James' World 2

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Subatomic particles such as quarks can pair up when linked by ‘strings’ of force fields — and release energy when the strings are pulled to the point of breaking. Two teams of physicists have now used quantum computers to mimic this phenomenon and watch it unfold in real time.

The results, described in two Nature papers on June 4, are the latest in a series of breakthroughs towards using quantum computers for simulations that are beyond the ability of any ordinary computers.

“String breaking is a very important process that is not yet fully understood from first principles,” says Christian Bauer, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, California. Physicists can calculate the final results of particle collisions that form or break strings using classical computers, but cannot fully simulate what happens in between. The success of the quantum simulations is “incredibly encouraging,” Bauer says.

String simulations

Each experiment was conducted by an international collaboration involving academic and industry researchers — one team at QuEra Computing, a start-up company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and another at the Google Quantum AI Lab in Santa Barbara, California.

The researchers using QuEra’s Aquila machine encoded information in atoms that were arranged in a 2D honeycomb pattern, each suspended in place by an optical ‘tweezer’. The quantum state of each atom — a qubit that could be excited or relaxed — represented the electric field at a point in space, explains co-author Daniel González-Cuadra, a theoretical physicist now at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid. In the other experiment, researchers encoded the 2D quantum field in the states of superconducting loops on Google’s Sycamore chip.

The teams used diametrically opposite quantum-simulation philosophies. The atoms in Aquila were arranged so that the electrostatic forces between them mimicked the behaviour of the electric field, and continuously evolved towards their own states of lower energy — an approach called analogue quantum simulation. The Google machine was instead used as a ‘digital’ quantum simulator: the superconducting loops were made to follow the evolution of the quantum field ‘by hand’, through a discrete sequence of manipulations.

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The man suspected of opening fire on two Minnesota legislators and their spouses on 14 June, killing one legislator and her husband, was apprehended late on Sunday night and charged with two counts of murder and two of attempted murder, the state’s governor, Tim Walz, said at a news conference.

Vance Boelter, 57, is suspected of fatally shooting the Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their residence early on Saturday. Boelter is also suspected of shooting the state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home, seriously injuring them.

“One man’s unthinkable actions have altered the state of Minnesota,” the state’s governor, Tim Walz, said at a news conference.

Boelter was arrested in a rural area in Sibley County, southwest of Minneapolis, according to police, who added that he was armed when he was taken into custody.

A criminal complaint unsealed Sunday night said Boelter faces two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder in the deaths of the Hortmans and the wounding of Hoffman and his wife.

Authorities alleged Boelter fled on foot after police responded to a shooting at Hortman’s house. Authorities alleged Boelter was wearing a police uniform that so closely resembled an actual law enforcement uniform that most civilians wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Earlier Sunday, Drew Evans, superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said at a news conference a nationwide warrant had been issued for the suspect’s arrest.

Evans said authorities found a car very early Sunday, they believed Boelter was using, a few miles from his home in Green Isle, in the farm country about an hour west of Minneapolis. He also said they found evidence in the car that was relevant to the investigation, but did not provide details.

The superintendent also said authorities interviewed Boelter’s wife and other family members in connection with Saturday’s shootings. He said they were cooperative and were not in custody.

The FBI had issued a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction. They circulated a photo taken Saturday of Boelter wearing a tan cowboy hat and asked the public to report sightings.

On Sunday evening, US Senator Amy Klobuchar shared a statement from Yvette Hoffman expressing appreciation for the outpouring of public support.

“John is enduring many surgeries right now and is closer every hour to being out of the woods,” Yvette Hoffman said in a text that Klobuchar posted on social media. “He took 9 bullet hits. I took 8, and we are both incredibly lucky to be alive. We are gutted and devastated by the loss of Melissa and Mark.”

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Officials in Minnesota announce shooting suspect is in custody

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Warnings of a potentially dangerous invasive ant have popped up on news sites and social media this week. You’d be forgiven for thinking a new threat had arrived. But this insect, the Asian needle ant (Brachyponera chinensis), is no newcomer—just a master of remaining inconspicuous.

The ant is getting attention after University of Georgia (UGA) entomologist Dan Suiter issued a warning that its sting can be remarkably painful and sometimes cause a serious allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. The ant is not new or spreading any faster than it used to, Suiter says. Rather, as a UGA Cooperative Extension entomologist, he’s been getting calls about people being stung by the ant and needing hospital care. With summer in full swing, the insect is active, and people are likely to be in the woods or in their gardens where they might encounter it, prompting Suiter to raise awareness of the species.

“By this time last year, I had fielded three calls of people who had been stung by an Asian needle ant—they knew it was an Asian needle ant—and suffered anaphylaxis,” Suiter says. The problem, he adds, is that the insect is small, black, and nondescript. “You’re not thinking that ‘this tiny little creature right here could have consequences if it stung me.’”

