Monthly Archives: December 2019

The 12 Most Important and Stunning Quantum Experiments of 2019 – Livescience.com

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The smallest scale events have giant consequences. And no field of science demonstrates that better than quantum physics, which explores the strange behaviors of mostly very small things. In 2019, quantum experiments went to new and even stranger places and practical quantum computing inched ever closer to reality, despite some controversies. These were the most important and surprising quantum events of 2019.

If one quantum news item from 2019 makes the history books, it will probably be a big announcement that came from Google: The tech company announced that it had achieved "quantum supremacy." That's a fancy way of saying that Google had built a computer that could perform certain tasks faster than any classical computer could. (The category of classical computers includes any machine that relies on regular old 1s and 0s, such as the device you're using to read this article.)

Google's quantum supremacy claim, if borne out, would mark an inflection point in the history of computing. Quantum computers rely on strange small-scale physical effects like entanglement, as well as certain basic uncertainties in the nano-universe, to perform their calculations. In theory, that quality gives these machines certain advantages over classical computers. They can easily break classical encryption schemes, send perfectly encrypted messages, run some simulations faster than classical computers can and generally solve hard problems very easily. The difficulty is that no one's ever made a quantum computer fast enough to take advantage of those theoretical advantages or at least no one had, until Google's feat this year.

Not everyone buys the tech company's supremacy claim though. Subhash Kak, a quantum skeptic and researcher at Oklahoma State University, laid out several of the reasons in this article for Live Science.

Read more about Google's achievement of quantum supremacy.

Another 2019 quantum inflection point came from the world of weights and measures. The standard kilogram, the physical object that defined the unit of mass for all measurements, had long been a 130-year-old, platinum-iridium cylinder weighing 2.2 lbs. and sitting in a room in France. That changed this year.

The old kilo was pretty good, barely changing mass over the decades. But the new kilo is perfect: Based on the fundamental relationship between mass and energy, as well as a quirk in the behavior of energy at quantum scales, physicists were able to arrive at a definition of the kilogram that won't change at all between this year and the end of the universe.

Read more about the perfect kilogram.

A team of physicists designed a quantum experiment that showed that facts actually change depending on your perspective on the situation. Physicists performed a sort of "coin toss" using photons in a tiny quantum computer, finding that the results were different at different detectors, depending on their perspectives.

"We show that, in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts," the experimentalists wrote in an article for Live Science. "In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective."

Read more about the lack of objective reality.

For the first time, physicists made a photograph of the phenomenon Albert Einstein described as "spooky action at a distance," in which two particles remain physically linked despite being separated across distances. This feature of the quantum world had long been experimentally verified, but this was the first time anyone got to see it.

Read more about the unforgettable image of entanglement.

In some ways the conceptual opposite of entanglement, quantum superposition is enables a single object to be in two (or more) places at once, a consequence of matter existing as both particles and waves. Typically, this is achieved with tiny particles like electrons.

But in a 2019 experiment, physicists managed to pull off superposition at the largest scale ever: using hulking, 2,000-atom molecules from the world of medical science known as "oligo-tetraphenylporphyrins enriched with fluoroalkylsulfanyl chains."

Read about the macro-scale achievement of superposition.

Under normal circumstances, heat can cross a vacuum in only one manner: in the form of radiation. (That's what you're feeling when the sun's rays cross space to beat on your face on a summer day.) Otherwise, in standard physical models, heat moves in two manners: First, energized particles can knock into other particles and transfer their energy. (Wrap your hands around a warm cup of tea to feel this effect.) Second, a warm fluid can displace a colder fluid. (That's what happens when you turn the heater on in your car, flooding the interior with warm air.) So without radiation, heat can't cross a vacuum.

But quantum physics, as usual, breaks the rules. In a 2019 experiment, physicists took advantage of the fact that at the quantum scale, vacuums aren't truly empty. Instead, they're full of tiny, random fluctuations that pop into and out of existence. At a small enough scale, the researchers found, heat can cross a vacuum by jumping from one fluctuation to the next across the apparently empty space.

Read more about heat leaping across the quantum vacuum of space.

This next finding is far from an experimentally verified discovery, and it's even well outside the realm of traditional quantum physics. But researchers working with quantum gravity a theoretical construct designed to unify the worlds of quantum mechanics and Einstein's general relativity showed that under certain circumstances an event might cause an effect that occurred earlier in time.

Certain very heavy objects can influence the flow of time in their immediate vicinity due to general relativity. We know this is true. And quantum superposition dictates that objects can be in multiple places at once. Put a very heavy object (like a big planet) in a state of quantum superposition, the researchers wrote, and you can design oddball scenarios where cause and effect take place in the wrong order.

Read more about cause and effect reversing.

Physicists have long known about a strange effect known as "quantum tunneling," in which particles seem to pass through seemingly impassable barriers. It's not because they're so small that they find holes, though. In 2019, an experiment showed how this really happens.

Quantum physics says that particles are also waves, and you can think of those waves as probability projections for the location of the particle. But they're still waves. Smash a wave against a barrier in the ocean, and it will lose some energy, but a smaller wave will appear on the other side. A similar effect occurs in the quantum world, the researchers found. And as long as there's a bit of probability wave left on the far side of the barrier, the particle has a chance of making it through the obstruction, tunneling through a space where it seems it should not fit.

Read more about the amazing quantum tunneling effect.

This was a big year for ultra-high-pressure physics. And one of the boldest claims came from a French laboratory, which announced that it had created a holy grail substance for materials science: metallic hydrogen. Under high enough pressures, such as those thought to exist at the core of Jupiter, single-proton hydrogen atoms are thought to act as an alkali metal. But no one had ever managed to generate pressures high enough to demonstrate the effect in a lab before. This year, the team said they'd seen it at 425 gigapascals (4.2 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level). Not everyone buys that claim, however.

Read more about metallic hydrogen.

Zap a mass of supercooled atoms with a magnetic field, and you'll see "quantum fireworks": jets of atoms firing off in apparently random directions. Researchers suspected there might be a pattern in the fireworks, but it wasn't obvious just from looking. With the aid of a computer, though, researchers discovered a shape to the fireworks effect: a quantum turtle. No one's yet sure why it takes that shape, however.

Read more about the quantum turtle.

Time's supposed to move in only one direction: forward. Spill some milk on the ground, and there's no way to perfectly dry out the dirt and return that same clean milk back into the cup. A spreading quantum wave function doesn't unspread.

Except in this case, it did. Using a tiny, two-qubit quantum computer, physicists were able to write an algorithm that could return every ripple of a wave to the particle that created it unwinding the event and effectively turning back the arrow of time.

Read more about reversing time's arrow.

A nice feature of quantum computers, which rely on superpositions rather than 1s and 0s, is their ability to play out multiple calculations at once. That advantage is on full display in a new quantum prediction engine developed in 2019. Simulating a series of connected events, the researchers behind the engine were able to encode 16 possible futures into a single photon in their engine. Now that's multitasking!

