Tag Archives: harvard

ICE detains Harvard scientists analyzing images that could alter cancer diagnosis

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Harvard Medical School’s cutting-edge microscopes have the potential to revolutionize cancer detection and lifespan research. However, a scientist who developed computer scripts to extract maximum information from the images found herself in immigration detention for two months, jeopardizing significant scientific advancements.

The scientist in question is 30-year-old Russian-born Xenia Petrova, who worked at Harvard’s renowned Kirschner Institute until her arrest at Boston Airport in mid-February. Currently detained at the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, Petrova is fighting against deportation to Russia, where she fears persecution and imprisonment due to her participation in protests against the conflict in Ukraine.

The incident involving Petrova and the detention of scholars across the country have hindered American universities’ ability to attract and retain crucial talent, a concern raised by Petrova’s colleagues. In fields where expertise is highly specialized, the loss of talent could have grave global implications for the future of medicine and scientific discovery. Scientists and faculty members are contemplating leaving institutions nationwide out of fear that their visas may be revoked or impacted by immigration enforcement actions.

“It’s like a meat grinder,” Petrova, as per a person talking to NBC News from the Louisiana facility, described her situation. “We are all in this system, regardless of having a visa, green card, or a valid reason.”

Petrova’s first immigration court hearing in Louisiana is scheduled for Tuesday morning, where she expects more clarity on her asylum case. Dr. Leon Peshkin, a prominent research scientist at Harvard University’s Faculty of Systems Biology and Petrova’s supervisor, received a call from Customs and Border Protection on February 16, notifying him of Petrova’s detention at Logan International Airport for failing to declare a sample of frog embryos used in research.

International researchers are increasingly anxious about the Trump administration’s strict stance on illegal immigration, with concerns that these policies could deter other foreign scientists from coming to Harvard. Recent surveys indicate a significant portion of scientists are contemplating relocating to Europe or Canada due to actions taken by President Donald Trump.

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Harvard Professor Jonathan McDowell announces retirement and departure from America

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Jonathan McDowell is the go-to expert for all spaceflight. Thousands of subscribers read his monthly Space Reportand we’ve seen him explain unexpected events on orbit on cable news and other media platforms.

But it was always his side gig. For 37 years, Dr. McDowell was an X-ray astronomy expert at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Earlier this year, he announced that he would retire from the role and also leave the US for the UK.

The decision, he said, was complicated by policy changes that have been the first since President Trump took office due to continued pressure on the federal science budget.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s any more opportunity to be an effective scientist and an effective person building the scientific community,” Dr. McDowell said. “I’m just proud to be as American as I used to be.”

Born in the US and the UK to gain dual citizenship, Dr. McDowell joined the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in 1988 and leads the Science Data Systems Group at NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the 26th space telescope.

In the next phase of his career, Dr. McDowell said he wanted to spend more time. Document what’s going on in space.

He’s preparing to move abroad, and with the accent he jokes, he’s clearly becoming British. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What is your interest in space?

There were really two routes. The satellites and space side really came from the Apollo program. I remember walking home from a school in the northern UK. I saw the moon in the sky and said, “Next week there will be humans there for the first time. They will be in another world.” It blew my 9-year-old mind.

The astronomical side was wondering what the real story was about where we came from and how the universe turned out to be. It pushed me towards an interest in cosmology at a very early age. My dad was a physicist and my babysitter was everything. I didn’t realize there were other options.

Another major influence was “Doctor Who.” I started watching it at the age of three. It infuses me with the wonders about the universe and the idea that one crazy person can help how humanity interacts with it.

All of them came together and I was just fascinated by what was there.

The UK school system specializes early. I’ve been doing orbital calculations since I was 14, and since I learned Russian, I was able to read what the Soyuz astronauts were doing. I have completed my PhD. At Cambridge University, I was able to spend time with people like current astronomer royals Stephen Hawking and Martin Reese. It wouldn’t have been a better training.

On the side, I used my technical skills to get deeper into spaceflight. At the time, the media didn’t actually cover the space, so I forced my own research.

Did that lead to the creation of Jonathan’s Space Report in 1989?

I just moved to Smithsonian Astrophysical ObservatoryIt was once the center of space information for the public in the 1950s. The civil servants began attacking me with questions they still get from the public, so in Self-Defense, they started preparing their briefings about what’s happening in space every week.

Someone has recommended that I put a briefing in Usenet, a kind of precursor to the web, but it doesn’t exist yet. To my surprise, it was popular. And I never looked back.

