New knowledge on ‘flawed’ diamonds could speed development of diamond-based quantum computers

 by Biomechanism 

A University at Buffalo-led research team has established the presence of a dynamic Jahn-Teller effect in defective diamonds, a finding that will help advance the development of diamond-based systems in applications such as quantum information processing.

“We normally want things to be perfect, but defects are actually very important in terms of electronic applications,” said Peihong Zhang, the UB associate professor of physics who led the study. “There are many proposals for the application of defective diamonds, ranging from quantum computing to biological imaging, and our research is one step toward a better understanding of these defect systems.”

Caption: Calculated energy surface of the 3E excited state of a diamond nitrogen-vacancy center as a function of distortions, a shape that is often referred to as a "warped Mexican hat." Credit: University at buffalo

The research was published online Sept. 30 in Physical Review Letters: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/pdf/October11/jahn-teller-effect.pdf.

The findings deal with diamonds whose crystal structure contains a particular defect: a nitrogen atom that sits alongside a vacant space in an otherwise perfect lattice made only of carbon.

At the point of the imperfection — the so-called “nitrogen-vacancy center” — a single electron can jump between different energy states. (The electron rises to a higher, “excited” energy state when it absorbs a photon and falls back to a lower energy state when it emits a photon).

Understanding how the diamond system behaves when the electron rises to an excited state called a “3E” state is critical to the success of such proposed applications as quantum computing.

The problem is that at the nitrogen-vacancy center, the 3E state has two orbital components with exactly the same energy — a configuration that is inherently unstable.

In response, the lattice “stabilizes” by rearranging itself. Atoms near the nitrogen-vacancy center move slightly, resulting in a new geometry that has a lower energy and is more stable.

This morphing is known as the Jahn-Teller effect, and until recently, the effect’s precise parameters in defective diamonds remained unknown.

Zhang and colleagues from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., are the first to crack that mystery. Using UB’s supercomputing facility, the Center for Computational Research, the team conducted calculations that reveal how, exactly, the diamond lattice distorts.

Their findings align with experimental results from other research studies, and shed light on important topics such as how long an excited electron at the nitrogen-vacancy center will stay coherently at a higher energy state.

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In a previous study by Rice University scientists,  they reported an achievement of a pivotal breakthrough in the development of a cable that will make an efficient electric grid of the future possible.

Armchair quantum wire (AQW) will be a weave of metallic nanotubes that can carry electricity with negligible loss over long distances. It will be an ideal replacement for the nation’s copper-based grid, which leaks electricity at an estimated 5 percent per 100 miles of transmission.

Quantum means any of the very small increments or parcels into which many forms of energy are subdivided.

Recommended Study: ‘Amplified’ Nanotubes May Power The Future

Mission Impossible.....

Mountain Biker gets taken out by BUCK - CRAZY Footage - Only in Africa

TOP FIVE WAYS MILLIONAIRES MAKE THEIR MILLIONS

It’s always intriguing to find out how the incredibly rich got that way. The assumption is inheritance or perhaps luck, but sometimes there is a much more basic explanation. This article explains the top 5 ways that millionaires gained their wealth!

Money Zine shares…

1) Live Well Below Your MeansDon’t be fooled. The ‘average’ millionaire doesn’t look like a millionaire! The key word here is frugal, frugal, and frugal. The typical person is America is a consumptionist. It’s in our blood. We work hard, make money, and spend it well. Not the typical millionaire! They play great defense (saving and investing) as well as offense (making money). Just like in football – great offense is exciting…but great defense wins games. An interesting note: Millionaires on average claimed their spouses were as frugal or more than they were. It’s a family affair: Sacrifice high consumption today, for financial freedom tomorrow.

2) Spend Your Time, Energy, and Money in Ways that Build Wealth.
Although the road to Millionaire’s Ville takes a frugal path, they pay well for training and advice. Do investment planning. Go to seminars. Hire good attorneys, tax accountants, mentors and coaches. Learn to identify and invest in assets that produce income. The wealthy spend money when the investment will protect and grow their assets. Millionaires also know the details: How much is spent each month and on food, clothing, and shelter. The non-wealthy say they don’t have time to plan, while the wealthy make time to plan. But here’s the shocker: The average millionaire spends 8.5 hours per month planning, while the non-affluent spend 4.5 hours or less planning. How can 4 more hours per week impact your future? Make it happen and the odds are in your favor of joining the truly wealthy!

