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Voices The Tech Take: The cloud still beckons – Accounting Today

The more tech-savvy corners of accounting world are constantly abuzz with talk of the next biggest solution that will change the profession. Over the past decade, the excitement has been the cloud; today, machine learning, artificial intelligence and even robots have piqued the industrys interest. But the reality is that in a nation where one quarter of the population does not have access to broadband Internet, the cloud is a revolution still in the making.

The wide availability of web development tools today has enabled cloud software companies to evangelize the idea that if youre not in the cloud, you should be now. And its true that using online software platforms exclusively has its benefits, like mobility, security and cost savings. But moving to the cloud is not as easy as dumping the old software and selecting a shiny new one.

Many firms have been using on-premise software for years. Not only does this mean loyalty to a known entity, but also significant investment in technology over time. The sunk-cost fallacy sometimes takes over when firms evaluate whether their legacy system is the best choice for them going forward: Even if moving to a cloud-based system will provide better benefits in the future, the financial and emotional outlay can cloud good judgement. Client pushback can be an issue, too, as clients are as likely as anyone else to balk at change.

This is not to say that the cloud is a surefire winning investment. Most cloud-based finance and accounting platforms operate on a subscription basis, which is a whole new way of doing business for firms used to paying up-front prices for their software. It can be difficult to assess whether the ROI will be worth it over time.

The term cloud is used broadly and loosely, but there are basically three ways accounting firms can relate to the cloud: A firms operations can exist and be hosted entirely on their own premises, in which case they are not in the cloud; their software and applications can be hosted offsite with the help of a cloud hosting provider that owns and manages the physical servers on which the data resides; or they can operate completely virtually, using only Web-based software and apps (which in turn are hosted on large cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services).

DP&Cs migration to the cloud

Tacoma, Washington-based firm DP&C hired the cloud vendor Cetrom to help it move to a cloud-hosted environmentthe second option mentioned above.

Age has real consequences on how easy it is for a firm to migrate to a cloud environment. DP&C was founded in 1936, in a decade in which exciting technological innovation meant color films and photocopy machines (although to be fair, nuclear fission was discovered in 1939). The firm recently completed its move to a cloud-hosted environment, and is very satisfied with the results. But with 80 years of information contained in both paper and electronic files, data migration is not easy, and the value proposition has to be extremely compelling for a firm to even begin to want to undertake the task.

At DP&C, whose staff members number around 30, working remotely or with clients offsite had become too difficult for it not to seek a better solution. The firm was using a suite of on-premise solutions, but accessing its systems via VPN was slow and cumbersome. So DP&C enlisted the help of technology advisor Donny Shimamoto and his company, Intraprise TechKnowlogies, to document its computer systems, programs and needs, as well as conduct extensive research to find several cloud IT solution providers that serviced accountants. After his evaluation, DP&C selected cloud vendor Cetrom, which develops customized cloud computing configurations customized to CPA firms.

Cetroms custom cloud-hosted solution enabled DP&Cs employees to work from home far more easilywhich has its own set of employee satisfaction-related benefitsand work with clients in the field more efficiently.

We now have laptops that employees can take into the field, but those laptops dont contain any information, Karin Teles, administrator at DP&C, said. All information is on the cloud, so if a laptop is stolen we feel a lot better about that.

Security is another very compelling reason for firms to consider moving to the cloud. Accountants would do well to take to heart the mantra that they are there to help clients do the business theyre good at and not have to focus on accounting; similarly, accounting firms are not tech firms, and outsourcing the management of a firms information systems to a capable technology provider is a smart move. Its a mistake to think on-premise servers are more secure because they can be entirely managed in house; in fact, most software breaches are inside jobs, and cloud hosting companies have far more sophisticated security measures than most in-house IT departments can offer.

Were accountants, not tech wizards, said Teles, who couldnt speak highly enough of the support Cetrom provided the firm during implementation. The tech company had weekly meetings with the firm, and one of Cetroms senior engineers answered any question DP&C had. These meetings occurred over a period of six to eight weeks before transitioning, and the migration took place over a weekend. The firm was closed on a Friday, and up and running on Monday, with Cetrom engineers remaining at the firm for a few days in case of any issues.

Another security benefit of cloud hosting is having servers located in more than one geographical region, which has redundancy benefits in case of an outage or natural disaster. DP&C happens to be located on the Tacoma Fault, an active fault line that poses the risk of earthquakes. Cetrom has its servers in two locations -- Virginia and Coloradonot to mention airlocks (double doors that are both protected by security measures) at every facility entrance and Kevlar-covered walls that provide protection from extremely severe weather events.