Read more about the 16 possible futures.

Originally published on Live Science.

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The 12 Most Important and Stunning Quantum Experiments of 2019 - Livescience.com

Physicists Just Achieved The First-Ever Quantum Teleportation Between Computer Chips – ScienceAlert

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As 2019 winds to a close, the journey towards fully realised quantum computing continues: physicists have been able to demonstrate quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time.

Put simply, this breakthrough means that information was passed between the chips not by physical electronic connections, but through quantum entanglement by linking two particles across a gap using the principles of quantum physics.

We don't yet understand everything about quantum entanglement (it's the same phenomenon Albert Einstein famously called "spooky action"), but being able to use it to send information between computer chips is significant, even if so far we're confined to a tightly controlled lab environment.

"We were able to demonstrate a high-quality entanglement link across two chips in the lab, where photons on either chip share a single quantum state," explains quantum physicist Dan Llewellynfrom the University of Bristol in the UK.

"Each chip was then fully programmed to perform a range of demonstrations which utilise the entanglement."

Hypothetically, quantum entanglement can work over any distance. Two particles get inextricably linked together, which means looking at one tells us something about the other, wherever it is (in this case, on a separate computer chip).

To achieve their result, the team generated pairs of entangled photons, encoding quantum information in a way that ensured low levels of interference and high levels of accuracy. Up to four qubits the quantum equivalent of classical computing bits were linked together.

"The flagship demonstration was a two-chip teleportation experiment, whereby the individual quantum state of a particle is transmitted across the two chips after a quantum measurement is performed," says Llewellyn.

"This measurement utilises the strange behaviour of quantum physics, which simultaneously collapses the entanglement link and transfers the particle state to another particle already on the receiver chip."

The researchers were then able to run experiments in which the fidelity reached 91 percent as in, almost all the information was accurately transmitted and logged.

Scientists are learning more and more about how quantum entanglement works, but for now it's very hard to control. It's not something you can install inside a laptop: you need a lot of bulky, expensive scientific equipment to get it working.

But the hope is that advances in the lab, such as this one, might one day lead to advances in computing that everyone can take advantage of super-powerful processing power and a next-level internet with built-in hacking protections.

The low data loss and high stability of the teleportation, as well as the high level of control that the scientists were able to get over their experiments, are all promising signs in terms of follow-up research.

It's also a useful study for efforts to get quantum physics working with the silicon chip (Si-chip) tech used in today's computers, and the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) techniques used to make those chips.

"In the future, a single Si-chip integration of quantum photonic devices and classical electronic controls will open the door for fully chip-based CMOS-compatible quantum communication and information processing networks," says quantum physicist Jianwei Wang, from Peking University in China.

The research has been published in Nature Physics.

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Physicists Just Achieved The First-Ever Quantum Teleportation Between Computer Chips - ScienceAlert

Quantum Supremacy and the Regulation of Quantum Technologies – The Regulatory Review

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Advancing technology requires regulators to act quickly to develop standards and defenses against cyberattacks.

After a false-start in September, Google provided the first peer-reviewed evidence of quantum supremacy a month later in the prestigious journal Nature. The announcement was the latest crescendo in the development of quantum computersemerging technologies that can efficiently solve complicated computational problems with hardware that takes advantage of quantum mechanics.

With data privacy and national security at stake, agile and adaptive regulatory strategies are needed to manage the risks of fast-approaching quantum computers without thwarting their potential benefits.

Although classical computers use binary bits to perform calculations, devices under development, like Googles, use qubits that are not limited to 1s and 0s when they process information. Instead, through phenomena like superposition and entanglement, groups of qubits can have exponentially more power by not merely being on or off, but also being some blend of on and off at the same time. With the right programming and hardware design, quantum computers should be able to work smarter than classical computers when making sense of large datasets.

Demonstrating that a quantum computer can actually solve problems even supercomputers cannot handleso called quantum supremacy (or, preferably, the less violent quantum advantage)has long been an envied goal in the quantum engineering field. But, as the CEO of leading quantum technology firm Rigetti noted, practical quantum devices will create new risks and could lead to unanticipated policy challenges.

Setting risks aside, quantum technologies do promise exciting near-term benefits. Quantum advantage highlights the raw power of these devices to work with big datasets and could be used to advance drug discovery, business analytics, artificial intelligence, traffic control, and more. Although IBM has moved to cast doubt on the achievement, Googles publication claims the team is only one creative algorithm away from valuable near-term applications. The world could almost be at the dawn of an era of quantum computers with day-to-day applications.

But practical quantum computers could also rip through current cybersecurity infrastructure. The abilities of these emerging technologies create significant national security concerns, both in the United States and for other countries investing heavily in quantum technologies, such as China.

Quantum cyberattacks could also put private or sensitive information at risk or expose corporate intellectual property and trade secrets.

To be sure, one developer showing quantum advantage for a single task does not mean the quantum cyberattacks will start tomorrow, so panic should be avoided. But, despite the hype, attaining quantum advantage does signal an approaching time when these attacks could become possible.

Achieving quantum advantage or supremacy is bittersweet, then, given the potential for both benefit and harm. Even though this is the first report of the achievement in the United States, it is not impossible that this goal has been reached elsewhere or will be soon. With this understanding, what should the regulatory and policy responses look like to manage novel risks while still encouraging benefits?

Three strategies can help prepare for the coming wave of quantum computers without undermining innovation, drawing on technical standards and codes of conduct as regulatory tools.

First, private standards will be useful for responding to quantum concerns. These voluntary, technical standards can give government and industry a common language to speak by creating agreed-upon definitions and ways of measuring quantum computers performance capabilities. Technical standards can therefore facilitate policy conversations about how powerful quantum computers really are and what types of risks are realistic and deserve policymakers attention.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE) is currently working on setting standards for terminology and performance metrics in quantum computing. Given the global authority and reputation of IEEE, these standards could become quite influential when adopted and even be helpful for industry. To get ahead of potential quantum cyberattacks, experts from government, industry, academia, and NGOs should participate in standardization efforts to accelerate this work and add different perspectives to make standards more comprehensive and inclusive.

Second, the quantum computing industry itself can be proactive even without government taking the lead. I argue in a recent paper that, to guide responsible development of these powerful new technologies, quantum computing companies could create codes of conduct todetail best practices and principles for the responsible deployment of quantum computing.

Codes of conduct can show that an emerging industry is trying to be responsible and transparent while publicly setting expectations for good behavior. With concerns that quantum computers might be used for nefarious purposes or fall into the wrong hands, the industry should respond by committing to act responsibly through quantum codesand have a chance to help define what responsibility means in this new area as an added benefit.