3) Choose Financial Independence over Displaying High Social Status
The wealthy run highly efficient operations both in business and at home. Most live in average neighborhoods, and drive average cars. They’re not interested in keeping up with the Jones’ – because the Jones’ aren’t financially free. It takes lots of energy to consume big mortgages, change homes every few years, buy the most recent model cars, and wear the latest fashions. The wealthy drive typically American made cars! Japanese cars come in 2nd place; half of these are Toyota Camrys. Yes, significant value per dollar is the key here. The Millionaire’s Motto: You aren’t what you drive. The status cars – Lexus, BMW’s, Mercedes? At 6.4% or less per each brand.

4) Don’t Accept Economic Support from Your Parents once Outside the HomeSounds painful doesn’t it? It’s a fact that has taught the wealthy how to earn, keep, and invest money. Parents of the wealthy do not, or cannot, provide “economic outpatient care”. The results are clear: The more dollars the adult children receive, the fewer they accumulate. Those who are given less are motivated to accumulate more on their own merits. An amazing fact: 80% of millionaires are first generation millionaires; they have made their money on their own, in their lifetime. Many of these folks have been immigrants to the U.S., starting out with minimal cash on hand. Work hard to learn and generate wealth-it CAN be done, and happens in America every day.

5) Teach your children to be economically self-sufficient to foster a “Wealth Mind-Set”Provide your children fish and they will eat for a day. Teach them to fish and they will eat for a lifetime. As you might guess, children who grew up to be affluent, who had affluent parents, were taught to be disciplined and intentional with their money. Robert Kyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, didn’t cave in when his son asked for a car at 16 years old, even when the neighbor kids were being given cars by their parents. He gave his son $3000, and a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, and a few books on investing in the stock market. Now Rich Dad’s son watches more CNN than MTV. He has the motivation, and is getting an education that will provide him for a lifetime, well beyond his first car purchase.

Get more information at Money Zine!

THREE WAYS TO BOOST YOUR CAREER

When you have been working in the same position for a certain amount of time, the same old tasks may lose their appeal. Perhaps everything seems dull and your enthusiasm is waning. This article will help you re-energize and love your career once more! Get the details here!

Payscale recommends…

1. Seek out new projects

If the issue is that you aren’t feeling challenged, then take the initiative to tackle something new. When suggesting new projects to your boss, Umar suggests “position[ing] it from a place of strength. Managers will feel good about that drive and passion.” Not in a position to add new projects during the workday? Get involved in something at lunch or after work. For instance, you could join the company softball team or offer to organize a canned food drive. That way you’ll have a new activity to keep you engaged in the organization.

2. Ask for feedback

Some workers grow disillusioned because they’re working hard and not getting any positive reinforcement. In some cases, your boss may have no idea you’re going the extra mile. That’s why Vicki Salemi, career expert and author of Big Career in the Big City, recommends scheduling a meeting and letting your supervisor know about your accomplishments. That’s also your chance to ask for feedback. However, Salemi adds that “you’re not always gonna get a pat on the back every time you do something,” so expectations may need adjustment, too.

3. Get out of the office

Conferences, industry mixers, and other networking or professional development opportunities can help give you a fresh perspective on your industry. “Attending a conference is incredible because you have the opportunity to network with people outside of your company,” says Salemi. “It gets you out of your cubicle and helps you to stay abreast of trends in the industry. Often it reminds you of why you chose that profession.” Need we mention that in some cases, your employer will also foot the bill?

Get the full story at Payscale!

Navarathri Pooja at Butterworth Shridi Sai Baba Center

Lion Man

Mushroom compound appears to improve effectiveness of cancer drugs

 by Biomechanism 

A compound isolated from a wild, poisonous mushroom growing in a Southwest China forest appears to help a cancer killing drug fulfill its promise, researchers report.

The compound, verticillin A, sensitizes cancer cells to TRAIL, a drug which induces cancer cells to self destruct, said Dr. Kebin Liu, cancer immunologist at the Georgia Health Sciences University Cancer Center and corresponding author of the study in the journal Cancer Research.

The compound appears to keep cancer cells from developing resistance to TRAIL, short for tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis inducing ligand. Drug resistance, intrinsic or acquired, is a major problem for cancer patients, accounting for greater than 90 percent of treatment failures in patients with metastatic disease.

“If we can make drugs work again, more people will survive,” Liu said.

Patient experience has shown cancer’s skill at desensitizing itself to the TRAIL. “It looks as though most cancer cells have found a way to become resistant and evade its action,” said Dr. Wendy Bollag, cell physiologist at GHSU and a study co-author. Tenacious cancer cells also are naturally resistant to cell suicide, which is how TRAIL works.

In mice, they found verticillin A alone was adequate to kill cancer cells, but the required dose made the mice sick, a common problem with many cancer therapies. However, when a lower dose was paired with TRAIL, it became a powerful, more tolerable recipe that killed previously resistant cells.

