Free Republic

Originally built to speed up calculations, a machine-learning system is now making shocking progress at the frontiers of experimental quantum physicsQuantum physicist Mario Krenn remembers sitting in a café in Vienna in early 2016, poring over computer printouts, trying to make sense of what MELVIN had found. MELVIN was a machine-learning algorithm Krenn had built, a kind of artificial intelligence. Its job was to mix and match the building blocks of standard quantum experiments and find solutions to new problems. And it did find many interesting ones. But there was one that made no sense. “The first thing I thought...

SIERRA VISTA — The Sierra Vista Fire Department is looking to the community to design a memorial honoring those that lost their lives in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 that will house a piece of the World Trade Center recovered from the wreckage. The deadline for registering for the competition, which is open to all residents of the county who are 15 years old and older, is May 30, while designs must be submitted prior to June 20. The memorial will be incorporated into the Maltese Cross layout on the south side of Fire Station 263 on Giulio Cesare...

The United States is honoring our Nation's Presidents by issuing $1 circulating coins featuring their images in the order that they served in office. The United States Mint issues four Presidential $1 Coins each year, with Presidents Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, and Lincoln being honored in 2010. Each coin has a common reverse design featuring a striking rendition of the Statue of Liberty. These coins feature large, dramatic artwork, as well as edge-incused inscriptions of the year of minting, or issuance, E PLURIBUS UNUM and the mint mark. In 2009 "In God We Trust" was moved from the edge to the...

Mathematician Andrew Hicks was in his Drexel University office, puzzling over some problem he can no longer recall, when colleague Ron Perline walked in with a challenge. Fresh from his morning bicycle ride from Germantown, Perline was unhappy with the rearview mirror mounted on his handlebars. Its tiny surface was curved, reflecting a wide-angle view of the road behind him, but the image was badly distorted. Could math provide the path to better reflection? Perline asked. Indeed it could. Eight years and numerous calculations later, Hicks is now testing a prototype mirror - for a car, not a bike -...

I got into this because I see this as a very important election....and with the committment of McCain selecting Palin it sent an important signal to every conservative out there to get out and hustle because you can win USE YOUR PRINTER....The idea behind this is to use your printer and your webpage to get your message out. Included are easy designs with conservative themes tying it into the national campaign using your computer and printer which I have designed for printing presses . Material that gotten state legislators; senators, representatives, and yes even aldermen elected to office in one...

United States Mint Announces the 2007 Designs for the 50 State Quarters® Program WASHINGTON – The United States Mint today officially released the designs selected for the five new 2007 commemorative quarter-dollar coins in the United States Mint’s 50 State Quarters® Program. The new quarters will honor Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. The coins will be issued at approximate ten-week intervals beginning early in 2007. The public may exchange their bills for each new quarter in person at the site of the official quarter launches, or buy the coins online when they are issued. The new quarters will also...

I admit, I wasn't overly impressed with Yamanaka Shunji's various designs until I read the specs on this one. It is an eight-wheeled vehicle that he and Chiba Institute of Technology's Furuta Takayuki designed. Nissan also pitched in to see how robotics and automobile technology can get along. The vehicle can make a 360-degree circle, move diagonally, and - get this - even climb stairs. I am guilty, too. I have often accused the Japanese of not being very creative. They are amazing at copying and approving on previous designs -- and then mass-producing them while maintaining quality. But my...

2006 State Quarter Designs Here are the 2006 State Quarters in order of release: Nevada The first commemorative quarter-dollar coin released in 2006 honors Nevada, and is the 36th coin in the United States Mint's 50 State Quarters® Program. Nevada, nicknamed "The Silver State," was admitted into the Union on October 31, 1864, becoming our Nation's 36th state. Nevada's quarter depicts a trio of wild mustangs, the sun rising behind snow-capped mountains, bordered by sagebrush and a banner that reads "The Silver State." The coin also bears the inscriptions "Nevada" and "1864." Nevada became a territory in 1861, several years...

The intelligent-design movement is a small but growing force on US university campuses. For some it bridges the gap between science and faith, for others it goes beyond the pale. Geoff Brumfiel meets the movement's vanguard. For a cold Tuesday night in March, the turnout is surprisingly good. Twenty or so fresh-faced college students are gathered together in a room in the student union at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, the state's largest public university. They are there for the first meeting of Salvador Cordova's Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) club.

Iran admits to UN it bought designs for nuclear bomb (Filed: 19/11/2005) Iran has admitted obtaining designs that could help it make a nuclear bomb, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said yesterday in a confidential report. After more than two years of investigations, it is the closest that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have come to linking Teheran's electricity generation project with an alleged weapons programme. The discovery will raise tensions before next week's meeting of the IAEA board of governors, which will debate whether to report Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. The IAEA...