Finally, the industry should work to support the development of standards for another technology intended to defend from quantum cyberattacks, called post-quantum cryptography. Quantum computers excel at solving problems that require factoring large numbers, which gets right to the heart of current cybersecurity methods. Post-quantum cryptography tries to counter this strength by creating new types of encryption that quantum computers will be less adept at cracking.

Post-quantum methods still must be fully developed, standardized, and then implemented in critical networkscreating a need for policy and governance efforts to facilitate the transition to a post-quantum world. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has begun to work on post-quantum standards, but these efforts will not finish overnight. The potential urgency of practical quantum computers means that work to standardize and advance post-quantum cryptographic methods deserves greater attention and resources from both the public and private sectors, as well as expert groups and non-governmental organizations.

Googles announcement that it has reached quantum advantage or supremacy is a great achievement in the long push to develop pragmatic quantum computers that can benefit society. But even though this announcement does not mean cybersecurity ends tomorrow, the security and privacy risks of quantum computers deserve policymakers prompt attention.

Responding to these challenges with public and private standards and codes of conduct should promote responsibility, security, and growth in the development of emerging quantum technologies.

Walter G. Johnson, a J.D. candidate and research assistant at the Sandra Day OConnor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he also holds a masters degree in science and technology policy.

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Quantum Supremacy and the Regulation of Quantum Technologies - The Regulatory Review

5 open source innovation predictions for the 2020s – TechRepublic

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IBM's CTO of Open Technology also looks back at the innovations of the past decade.

Open source played a significant role in software development over the past decade from containers to microservices, blockchain and serverless.

Chris Ferris, chief technology officer of Open Technology at IBM, discusses some of the open source trends from the past decade and what to expect in 2020 and beyond.

SEE: Deploying containers: Six critical concepts (TechRepublic)

The concepts of containers and microservices were merely concepts before 2010, Ferris said. Then Docker launched in 2013, planting the early seeds of the container industry.

At the same time, microservices and the technologies to make them possible were borne in open source through the Netflix OSS project.

Docker went on to become one of the most influential technologies of the 2010s, giving rise to a myriad of new open source projects, including Kubernetes, which launched in 2015.

Today, he noted, Kubernetes is the largest open source project on the planet. Companies are using the platform to transform monolithic application architectures, embracing containerized microservices that are supported by service mesh capabilities of projects such as Istio.

"In the next decade, we anticipate that open source projects such as Istio, Kubernetes and OKD will focus on making containers and microservices smaller and faster to serve the needs of cloud-native development and to reduce the container's attack surface," Ferris said.

OKD is the open source version of Red Hat's OpenShift platform. "Keep an eye on unikernels (executable images that contain system libraries, a language runtime, and necessary applications), which may also gain traction thanks to the open source communities around them."

AWS Lambda was released in 2014 and put all the PaaS services on notice. Lambda's release was followed by IBM OpenWhisk (which became Apache OpenWhisk), among others, in 2016. Both open source, distributed serverless platforms execute functions in response to events at any scale, Ferris said.

Kubernetes gained prominence in the latter part of the decade, fueling the desire to extend Kubernetes with capabilities that would enable serverless. This gave rise to Knative in 2018. Now Knative has split into multiple open source projects including Tekton, each with their own set of innovations, he said.

In the next few years, Ferris said we can expect to see containers get smaller, faster. "The potential exists to have an environment that can run containers at very little cost, instantaneously,'' pushing the boundaries of serverless platforms, he said.

IBM Watson made a huge splash when it appeared on "Jeopardy!" in 2011, bringing artificial intelligence into the mainstream. Now, Ferris noted, AI is part of our everyday lives and we interact with Siri and Alexa daily, talk with customer service chatbots regularly, use facial recognition to unlock our gadgets, and are nearing the advent of fully autonomous self-driving cars.

AI and machine learning have powered these innovations and many of the AI advancements came about thanks to open source projects such as TensorFlow and PyTorch, which launched in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

In the next decade, Ferris stressed the importance of not just making AI smarter and more accessible, but also more trustworthy. This will ensure that AI systems make decisions in a fair manner, aren't vulnerable to tampering, and can be explained, he said.

Open source is the key for building this trust into AI. Projects like the Adversarial Robustness 360 Toolkit, AI Fairness 360 Open Source Toolkit, and AI Explainability 360 Open Source Toolkit were created to ensure that trust is built into these systems from the beginning, he said.

Expect to see these projects and others from the Linux Foundation AI such as the ONNX project drive the significant innovation related to trusted AI in the future. The Linux Foundation AI provides a vendor-neutral interchange format for deep learning and machine learning.

In 2008, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto published his now famous paper on bitcoin, which introduced the concept of a blockchain network, whose purpose was to be a decentralized cryptocurrency platform.

That innovation made people start to wonder about different ways that the blockchain concepts and technology might be applied in non-cryptocurrency use cases in asset management, supply chains, healthcare, and identity, among others, Ferris said.

In 2015, IBM contributed its Open Blockchain project to the newly established Hyperledger organization, founded to develop open source blockchain technology for the enterprise. That contribution launched what has arguably become one of the two or three most popular blockchain frameworks: Hyperledger Fabric, he said.

While blockchain's initial uses were confined to cryptocurrency, open source engagement around Hyperledger and Ethereum has expanded the possibilities for how this technology is used.

In the enterprise, different approaches are being explored not only to enhance privacy but also to build a collection of nodes required to achieve confirmation on a transaction with trust almost all in open source, he said.

There has been lots of buzz around the promise of quantum computing, and although an app with a "quantum advantage" hasn't been developed yet, the ability for developers to start using quantum processors is growing and will continue to evolve in the next decade, Ferris said.

IBM's open source Qiskit software framework, released in 2016, lets developers code in Python on real quantum hardware for systems around research, education, business, and even games.

"The possibilities for how quantum computing will solve problems and interact with today's technology seem endless quantum computing could impact a wide range of domains, such as chemistry, finance, artificial intelligence, and others," he said.For that to happen will require a "significant hardware environment," Ferris said.

Open source is the best mechanism to bring about these changes, he maintained. That is what spawned ideas like microsystems, which grew out of the virtualization space, and Knative from Kubernetes.

"That wouldn't have happened in the closed source space, so it's a matter of everyone building up on everyone else's successes and someone coming along and saying, 'Here's a better idea,'" he said.

Working together, developers have the power to change entire industries, Ferris believes. "I can't think of anything that's been developed exclusively in closed source that didn't eventually come out in open source."

You don't want to miss our tips, tutorials, and commentary on the Linux OS and open source applications. Delivered Tuesdays

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20 technologies that could change your life in the next decade – Economic Times

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The decade thats knocking on our doors now the 2020s is likely to be a time when science fiction manifests itself in our homes and roads and skies as viable, everyday technologies. Cars that can drive themselves. Meat that is derived from plants. Robots that can be fantastic companions both in bed and outside.