They also found that the compound improved the efficacy of commonly used cancer drugs etoposide and cisplatin, which also work by promoting cancer cell death but are less targeted than TRAIL. “We believe this could be a good companion drug for a lot of cancer therapies,” Liu said.

Caption: A compound isolated from a wild, poisonous mushroom growing in a Southwest China forest appears to help a cancer killing drug fulfill its promise, researchers report. Pictured (L to R) are GHSU researchers, Dr. Kebin Liu, Dr. Wendy Bollag and Dr. Keith Robertson. Credit: Phil Jones, GHSU campus photographer

One way verticillin A appears to work is by upregulating BN1P3, a gene that promotes cell death, the researchers said. Cancer cells work to silence BN1P3 through a process called DNA methylation; verticillin A appears to modify the same process to turn the gene on.

All cells use DNA methylation but cancer cells use it differently, said Dr. Keith Robertson, cancer epigeneticist and Georgia Cancer Coalition Scholar. “Verticillin A may be working by altering methylation in a way that makes the cancer cells sensitive to TRAIL,” Robertson said.

Their studies were of metastatic human colon cancer cells, which are highly resistant to treatment, including TRAIL, both in culture as well as transplanted into mice. They did similar studies on sarcoma, lung adenocarcinoma and breast cancer.

Additional toxicity studies are needed before moving forward with clinical trials, Bollag said. The researchers also want to pursue the compound’s potential in melanoma and pancreatic cancer.

Verticillin A was isolated from mushrooms in Dr. Ping Wu’s laboratory at the Research Centre of Siyuan Natural Pharmacy and Biotoxicology at China’s Zhejiang University and brought to GHSU by former postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Feiyan Liu, the study’s first author, who studied with Kebin Liu in Augusta for two years. The Chinese university is involved in extensive studies to isolate active compounds from plants to explore their therapeutic potential and both Dr. Lius liked verticillin A’s aggressive response against cancer.

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GHSU and Zhejiang University have a joint use patent on verticillin A and Zhejiang University has a synthesis patent.

Ocean Explorers Find Largest Virus Ever Seen, 20 Times Bigger than the Average Bug

By Rebecca Boyle

Megavirus vs. Mimivirus Top row: Megavirus (E) and Mimivirus (F) early-stage virion factories with the seeds at their centers. Bottom row: Megavirus (G) and Mimivirus (H) mature virion factories seen in full production. PNAS

You never know exactly what you’ll find when you go churning up muck, but apparently odds are pretty good you’ll find some viruses. The other day we heard how raw sewage is a hotbed of unknown viruses; now a French team has found the largest virus ever, living in the sea off the coast of Chile.

Named Megavirus chilensis, it barely beats the previous record-holder, Mimivirus, as the world’s most giant virus. It’s a linear double-stranded DNA molecule with 1,259,197 base pairs — by far the biggest viral genome ever discovered. Its complex genome gives it some abilities, like protein translation, that overlap with simple cellular organisms like parasitic bacteria, according to the researchers who found it. Viruses aren’t cellular organisms; they need to invade other cells and hijack their machinery to produce new versions of themselves.

It is so large that it can be seen with a regular light microscope rather than an electron microscope, as Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University in Marseille, France, told the BBC.

It has several DNA-repair enzymes, which allow it to correct damage due to ultraviolet light, radiation or chemicals, Claverie and colleagues say. Its cell-like genes may be a holdover from an ancestor it shares with Mimivirus, which may have gotten its genes from a cell.

Like Mimivirus, Megavirus infects amoebas, single-celled organisms that live in water. Also like Mimivirus, Megavirus employs a Stargate structure (really its name) to invade a host cell. The opening of this five-pronged structure triggers the release of the virus’ genetic material.

Megavirus turned up in an exploration trawl off the coast of Las Cruces in central Chile. Mimivirus was isolated from a water cooling tower in the UK in 1992, BBC says.

Anyone with an interest in its phylogeny can check out the genome browser, available here. The paper is published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[via BBC]

Winner of Million-Dollar X Challenge Cleans Up Oil Spills Three Times Better Than Existing Tech

The second-place finalist did a little more than half that well

By Rebecca Boyle and Clay Dillow

Testing Oil Recovery A test of Pacific Petroleum Recovery's system at the National Oil Spill Response Research & Renewable Energy Test Facility in New Jersey. X Prize Foundation

Last summer, as sweet crude oil gushed unabated into the Gulf of Mexico, the overriding emotion was one of frustration. It wasn't just directed at the well owner, BP, or at rig-builders Transocean and Halliburton, or even the government and its difficult-to-understand oil flow estimates. The inability to shut off the well was one thing — but why, in an era of nanotubes and autonomous robots and invisibility cloaks, couldn't we just clean it up?

