# game: an interesting question of "worth" that circulates around a pulsatile meta-cycle of kidnapping and negotiation

<< There’s an interesting question of "worth" that circulates around this cycle of kidnapping and negotiation. Harold is dismayed that his company would rather negotiate than pay a full ransom for him, and that they’ve let their kidnapping insurance lapse. When Harold continually evades capture, he suddenly accrues more worth because he’s scarce. It’s a fascinating idea that’s explored with far more depth and nuance in the Danish drama "A Hijacking." >>

Katie Walsh. Film review: 'Gringo' lacks the intelligence to make a dark comedy work. Mar 8, 2018.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/08/movie-review-gringo-lacks-the-intelligence-to-make-a-dark-comedy-work/

# astro: differential rotation in Jupiter

<< Jupiter's atmosphere is rotating differentially, with zones and belts rotating at speeds that differ by up to 100 metres per second >>

<< The discovery by the Juno spacecraft that Jupiter's gravity field is north–south asymmetric [..] demonstrates that the observed zonal cloud flow must persist to a depth of about 3,000 kilometres from the cloud tops >>

AA << find that the deep interior of the planet rotates nearly as a rigid body, with differential rotation decreasing by at least an order of magnitude compared to the atmosphere >>

AA << expect the outer, differentially rotating region to be at least three times deeper in Saturn and to be shallower in massive giant planets and brown dwarfs >>

Guillot T, Miguel Y, et al. A suppression of differential rotation in Jupiter’s deep interior. Nature. 2018; 555; 227 - 30.  doi: 10.1038/nature25775. Mar 8, 2018.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25775

<< Scientists have long wondered what lies beneath Jupiter's surface. Now, using data from NASA's Juno mission, four research teams have published studies revealing incredible new information about the gas giant >>

Chelsea Gohd.  We Now Know What Lies Beneath Jupiter's Clouds. Mar 7, 2018.

https://futurism.com/beneath-jupiters-clouds/

NASA Juno Findings - Jupiter's Jet - Streams Are Unearthly.  March 7, 2018.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-juno-findings-jupiter-s-jet-streams-are-unearthly

# sec: oops! also blockchain system seems to show some security vulnerabilities

<< Smart contracts - stateful executable objects hosted on blockchains like Ethereum - carry billions of dollars worth of coins and cannot be updated once deployed >>

AA << present a new systematic characterization of a class of trace vulnerabilities, which result from analyzing multiple invocations of a contract over its lifetime >>

Ivica Nikolic, Aashish Kolluri, et al. Finding The Greedy, Prodigal, and Suicidal Contracts at Scale. arXiv: 1802.06038 [cs.CR]. Feb 16, 2018.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.06038

Kristin Houser. Uh Oh: Blockchain May Not Be as Secure as We Thought. Mar 2, 2018.

https://futurism.com/blockchain-security-smart-contracts/ 

Mike Orcutt. Ethereum's smart contracts are full of holes. MIT Tech Rev. Mar 1, 2018.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610392/ethereums-smart-contracts-are-full-of-holes/

Also

# e-ai: an intriguing hypothesis: cheating that system will become near impossible. Jun 18, 2017

http://flashontrack.blogspot.it/2017/06/e-ai-intriguing-hypothesis-cheating.html

# gst: random walk to describe a interplay between the inter-chain hopping and the intra-chain hopping in amorphous Polyimide nanofibers

AA << report the observation of a crossover of heat conduction behavior from three dimensions (3D) to quasi-one dimension (1D) in Polyimide(PI) nanofibers at a given temperature. A theoretical model based on the random walk theory has been proposed to quantitatively describe the interplay between the inter-chain hopping and the intra-chain hopping in nanofibers. This model explains well the diameter dependence of thermal conductivity and also speculates the upper limit of thermal conductivity of amorphous polymers in the quasi-1D limit. >>

Lan Dong, Qing Xi, et al. Dimensional crossover of heat conduction in amorphous Polyimide nanofibers. National Science Review. nwy004.  doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwy004. Jan 09,  2018.

https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwy004/4794956

<< The intrinsic structure of amorphous polymers is highly disordered with long, entangled molecular chains >>

Science China Press. "Random walk" of heat carriers in amorphous polymers. Mar 01, 2018.

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-03-random-carriers-amorphous-polymers.html

# drugs: they elicit experiences with the highest semantic similarity to those of dreams

AA << investigated the semantic similarity between a large number of subjective reports of psychoactive substances and reports of high/low lucidity dreams, and found that the highest-ranking substance in terms of the similarity to high lucidity dreams was the serotonergic psychedelic lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), whereas the highest-ranking in terms of the similarity to dreams of low lucidity were plants of the Datura genus, rich in deliriant tropane alkaloids. Conversely, sedatives, stimulants, antipsychotics, and antidepressants comprised most of the lowest-ranking substances. >>

AA << confirm the hypothesis that, among all psychoactive substances, hallucinogen drugs elicit experiences with the highest semantic similarity to those of dreams. >>

Camila Sanz, Enzo Tagliazucchi. The Experience Elicited by Hallucinogens Presents the Highest Similarity to Dreaming within a Large Database of Psychoactive Substance Reports.
Front. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2018.00007. Jan 22, 2018.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.00007/full   

Eric W. Dolan. Study reveals the similarity between psychedelic states and dreaming. Feb 16, 2018.

http://www.psypost.org/2018/02/study-reveals-similarity-psychedelic-states-dreaming-50760  

# life: tre cappotti

<< L’ho portato a casa che aveva due mesi. Non sapeva abbaiare. L’ho nutrito, l’ho pulito, l’ho addormentato. L’ho portato in passeggiata, faceva freddo, gli ho comprato i cappottini. L’ho spazzolato, l’ho coccolato, mi sono dovuta sorbire le proteste di Alberto che si sentiva messo da parte. L’ho portato dal veterinario, duecento euro tra: visita, vaccino pentavalente, inoculazione del microchip, iscrizione all’anagrafe canina e, tanto per non sbagliare, puntura anti-filaria (solo quella ventotto euro). L’ho sgridato quando faceva la pipì in casa. Ho smesso di uscire con le amiche perché, i primi tempi, non stava mai fermo per la voglia di giocare e ci aveva reso impossibile andare al ristorante.
Vorrei proprio sapere quali delle suddette attività mi differenzia da una mamma. >>

Erica Tabacco. Tre cappotti per un bassotto. Tragopano Ed. 8 Feb 2018.

http://www.tragopano.it/tre-cappotti-per-un-bassotto-di-erika-tabacco-in-e-book/  

# qubit: three-qubit operation with the Toffoli gate for scalable semiconductor quantum processors

<< The Toffoli gate is a three-qubit operation that changed the state of a target qubit conditioned on the state of two control qubits. It can be used for universal reversible classical computation, (..) >>

<< As a result, a single-step Toffoli gate can reduce the number of quantum operations dramatically, which can break the limit of coherence time and improve the efficiency of quantum computing >>

University of Science and Technology of China. Experimentally demonstrated a Toffoli gate in a semiconductor three-qubit system. March 1, 2018

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-03-experimentally-toffoli-gate-semiconductor-three-qubit.html

Hai-Ou Li, Gang Cao, et al. Controlled Quantum Operations of a Semiconductor Three-Qubit System. Phys. Rev. Applied 2018; 9.024015. doi: 10.1103/ PhysRevApplied.9.024015. Feb 15, 2018.

https://journals.aps.org/prapplied/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.9.024015