Implanting kidneys that can be 3-D printed using your own biomaterial. Using gene editing to eradicate diseases, increase crop yield or fix genetic disorders in human beings. Inserting a swarm of nanobots that can cruise through your blood stream and monitor parameters or unblock arteries. Zipping between Delhi and New York on a hypersonic jet. All of this is likely to become possible or substantially closer to becoming a reality in the next 10 years.

Ideas that have been the staple of science fiction for decades artificial intelligence, universal translators, sex robots, autonomous cars, gene editing and quantum computing are at the cusp of maturity now. Many are ready to move out of labs and enter the mainstream. Expect the next decade to witness breakout years for the world of technology.

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The 2020s: A new decade promising miraculous tech innovations

Universal translators: End of language barrier

Climate interventions: Clearing the air from carbon

Personalised learning: Pedagogy gets a reboot with AI

Made in a Printer: 3-D printing going to be a new reality

Digital money: End of cash is near, cashless currencies are in vogue

Singularity: An era where machines will out-think human

Mach militaries: Redefining warfare in the 2020

5G & Beyond: Ushering a truly connected world

Technology: Solving the problem of clean water

Quantum computing : Beyond the power of classical computing

Nanotechnology: From science fiction to reality

Power Saver: Energy-storage may be the key to maximise power generation

Secret code: Gene editing could prove to be a game-changer

Love in the time of Robots: The rise of sexbots and artificial human beings

Wheels of the future: Flying cars, hyperloops and e-highways will transform how people travel

New skies, old fears: The good, bad& ugly of drones

Artificial creativity: Computer programs could soon churn out books, movies and music

Meat alternatives: Alternative meat market is expected to grow 10 times by 2029

Intelligent robots & cyborg warriors will lead the charge in battle

Why we first need to focus on the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence

It's time to reflect honestly on our motivations for innovation

India's vital role in new space age

Plastic waste: Environment-friendly packaging technologies will gain traction

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20 technologies that could change your life in the next decade - Economic Times

Donna Strickland appointed to Order of Canada – University of Rochester

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December 30, 2019

University of Rochesteralumna Donna Strickland 89 (PhD), who shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics, has been appointed to theOrder of Canada.

The award recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the nation. Strickland was appointed a Companion of the Order, the highest of three levels of the award. There can be no more than 165 living companions at any time.

The professor of physics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, is being recognized for her contributions to optical physics and for her innovative developments in ultra-fast optical science.

I feel so proud and privileged to be Canadian and I am thrilled to receive this recognition from my country, Strickland toldCBC news. It is an exceptional honor for me to be named a companion of the Order of Canada. This award means a great deal to me.

Strickland and Grard Mourou, former engineering professor and scientist at the University of Rochesters Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), were together recognized with the 2018 Nobel Prize for revolutionizing the field of high-intensity laser physics.

Mourou was Stricklands PhD advisor during the time they pioneered chirped-pulse amplification. Known as CPA, this work was the basis of Stricklands PhD in optics dissertation.

Today, CPA has applications in corrective eye surgeries and other surgical procedures, data storage, and quantum computing.

Tags: alumni, announcement, Institute of Optics, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Nobel Prize

Category: University News

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Donna Strickland appointed to Order of Canada - University of Rochester

A lens on 2019: The year’s best images, as seen by Globe photojournalists – The Globe and Mail

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Fred Lum

Guelph, Ont., Feb. 20: Canadian sprinter Kudakwashe Murasiranwa runs at the Gryphon Fieldhouse ahead of the OUAA track meet.

For an assignment to photograph Canadian sprinter Kudakwashe Murasiranwa, I knew I had to illustrate the feel of speed and explosive energy.

The University of Guelph field house where he was training was pretty busy, but I managed to find a spot with a clean background, away from the other athletes. With the help of the universitys media contact as a stand-in, I was able to figure out the shutter speed and lighting necessary to create this photograph.

I will say that the advantage of digital cameras bore fruit as I was able to look at results immediately, and thus able to find the right exposure, and moment when Mr. Murasiranwa exploded out of the starting blocks.

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Toronto, March 25: Keana Rodel, 7, stands beside her mother, Vanessa Rodel, at a news conference after their arrival from Hong Kong. Vanessa Rodel was one of a number of refugees who helped whistleblower Edward Snowden when he was a fugitive from U.S. authorities.

Having helped shelter whistle-blower Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, Vanessa Rodel was granted asylum in Canada, along with her daughter, Keana. The two were greeted with a large media presence when they arrived in Canada. In this photograph, a wide-eyed Keana takes in all the activity while her mother was being interviewed by the media, wanting to know about her journey from the Philippines, to Hong Kong and, finally, to Canada.

Toronto, April 29: Canadian author Barbara Gowdy is photographed before an interview at the University of Toronto's Hart House.

Portraiture is always an important part of newspaper story coverage and often the kind of assignment that can be very challenging.

For an assignment to photograph author Barbara Gowdy, The Globe and Mail was booked into a room at the University of Toronto that had a look and feel that would lend itself to a compelling portrait.

As part of my workflow, I will often use a film camera if I feel that the portrait could benefit from a different visual look. And also to have for our archives. Im thinking long term when I often shoot film.

After creating portraits with the digital camera, I had a few more minutes to photograph Ms. Gowdy with my Hasselblad (the camera that is usually called upon for my portrait work).

With black and white film, the warm tones of a room in natural light were less important. I was looking instead for subtle shades of grey and the range of tones I could squeeze out of the film.

I wouldnt go so far as to say black and white film portraits have more veracity, but I feel that it allows the reader to have a different take on the work, and the subject in front of the camera.

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Toronto, June 17: Fans crowd University Avenue as double-decker busses carrying the Toronto Raptors slowly makes its way to Nathan Phillips Square.

A few days before Junes parade for the Toronto Raptors, the newest NBA champions, editors decided that we wouldnt go with two photographers on the ground. My task was to go up in a helicopter and try to capture the expected million-plus fans that would be lining the streets of downtown Toronto.

Having been told what helicopter Id be flying in, of course I had to Google it. I jokingly described the helicopter as two flying lawn chairs, attached to a large engine, surrounded by a plexiglass bubble. But with no door on my side.

The day started off with a speed bump when the pilot informed me at the last minute that the airspace over downtown Toronto was closed off. Zero access. Im up in Kleinburg at the aerodrome. Too late to drive back. Our plan was to beeline to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport and work from there. Now, we potentially had to take a long detour around the airspace. Fortunately, the pilot was given permission to fly straight through and head directly to the island airport.

While we were on route in the closed airspace, we were then allowed to fly around and take some photographs before having to land. From around 2,300 feet up, all one could see were streets clogged with people waiting for the team to come through. So flying over City Hall where the parade was heading, I saw a huge mass of people and my first thought was that I totally missed the teams procession.

Upon landing at the airport, a television was broadcasting the parade, which showed that the team buses had barely left the CNE.