Finally, cloud vendors such as Cetrom enable firms to outsource a large chunk of their IT needs. For example, Cetrom provides technical support 24/7/365; and during implementation, it was present from initial set-up to implementation weekend to help the firm through every step.

Migrating to the cloud hasnt changed the fundamental way DP&C operates, Teles said. Its just saved a lot of time, made its staff more efficient, and its data more secure.

Whats the next big technological innovation that will have everyone talking? Lets hope for robots.

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Cloud Pushing India’s Server Market Growth: IDC – CXOToday.com

According to the latestIDC Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) Quarterly Server Tracker, Q1 2017, the overall server market in India witnessed a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) increase of 14.2 percent in terms of revenue to reach $215.6 million in Q1 2017 as against $188.8 million in Q4 2016. The x86 server market accounted for 90.7 percent of the overall server revenue during Q1 2017 with growth being majorly driven by spending of public cloud service providers for their data centers.

The public cloud uptake and digital transformation across banking and government verticals are driving the server market in India. The x86 server market in terms of revenue witnessed a year-over-year (YoY) growth of 3.9 percent to reach $195.6 million in Q1 2017 up from $188.2 million during Q1 2016.

The enterprise migration to cloud and role of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, IoT and analytics are attracting the global public cloud providers to expand their footprints in India. Density optimized servers are mostly preferred for cloud workloads which are gaining traction, accounting for QoQ growth of 413.6 percent in terms of revenue for Q1 2017 over previous quarter.

The non x86 server market declined by 22.3 percent YoY in terms of revenue to reach $20.0 million in Q1 2017. In terms of revenue, IBM led the market, accounting for 50 percent of market share, while HPE remained the only vendor who grew its share to 17.8 percent during Q1 2017. In non x86 server market banking industry on its own contribute for 57.3 percent of the revenue, followed by manufacturing and professional services verticals.

Rishu Sharma, Associate Manager, Enterprise Infrastructureadded Professional services, telecommunications and banking remained the top three verticals, accounting for about 70% of the overall market. The market is likely to be driven by Digital initiatives, SAP HANA implementations and cloud workloads in the coming quarters.

[Source: IDC 2017]

In India x86 market,HPEincreased its market share from 37.8 percent in Q4 2016 to 40.3 percent in Q1 2017 in terms of revenue, followed byDellwith a market share of 20.5 percent during Q1 2017.Though the market increased Y-o-Y in terms of revenue most of the major vendors failed to maintain their market share, while ODMs have been successful in growing their market share from 0.3 percent in Q1 2016 to 14.5 percent in Q1 2017 andCiscoincreased its market share to 8.9 percent in Q1 2017, mainly driven by its blade revenue.

ODMs have disrupted the India server market during Q1 2017 by strategically positioning themselves in public cloud and third party data center space and are challenging the established vendors with their attractive pricing, saysHarshal Udatewar, Server Market Analyst, IDC India.

IDC India Forecast:Digital transformation initiatives from Government towards smart cities, skill India, e-records, education, healthcare is likely to drive the market. Also, increased banking focus towards high compute to handle voluminous transaction, analytics, and CRM applications are vital factors leading towards the server market growth in the coming quarters. Professional services including IT, ITeS, third party datacentre and public cloud service providers would continue to fuel the server market growth in India.

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South Korea Will Introduce Legislation To Legalize Cryptocurrencies – ETHNews

News world

The South Korean government is expected to consider legislation that is intended to increase consumer trust in cryptocurrencies.

South Korean lawmakers will be presenting several bills that will affect the legal status of cryptocurrencies. According to the Korea Herald, Rep. Park Yong-jin of the Democratic Party stated on July 3, 2017, that he will introduce three revisions in July that will build a set of regulatory frameworks for digital currencies. According to Park, the legislation is intended to fill the void of a state-led protection that guarantees digital currencys value, and eradicate the possibility of wreaking havoc on national economy from digital currency bubble burst.

One bill aims to revise the Electronic Financial Transactions Act. If approved, the bill will require traders, brokers, and other businesses involved in cryptocurrency transactions to get regulatory approval from the Financial Services Commission, maintain data processing facilities, and have at least 500 million won ($436,300) in capital.

