Google Plans to Calculate ‘Criticality’ Scores for Open Source Projects

Programming columnist Mike Melanson writes:
As part of its involvement in the recently announced Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), Google has penned a blog post outlining one of the first steps it will take as part of this group, with an attempt at finding critical open source projects. “Open source software (OSS) has long suffered from a ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem,”…

The Hall effect links superconductivity and quantum criticality in a strange metal

Over the past few decades, researchers have identified a number of superconducting materials with atypical properties, known as unconventional superconductors. Many of these superconductors share the same anomalous charge transport properties and are thus collectively characterized as “strange metals.” …

Upskilling During Difficult Times: How Do We Keep Employees Learning from Home?

By Rich Jacquet, Coursera Chief People Officer What is the future of learning and development? The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly and dramatically disrupted workforces around the world, leading to changes in the very fabric of how we work, collaborate, and learn on the job. Companies are adapting by streamlining workforces and shifting to remote models. […]
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Resources to Support your Learners: Stay Informed & Productive During the Coronavirus Crisis

By Alison Lands, Skills Transformation Consultant As companies scramble to secure the health and safety of employees, virtualize their operations, and check-in with their customers (not to mention find a quiet + comfortable + decent-looking nook from which to work virtually in their homes!), a new level of leadership is being demanded from every individual […]
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Quantum physics: Controlled experiment observes self-organized criticality

Writing in Nature, researchers describe the first-time observation of ‘self-organized criticality’ in a controlled laboratory experiment. Complex systems exist in mathematics and physics, but also occur in nature and society. The concept of self-organized criticality claims that without external input, complex systems in non-equilibrium tend to develop into a critical state far away from a stable equilibrium. That way, they reinforce…

Quantum criticality could be a boon for qubit designers

Physicists studying the strange behavior of metal alloys called heavy fermions have made a surprising discovery that could be useful in safeguarding the information stored in quantum bits, or qubits, the basic units of encoded information in quantum computers. …

Holography and criticality in matchgate tensor networks

Tensor networks take a central role in quantum physics as they can provide an efficient approximation to specific classes of quantum states. The associated graphical language can also easily describe and pictorially reason about quantum circuits, channels, protocols and open systems. In a recent study, A. Jahn and a research team in the departments of complex quantum systems, materials and energy…