Having been given permission by air traffic control to take another circuit around the core, I heard over the radio that the Snowbirds aerobatic team were going to do a fly past, and that they were leaving Toronto Pearson in a few minutes. The airspace was going to be closed again. As luck would have it, while we were airborne, we were told that the Snowbirds were delayed and that we could keep flying. So we made as many laps as we could, trying to find the red double-decker buses that carried the players. On what turned out to be our last circuit, we located the buses and I took as many frames as possible.

After making sure I had what I needed, I headed back to Kleinburg, where I had to rush to make deadline. Now it was all in the hands of the editors and page designers.

Secaucus, N.J., Nov. 23: Steve Katrensky, dressed as TV mobster Tony Soprano, looks at a wall of memes from the HBO show at the first-ever SopranosCon.

Ive never seen an episode of The Sopranos. Ever. I knew of the show and actors, but that was it. So, of course, I was asked if I wanted to head to New Jersey to cover the inaugural SopranosCon. I joined Globe writer Barry Hertz, who was already there to write a story about the fan convention. I quickly learned that track suits are a big part of The Sopranos backstory and Bada Bing also has a history.

The earliest flight out of Toronto had me camera-ready and working by around 11 a.m. or so. Again, for this assignment, I brought a film camera, hoping to make a portrait series of fans dressed up as their favourite character on the show. Id also decided that for the black-and-white work, I was going to use a straight flash, as I wanted that fan-snapshot aesthetic.

I lost track of how many laps I made around the convention floor. There was so much to see and photograph, and I had to keep checking to make sure I didnt miss anything.

This particular fan, Steve Katrensky from Dunellen, N.J., was dressed as the title character, Tony Soprano. There were a few Tony Sopranos walking around, but he had The Vibe and also was a great subject. I ran into him often and photographed him often as well. It was this photo of Steve looking at the wall of Sopranos memes that was one of my favourites from the convention.

Neskantaga First Nation, August: Elias Atlookan, 17, pauses to reflect on his home First Nation before he leaves to attend high school in Thunder Bay, just more than an hour away by plane.

The Globe set up a bureau in Thunder Bay in 2019 to cover First Nations issues and give their stories prominence in a media landscape that has often overlooked their problems and grievances. This Northwestern Ontario city had been in the news because of its relationship with the First Nations community, one fraught with racism.

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With writer Geoffrey York, we flew into the First Nations community of Neskantaga (Lansdowne House, an hour or so flying time north of Thunder Bay), to cover a continuing water crisis. The community has been under a boil-water advisory for nearly 25 years. At the same time, many students were flying south to Thunder Bay to continue their schooling at a First Nations high school.

Trying to find students to speak with was challenging until we came across Elias Atlookan near a boat launch. Mr. Atlookan had already been down in Thunder Bay for high school and one of his closest friends was among the seven young people whose deaths were the subject of an inquest in 2016.

Toronto, June 2: Raptors forward Kawhi Leonard runs into heavy traffic with centres Marc Gasol of the Raptors and Andrew Bogut of the Golden State Warriors during Game 2 of the NBA finals.

For the Toronto Raptors playoff run, I was accredited to cover the home games at Scotiabank Arena. With courtside seats reserved for media outlets that cover the team throughout the year, I was among many who had to photograph the game from the stands. High up. This might seem like a bad position, but often the higher angle can produce something that just cant be captured from up close.

My coverage basically involved keeping my lens on Kawhi Leonard whenever he was on the court. No other player mattered. It was all Kawhi, all the time. This made things easy, but also tough because there were spots on the court that were blocked from my high position. Nonetheless, it was pretty straightforward and with enough opportunities, a good frame of Kawhi being blanketed by the opposing team was the reward.

Toronto, June 4: Brian Mulroney looks into the camera at a Canadian Club luncheon.

There was a time when we covered almost every business luncheon that had an important politician making the keynote speech. We dont do that as much any more, but if its Brian Mulroney, a former prime minister, it was a given that Id be going. These events are pretty standard for coverage. The subjects are photographed at the head table or behind the podium during their speech and/or Q&A session. But one can only photograph someone behind a podium for so long, before one needs to look for another angle.

Much of our job as photographers is waiting. But if we look hard enough for a different angle, we can usually find something else that goes beyond the static man-and-podium photo. We try to find the candid moments. They can be very quick and fleeting, but thats why we wait and watch.

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Gillam, Man., Aug. 7: RCMP load human remains onto a plane after a weeks-long manhunt for two murder suspects. The bodies, discovered in the remote northern Manitoba woods, were flown to Winnipeg for an autopsy that would confirm they belonged to Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod.

When we found out that the RCMP had recovered what they believed to be the bodies of Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod, I knew this was the photograph I had to capture. It was the grim ending to a manhunt for two murder suspects that had stretched across half the country and into the endless forests of isolated northern Manitoba.

It was my 13th day in the Gillam area covering the story with Renata DAliesio. The photo was created 10 minutes before deadline after I had spent hours hiking through the forest, unable to find the site where the police were working the scene.

It was surreal to capture the end of this ordeal in a photograph. Hours earlier, the police had confirmed to us that they were leaving the area. The families of both the victims and the suspects, and the people in Fox Lake Cree Nation and Gillam, would have no answers. Then they announced that they found something and the scramble was on.

It was a sorrowful photo to create, but I was gratified to have the opportunity to show the country the end of this story.

Gillam, Man., July 26: Local resident Alex Muzyczka takes daughters Vada, Adelle and Frankie out for an errand, passing an RCMP armoured vehicle brought for the manhunt. By this point, it was four days since the fugitives were last seen.

I arrived in Gillam, Man., on July 26 with Renata DAliesio a few days after the suspects had been spotted near the area. We had to start reporting and photographing right away to get a story online and make deadline for the Saturday paper.

It was difficult to arrive late into the story. We had to stay together since we had one vehicle and didnt know the area. I was struggling to find interesting storytelling images while Renata was conducting interviews.

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About an hour after we landed, I jogged across a parking lot to catch up to this family. I wanted to capture the family walking through town because there were very few people out and about at the start of the manhunt. I spotted the RCMPs armoured vehicle parked behind the detachment headquarters and created this picture as the family passed. I think the vehicle shows the intensity of the police search, as the young family tried to continue with their regular lives.

Thunder Bay, July 24: Jake MacLaurin hugs his sons Odin, 7, and Donald, 10, after a meal at the Coney Island Westfort diner.

In Thunder Bay this summer, I had the opportunity to spend time at the small diner, Coney Island Westfort, for an Eric Andrew-Gee story. The diner has been open for more than 70 years. Its in a working-class neighbourhood, across the river from Fort William First Nation. Erics story focused on positive vibes of the employees and regulars, and the lack of judgment in a city that often sees conflict around class and race.