Tax laws will also be revised to allow Korean financial authorities to pursue tax evaders who do not pay income or corporate tax from digital currency transactions. According to Park and the Financial Supervisory Service, although virtual currency exchanges hold a large amount of market power in the countrys cryptocurrency space, there is no legal ground for their business.

The move for more robust regulation comes after a mishap with South Korean exchange Yapizon, when it fell victim to a massive bitcoin heist in April. In the incident, a hacker swiped four hot wallets and made off with 3831 bitcoin, which at the time totaled to about $5 million. To resolve the problem, Yapizon implemented a clever accounting scheme in which it essentially provided users with IOUs. At the time of the occurrence, the South Korean government authorities lacked regulation to handle such calamities. Parks proposals lookto fill this void and increase trust in one of South Koreas emerging markets.

Cryptocurrency investments have also been on the rise in East Asian markets. To promote growth and innovation in FinTech companies operating in foreign exchange markets, the South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance in May decided to revamp capital requirements, which will go into effect July 18.

Dan is a US Army veteran and Los Angeles-based writer passionate about science and technology, current events, human rights, economic impacts, and strategic calculus. Dan is a full time staff writer for ETHNews and holds value in Ether.

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Cryptocurrency Hash Rental Service Review Nicehash – The Merkle

Summary

Nicehash is an excellent platform for people looking for multipool mining or a way to buy and sell hashpower. The platform is very transparent about its business and has built up a solid reputation over the past three years.

It is not all that easy to find a legitimate cryptocurrency cloud mining service. Nicehash is one of the few companies people can trust these days. The platform specializes in cloud mining, hash rental services, and multipool mining. It is refreshing to see legitimate companies pop up now and the in the landscape filled with Ponzi Schemes. Now is a good time to look at what Nicehash offers to its customers and why they are so successful.

Most cryptocurrency cloud mining scams ask users to make a Bitcoin investment, so they can earn a passive income. Unfortunately, a lot of those are Ponzi schemes. However, Nicehash is doing things in a professional manner and without putting users at risk of losing any funds. In fact, they are one of a handful of legitimate companies in the world of cryptocurrency cloud mining.

Nicehash first came to the market in April of 2014 and has quickly grown to be one of the most reliable online mining hashrate marketplaces in the world. The company specializes in added-value services for miners, traders, and investors alike. Providing customer support services helped Nicehash achieve success. So far, the team is doing an outstanding job in this regard, as they have no negative reviews.

What makes NiceHash so unique is how they let users buy and sell hashing power on demand. Contracts can run for as little as one hour, and the maximum duration can be agreed upon by the buyer and seller. The platforms marketplace is filled with available orders, which can be filtered based on mining algorithm, and geographical locations. Reducing latency between the miner and the mining pool is of the utmost importance to maximize potential earnings.

It is worth mentioning Nicehash is not the only company providing a cryptocurrency mining hashrate marketplace. Mining Rig Rentals is one of their main competitors in this space, as they provide a powerful service as well. It is good to see competing peer-to-peer mining hashpower rental marketplaces. Competitionallows for far more flexibility than one would get through traditional cloud mining.

Nicehash also provides users with their own mining software clients, which is a nice addition. Plus, their own multipool servers allow miners to point their eligible hardware to the pool and earn mining revenue in the process. Nicehash supports a few dozen mining algorithms, including X11, Scrypt, Keccak, Decred, Cryptonight, and Pascal. Pointing aminer at this pool allows users to earn revenue without having to worry about anything, as earnings are calculated and paid out automatically.

The main question is whether or not miners should sell their hashpower or point it to the multipool. It heavily depends on how much risk one is willing to take. Using the multipool means investing in the mined coins, which can be a financial risk.One could always rent out the hashpower and keep mining the multipool as long as the contract is not picked up by a buyer. That way, users can get the best of both worlds.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

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ElliottWaveTrader launching cryptocurrency service – CryptoNinjas – CryptoNinjas

It was announced recently from ElliottWaveTrader.net (EWT), a live Trading Room of market analysis, based on Elliott Wave principle, that due to high demand and many requests, they will start a cryptocurrency service based onElliott Wave analysis. To lead this new service, the firm has brought on Ryan Wilday.

Ryan has over 17 years experience trading equities, futures, and options. He was introduced to cryptocurrency in 2013 by a programmer friend and began mining and trading shortly thereafter.

