Latest news with #science
E&E News
6 hours ago
- Business
- E&E News
EPA announces layoffs
EPA plans to lay off employees and eliminate its stand-alone science branch, confirming the office's demise that employees have anticipated for months. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Friday afternoon the agency is conducting a reduction in force, or RIF, affecting those in the Office of Research and Development. 'This reduction in force will ensure we can better fulfill that mission while being responsible stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars,' Zeldin said in a statement. Advertisement The agency did not provide figures for how many employees will receive a RIF notice in its announcement but did say that with 'organizational improvements,' EPA will save $748.8 million. Combined with other 'early out' options for employees, EPA's workforce will total 12,448 employees. That is down from 16,155 personnel in January. The research office housed roughly 1,500 employees toward the end of the Biden administration. Hundreds of employees are leaving the agency already. EPA has received 3,201 applications for the 'deferred resignation' program and early retirement. EPA earlier this year sent RIF notices to 280 environmental justice employees as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on 'woke' diversity initiatives. Contacted for this story, EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said, 'The agency announced today its decision to restructure and eliminate' the research office to improve efficiency of operations and align statutory requirements. 'The next step in this process is to issue intent-to-RIF notices to individual employees,' Vaseliou said. Key ORD functions will be absorbed into EPA's existing air, water and chemicals programs or new science office directly underneath the administrator, according to Friday's announcement. ORD staffers have been bracing for layoffs since March, after draft reorganization plans indicating a majority of staffers would be fired or reassigned were leaked to the press. After EPA unveiled its first phase of reorganization, ORD employees were encouraged to apply for lateral reassignment positions available under other program offices. Senior-level officials earlier this week urged managers to make decisions, according to an internal email reviewed by POLITICO's E&E News. It's not clear how many employees will be reassigned to these positions. EPA earlier this week opened another period offering employees to take offers through the deferred resignation program — marking the third round since President Donald Trump took office in January. The research office 'is the heart and brain of the EPA, without it we don't have the means to assess impacts upon human health and the environment,' said Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, EPA's largest union. Chen added, 'Its destruction will devastate public health in our country.' Contact reporters Ellie Borst on Signal at eborst.64 and Kevin Bogardus on Signal at KevinBogardus.89.
BBC News
20 hours ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Porton Down science labs move 'a hammer blow', says Salisbury MP
A Wiltshire MP has criticised the government's decision to go forwards with a plan to move a major science and defence facility from his constituency to Glen, the Conservative MP for Sailsbury, said news on Thursday the UK Health Security Agency laboratories at Porton Down would closes was a "hammer blow" for his government has pledged to bring the UK Security Agency's centres to one site as it creates a large facility aimed at protecting the country from future pandemics. The Wiltshire facility's move was first announced in 2015, but was postponed due to spiralling costs. The government has pledged a "multi-billion pound" investment to make the National Biosecurity Centre (NBC) in Harlow the largest of its kind in Europe by bringing the agency's existing centres in London and Wiltshire to one site. Visiting Harlow, Health Secretary Wes Streeting had said: "Covid-19 taught us how crucial it is to be able to respond quickly to new emerging threats and the new NBC will allow us to do exactly that."But Glen said he was "beyond disappointed" that the government had chosen to go ahead with the move, calling it a "vanity project" which failed to recognise "Porton Down's existing expertise". The MP added what may have been a "marginally good decision to make 10 years ago", was now floored due to the significant increase in costs."In 2015 it was going to cost £525 million, and it would all be done by 2021."Now it's going to cost £3.2 billion, and it will be done by 2035 to 2038."What I was saying to the secretary of state, was pause and think again, refurbish Porton. Stop this mega plan in Harlow, because it's so many years away and it's an enormous waste of taxpayers' money."Glen said he will continue to ask "questions about the cost of the project", and will be working with Wiltshire Council to build up a taskforce to look at what to do with the Porton Down site. Following the announcement, Streeting said that "the transformational investment in the UK's national biosecurity will better protect the British public from future health emergencies, boost the life sciences sector and create new jobs."