I spent the lunch rush over two days in the diner and ate a few Coney dogs. Coney sauce is inspired by the original Coney Island in New York. Thunder Bay has at least five spots that specialize in the dish.

After lunch at the Westfort, a regular patron, Jake MacLaurin from Fort William First Nation, hugs his sons before they leave. You can see what we call camera shake and distortion on the edges of this photo. I had just changed lenses and had to quickly adjust the frame to get the hug. In the end, I was happy to capture a genuine moment that helped show the family feel of the diner.

Toronto, June 17: Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri signs a fan's jersey at the start of the team's victory parade.

After the Raptors won the NBA championship, they took part in the largest, wildest parade Ive ever seen. It seemed like every photographer and videographer in Toronto was covering the event.

This photo was created at the start of the parade under the Princess Gates at the CNE. Raptors president Masai Ujiri and his family were in a car together. The parade was stopped when a young fan mustered the courage to walk up to Mr. Ujiri and ask for an autograph. They shared a fist bump and the young fan slipped back into the crowd. It was a sweet, subtle moment between Mr. Ujiri (who is only the second black NBA executive to win a championship) and the young fan.

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Toronto, Feb. 27: Burton Goicoechea sits in his powered wheelchair at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital alongside his mother, Jan Genge. The 15-year-old Burton has spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic disorder.

Last winter, I spent the day with Burton Goicoechea and his mother, Jan Genge for a story with health reporter Kelly Grant. Burton lives with spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, a rare genetic neuromuscular disorder that causes a loss of nerve cells and severely weakens his muscles. The 15-year-old can no longer walk, stand or turn over in bed at night.

We were documenting a day in their life as the family waited to hear if Burton would have access to a new, expensive drug called Spinraza that could help slow the degeneration of his disease and possibly even improve his mobility.

This photograph captured an exhausted Burton after he had endured a number of exercises to test his baseline mobility at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. Ms. Genge spends much of her time caring for Burton, who is a funny, vibrant teenager, but, because of SMA, needs a lot of assistance.

The dynamic between the pair is loving and familiar, and with as much sass as most teenagers and mothers that I know. I like this photo because Burtons face is showing some of the strain of his condition, while his mother helps him in a brightly painted room. Theres no way around it, Burton and his family dont live an easy life, so to me it was important to show that struggle either explicitly, or with a bit more subtlety.

Burton is now receiving publicly funded access to Spinraza.

Toronto, Sept. 27: Carmen Zielinski and Chloe Lederman, both 16, shout 'shame' at Queen's Park as they take part in a global climate strike.

I arrived at Queens Park early in the morning before Torontos wave of the Sept. 27 climate strike was to start. I had been give the task of getting a good overall shot of the protest.

After being denied access to any buildings in the area, I spent some time trying to get the best vantage point from the historic Queens Park building. What I ended up with was a fairly good overall image. However, once I had filed that photo to the office, I decided to try to head down to the crowd. I squeezed my way past other media and some protesters to the front of a stage that was set up for speeches and music for the day before the group would head off for their march. It was a hot day and I was crouched down trying not to block the audience.

During a speech, the crowd began to shout shame and I quickly stood up and raised my camera above my head to try and get the young protesters in front. I also wanted to show how far back the crowd went. Thankfully, the photo worked out, and it ended up being my best photo of the day.

Newmarket, Ont., Aug. 13: Shameela Shakeel and daughter Yasmeen, 8, play a card game at home. Yasmeen struggled with anxiety in her previous year at school, where another student acted violently in the classroom several times.

I spent a bit of time with Shameela Shakeel and her daughter for a project on the rise of violent incidents in schools and how boards across Canada struggle to manage children with complex needs. Eight-year-old Yasmeen had a difficult time in school the year before. She had to deal with anxiety after multiple incidents where a student with complex needs lost control in the classroom, requiring the room to be evacuated. While I was at their home, the two played a game together in the kitchen with natural light shining on them and I documented the lovely moment.

Regina, Oct. 21: Conservative supporter Blanca Powell watches results come in at the party's election-night event. The Conservatives won all Saskatchewan's seats and all but one of Alberta's, but nationally, they didn't unseat the Trudeau Liberals as they had hoped.

On federal election night, I was in Regina, mostly to film and edit video of Andrew Scheer giving his concession speech. But I was also able to spend time beforehand taking some photographs of supporters in the audience as the results were revealed. The lighting in the venue cast a Conservative blue hue over the crowd. At the start, there was the usual excitement but the tone became more serious as reality sunk in.

Scarborough, Oct. 4: Larisa Mann works with corrective exercise specialist Maciej Ornach at the GoodLife Fitness centre. She goes to the gym twice a week to strengthen her muscles after being hit by a car while waiting for a bus near her home.

This photo is part of a Globe investigation on distracted driving. When I met Larisa Mann, who had been hit by a distracted driver, I was impressed by how happy she seemed despite everything that had happened to her physically and mentally. More than a year after the crash, she is still recovering, working hard on getting back to normal. When she is able, she attends chiropractic sessions and message therapy, as well as counselling appointments. And, she tries to go to the gym twice a week. Ms. Mann is building her strength in her legs and body again, trying to recover from injuries that were a result of someone elses bad decision.

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A lens on 2019: The year's best images, as seen by Globe photojournalists - The Globe and Mail

From streaming wars to Star Wars to Joker: The stories that ruled the geekverse in 2019 – SYFY WIRE

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What can we say about 2019? It was a whirlwind of a year when it came to news from the worldsof science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Box-office records were utterly shattered;Oscar-winning directors picked fights over superheroes;Baby Yoda was born into pop culture;the MCU was changed forever in Avengers: Endgame;two major new streaming services went live;and the public finally decided to try and see what the government is hiding in Area 51.

At times, it felt like every news story was trying to top the last one in terms of craziness. In an effort to make sense of the last 365 days, here are our picks for the biggest news stories about the geekverseto break the internet (and our psyches) in 2019.

2019 will officially be known as the year we started keeping Googlespreadsheets of all the streaming services we subscribe to. Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu are no longer the only big guns on the battlefield. Within a few weeks of each other, Apple TV+ and Disney+ went live, unleashing original genre programminglike See, Servant,For All Mankind, and The Mandalorian. With HBO Max slated to debut this coming spring with offerings like Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai,DMZ, and the entire Studio Ghibli library, the Streaming Warswill only get bloodier.

The Rise of Skywalker (which debuted to a massive $176 million amid unfavorable reviews) wasn't the only major newsfrom the galaxy far, far away in 2019. For instance, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss showrunners of Game of Thrones parted ways with Lucasfilm after they had signed on to create a post-Skywalker trilogy. Then there was the premiere ofThe Mandalorian on Disney+, which thrust the adorable "Baby Yoda" into our midst. And let's not forget about that spine-chillinglaugh in the first Rise of Skywalkertrailer that heralded the return of Ian McDiarmid'sEmperor Palpatine.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe will never be the same after Avengers: Endgame, but that's for the best, as it allows Kevin Feige & Co. to explorepaths we haven't seen yet. At this year's San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Studios dumped a ton of news on us about the next phase of Marvel films and TV shows. Black Widow will lead the pack in early May, kicking off a string of big-screen releases like Eternals, Shang-Chi, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Thor: Love and Thunder. Then there's all of the Disney+ shows that tie into the films, like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Loki, Hawkeye, What If...?, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, and She-Hulk.