The Asian needle ant is native to Japan, Korea, and China. It arrived in the U.S.  around or before the 1930s, probably in ships carrying plants and livestock, “before we even realized that is a great way to spread things around,” says Theresa Dellinger, a diagnostician at the Insect Identification Lab at Virginia Tech. It’s not clear precisely where the ant has spread within the U.S., but it’s plentiful in the Southeast and appears to range as far north as Massachusetts, according to sightings on the community science app iNaturalist. It’s not often seen farther west than Missouri, probably because it’s not well-adapted to arid conditions, Dellinger says.

Studies have found that when Asian needle ants move into an area, they outcompete native ants, reducing ant diversity.

These ants don’t lay down pheromone trails to lead their colony to food, so you won’t see them marching in a line like the little black ant (Monomorium minimum). Instead, when an Asian needle ant finds food, it will return to its colony, pick up another worker and physically carry it to the jackpot, says Christopher Hayes, an entomologist at North Carolina State University.

And unlike fire ants, Asian needle ants don’t build big nest mounds. Instead they love nesting in damp wood, such as fallen logs or wet mulch. While they aren’t particularly aggressive, they will sting to protect their nest, making them a danger to the home gardener.

Their sting is initially more painful than a fire ant sting, Hayes says, but also irritatingly persistent, like fiberglass under the skin. The pain can also come and go. Hayes’s two-year-old son recently got a sting. The little boy was fine after a few minutes, Hayes says, but then woke up after midnight that night crying about the pain again.

In their native range, Asian needle ant bites are associated with a 2 percent risk of anaphylaxis compared with a 0.5 to 1.5 percent risk from the bites of fire ants, Hayes says.

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My family tree has always felt more like an orchard. I have two half-siblings who are unrelated to each other, but I’m so close to both of them you’ll never catch me using that term again. Ashley is nine years older than me, and my little brother, Garrett, is 20 years my junior. Now that I’m a mom to a 4-year-old boy, I hear many parents wondering if they should have more kids now, “you know, so they’re close in age.”

I’m not sure where that comes from, this pervasive idea that in order for siblings to have a close relationship, they have to be close in age. That has never been my reality. When I was a baby, our mom had to tell Ashley to stop carrying me everywhere or I’d never learn how to walk. She continued her diligent older sister duties in new ways, though, teaching me to read and write before I’d started preschool, my bubbly big letters matching hers almost exactly.

Early on, we quibbled like all siblings do. When I was a toddler, she convinced me my family had rescued me from a dumpster behind the hospital; that’s why I didn’t look like her or mom. I repaid her on other occasions, like the time I slammed her face into an alphabet peg puzzle. She was trying to convince me the M was a W so I hissed, “Don’t mess with the baby,” and let her have it.

Once everyone’s frontal lobe developed more fully, we didn’t fight much at all. I think this was because, at nine years apart, there was never any competition between us. I coveted everything she owned, sure, from her Abercrombie & Fitch clothes to the Bath & Body Works Cucumber Melon body spray she was allowed to wear to school. It didn’t matter that my mom said it smelled like stale fruit salad and made her roll down her window for the whole drive. To me, Ashley was the epitome of everything pretty and cool, and I wanted to be just like her. When she’d let me sit in her room while she straightened my hair, and I didn’t even care how many times she clamped the tops of my ears with the hot iron in the process, I was at the height of my glory.

Like all siblings, we had secrets just between us. After she’d moved out of the house and gotten a car — a decrepit Ford Taurus with a hole in the bumper — she’d pick me up from fourth grade or drive me to our grandparents’ house. We’d cruise across the causeway between the barrier island and Florida’s mainland, windows down, Ash rapping the lyrics to an absolutely vile Nate Dogg song I knew Mom would loathe. (I tracked it down and put it on my iPod as soon as I got one.)

If you have another baby in five, seven, 10 more years, your firstborn will still be close with their sibling — just not in age.

 

Sometimes I blabbed her secrets, like once when I was 7 and she had her boyfriend over to hang out when she was supposed to be watching me. I’m pretty sure she’s never told a single one of mine, though. Once she had a job and was all moved in with Jason, her high school sweetheart and now husband, in their first apartment, cobbling together her own life, she still came to all of my award ceremonies, birthday parties, and science fair events. My favorite picture of my college graduation is one my friend snapped of my face on the Jumbotron while crossing the stage, my mom and sister’s hands thrown up to the sky in front of it, both of them screaming, I’m sure.

Then, when I was 20, my little brother was born — my dad and the woman I considered my stepmom had told me she was pregnant shortly after my 19th birthday. I was shocked but excited. I spent my entire spring break hanging around their house, waiting for him to come. When I met him in the hospital, I thought he was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.

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You don’t have to have kids close together for them to be close at all.

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