In the US, in particular, we saw it more internationally than most news sources. I gave it the same weight as what Russians, Chinese and Europeans did. It helped me gain a reputation and people in the space industry started sending me information.

Why did you keep your space report free?

Honestly, most of the work I do for myself anyway. I am the No. 1 reader. But I now have this role of being someone who trusts to say what’s going on. If I don’t receive direct money for it, I can maintain its reputation for independence and objectivity.

How have space flight and space exploration changed in your life?

I grew up in the 1960s during a superpower. It was the US, the Soviet Union and the Cold War. In the 1970s, space became more international. China, Japan, France and others have begun selling their own rockets and satellites. Then, in the 1990s, there was a shift towards commercialization in both communications and imaging. And then there was another change in the 2000s and 2010s that I call democratization. There, cheap satellites created space within the budgets of university sectors, developing countries, or start-up companies.

The most important thing in space in 2025 is not that there are more satellites, but more players. This has implications for governance and regulations.

Another way to think about how things have changed is where the frontier is. When I was a child, it was a low-earth orbit. The frontier is now close to the asteroid belt, with the moon and Mars becoming part of the accumulation of humanity. On the other hand, low-Earth orbits are so normalized that they are not necessary to deal with space agencies. Just call SpaceX.

How do you plan to spend your retirement?

The UK has been actively and actively working recently in promoting what we call space sustainability. They are committed to using the space, but they are responsible. I hope to be involved in those efforts.

Compile Large catalogue of Space Junk Around the sun that the US Space Force does not pursue. It’s not anyone’s job to track it right now. We will return years later, so we need to put together our actions for things that are farther, farther, what we send out between the planets. We think that when it’s really a rocket stage, it’s an asteroid that hits Earth.

Obviously, it all needs to be scanned and it will take me years. Somewhere, a reasonable commute from London, you will need to find a new home in the library. My plan is to make it available by appointing it when it is unpacked.

What motivates me to closely record human activity in space?

As an astronomer, I think it’s a measure for a long time. I imagine someone who wants to know that, a thousand years from now, perhaps more extraterrestrial times, has stepped into space for the first time at this important moment in history.

I would like to save this information so that they can reconstruct what we did. That’s who I write about. Not today’s audience, but a thousand years from now.

Source: www.nytimes.com

Harvard University debuts the world’s first logical quantum processor

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Researchers at Harvard University have achieved a significant milestone in quantum computing by developing a programmable logic quantum processor that can encode 48 logic qubits and perform hundreds of logic gate operations. Hailed as a potential turning point in the field, this advance marks the first demonstration of large-scale algorithm execution on an error-correcting quantum computer.

Harvard University’s breakthrough quantum computing features a new logical quantum processor with 48 logical qubits, enabling the execution of large-scale algorithms on error-corrected systems. The development, led by Mikhail Lukin, represents a major advance towards practical fault-tolerant quantum computers.

In quantum computing, a quantum bit or “qubit” is a unit of information, similar to a binary bit in classical computing. For more than two decades, physicists and engineers have shown the world that quantum computing is possible in principle by manipulating quantum particles such as atoms, ions, and photons to create physical qubits. I did.

But exploiting the strangeness of quantum mechanics for calculations is more complicated than collecting enough physical qubits, which are inherently unstable and prone to collapsing from their quantum states.

Logical qubit: the building block of quantum computing

The real coin of the realm in useful quantum computing are so-called logical qubits. This is a bunch of redundant, error-corrected physical qubits that can store information for use in quantum algorithms. Creating logical qubits as controllable units like classical bits is a fundamental hurdle for the field, and until quantum computers can reliably run on logical qubits, , it is generally accepted that the technology cannot really take off. To date, the best computing systems have demonstrated either: two logical qubits and one quantum gate operation – similar to just one operation code unit – between them.

A team led by quantum expert Mikhail Lukin (right) has achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing. Dr. Dorev Brufstein was a student in Lukin’s lab and the lead author of the paper.

Credit: Jon Chase/Harvard University Staff Photographer

Breakthrough in quantum computing at Harvard University

A team from Harvard University led by co-director Mikhail Lukin, Joshua and Beth Friedman Professor of Physics. Harvard Quantum Initiative has achieved an important milestone in the quest for stable and scalable quantum computing. For the first time, the team has created a programmable logic quantum processor that can encode up to 48 logic qubits and perform hundreds of logic gate operations. Their system is the first demonstration of large-scale algorithm execution on an error-corrected quantum computer, and heralds the early days of fault-tolerant, or guaranteed uninterruptible, quantum computing.

was announced on Nature, this research was conducted in collaboration with Marcus Greiner, the George Basmer Leverett Professor of Physics.colleague from Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and based in Boston QuEra Computing, a company founded on technology from Harvard University’s research labs.

Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development recently entered into a licensing agreement with QuEra for a patent portfolio based on innovations developed at the Lukin Group.

Lukin called the achievement a potential inflection point similar to the early days of the field of artificial intelligence, where long-theorized ideas of quantum error correction and fault tolerance are beginning to come to fruition.

“I think this is one of those moments where it’s clear that something very special is going to happen,” Lukin said. “While there are still challenges ahead, we expect this new advance to greatly accelerate progress toward large-scale, useful quantum computers.”

This breakthrough is based on several years of research into “quantum computing architectures.” neutral atomic arrangement, pioneered in Lukin’s lab and now commercialized by QuEra. The main component of the system is a block of ultracold, suspended rubidium atoms in which the atoms (the system’s physical qubits) move around and connect, or “entangle”, into pairs during calculations. Entangled pairs of atoms form gates, units of computational power.

Previously, the team demonstrated Low error rate for entanglement operations proving the credibility of their neutrality atom array system.

Impact and future directions

“This breakthrough is a masterpiece of quantum engineering and quantum design,” said Dennis Caldwell, acting deputy director of the National Science Foundation’s Mathematics and Physical Sciences Directorate, which supported the research through NSF’s Physics Frontiers Center and Quantum Leap Challenge Institute programs. says. “By using neutral atoms, the team has not only accelerated the development of quantum information processing, but also opened new doors to the search for large-scale logical qubit devices that could have transformative benefits for science and society as a whole. I opened the door.

Researchers are now using logic quantum processors to demonstrate parallel multiplexed control of entire patches of logic qubits using lasers. This result is more efficient and scalable than controlling individual physical qubits.

“We are seeking to mark a transition in the field by starting to test algorithms that use error-corrected qubits instead of physical qubits, enabling a path to larger devices. ,” said lead author Dorev Brubstein of the Griffin School of Arts and Sciences student in Lukin’s lab.

The team continues to work on demonstrating more types of operations with 48 logical qubits and configuring the system to run continuously, as opposed to manual cycles as it currently does.

Reference: “Logical quantum processors based on reconfigurable atomic arrays” Dolev Bluvstein, Simon J. Evered, Alexandra A. Geim, Sophie H. Li, Hengyun Zhou, Tom Manovitz, Sepehr Ebadi, Madelyn Cain, Marcin Kalinowski, Dominik Hangleiter, J. Pablo Bonilla Ataydes, Nishad Mascara, Iris Kong, Xun Gao, Pedro Salles Rodríguez, Tomas Karoliszyn, Julia Semeghini, Michael J. Galans, Markus Greiner, Vladan Vretić, Mikhail D. Lukin, December 6, 2023, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06927-3

This research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency through the Noisy Medium-Scale Quantum Devices Optimization Program. The Ultracold Atom Center, a National Science Foundation Physics Frontier Center. Army Research Office. and QuEra computing.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Harvard University Researchers Decipher Enigmas of the Brain

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A new study led by Harvard Medical School has revealed the neurological foundation of daydreaming. Conducted in mice, the study found that neurons in the visual cortex fired in patterns similar to those seen during the viewing of images, indicating daydreaming. This was especially pronounced during early daydreams and could predict future brain responses to visual stimuli, implying a role in brain plasticity. The study suggests that daydreaming may play a role in learning and memory processes in mice and potentially in humans. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

However, most neuroscientists do not understand what happens in the brain during daydreaming. A team of researchers at Harvard Medical School used mice to investigate the activity of neurons in the visual cortex of the brain during quiet wakefulness and found that these neurons fire in patterns similar to when the mouse views images, indicating that the mouse was daydreaming about the image. Furthermore, the brain showed the same firing pattern during daydreams as when it was seeing an image, suggesting that the mouse was imagining the image. These daydreams occurred only when the mouse was relaxed and had a calm behavior and small pupils.

The researchers found that mice were biased towards daydreaming about recently viewed images, and this daydreaming was more prominent at the beginning of the day. The daydreams influenced the brain’s future responses to images, indicating a role in brain plasticity. The two regions of the brain, the visual cortex and the hippocampus, were also found to communicate during daydreaming. Subsequent research with imaging tools will examine how these connections change when the brain sees an image.