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
'Quantum AI' algorithms already outpace the fastest supercomputers, study says
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists say they have made a breakthrough after developing a quantum computing technique to run machine learning algorithms that outperform state-of-the-art classical computers. The researchers revealed their findings in a study published June 2 in the journal Nature Photonics. The scientists used a method that relies on a quantum photonic circuit and a bespoke machine learning algorithm. Using only two photons, the team's technique successfully demonstrated increased speed, accuracy and efficiency over standard classical computing methods for running machine learning algorithms. The scientists say this is one of the first times quantum machine learning has been used for real-world problems and provides benefits that cannot be simulated using binary computers. Furthermore, due to its novel architecture, it could be applied to quantum computing systems featuring only a single qubit, they said. Unlike many existing methods for achieving speedup through hybrid quantum-classical computing techniques, this new method doesn't require entangled gates. Instead, it relies on photon injection. Related: 'The science is solved': IBM to build monster 10,000-qubit quantum computer by 2029 Essentially, the team used a femtosecond laser — a laser that emits light in extremely short pulses measured in femtoseconds (10⁻¹⁵ seconds) to write on a borosilicate glass substrate to classify data points from a dataset. The photons were then injected in six distinct configurations, which were processed by a hybrid quantum-binary system. The scientists determined where the photonic measurements outperformed those conducted via classical computing by measuring how long it took the photons to complete the quantum circuit. They then isolated the processes where quantum processing provided benefit and compared the results to the classical outputs. The researchers found that experiments run using the photonic quantum circuit were faster, more accurate and more energy-efficient than those conducted using only classical computing techniques. This boosted performance applies to a special class of machine learning called "kernel-based machine learning" that can have myriad applications across data sorting. While deep neural networks have become an increasingly popular alternative to kernel methods for machine learning over the past decade, kernel-based systems have seen a resurgence in the past few years due to their relative simplicity and advantages when working with small datasets. The team's experiment could lead to more efficient algorithms in the fields of natural language processing and other supervised learning models. Perhaps most importantly, the study showcases a novel method for identifying tasks that quantum computers excel at in hybrid computer systems. RELATED STORIES —What is quantum superposition and what does it mean for quantum computing? —Quantum 'miracle material' can store information in a single dimension thanks to newly discovered magnetic switching —Newly discovered quantum state could power more stable quantum computers — and a new 2D chip can tap into it The researchers say the techniques used are scalable, meaning they could lead to even better performance as the number of photons or qubits increases. This could, in turn, make it possible to develop machine learning systems capable of exceeding the limits of today's models, which increasingly face power consumption limitations due to the massive energy requirements needed to process data via electronics. The researchers claim their techniques will "open the door to hybrid methods in which photonic processors are used to enhance the performance of standard machine learning methods."
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists achieve 'magic state' quantum computing breakthrough 20 years in the making — quantum computers can never be truly useful without it
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In a world first, scientists have demonstrated an enigmatic phenomenon in quantum computing that could pave the way for fault-tolerant machines that are far more powerful than any supercomputer. The process, called "magic state distillation," was first proposed 20 years ago, but its use in logical qubits has eluded scientists ever since. It has long been considered crucial for producing the high-quality resources, known as "magic states," needed to fulfill the full potential of quantum computers. Magic states are quantum states prepared in advance, which are then consumed as resources by the most complex quantum algorithms. Without these resources, quantum computers cannot tap into the strange laws of quantum mechanics to process information in parallel. Magic state distillation, meanwhile, is a filtering process by which the highest quality magic states are "purified" so they can be utilized by the most complex quantum algorithms. This process has so far been possible on plain, error-prone physical qubits but not on logical qubits — groups of physical qubits that share the same data and are configured to detect and correct the errors that frequently disrupt quantum computing operations. Because magic state distillation in logical qubits has not so far been possible, quantum computers that use logical qubits have not been theoretically able to outpace classical machines. Related: What is quantum superposition and what does it mean for quantum computing? Now, however, scientists with QuEra say they have demonstrated magic state distillation in practice for the first time on logical qubits. They outlined their findings in a new study published July 14 in the journal Nature. "Quantum computers would not be able to fulfill their promise without this process of magic