The coming of age of plasma physics

By Springer - Friday, December 28th, 2018

Once upon a time, people thought that electrons and ions always stuck together, living happily ever after. However, under low density of matter or high temperatures, the components of matter are no longer bound together. Instead, they form plasma, a state of matter naturally occurring in our universe, which has since been harnessed for everyday applications such as TV screens, chip etching and torches, but also propulsion and even sustained energy production via controlled fusion.

The Case Against Quantum Computing

By Mikhail Dyakonov - Friday, December 28th, 2018

In quantum computing, the classical two-state circuit element (the transistor) is replaced by a quantum element called a quantum bit, or qubit. Like the conventional bit, it also has two basic states. Although a variety of physical objects could reasonably serve as quantum bits, the simplest thing to use is the electron’s internal angular momentum, or spin, which has the peculiar quantum property of having only two possible projections on any coordinate axis: +1/2 or –1/2 (in units of the Planck constant). For whatever the chosen axis, you can denote the two basic quantum states of the electron’s spin as ? and ?.

Information Security Manual update: 20% less cyber controls, no more ‘should’ or ‘must’

By Stephen Easton - Thursday, December 27th, 2018

The Australian government’s Information Security Manual has been simplified with the removal of 258 recommended cyber security controls and the addition of 63.

Words like “should” and “must” were also removed from the descriptions of 687 entries to get away from “compliance-based language” in the manual, according to a report listing all the changes.

Presumably, the idea is to encourage executives to take charge of managing cyber security risks and to use the ISM as a guide, but not to rely on it too much as a kind of checklist.

The latest update sees a net reduction of 20% on the 950 individual security tips that were listed in the previous version of the ISM.

2018: The Year of Skepticism

By Ted Smillie - Wednesday, December 26th, 2018

Yes, 2018 was a year of skepticism, where sound advice was often shouted down by unconscious bias, but by year end there were encouraging signs. On the down side: On climate change scepticism, a 20 December 2018   study led by researchers at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH) notes that “The World Health […]