Sure, skimmer ships, containment booms and dispersants deployed immediately, aiming to capture oil gushing from the blown well beneath the destroyed Deepwater Horizon rig. But week after frustrating week, the best available technologies failed to make much of an impact. But some people saw opportunity in this disaster — a chance to prove a new idea, or maybe build upon an old concept. The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge, under the auspices of the X Prize Foundation, encouraged competitors to design new oil-removal technologies that would dramatically improve the state of the art. Today in New York, we found out just how far some friendly competition and a tidy sum can push the technological envelope.

Nearly 400 applicants were narrowed down to 10 finalist teams, who were invited to test their techniques at the nation's oil spill test bed, the Department of the Interior’s Ohmsett facility at the Naval Weapons Station Earle in Leonardo, N.J. The minimum criteria to be eligible for the prize: a technology capable of an average oil recover efficiency (ORE) of more than 70 percent—that is, the mixture extracted from the water had to be 70 percent oil—and an oil recover rate (ORR) of 2,500 gallons per minute. That’s roughly twice what the oil cleanup industry’s best technology can currently recover. The leading team was promised a $1 million reward, while second and third place would receive $300,000 and $100,000 respectively.

The winners did more in a handful of months than private industry had done in the two decades since the Exxon Valdez disaster.This morning in New York, just minutes before revealing the winners of the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge, Schmidt herself made what would prove to be the understatement of the event: “This is a powerful return on a relatively modest investment,” she said knowingly. A few minutes later we would find out just how right she was. Second place winner NOFI of Norway demonstrated technology that extracted 2,712 gallons per minute with an ORE of 83 percent. But audible gasps went up when the winning numbers hit the presentation screen. Team Elastec/American Marine had blown the competition out of the water, recovering 4,670 gallons per minute at efficiencies averaging 89.5 percent.

In other words, Elastec/American Marine nearly doubled the gallons-per-minute requirement for the X Prize. But perhaps a better way of looking at it is through the lens of the state-of-the-art. In just one year’s dedicated time, NOFI found a way to double the efficiency of the industry’s best available surface oil skimmers. Elastec/American Marine tripled it, doing more in a handful of months than private industry had done in the two decades since the Exxon Valdez disaster.

It wasn’t easy. Throughout August and September, the teams huddled at Ohmsett for 10 days each, removing oil with skimmers, booms, spinning axial devices and even a "shaver," testing amid calm seas and turbulent waves. Hurricane Irene briefly interrupted testing, and lent an air of harsh reality to NOFI’s efforts.

Each team completed a minimum of six tests, three in calm conditions and three with waves. Once the team was ready to go, the judges would wave a green flag to give the go-ahead, and Ohmsett staff would start the stopwatch, open the valves and let the group get to work.

Team Lamor Gets the Green Flag: A referee waves the green flag to give the go-ahead to Team Lamor of Finland during the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge.  X Prize Foundation

"The team would be on the bridges operating their system — they're turning on pumps, monitoring performance, and letting the judges know they are ready," said Cristin Dorgelo Lindsay, vice president of Prize Operations for the X Prize Foundation, who managed the competition. "It is a really finely tuned dance... it is like getting into a test tube and being shaken about. It was very stressful."

The competitors included a retired police inspector; two generations of one family; a tattoo artist; a former pro basketball player and several other entrepreneurs and inventors. Each team had its own judges, who consisted of industry reps, Coast Guard officials and marine conservation experts, examining each system according to various criteria, she added.

"It was a little bit like summer camp. People from all over the world get to come and hang out at this Navy base in New Jersey," Lindsay said.

But unlike summer camp, the work being done there was anything but carefree. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the weeks and months of unchecked pollution of gulf ecosystems placed a new urgency on finding ways to remediate waters fouled by man-made disasters, and the X Prize offered the financial impetus as well as the benchmarks for success that drove the search for better technologies.

“Nobody thought about an oil spill such as the Gulf oil spill, so nobody was asking for this,” Elastec/American Marine team leader Don Johnson said. “Nobody was asking for 2,500 gallons per minute.” Things like the X Prize are critical to pushing technology forward, Johnson said, because when there’s no industry demand for a technology and no customer to buy it, it doesn’t get built. And given the nature of disasters like Deepwater Horizon, the time when demand peaks—during an actual oil spill—is not the time to be developing and testing new technologies. During the Deepwater Horizon spill Johnson and his team were out on the gulf corralling oil with last-gen technologies rather than building new technologies in the workshop, he notes. They would have been better served if the new technology had already been on the shelf.

To tackle these kinds of challenges, we need to be proactive rather than reactive, Johnson said. Deepwater Horizon serves as a stark reminder of that. And just in case that’s not clear, there’s $1 million to drive the point home.