The EWT team stated:

Though he read Prechters Elliott Wave Principle in the early 2000s, he didnt make practical use of the theory until joining EWT in 2015. Today he melds his deep knowledge of the cryptocurrency market with Elliott Wave theory and Fibonacci Pinball.

Ryans service will be opening in August of 2017, more information will be forthcoming on the launch.

ElliottWaveTrader benefits traders looking to anticipate the direction of U.S. & world equity indices, stocks, bonds, precious metals, energy & forex over a time horizon of several days to several months.

The site also features insights and interaction by its community of traders, many of them professionals, as members are encouraged to post questions and contribute their own analysis in the interactive room.

How the cryptocurrency market and certain assets within react to Elliot Wave analysis will be quite interesting to observe.

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A golden crypto currency you can invest in for as little as $45 – Sun … – The National

Ibrahim Mohammed is the founder and chief executive and OneGram, a new digital currency, at the company's offices in Emirates Financial Towers in the DIFC area of Dubai. OneGram is partnering with GoldGuard, a Dubai-based online gold trading platform to build one of worlds largest gold vaults inside the Dubai Airport Free Zone. Christopher Pike / The National

As the founder and chief executive of OneGram the Dubai-based technology company behind the first digital currency completely backed by gold - Ibrahim Mohammed is confident his cryptocurrency will be a success, even as competition in the digital currency sphere hots up.

He says with 100s of new coins releasing every day, it is OneGrams unique selling point - the fact that the currency is fully Sharia-compliant - that will set it apart.

The company has already launched an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) offering, which aims to raise more than US$500 million in capital; the tokens were launched on May 21 and will be available to buy until September 22.

OneGram has partnered with GoldGuard, a Dubai-based online gold trading platform, for the offering, with each token backed by one gram of gold, held in a vault at Dubai Airport Free Zone. Only 12.5 million tokens are available to buy in total.

The OneGram currency was created using blockchain technology, a digital method of recording data that underpins the digital currency bitcoin.

While one bitcoin today is currently worth about US$2,500 (or $2,438 at the time of writing), to buy a OneGramCoin would set you back $45 at current market prices.

Almost six weeks after the OneGram coin first went on sale, Mr Mohammed, a British Dubai resident with 10 years of experience running companies whose specialisms have included debt collection and business formation, explains how the new digital currency works and how investors can get on board:

Why did you set up OneGram?

Because of the ruling that happened in November 2016 from the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) with regards to the gold standard. It was the first time gold was deemed to be a sharia-compliant product and it got us thinking. It evolved into digitisation ofgold but then having bigger returns rather than just waiting for the market to go up - so we combined it with a digital currency.

How does OneGram work?

Its like bitcoin; its a digital currency but the major difference to any other crypto is that its backed with physical gold. Putting it very simply, if you have one bitcoin today thats worth about US$2,500 and if it crashes and went to zero youd lose all your money. With OneGram, if you buy today you pay about $45; $41 of that is in physical gold but $4 is in the coin, so if OneGram crashed you would potentially lose $4 and still have $41. Essentially its a digital token - a digital form of payment.

So how can you use this form of payment?

Globally, these kinds of tokens are mainly used in the crypto community by people that believe in [the concept] and are willing to hold it. What we are trying to develop over the next 12 months or so is a payment solution that retailers can adopt to accept payment. At this stage (until the OneGram coin is listed in September), its like holding stocks or shares. The demand is there and the prices are increasing; if you follow the crypto market at all it was worth $20 billion in 2016 and this year its worth $100bn as we speak. Most of that jump has happened in the last five months.

What is driving that?

People see the potential in it. Most governments now are talking about how to regulate the market and control it and bring it into mainstream. The growth is phenomenal. I dont think investors are risk takers because the model of crypto currencies has been proven. Japan has legalised bitcoin; its inevitable that others will follow suit.

How does OneGram work?

Register at GoldGuard.com and where you go to buy you will see the live spot price of gold and it will be a live spot buy. Underneath it you will see the coin value of $4 - thats 10 per cent of the actual transaction and thats the coin fee. You will see a total price of $45; its approximate on the site as its linked to the Allocated BullionExchange's live gold fee. You can transfer funds or buy through bitcoin but we wont accept bitcoin directly as we dont know the source of funds, so we use a company called BitPay in the United States. They do all the verifications, as they are regulated by the US government and they will accept the bitcoin and wire us US dollars.

Is the $4 a fee then?