While it remains an open question whether human daydreams involve similar patterns in the visual cortex, preliminary evidence suggests that a similar process occurs during the recall of visual images. The findings suggest that giving the mind waking downtime is crucial for daydreams, which is important for brain plasticity. This research was published on December 13th in Nature.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Harvard team makes significant strides in error correction technology

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Quantum computing has advanced significantly with a new platform from Harvard University that is capable of dynamic reconfiguration and can demonstrate low error rates in two-qubit entangled gates. This breakthrough, highlighted in a recent Nature paper, represents a major advance in overcoming the challenges of quantum error correction and places Harvard’s technology alongside other leading quantum computing methods. Masu. This research, in collaboration with MIT and others, represents an important step toward scalable, error-correcting quantum computing. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

A method developed by a team at Harvard University to reduce errors addresses a critical hurdle in scaling up technology.

Quantum computing technology has the potential to achieve unprecedented speed and efficiency, vastly exceeding the capabilities of even the most advanced supercomputers currently available. However, this innovative technology has not been widely scaled or commercialized, primarily due to inherent limitations in error correction. Quantum computers, unlike classical computers, cannot correct errors by copying encoded data over and over again. Scientists had to find another way.

Now, a new paper Nature depicting Harvard University quantum computing A potential platform to solve a long-standing problem known as quantum error correction.

The Harvard team is led by quantum optics expert Mikhail Lukin, Joshua and Beth Friedman Professor of Physics and co-director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative. The research reported in Nature was a collaboration between Harvard University. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston-based QuEra Computing. George Busmer Leverett Professor of Physics and Marcus Greiner’s group also participated.

Unique Harvard Platform

The Harvard University platform, an effort over the past several years, is built on an array of very cold rubidium atoms captured by a laser.Each atom They act as bits (called “qubits” in the quantum world) that can perform extremely fast calculations.

The team’s main innovation is configuring a “neutral atomic array” so that the layout can be dynamically changed by moving and connecting atoms during calculations. This is called “entanglement” in physics terms. 2 Operations that entangle pairs of atoms called qubit logic gates are units of computing power.

Running complex algorithms on a quantum computer requires many gates. However, these gating operations are known to be error-prone, and the accumulation of errors renders the algorithm useless.

In a new paper, the team reports near-perfect performance of the two-qubit entanglement gate with extremely low error rates. For the first time, they demonstrated the ability to entangle atoms with an error rate of less than 0.5 percent. In terms of operational quality, this puts the performance of the company’s technology on par with other major types of quantum computing platforms, such as superconducting qubits and trapped ion qubits.

Benefits and future prospects

However, Harvard’s approach has significant advantages over these competitors due to its large system size, efficient qubit control, and the ability to dynamically reconfigure the atomic layout.

“We demonstrate that the physical errors of this platform are low enough that we can actually imagine large-scale error correction devices based on neutral atoms,” said lead author and Harvard University Griffin School of Arts and Sciences. student Simon Evered said. group. “Currently, our error rates are low enough that if we group atoms into logical qubits (information is stored non-locally between the constituent atoms), we can Errors can be even lower than individual atoms.”

The Harvard team’s progress was tracked by former Harvard graduate student and current princeton university, former Harvard University postdoctoral fellow Manuel Endres, now at the California Institute of Technology. Taken together, these advances lay the foundation for quantum error correction algorithms and large-scale quantum computing. All of this means that quantum computing on neutral atomic arrays is reaching its full potential.

“These contributions open the door to very special opportunities in scalable quantum computing, and truly exciting times ahead for the field as a whole,” Lukin said.

Reference: “High-fidelity parallel entanglement gates on neutral atom quantum computers” Simon J. Evered, Dolev Bluvstein, Marcin Kalinowski, Sepehr Ebadi, Tom Manovitz, Hengyun Zhou, Sophie H. Li, Alexandra A. Geim, Tout T Wang, Nishad Maskara, Harry Levine, Julia Semeghini, Markus Greiner, Vladan Vretić, Mikhail D. Lukin, October 11, 2023. Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06481-y

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Quantum Systems Accelerator Center. Ultracold Atom Center. National Science Foundation. Army Research Office Interdisciplinary University Research Initiative.And thatDARPAOptimization with a noisy intermediate-scale quantum device program.

Source: scitechdaily.com