays affect these, too, but the mechanism is completely different.

Enlarge / Porsche's newest electric car variant is the $133,300 Taycan GTS Sport Turismo. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Two weeks ago, we found out how the new Porsche Taycan GTS sedan handles some light track work—quite competently, as it turns out. But as I noted at the time, few Taycan GTSes will ever take part in a track day, so how the car drives on the road is more important .

We didn't get a road drive in the GTS sedan, but we did get a few hours' seat time in that car's new sibling, the $133,300 Taycan GTS Sport Turismo. And for readers who don't speak fluent Porsche, that means this one is a station wagon.

In fact, this is not even the first battery electric station wagon. I think that honor goes to the Taycan Cross Turismo, which is basically the same bodyshell with the suspension raised a few millimeters, plus some plastic bumper extensions to give it an ersatz off-roader feel. Porsche would say that the Cross Turismo "exemplifies all-weather, all-road capability" and that this new Sport Turismo version is focused entirely on on-road performance.

Enlarge / Veterinarians at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium have pioneered a lot of unusual procedures to diagnosis and treat the animals in their care—including figuring out to give MRIs to electric eels. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Right before Thanksgiving, we reported on how Chicago's Shedd Aquarium solved the Curious Case of the Missing Chloroquine. The antiparasitic drug is typically added to the water for new animals in quarantine, but it was mysteriously disappearing. The culprit: hungry, hungry microbes. The post included a throwaway line about how the aquarium vets also had the lowdown on how to give an electric eel an MRI.

That bit seemed to resonate with readers, and we received several queries about how, exactly, this feat might be accomplished. You asked. We wanted answers. So we turned to Bill Van Bonn, the clinical veterinarian in charge of the aquarium's Center for Animal Health and Welfare, which boasts a state-of-the-art animal hospital for monitoring the health of all the animals in the exhibits and treating them as necessary. Dr. Van Bonn and his colleague, Dr. Karisa Tang, were happy to oblige.

Van Bonn describes the veterinary team at the aquarium as "family practitioners" rather than specialists, although they are able to draw on world-class expertise as needed from the greater Chicago area. And since there isn't a lot of diagnostic and treatment precedent in the literature for many of the animals in their care, they practice comparative medicine by necessity.

Enlarge / Medical workers carry a patient to a hospital in New York, the United States, Dec. 13, 2021. (credit: Getty | Xinhua News Agency )

Health officials sounded the alarm Tuesday over the fast spread of the omicron coronavirus, which has now been detected in 77 countries worldwide and 33 states in the US—and is expanding quickly.

Only two weeks have passed since health officials detected the first omicron case in the US, and the variant is already accounting for 3 percent of cases overall in the country—which is still swept up in a powerful wave of the delta variant. In New York and New Jersey, omicron accounts for 13 percent of cases, according to Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Surge upon surge

Currently, the US is seeing around 120,000 new COVID cases per day, a 49 percent increase over two weeks ago. The country is averaging 66,500 hospitalizations a day, which is a 22 percent increase. For now, nearly all of the cases and hospitalizations are due to delta, but that will likely change quickly with omicron.