Its a kind of administration fee because typically in crypto currencies you are paying the whole amount - so if we didnt have gold youd be paying $45 and wed have all money. But we only take 10 per cent which covers operations, staffing, support, marketing, development, blockchain etc. With typical cryptos, if they are selling at $45 they may pay 30 to 40 per cent commission on transactions and theyll sell out in a day or two. Weve adopted a real business model as opposed to a "lets loot type of crypto." So there is a 10 per cent mark up on the price to give our investors the best possible chance of higher returns and that 10 per cent will cover our costs to operate.

What happens when you list?

Then you will have your own wallet and you will hold it on your own iPad, phone or desktop. The coin will be listed on a few digital currency platforms, so any buying or selling happens through those platforms and it goes into the secondary market. In terms of where the price can be at launch and where it can be in 24 months is completely beyond our control. Some analysts have said OneGram is the closest coin that has ever come to knocking bitcoin off its pedestal.

Who are your investors?

As well as crypto tech investors, were getting people that have never invested in cryptoor digital currencies before but because of the gold aspect and the sharia regulatory aspect they are very comfortable. We get customers buying for $100 and in the same day someone will buy $200,000. There is massive interest from Africa and Pakistan, countries we never expected. We now have 4,000 to 5,000 registered users and the majority are non-Muslims;another surprise.

What happens if you dont sell all the 12.5 million coins?

Anything that is left will be burnt wiped away. If we dont sell all of them then it's likely the price will go up as there will be less in circulation. We left the first month open for anyone to buy. Now we have our affiliates, partners that will also sell the coin. The first affiliate is $100m, there are a couple more after that. We are not in any doubt that the coin will sell out.

How many have you sold so far?

Twenty-two per cent of the ICO has already been assigned thats about 2 million coins.

Once the coin is listed what happens to OneGram?

Our ongoing role is to maintain the blockchain and security of it so that the coins can trade. And we make 1 per cent of every trade, the typical fee within blockchain.

Who are you licensed by?

Cyptos are not licensed but the part that needs licensing is GoldGuard, which is a gold trading platform. That is licensed by Dubai Airport Free Zone so we are licensed to trade gold.

Can investors see the gold?

Our vaulting partner may have security issues with that but once we have our own vaulting systems we will be open to anyone that wants to inspect. For verification that the gold exists, our auditors PwC have to physically go and count the gold along with our sharia advisers so I think the investors can rest assured that the gold exists. We buy through ABX and within three days they physically store it for us.

How could it all go wrong?

Its very difficult to go wrong because the exposure is very limited its 90 per cent in gold, 10 per cent in the coin. The demand is there and the market is there so unless someone turns the internet off

Whats next?

Were in discussions about ATM machines. You could have an ATM machine in Dubai, Hong Kong or London where OneGram can be bought and sold across the globe.

ahaine@thenational.ae

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CryptoPing completes $2.5 million ICO to further develop altcoin trading intel bot – CryptoNinjas

4,727 investors have invested 1000.02 BTC, over $2.5 million in USD to stand behind CryptoPing, a bot that monitors crypto markets and notifies when an altcoin gets a surprising amount of market action.The projects ultimate mission is to use market data, statistics, news and social media to produce more precise trading signals and aid in forecasting cryptocurrency markets.

Date held: May 25 June 24, 2017 / Platform: WAVES

9,000,000 PING tokens sold out of 10,000,000 807,221 referral bonus tokens 136,868 discount bonus tokens 8,000 bounty tokens 47,911 tokens will be burned

CryptoPing informed investors that they put an extra 0.01 WAVES into their wallet to offset the commission fee for token withdrawal transactions charged from the Waves wallet.

From today,Cryptopia, a cryptocurrency and altcoin exchange based in New Zealand has already listed PING/BTC for trading. Instructions to move tokens to Cryptopia can be found here. Another exchange which has immediately listed PING tokens is YoBit.

Post-sale supply maintenance

To ensure that the token price remains stable, CryptoPing will keep burning tokens after ICO ends.

From every subscription transaction for CryptoPing, the company will burn a certain amount of transferred tokens: 75% of subscription fees during 6 months after the subscription is introduced, and 25% of fees for a year after that.

A public log will be kept of subscription payments and burned tokens. Every investor will get transparent information about actions undertaken and remaining token supply. Burning means transferring tokens to an address without the private key, rendering them inaccessible.

Service and roadmap

CryptoPing will now start to require small subscription fees in PING tokens to access the signaling bot and other upcoming services.