In the summer of 2018, Disney shocked the world of pop culture by firing James Gunn as director ofGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. over offensivetweets he had once written. For months, fans hoped that the Mouse House would reconsider its decision or, at the very least, recruit a filmmaker who would do right by the cinematicfranchise that turned obscure comic book characters into household names. In March of this year, MCU viewers rejoiced and breathed a sighof reliefas Marvel Studios decided to bring Gunn back for Vol. 3, which is expected to begin shooting next year. Before that happens, though,Gunn has to finish The Suicide Squad for Warner Bros., becoming a rare director to helm films at both Marvel and DC.

On May 19, 2019, HBO'sGame of Thrones aired its final episode ever. For eight epic seasons, the high-fantasy series (based on the novels by George R.R. Martin) captivated millions of people, who would tune in without fail to follow the ever-shifting geopolitics inWesteros and beyond. Who would take the Iron Throne? Who would be the next to die unexpectedly? Would the Night King and his undead army ever be defeated? All of these questions and many more swirled in our minds across 73 episodes of sex, violence, betrayal, ice zombies, and dragons.

And while many audience members were ultimately let down by Season 8(going so far as to petition to have it remade), no one can deny the immense impact Game of Throneshas had on the way television is produced and enjoyed.

Even as it had one foot out the door, the show managed to snag headlines for weeks after a stray coffee cup was spotted during "The Last of the Starks." To this day, we still have no idea who was responsible for the caffeine-related gaffe, but Conleth Hill is a seriousperson of interest in the ongoing investigation.

What's next for Westeros on television? A prequel series starring Naomi Watts was shockingly axed before airing its pilot episode, but HBO has decided to go in a different direction with a spinoff project about HouseTargaryen.

The global box office was pretty much ruled by genre films this year. For instance, Avengers: Endgame unseated James Cameron's Avatar for the honor of history's highest-grossing movie. Endgame was just one of six Disney releases to cross $1 billion this year. Captain Marvel, Aladdin, Toy Story 4,The Lion King, and Frozen II achieved the same feat, helping the Mouse House to become the first studio ever to surpass $10 billion worldwide in one year.

Over in DC-land, Todd Phillips' Joker became the highest-grossing R-rated film ever, wrenching the title out of Deadpool's baby hands. It also became the first R-rated film to cross the coveted $1 billion mark. Aquaman, which became the highest-grossing DC movie back in January, is still the biggest DC movie ever, with $1.14billion.

Does a movie have a socialresponsibility? Can a piece of cinema inspire violence in others? These were the questions many folks were asking prior to therelease of Todd Phillips' Joker in early October.

Telling the story of a neglected loner who unintentionally sparks a revolution in Gotham City, the film follows theorigin of the man who would becomeBatman's greatest nemesis. But since Arthur Fleck (played by Joaquin Phoenix) is the project's protagonist, many were concerned that some individuals would want to lionize his violent agenda.

"We were certainly aware of the responsibility and the fact that youre humanizing a character that does bad things," the movie's director of photography, Lawrence Sher, told SYFY WIRE. "But there are lots of movies that do that, and I think partly one of the reasons why this movie is impactful for people is because we try to keep it real. Its a challenging movie because youre conflicted. You feel great empathy for Arthur, and when he does bad things, thats conflicting."

Now, the movie is a serious awards-season contender, having recently beennominated for four Golden Globes, including Best Drama Film. It also scored nods forBest Director (Phillips), Best Actor in a Drama Role (Phoenix), andBest Original Score (Hildur Gunadttir).

While DC has had trouble keeping up with Marvel on the big screen, it's been able to gain the upper hand on the small one, particularly with all of the comic book company's live-action series on The CW. For the last few years, the Arrowverse has come to be defined by its yearly crossover events, in which all (or most) of the shows bleed together for one big, overarching adventure.

This year, the ambition of the network's crossover concept went through the roof when The CW decided to go with Crisis on Infinite Earths an event that draws its name and inspiration from the iconic storyline by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, which simplified decades of confusing DC comics continuity.

Fans knew they were in for a real treat when the massive Crisis undertaking slowly announced its slew of guest stars, several of whom hadn't appeared in the DC Universe for years. For instance, Brandon Routh and Tom Welling were brought back to play their versionsofClark Kent in Superman Returns and Smallville, respectively.

Burt Ward, who played young Robin alongside Adam West's Batman in the '60s-era TV show, was asked to reprise hisiconic Boy Wonderrole for theBatwomanepisode. And speaking of the Caped Crusader,Kevin Conroy longtime voice of Batman in the animated space was brought in to play a live-action Bruce Wayne for the first time ever.

Even Black Lightning, a show that is not technically set in the Arrowverse, is finally crossing overwith the other programs.

This was a huge year for The CW's DC projects, especially since Arrow is ending soon.

For about a month straight, you couldn't open your web browser without bumping into a story about Martin Scorsese's thoughts on big-budget comic book movies. It all began with a simpleinterview with Empire magazine in which the Oscar-winning directorsaid that superhero flicksare "not cinema."From there, the floodgates opened and the internet became inundated with follow-up stories aboutScorsese doublingdown on his comments or Francis Ford Coppola echoing his disdain for the genre.

It got so heated that Joss Whedon, James Gunn, and otherdirectors and actors working within the superhero genre had to weigh in on the debate. Disney CEO Bob Iger didn't hold back on his disappointment with the criticism,and plans to meet with Scorsese in an effort tobury the hatchet.

The concept of Area 51 has captivated pop culture (and conspiracy theorists) ever since a mysterious object crashed in the desert just outside Roswell, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947. For over seven decades, the mere mention of the phrase "Area 51" has conjured up fantastical images of aliens, futuristic technology, and Brent Spiner'sDr. Brackish Okun.

That's why the internet went absolutely crazy when one Facebook event decided that it was finally time to "see them aliens." A raid on Area 51 did indeed take place in late September, although no E.T.s were spotted. In fact, Edward Snowden can attest to the fact that our government is probably not covering up proof of alien life on Earth.

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From streaming wars to Star Wars to Joker: The stories that ruled the geekverse in 2019 - SYFY WIRE

Why a signals intelligence aircraft tried to destroy intel using coffee – We Are The Mighty

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On April 1, 2001, a U.S. Navy EP-3E intelligence-gathering aircraft hit a Chinese J-8II fighter in mid-air, forcing the Navy intel plane to make an emergency landing on nearby Hainan Island on a Chinese military installation. One Chinese pilot was killed, and the American crew was held captive and interrogated by the Chinese military.

