"A meek endeavor to the triumph" by Sampath Jayarathna

Monday, January 23, 2006

Terrorism

I heard a rumor about one of precarious LTTE Terrorist (Thami Chelwam) yesterday; the news reported the death of him due to a bomb attack probably by another Terrorist (Karuna) team. I was really thrilled on the story but the sad news is, it was just a gossip.
Im not really a person who is oppose with Tamil people but I hate terrorist specially LTTEs (and the sri lankans politician as well). Is there any other country who is said to be sinhala. I dont think. Take Arab, they have the Muslims, take India , they have the Hindustanis, take American , they have the white people. Take Tamilnadu, they have the Tamil people. Do any country other than sir lanka have Sinhalease? So, do u agree to give a part of Sri Lanka to Tamil terrorist?

Cheers Sri Lankan Cricket

Yesterday the awesome Sri Lankan Cricket team struck against the World Champion Ausies. The master blaster Sana slogs for maximum 114 of only 94 balls. Its really glad to see the team is back on track. Throughout the day, all the ppl gathered around the Jayathilaka cafeteria TV, they cheered for the Sri Lankan victory. I also had no work till 2pm just hang on to the TV, afterward I had to be at American College till 6pm on lecturing for the Diploma Class. At that time also I just stick in to the web to see how the Ausies going to followed on to get the mighty total runs of 309 put on the score by Sri Lankans. Funny thing was, when I was at American college, I saw one of minor staff guy who is eagerly listen to a pocket radio and I just asked him the cricket score, after that every 30min time he came to my class room and informed me the match status of the sri lankan team. Cheers Sri Lanka.

Researchers Develop Quantum Processor

A computer chip based on the esoteric science of quantum mechanics has been created by researchers at the University of Michigan. The chip might well pave the way for a new generation of supercomputers. Employing the same semiconductor-fabrication techniques used to create common computer chips, the Michigan team was able to trap a single atom within an integrated chip and control it using electrical signals.
Two Places at Once
As of yet, the technology is not applicable to typical desktop PCs or servers, but quantum computers are said to be promising because they can solve complicated problems using massively parallel computing. That is accomplished by the quirky nature of quantum mechanics, said Christopher Monroe, a physics professor and the principal investigator and co-author of the paper "Ion Trap in a Semiconductor Chip." He explained that that chips can process multiple inputs at the same time in the same device. "With quantum mechanics, an object can be in two places at the same time, as long as you don't look at it," he said. The quantum computer architecture can store quantum bits (qubits) of information, where each qubit can hold the numbers one or zero, or even both digits simultaneously. When a qubit is added to a quantum system, the computing power doubles. Thus, the quantum machine can crunch numbers at a rate that is exponentially faster than conventional processors, said Monroe.
New Spin on Semiconductors
Electrically charged atoms (ions) for such quantum computers are stored in traps in order to isolate the qubits, a process that is essential for the system to work. The challenge is that current ion traps can hold only a few atoms, or qubits, and are not easily scaled, making it difficult to create a quantum chip that can store thousands or more atomic ions. A string of such atoms, in theory, could store thousands of bits of information. In the chip created at Michigan, which is the size of a postage stamp, the ion is confined in a trap while electric fields are applied. Laser light puts a spin on the ion's free electron, enabling it to flip it between the one or zero quantum states. The spin of the electron dictates the value of the qubit. For example, an up-spin can represent a one, or a down-spin can represent a zero -- or the qubit can occupy both states simultaneously.
Applications for Cryptography
The quantum processor is made of gallium arsenide in a layered structure and etched with electrodes using the same type of lithography process as those used to create today's computer chips. Each electrode is connected to a separate voltage supply, and these various electrical voltages control the ion by moving as it hovers in a space carved out of the chip. The next step is to build a bigger chip with many more electrodes, so that it can store more ions. There still is a lot of work to be done to learn how to control lots of ions in one of these chips. It won't be nearly as easy as it was with conventional computer chips, but at least we know what to do in principle, Monroe said. "This type of integrated chip structure is significant because it demonstrates a way to scale the quantum computer to bigger systems," Monroe said. "It has applications for processing very large [data sets] such as in cryptography, for example, and there is a lot of interest in this by the government."

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Happy New Year...........

Happy New Year all my friends who r there with me in the past few years and hope ur back-up all the way through this year too. Bit of late to pierce in, had lot of workings specially with my research. Quite a busy these days with all the things.
Now only I know how much of effort has to be done on a research.I remember that in the past how we work on projects. Specially Software Engineering course work project, Indra Traders Stock Maintenance system (Group 13), work of Mr. Dawin (Chandima,nick name MPhil in Typewriting) with pola, nice time with you ppl. The 3rd Year Project, take only 2 weeks to finish a 1 year project work amazing isnt it, got A grade for it too(Hard work OK).
Hey but it is not the case in this research. We have to work hard all throughout the year to come up with a solution. I think this is because, we know the finals solution, but dont know to find correct path to go there.
In my research I came up with a nice solution to find character junctions (to locate connected character junctions) and implemented it in java. It is working quite well. Still at the 50% mark of the work. So my next intention is to uncover, how to merge character segments after segmenting them at a particular junction point. Lot of issues to consider, how to name the segments at the junction? Will the algorithm give the correct number of segments at the junction? Etc. Have to find first-rate solutions for these problems, within a narrow instance of time.