With the East Asia Security Act of 2005 (H.R. 3100), Congress has the opportunity to give the President valuable leverage to form a strategic consensus on arms sales to China. EASA mandates that any person, firm, or country that provides military arms, equipment, or technology to China or dual-use items to the Chinese military, security forces, police, or other repressive agencies face heightened scrutiny of its arms relationship with China and, if warranted, be denied access to U.S. weapons technology. By giving teeth to U.S. diplomats’ warnings to Europeans who would end the EU’s embargo on arms sales to China,...

A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation. By Douglas Frantz, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington's watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year. Two Western nuclear weapons specialists who have examined the top-secret designs say the hundreds of pages of engineering drawings and handwritten notes...

Che Guevara is more than just a sleazy tee shirt on an aging leftwinger's food-dribbled chest. Che Guevara is a live emblem of hemispheric terror, kidnapping and murder. And not just in the 1960s but happening right now. Today! The news, still in only Spanish, has just come out this afternoon. Colombia's government just released a tape proving, without a shadow of a doubt, that filthy Marxist narcoterrorist FARC and ELN guerrillas are operating a string of working terrorist camps inside Venezuela. And not just inside Venezuela in the way we thought they were, as Hugo Chavez-hosted recreational guerrilla spas,...

"The Government had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. They will get war too." -Churchill The grotesque Granda case would seem to be the cause of our problem with Venezuela in the same way that the war of independence would have been due to the insolence with which the chapeton refused to lend the flower vase to the party to honor Antonio Villavicencio. ... From the Ministry of Interior and Justice we warned that the key to our relationship with Chavez could be found in the Sao Paulo Forum, and in the communist conspiracy that was being...

Dear Dr. Lewis, This e-mail is in response to your above-referenced article published today, Dec. 19th on ChronWatch.http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=11860. Very little of what follows will be news to you but please indulge me. These past 60 odd years the West has been on the defensive trying (ineffectually) to keep Islam at bay and Islam has been on the offensive their declared aim being to convert by armed force the infidels except the Jews whose eradication from this planet has been (with Europe's quiet acquiescence) pronounced, save young Jewish maidens destined to be parceled out to the harems of the faithful. It...

TERRORISTS 2, NEW YORK 0 by Timothy Rollins, Editor and Publisher August 23, 2004 EDITOR'S NOTE: With over 70 percent of those surveyed saying they wanted both twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York rebuilt - to include survivors and relatives of the of 9/11 attacks themselves - I am taking the highly unusual step of recommending that my readers visit the Make New York New York Again Web Site to see the point I am trying to make. You will definitely find it well worth your time. - Editor.With all the talk about designs for construction...

<p>DAVOS, SWITZERLAND – Gen. Pervez Musharraf personally acknowledged Friday that Pakistani scientists appeared to have sold nuclear designs to other nations, probably "for personal financial gain."</p> <p>He said his government did not know of the sales at the time and said that those involved would be dealt with as "anti-state elements."</p>

Bricks with molded designs unearthed in Chongqingwww.chinaview.cn 2004-01-12 20:52:43 CHONGQING, Jan. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Archaeologists in southwest China's Chongqing municipality have unearthed more than 20 pieces of brick reliefs from a tomb of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 A.D.-220 A.D.). Lin Bizhong, a noted archaeologist with the Chongqing MunicipalArchaeological Team, said this was the first time that bricks withmolded designs had been unearthed in Chongqing. Previously, such tomb bricks had been excavated from Sichuan province, southwest China, and have been included as relics under state key protection. Lin acknowledged that the brick-and-stone-structured tomb, fromwhich brick reliefs were unearthed, had been...

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - A drawing showing a Gold Rush miner, a redwood tree and a bear was the most popular design among Californians who participated in an Internet poll on what the state's commemorative quarter should look like.</p> <p>Running a close second was a scene that includes the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hollywood sign, palm trees and redwoods, state librarian Kevin Starr said Tuesday.</p>

Christian Designs Found in Tomb Stones of Eastern Han Dynasty [2002-08-02] Studies show that as early as 86 A.D., or the third year under the reign of "Yuanhe" of Eastern Han, Dynasty Christianity entered into China, 550 years earlier than the world accepted time. When studying a batch of stone carvings of Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.) stored and exhibited in the Museum of Xuzhou Han Stone Carvings, Christian theology professor Wang Weifan was greatly surprised by some stone engravings demonstrating the Bible stories and designs of early Christian times. Further studies showed that some of these engravings were made...