The project roadmap now sees to it that the following services be developed, news and social feed monitoring, neural network inception, auto-investing app, and programmatic technical analysis.

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Less is more for Canadian quantum computing researchers – ITworld

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Researchers in Canada have found a way make a key building block for quantum computing from a custom photonics chip and off-the-shelf components intended for use in telecommunications equipment.

They have built a chip that can create entangled pairs of multicolored photons. The result is that they can be manipulated as two "qudits," quantum computing digits, that can each hold 10 possible values.

Where classical computers operate on values in sequence, quantum computers are able to express all possible values of a variable simultaneously, collapsing to the "right" answer at the end of the calculation. Not all computing problems benefit from this treatment, but it is particularly useful in the factorization of large numbers, necessary for cracking many forms of encryption.

The storage elements quantum computers are made from are inherently unstable, and must be linked in a process known as entanglement in order to work together. The more of them there are, the harder it is to keep them all entangled and functioning for long enough to perform a calculation.

The simplest quantum element is the two-dimensional qubit, a quantum bit, which can simultaneously hold two values (0 and 1). With six qubits, a quantum computer could hold any or all of 64 (2 to the power 6) possible values.

But that requires maintaining the quantum state of six elements.

In July 2016, Russian scientists suggested that, instead of building quantum computers with qubits, it would be easier to maintaina smaller number of qudits, each able to hold a greater range of values. They showed how to make a five-dimensional qudit, which would have greater computing power than a quantum computer with two qubits.

Now the Canadian researchers have demonstrated that their photonic chip can entangle two 10-dimensional qudits, storing a greater range of values than a six-qubit quantum computer, but requiring the stabilization of only two elements.

Using the same chip, they say, it should be possible to generate two entangled qudits able to hold 9,000 or more values -- the equivalent of a 12-qubit computer.

By way of comparison, IBM hitched up a 16-qubit computer to its computing cloud back in May, inviting scientists to share time on it to test quantum computing algorithims.

Google, meanwhile, hopes to have an operational 49-qubit quantum computer by the end of the year.

It's not enough merely to generate these qudits: To turn them into a quantum computer it must also be possible to manipulate them.

That can be accomplished using standard telecommunications components such as modulators and filters, according to the researchers, making the system relatively accessible.

Being able to generate multidimensional quantum computing systems in this way will open the door to faster and more robust quantum communication protocols, and more efficient and error-tolerant quantum computation, the researchers said in a paper detailing their research in the journal Nature in June.

Peter Sayer covers European public policy, artificial intelligence, the blockchain, and other technology breaking news for the IDG News Service.

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New method could enable more stable and scalable quantum … – Phys.Org

June 29, 2017 by Ali Sundermier A false color image of one of the researchers' samples. Credit: University of Pennsylvania

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and Goucher College, have discovered a new topological material which may enable fault-tolerant quantum computing. It is a form of computing that taps into the power of atoms and subatomic phenomena to perform calculations significantly faster than current computers and could potentially lead to advances in drug development and other complex systems.

The research, published in ACS Nano, was led by Jerome Mlack, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics & Astronomy in Penn's School of Arts & Sciences, and his mentors Nina Markovic, now an associate professor at Goucher, and Marija Drndic, Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics at Penn. Penn grad students Gopinath Danda and Sarah Friedensen, who received an NSF fellowship for this work, and Johns Hopkins Associate Research Professor Natalia Drichko and postdoc Atikur Rahman, now an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, also contributed to the study.

The research began while Mlack was a Ph.D. candidate at Johns Hopkins. He and other researchers were working on growing and making devices out of topological insulators, a type of material that doesn't conduct current through the bulk of the material but can carry current along its surface.

As the researchers were working with these materials, one of their devices blew up, similar to what would happen with a short circuit.

"It kind of melted a little bit," Mlack said, "and what we found is that, if we measured the resistance of this melted region of one of these devices, it became superconducting. Then, when we went back and looked at what happened to the material and tried to find out what elements were in there, we only saw bismuth selenide and palladium."

When superconducting materials are cooled, they can carry a current with zero electrical resistance without losing any energy.

Topological insulators with superconducting properties have been predicted to have great potential for creating a fault-tolerant quantum computer. However, it is difficult to make good electrical contact between the topological insulator and superconductor and to scale such devices for manufacture, using current techniques. If this new material could be recreated, it could potentially overcome both of these difficulties.

