Is the Lose of Religious Liberties Inevitable in a Modern Society?

By: Alexandria Addesso

Religion has long been the scapegoat of many of the world’s problems; poverty, ignorance, immorality, backwardness, and war. It is believed and frequently perpetuated that most wars were started and carried out because of religion, such instances were usually deemed “holy wars”. But do these notions suggest that there must be a war fought against religion itself?

Most first-world Western Nations are highly secularized. Where religions were once used to dictate moral standards and laws, now modern “norms” seem to be the guiding light. Such nations that lean toward secularism seem to hold atheism as the highest intellectual belief structure (or rather lack thereof). So what does that mean for those who still practice religions or formal faith structures?

Religious liberty and freedoms are hot-button topics in current events. The newly elected United States president, just days after being inaugurated, signed an executive order that banned people from entering the country if their visas were from 7 particular countries and if they were also Muslim. And while some may not disagree with these measures and brand the United States as a “Christian” nation, the state department completely disregarded the
Christian genocide that was ongoing in the Middle East and Africa for several years.



What is the cost we pay for progressiveness? Technological and scientific advances seem to push the need for the protection of religious liberties and freedoms further and further away. Would a religion-free society be better than a religious one? There is no doubt that many people would fight to establish the former, and there are currently people working for just that.

But with a look back on history to nations that tried to eliminate religions and make all such practices illegal does not paint a perfect picture, but rather just the gruesome opposite. The Cristero Rebellions in the 1920s where the Mexican government tried to suppress Catholicism and kill off clergy is one such example of such wickedness. The religionless Soviet Union is another. Yet in most of these cases the faith of such adherents only seemed to grow stronger, even unto death. So should these religious liberties be protected like any other human right or should they be part of the “final test”? Stay vigilant.

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Quantum Computing: Information can be carry using a Photon

A Princeton University-led team has built a device that advances silicon-based quantum computers, which when built will be able to solve problems beyond the capabilities of everyday computers. The device isolates an electron so that can pass its quantum information to a photon, which can then act as a messenger to carry the information to other electrons to form the circuits of the computer.

In a step that brings silicon-based quantum computers closer to reality, researchers have built a device in which a single electron can pass its quantum information to a particle of light.

In a step that brings silicon-based quantum computers closer to reality, researchers at Princeton University have built a device in which a single electron can pass its quantum information to a particle of light. The particle of light, or photon, can then act as a messenger to carry the information to other electrons, creating connections that form the circuits of a quantum computer.

The research published in the journal Science and conducted at Princeton and HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California, represents a more than five-year effort to build a robust capability for an electron to talk to a photon, said Jason Petta, a Princeton professor of physics.



"Just like in human interactions, to have good communication a number of things need to work out -- it helps to speak the same language and so forth,"Petta said. "We are able to bring the energy of the electronic state into resonance with the light particle, so that the two can talk to each other."

The discovery will help the researchers use light to link individual electrons, which act as the bits, or smallest units of data, in a quantum computer. Quantum computers are advanced devices that, when realized, will be able to perform advanced calculations using tiny particles such as electrons, which follow quantum rules rather than the physical laws of the everyday world.

Each bit in an everyday computer can have a value of a 0 or a 1. Quantum bits -- known as qubits -- can be in a state of 0, 1, or both a 0 and a 1 simultaneously. This superposition, as it is known, enables quantum computers to tackle complex questions that today's computers cannot solve.

Simple quantum computers have already been made using trapped ions and superconductors, but technical challenges have slowed the development of silicon-based quantum devices. Silicon is a highly attractive material because it is inexpensive and is already widely used in today's smartphones and computers.

The researchers trapped both an electron and a photon in the device, then adjusted the energy of the electron in such a way that the quantum information could transfer to the photon. This coupling enables the photon to carry the information from one qubit to another located up to a centimeter away.

Quantum information is extremely fragile -- it can be lost entirely due to the slightest disturbance from the environment. Photons are more robust against disruption and can potentially carry quantum information not just from qubit to qubit in a quantum computer circuit but also between quantum chips via cables.



For these two very different types of particles to talk to each other, however, researchers had to build a device that provided the right environment. First, Peter Deelman at HRL Laboratories, a corporate research-and-development laboratory owned by the Boeing Company and General Motors, fabricated the semiconductor chip from layers of silicon and silicon-germanium. This structure trapped a single layer of electrons below the surface of the chip. Next, researchers at Princeton laid tiny wires, each just a fraction of the width of a human hair, across the top of the device. These nanometer-sized wires allowed the researchers to deliver voltages that created an energy landscape capable of trapping a single electron, confining it in a region of the silicon called a double quantum dot.

The researchers used those same wires to adjust the energy level of the trapped electron to match that of the photon, which is trapped in a superconducting cavity that is fabricated on top of the silicon wafer.

