Interesting Things I've Learned Recently

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in bigger news/current events that I think I forget to slow down and take a look at some of the interesting little stories that happen. So... here are two stories that I came across recently that I have to share.

In "A Farewell to Arms", I learn that conscription (the act of requiring military service on a national level) is on its way out for most countries (esp. developed ones...Germany, Sweden and Serbia all scrapped their conscription plans in the last year), but in smaller or poorer countries, it continues to linger. In south Sudan, for example, conscription is actually being re-introduced because it is hoped that conscription will be the answer to supplementing their weakened and dwindling militias. Not too interesting. More interesting?

In Thailand, where "ladyboys" is a common occurrence (men who dress/have been surgically altered to be women), conscription is not only being retained, but is also extending to ladyboys. Previously, the government had deemed ladyboys to have "a permanent mental disorder", which would disqualify them (and really all transsexuals and transvestites) from being conscripted. In fact, they had many different types and hierarchies of ladyboys. "Type 1" men are normal, "Type 2" have surgically enhanced breasts, and "Type 3" have had the full sex change. Under new rules, ladyboys could just be a new niche culture in their armed services.

Although I don't think that anyone would try to make the argument that someone would become a ladyboy just to dodge the draft, there are some other interesting side effects. A study in France, which has been phasing out conscription since 1996, shows that male educational achievement fell when conscription was removed. Reason? Many males would apply and go to university in order to dodge the draft. 

In "Herr and Madame, Senor and Mrs.", studies show that international marriages-- involving couples from different nationalities-- is on the uptick. The biggest share of these types of unions is Taiwan, where 13% of wives in 2009, but had peaked in 2003 with 28% of all weddings involving a foreign-born wife. There are a lot of explanations around why this would be. Studies have shown that many Asian women are moving away from marriage, and if they are planning to get married, often put off marriage until 31 or 32. Additionally, due to the traditional preference of sons (and the availability of sex-selective abortion), many Asian countries set themselves up for a serious shortage of brides about 20 years ago. South Korea for example, had 117 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990. Come marryin' age, and it's beginning to look a lot like musical chairs. Vaguely interesting. More interesting?

One of the other reasons they give is that Asian men seem to be looking abroad for wives in the hope that immigrant women will bear them more children. Apparently, this is a real thing. In Europe and America, the fertility rate of new immigrants is higher than average, though is reverts to the local mean within a few years. Ironically, this initial higher fertility rate seems to not hold in Asia, or at least not in South Korea, where the studies were held. Researchers posit that the age gap between husbands and brides might discourage large families, thus offsetting any potential edge given by immigrant status.

So let's hop over to quantum computing. In 1995, the first quantum computer computations were done in a lab.Quantum computing holds a lot of promise because currently, binary computers which operate by transforming information into bits in the form of 0 or 1. This represents itself in the computer as different voltages of electric current, which itself is the result of an electron's charge. Because this charge is a fixed feature of all electrons, each has the same amount of it as any other. But electrons possess other properties such as spin ("up", "down" or a an in-between which is known as superpositions).

Superpositions could potentially fundamentally change the way we view the traditional bit and create what they now call a qubit. When you wrangle particles together in order to add more qubits, this is called entanglement. When you can rope multiple qubits together, then you suddenly get the ability for quantum computing, which is basically the ability to pursue multiple streams of logic (operations) simultaneously to determine an answer. The best part is that qubits operate exponentially, meaning that each qubit allows an exponential more information to flow through the system. Two entangled qubits permit four operations, three permit eight, and etc. To put this into perspective, they've been able to entangle 14 qubits. Entangling 300 qubits would create a computer that could perform more concurrent operations than there are atoms in the visible universe.

Right. Unfortunately, entanglement and superposition are delicate. Any disturbance causes qubits to "decohere" (act cray-cray and otherwise shed the properties that we're trying to harness). However, more recent research from the University of Copenhagen indicates that, by trapping electrons between two semi-conducting crystals, they are able to join them together to form qubits. Other research from the University of California, Santa Barbara indicates that superconductors can create paired electrons, which then begin to behave like single particles while simultaneously (potentially) moving in two directions at once. Create a closed loop super conductor (they've made 5) and you've got yourself a superconducting qubit.

Oh the future. Ladyboys and the army, marriage and superconducting qubits, oh my.