In standard computing, the smallest unit of data that makes up the computer and stores information, the binary digit, or bit, can have a value of either 0, for off, or 1, for on. Quantum computing takes advantage of a phenomenon called superposition, which means that the bits, in this case called qubits, can be 0 and 1 at the same time.

A famous way of illustrating this phenomenon is a thought experiment called Schrodinger's cat. In this thought experiment, there is a cat in a box, but one doesn't know if the cat is dead or alive until the box is opened. Before the box is opened, the cat can be considered both alive and dead, existing in two states at once, but, immediately upon opening the box, the cat's state, or in the case of qubits, the system's configuration, collapses into one: the cat is either alive or dead and the qubit is either 0 or 1.

"The idea is to encode information using these quantum states," Markovic said, "but in order to use it in needs to be encoded and exist long enough for you to read."

One of the major problems in the field of quantum computing is that the qubits are not very stable and it's very easy to destroy the quantum states. These topological materials provide a way of making these states live long enough for to read them off and do something with them, Markovic said.

"It's kind of like if the box in Schrodinger's cat were on the top of a flag pole and the slightest wind could just knock it off," Mlack said. "The idea is that these topological materials at least widen the diameter of the flag pole so the box is sitting on more a column than a flag pole. You can knock it off eventually, but it's otherwise very hard to break the box and find out what happened to the cat."

Although their initial discovery of this material was an accident, they were able to come up with a process to recreate it in a controlled way.

Markovic, who was Mlack's advisor at Johns Hopkins at the time, suggested that, in order to recreate it without having to continually blow up devices, they could thermally anneal it, a process in which they put it into a furnace and heat it to a certain temperature.

Using this method, the researchers wrote, "the metal directly enters the nanostructure, providing good electrical contact and can be easily patterned into the nanostructure using standard lithography, allowing for easy scalability of custom superconducting circuits in a topological insulator."

Although researchers already have the capability of making a superconducting topological material, there's a huge problem in the fact that, when they put two materials together, there's a crack in between, which decreases the electrical contact. This ruins the measurements that they can make as well as the physical phenomena that could lead to making devices that will allow for quantum computing.

By patterning it directly into the crystal, the superconductor is embedded, and there are none of these contact problems. The resistance is very low, and they can pattern devices for quantum computing in one single crystal.

To test the material's superconducting properties, they put it in two extremely cold refrigerators, one of which cools down to nearly absolute zero. They also swept a magnetic field across it, which would kill the superconductivity and the topological nature of the material, to find out the limitations of the material. They also did standard electrical measurements, running a current through and looking at the voltage that is created.

"I think what is also nice in this paper is the combination of the electrical transport performance and the direct insights from the actual device materials characterization," Drndic said. "We have good insights on the composition of these devices to support all these claims because we did elemental analysis to understand how these two materials join."

One of the benefits of the researchers' device is that it's potentially scalable, capable of fitting onto a chip similar to the ones currently in our computers.

"Right now the main advances in quantum computing involve very complicated lithography methods," Drndic said. "People are doing it with nanowires which are connected to these circuits. If you have single nanowires that are very, very tiny and then you have to put them in particular places, it's very difficult. Most of the people who are on the forefront of this research have multimillion-dollar facilities and lots of people behind them. But this, in principle, we can do in one lab. It allows for making these devices in a simple way. You can just go and write your device any way you want it to be."

According to Mlack, though there is still a fair amount of limitation on it; there's an entire field that has sprouted up devoted to coming up with new and interesting ways to try to leverage these quantum states and quantum information. If successful, quantum computing will allow for a number of things.

"It will allow for much faster decryption and encryption of information," he said, "which is why some of the big defense contractors in the NSA, as well as companies like Microsoft, are interested in it. It will also allow us to model quantum systems in a reasonable amount of time and is capable of doing certain calculations and simulations faster than one would typically be able to do."

It's particularly good for completely different kinds of problems, such as problems that require massive parallel computations, Markovic said. If you need to do lots of things at once, quantum computing speeds things up tremendously.

"There are problems right now that would take the age of the universe to compute," she said.

"With quantum computing, you'd be able to do it in minutes." This could potentially also lead to advances in drug development and other complex systems, as well as enable new technologies.

The researchers hope to start building some more advanced devices that are geared towards actually building a qubit out of the systems that they have, as well as trying out different metals to see if they can change the properties of the material.