Meanwhile, a trove of Top Secret American intelligence and intel-gathering equipment was sitting in Chinese hands.

A Chinese J-8 fighter.

The EP-3E Airborne Reconnaissance Integrated Electronic System, also known as ARIES, aircraft is used for signals intelligence gathering. Much of what these planes do is a close secret, and no one except its crew members really know how or what information they track, which makes what is now known as the "Hainan Island Incident" all the more damaging. When the crew of the EP-3E was forced to land without permission on the Chinese military base, it was basically handing China some of the U.S. military's most secret equipment.

At the end of the EP-3's six-hour mission, it was intercepted by Chinese jets near Hainan Island, itself an extremely important signals intelligence base for China. One of the Shenyang J-8 interceptors made three passes on the EP-3E, accidentally colliding with it on the third pass. The hit damaged the Navy plane and tore the Chinese fighter in two. After recovering from a steep, fast dive, the Navy crew tried to destroy all the sensitive equipment aboard. Sadly, they had not been trained on how to do that. Protocol for such an event would have been to put the plane into the sea and hope for rescue. Instead, the crew poured coffee into the electronic equipment and threw other sensitive documents out a hatch.

The EP-3E spy plane was flown out by a third party in an Antonov-124 cargo plane, the world's largest.

The crew conducted an emergency landing on Hainan Island's Lingshui Airfield, where they were taken into custody by the People's Liberation Army. They were interrogated and held for ten days as the United States negotiated their release. The Chinese demanded an apology for both the illegal landing and for their dead pilot, which the U.S. publicly announced. The plane required extra negotiation, as the Chinese wouldn't let the United States repair it and fly it out. The Navy had to hire a Russian company to fly it away.

When the Russians came to pick up the plane, they found it torn apart by the Chinese. It was returned to the Navy in pieces months later and the Chinese presumably learned everything about America's most sensitive signals intelligence equipment. A later inquiry didn't fault the crew. In fact, the pilot received the Distinguished Flying Cross for saving the crew and the aircraft. Documents later released by Edward Snowden revealed the Navy didn't know how much sensitive material was aboard and inadequately prepared the crew for this eventuality.

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Why a signals intelligence aircraft tried to destroy intel using coffee - We Are The Mighty

Chinas Dichotomy Between Cryptocurrency And Blockchain – Forbes

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On Friday, December 27, 2019, Chinese regulators issued a joint regulatory warning on the rise of virtual currency trading activity in the country. The Beijing Local Financial Supervision Bureau, the People's Bank of China Business Management Department, the Beijing Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau, and the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau noted that the uptick in activity is the result of the promotion of blockchain technology.

Indeed, on October 25, Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a statement for Chinese companies to seize the opportunity offered by blockchain technology. The markets reacted with a surge in the price of bitcoin and an increase in internet searches for the term blockchain on WeChat. The positivity on blockchain coming from Chinas leader is not new as he has in the past referred to blockchain as ten times the importance of the discovery of the Internet.

BEIJING, Nov. 7, 2019 -- Jing Xiandong, CEO of Ant Financial, introduces the blockchain platform of ... [+] Ant Financial during the fifth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, east China's Zhejiang Province, Nov. 7, 2018. (Photo by Chen Yehua/Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/Chen Yehua via Getty Images)

The approach of being tough on virtual currency trading platforms while encouraging blockchain technology might seem at first to be complicated - particularly if public platforms such as Bitcoin or Ethereum are used that has a native token or cryptocurrency used as an essential part of the blockchain or distributed ledger technology. Of course, for China, with the imminent release of a Central Bank Digital Currency, and its wish to maintain control over the types of digital or cryptocurrencies traded similarly to the way it has controlled the spread and use of the Internet, a policy coming down hard on cryptocurrency trading platforms makes sense.

Many in the United States have noted the focus should not be on cryptocurrencies, but rather blockchain technology. Indeed, the cryptocurrency and blockchain community seems to swing like a pendulum. When Bitcoin goes up, its all about the cryptocurrency and the focus on blockchain gets blurred. When Bitcoin goes down, the industry and developers are quick to note that finally, there can be a focus on the real gem in all of this technology - a distributed ledger technology that will fundamentally change the way people, processes, and organizations operate.

Indeed, a recent Forbes article noted how Chinas approach to Blockchain was winning and notes the U.S. should pay attention. The U.S. has similarly started to pay attention, more as the result of Project Libra, that forced Congress to pay attention to both cryptocurrency and blockchain at the same time. While many Members of Congress became quickly adept at some of the finer distinctions in the marketplace, cryptocurrency and blockchain still seem to be words quickly conflated, where an increase in blockchain is the same as an increase in cryptocurrency, and so the U.S. runs a much higher risk than China in stopping cryptocurrency trading and also significantly impacting the development of blockchain technology in the country.

The notice from China harped on how the virtual currency trading platforms were creating the potential for investor harm in a variety of ways. As stated in the joint risk release, They launch zero-interest loans, dual currency financial management and other projects through digital currency mortgages. In other words, Decentralized Finance or DeFi, meet the Peoples Republic Of China.

And therein lies the issue for China - which is that there is very little interest in decentralization, and much more interest in seeing the development of blockchain technology and its central bank digital currency as a way of spreading its influence around the globe to push its own agenda.

Meanwhile, for the virtual currency trading platforms, The release, seriously warn institutions and personnel in Beijing that carry out related activities. They must not publicize and promote relevant virtual currency projects or platforms, they must not conduct virtual currency business sales or transactions, they must not engage in virtual currency transactions or disguised trading operations with investors, Acting on domestic and overseas virtual currency issuance and trading activities, financial institutions and non-bank payment institutions within its jurisdiction shall not provide services for any virtual currency transaction.

HONG KONG - 2019/04/06: In this photo illustration a cryptocurrency electronic cash Bitcoin logo is ... [+] seen on an Android mobile device with People's Republic of China flag in the background. (Photo Illustration by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Thus, the seriousness of this warning makes it clear virtual currency trading is not welcome in China, and finishes by noting that investors should, maintain rationality ... beware of being deceived, and promptly report relevant clues about violations of laws and regulations. So, investors are then part of the regulatory structure as well in China, encouraged to provide tips to authorities if violations in the marketplace are noticed.

So, as China continues to pour money into the blockchain technology and prepares the release of its central bank digital currency, the country continues what was likely the inevitable, which is to push back on any other virtual currencies that might compete with its national currency.

The U.S. should take note, at a minimum, of the level of proficiency and understanding regulators in China have regarding cryptocurrency and blockchain, particularly in its ability to note how the promotion of blockchain technology can lead to cryptocurrency schemes as a result.

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Chinas Dichotomy Between Cryptocurrency And Blockchain - Forbes