Prior to this discovery, semiconductor qubits could only be coupled to neighboring qubits. By using light to couple qubits, it may be feasible to pass information between qubits at opposite ends of a chip.

The electron's quantum information consists of nothing more than the location of the electron in one of two energy pockets in the double quantum dot. The electron can occupy one or the other pocket, or both simultaneously. By controlling the voltages applied to the device, the researchers can control which pocket the electron occupies.

"We now have the ability to actually transmit the quantum state to a photon confined in the cavity," said Xiao Mi, a graduate student in Princeton's Department of Physics and first author on the paper. "This has never been done before in a semiconductor device because the quantum state was lost before it could transfer its information."



The success of the device is due to a new circuit design that brings the wires closer to the qubit and reduces interference from other sources of electromagnetic radiation. To reduce this noise, the researchers put in filters that remove extraneous signals from the wires that lead to the device. The metal wires also shield the qubit. As a result, the qubits are 100 to 1000 times less noisy than the ones used in previous experiments.

Eventually the researchers plan to extend the device to work with an intrinsic property of the electron known as its spin. "In the long run we want systems where spin and charge are coupled together to make a spin qubit that can be electrically controlled," Petta said. "We've shown we can coherently couple an electron to light, and that is an important step toward coupling spin to light."
Story Source: Princeton University

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Thinking With Our Hands Can Help Find New Ways to Solve Problems

Using objects when trying to solve problems may help to find new ways of finding a solution, researchers report.

Have you ever tried to solve a complicated math’s problem by using your hands, or shaped a piece of clay without planning it out in your head first? Understanding how we think and make decisions by interacting with the world around us could help businesses find new ways of improving productivity – and even improve people’s chances of getting a job, according to experts from Kingston University.

New research by Gaëlle Vallée-Tourangeau, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, and Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau, Professor of Psychology, is challenging the traditional idea that thinking takes place strictly in the head. Instead, they are seeking to demonstrate how our decision making is heavily influenced by the world around us – and that using tools or objects when problem solving can spark new ways of finding solutions.

The idea that thinking is done only in the head is a convenient illusion that doesn’t reflect how problems are solved in reality, Professor Gaëlle Vallée-Tourangeau explained. “When you write or draw, the action itself makes you think differently,” she said. “In cognitive psychology you are trained to see the mind as a computer, but we’ve found that people don’t think that way in the real world. If you give them something to interact with they think in a different way.”



In a recently-published study in the Acta Psychologica Journal, the two Kingston University academics invited 50 participants to try and solve the problem of how to put 17 animals into four pens in such a way that there were an odd number of animals in each one.

The participants were split into two groups, with the first group able to build physical models with their hands and the second group tasked with using an electronic tablet and stylus to sketch out an answer. They found that the model-building participants were much more likely to find the solution – which requires designing an overlapping pen configuration – than those with the tablet.

“We showed with this study that for some types of problem – regardless of an individual’s cognitive ability – being able to physical interact with tools gave people a fighting chance of solving it,” said Professor Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau. “By contrast, a pen and paper-type method almost guaranteed they wouldn’t be able to. It demonstrates how interacting with the world can really benefit people’s performance.”

The cognitive psychology experts have also been working on a new piece of research exploring how math’s anxiety – a debilitating emotional reaction to mental arithmetic that can lead sufferers to avoid even simple tasks like splitting a restaurant bill – could potentially be managed through interactivity.



The study now published in the Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications journal, involved asking people to speak a word repeatedly while doing long sums at the same time. It found that the mathematical ability of those asked to do the sums in their heads was more affected than those given number tokens that they could move with their hands.

However, the really interesting finding was how a person’s math anxiety affected the results, Professor Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau said. “We found that for those adding the sums in their head, their math anxiety score predicted the magnitude of errors made while speaking a word repeatedly. If they’re really math anxious, the impact will be huge,” he explained. “But in a high interactivity context – when they were moving number tokens – they behaved as if they were not anxious about numbers.

“The horrible thing about math’s anxiety is that some people cope by completely avoiding math’s, which only worsens the problem. That’s what makes these findings really interesting. Trying to understand why the fear factor is eliminated or controlled to a manageable level when using your hands rather than just your head is the question we’re trying to get to the bottom of now.”

As well as potentially being of benefit when it comes to teaching, re-examining old ideas of how we think could have numerous practical applications, Professor Gaëlle Vallée-Tourangeau added. “If you look at recruitment, for example, a lot of assessment centers use classical intelligence tests when interviewing candidates. But depending on the type of work they are recruiting for, they may be missing out on the best people for the job.



“In business and management, all the models are using the old metaphor of decision making as information processing, which is something I think we need to overcome. We need to redefine how thinking occurs.”
Source: NEUROSCIENCE NEW, Source: Kingston University

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