"It really is a new potential way of fabricating these devices that no one has done before," Mlack said. "In general, when people make some of these materials by combining this topological material and superconductivity, it is a bulk crystal, so you don't really control where everything is. Here we can actually customize the pattern that we're making into the material itself. That's the most exciting part, especially when we start talking about adding in different types of metals that give it different characteristics, whether those be ferromagnetic materials or elements that might make it more insulating. We still have to see if it works, but there's a potential for creating these interesting customized circuits directly into the material."

Explore further: Group works toward devising topological superconductor

More information: Jerome T. Mlack et al, Patterning Superconductivity in a Topological Insulator, ACS Nano (2017). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b01549

The experimental realization of ultrathin graphene - which earned two scientists from Cambridge the Nobel Prize in physics in 2010 - has ushered in a new age in materials research.

The 'quantized magneto-electric effect' has been demonstrated for the first time in topological insulators at TU Wien, which is set to open up new and highly accurate methods of measurement.

University of Pennsylvania researchers are now among the first to produce a single, three-atom-thick layer of a unique two-dimensional material called tungsten ditelluride. Their findings have been published in 2-D Materials.

The global race towards a functioning quantum computer is on. With future quantum computers, we will be able to solve previously impossible problems and develop, for example, complex medicines, fertilizers, or artificial ...

Researchers have shown how to create a rechargeable "spin battery" made out of materials called topological insulators, a step toward building new spintronic devices and quantum computers.

In an article published today in the journal Nature, physicists report the first ever observation of heat conductance in a material containing anyons, quantum quasiparticles that exist in two-dimensional systems.

Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have designed a new nano material that can reflect or transmit light on demand with temperature control, opening the door to technology that protects astronauts in space ...

A new technique allows researchers to characterize nuclear material that was in a location even after the nuclear material has been removed a finding that has significant implications for nuclear nonproliferation and ...

Researchers at the University of Melbourne have demonstrated a way to detect nuclear spins in molecules non-invasively, providing a new tool for biotechnology and materials science.

Using a state-of-the-art device for measuring mass, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made their most precise determination yet of Planck's constant, an important value in science ...

Scientists from India and Portugal recreated solar turbulence on a tabletop using a high intensity ultrashort laser pulse to excite a hot, dense plasma and followed the evolution of the giant magnetic field generated by the ...

By measuring the random jiggling motion of electrons in a resistor, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have contributed to accurate new measurements of the Boltzmann constant, a fundamental ...

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Crowd funding campaign to save a two-year-old kid – Times of India

Hyderabad: Parents of two-year-old city boy who is suffering from a rare liver disorder since birth, have recently turned to crowd funding to raise money for an emergency liver transplant operation.

While the total cost of the operation has been pegged at Rs 22 lakh, parents of Nihaal Prian, who has been suffering from Progressive Familial Intrahepatic Cholestasis (PFIC) are trying to raise Rs 9 lakh through the crowd-funding platform Impact Guru.

So far, they have managed to raise close to Rs 93,937, through donations on the online platform.

"Since my son has been suffering from this rare liver disorder from birth, he has been suffering from intense itching, ever since we can remember. He keeps scratching his body rigorously through day and night and this often results in bleeding. He neither eats nor sleeps. Unable to bear the pain, he keeps crying continuously," said Ramakrishna, father of Nihaal and a daily wage labourer who lives in Manikonda with his family.

"We have consulted many hospitals, doctors and have tried taking many medicines to reduce the effects of the condition. Doctors have finally suggested undergoing an emergency liver transplant operation, which according to them, is mandatory and is only option left for my son to stay alive. My wife Swetha has agreed to be the donor for our son," he added.

According to research published by the National Technology for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), PFIC is part of a group of rare, chronic liver disorders which are caused by defects in bile secretion and whose symptoms usually manifest during infancy and childhood, typically three months after birth.

"Since Nihaal's birth, I have spent nearly Rs 3 lakh for his medication and have run into debts. For a daily labourer like me, who struggles to provide food twice a day, it is near to impossible to pay Rs 22 lakh for an operation. In spite of having approached state government departments regarding this, repeatedly, we have been denied any help. This is when doctors at the hospital suggested we use a crowdfunding platform instead," added Ramakrishna.

Graphics

Features of PFIC

A group of rare, chronic liver disorders

Caused by defects in bile secretion

Symptoms usually manifest during infancy and childhood

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Crowd funding campaign to save a two-year-old kid - Times of India

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