state distillation. It's a required milestone." Yuval Boger, chief commercial officer at QuEra, told Live Science in an interview. Boger was not personally involved in the research. The path to fault-tolerant quantum computing Quantum computers use qubits as their building blocks, and they use quantum logic — the set of rules and operations that govern how quantum information is processed — to run algorithms and process data. But the challenge is running incredibly complex algorithms while maintaining incredibly low error rates. The trouble is that physical qubits are inherently "noisy," which means calculations are often disrupted by factors like temperature changes and electromagnetic radiation. That's why so much research has centered on quantum error correction (QEC). Reducing errors — which occur at a rate of 1 in 1,000 in qubits versus 1 in 1 million, million in conventional bits — prevents disruptions and enables calculations to happen at pace. That's where logical qubits come in. "For quantum computers to be useful, they need to run fairly long and sophisticated calculations. If the error rate is too high, then this calculation quickly turns into mush or to useless data," study lead author of the study Sergio Cantu, vice president of quantum systems at QuEra, told Live Science in an interview. "The entire goal of error correction is to lower this error rate so you could do a million calculations safely." Logical qubits are collections of entangled physical qubits that share the same information and are based on the principle of redundancy. If one or more physical qubits in a logical qubit fail, the calculation isn't disrupted because the information exists elsewhere. But logical qubits are extremely limited, the scientists said, because the error-correction codes applied to them can only run "Clifford gates" — basic operations in quantum circuits. These operations are foundational to quantum circuits, but they're so basic that they can be simulated on any supercomputer. Only by tapping into high-quality magic states can scientists run "non-Clifford gates" and engage in true parallel processing. But generating these is extremely resource-intensive and expensive, and has thus far been unachievable in logical qubits. In essence, relying on magic state distillation in physical qubits alone would never lead to quantum advantage. For that, we need to distill magic states in logical qubits directly. Magic states pave the way for capabilities beyond supercomputing "Magic states allow us to expand the number and the type of operations that we can do. So practically, any quantum algorithm that's of value would require magic states," Cantu said. Generating magic states in physical qubits, as we have been doing, is a mixed bag — there are low-quality and high-quality magic states — and they need to be refined. Only then, can they fuel the most powerful programs and quantum algorithms. In the study, using the Gemini neutral-atom quantum computer, the scientists distilled five imperfect magic states into a single, cleaner magic state. They performed this separately on a Distance-3 and a Distance-5 logical qubit, demonstrating that it scales with the quality of the logical qubit. "A greater distance means better logical qubits. A Distance-2, for instance, means that you can detect an error but not correct it. Distance-3 means that you can detect and correct a single error. Distance-5 would mean that you can detect and correct up to two errors, and so on, and so on," Boger explained. "So the greater the distance, the higher fidelity of the qubit is — and we liken it to distilling crude oil into a jet fuel." RELATED STORIES —Small, room-temperature quantum computers that use light on the horizon after breakthrough, scientists say —'Quantum AI' algorithms already outpace the fastest supercomputers, study says —Scientists forge path to the first million-qubit processor for quantum computers after 'decade in the making' breakthrough As a result of the distillation process, the fidelity of the final magic state exceeded that of any input. This proved that fault-tolerant magic state distillation worked in practice, the scientists said. This means that a quantum computer that uses both logical qubits and high-quality magic states to run non-Clifford gates is now possible. "We're seeing sort of a shift from a few years ago," Boger said. "The challenge was: can quantum computers be built at all? Then it wasL can errors be detected and corrected? Us and Google and others have shown that, yes, that can be done. Now it's about: can we make these computers truly useful? And to make one computer truly useful, other than making them larger, you want them to be able to run programs that cannot be simulated on classical computers."
ABC News
a day ago
- Science
- ABC News
Is it time to bring back natural philosophy?
Once upon a time, what we now call scientists were known as "natural philosophers". These were people who studied the physical universe through observation and logic, using philosophical methods and reasoning. Today, science and philosophy have gone their separate ways, with some scientists rejoicing in the split (the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking famously pronounced that "philosophy is dead"). This week we're asking if science and philosophy need each other, and if a reconciliation between the two would benefit both. Guests: Sean Carroll, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore USA Sandra Mitchell, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh USA Melanie Mitchell, Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico USA David Albert, Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University USA Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, Sussex University UK Alan Guth, Professor of Physics, MIT Cambridge USA Producers: Dan Falk David Rutledge
