Quantum computers today are small in computational scope — the chip inside your smartphone contains billions of transistors while the most powerful quantum computer contains a few hundred of the quantum equivalent of a transistor. They are also unreliable. If you run the same calculation over and over, they will most likely churn out different answers each time.

But with their intrinsic ability to consider many possibilities at once, quantum computers do not have to be very large to tackle certain prickly problems of computation, and on Wednesday, IBM researchers announced that they had devised a method to manage the unreliability in a way that would lead to reliable, useful answers.

“What IBM showed here is really an amazingly important step in that direction of making progress towards serious quantum algorithmic design,” said Dorit Aharonov, a professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who was not involved with the research.

Read it all.

“What IBM showed here is really an amazingly important step in that direction of making progress towards serious quantum algorithmic design.” https://t.co/QenWsf3Tjr

— NYT Science (@NYTScience) June 15, 2023

The Venerable Ian Bishop was born and brought up in Devizes in Wiltshire and worked as a chartered surveyor before ordination. He was ordained as a Deacon in 1991 and priested the following year. He became the Archdeacon of Macclesfield in January 2011.

Ian is married to Sue and they have three sons together. In his leisure time, he enjoys theatre, cinema, cricket, golf and amateur dramatics.

Ian will be ordained as a bishop in Westminster Abbey on 29 September 2023. There will be a service of welcome for him and Sue at Norwich Cathedral on Saturday 30 September at 5.30pm to which all are warmly invited.

The Venerable Ian Bishop says;

“I want to be a pastoral bishop who comes among the people of Norfolk and Waveney with kindness and love, and an ability to listen well. I want to be a missional bishop, to help you grow your church where you are and to nurture the green shoots of growth that you see locally. I am looking forward to being amongst you very much, we have very many happy memories.”

Read it all.

Delighted to welcome Ian Bishop @VenBish back to @DioceseNorwich as Bishop of Thetford. Looking forward to visiting Tasburgh (their old parish), Great Yarmouth, Oulton Broad and Thetford with him and Sue today.
And I suspect the @EDP24 headline will be “Bishop to be bishop”. pic.twitter.com/pRJE2G7uNI

— Graham Usher (@bishopnorwich) June 14, 2023

Before the border closure, Myong Suk would arrange for much-needed drugs, including antibiotics, to be smuggled across from China, which she would sell at her local market. She needed to bribe the border guards, which ate up more than half of her profits, but she accepted this as part of the game. It allowed her to live a comfortable life in her town in the north of the country, along the vast border with China.

The responsibility to provide for her family has always caused her some stress, but now it consumes her. It has become nearly impossible to get hold of products to sell.

Once, in desperation, she tried to smuggle the medicine herself, but was caught, and now she is monitored constantly. She has tried selling North Korean medicine instead, but even that is hard to find these days, meaning her earnings have halved.

Now when her husband and children wake, she prepares them a breakfast of corn. Gone are the days they could eat plain rice. Her hungry neighbours have started knocking at the door asking for food, but she has to turn them away.

“We are living on the front line of life,” she says.

Read it all.

"We are stuck, waiting to die"

The disaster unfolding inside North Korea, more than three years since its borders were sealedhttps://t.co/HoOMNsaNbj

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) June 15, 2023

There is no near-term prospect of the synthetic embryos being used clinically. It would be illegal to implant them into a patient’s womb, and it is not yet clear whether these structures have the potential to continue maturing beyond the earliest stages of development.

The motivation for the work is for scientists to understand the “black box” period of development that is so called because scientists are only allowed to cultivate embryos in the lab up to a legal limit of 14 days. They then pick up the course of development much further along by looking at pregnancy scans and embryos donated for research.

Robin Lovell-Badge, the head of stem cell biology and developmental genetics at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said: “The idea is that if you really model normal human embryonic development using stem cells, you can gain an awful lot of information about how we begin development, what can go wrong, without having to use early embryos for research.”

Read it all.

This is a significant development that raises important questions about both the boundaries of human life and the future of the family. https://t.co/nLuWEdWJ6q

— Matthew Lee Anderson (@mattleeanderson) June 15, 2023

O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all creatures: Grant that thy Church, taught by thy servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by thy power, and guided by thy Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to thee all glory and thanksgiving, and attain with thy saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast promised us by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with thee and the same Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever.

Today the Church of England commemorates Evelyn Underhill, Spiritual Writer, 1941

If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.
― Evelyn Underhill pic.twitter.com/BmqB8YwMfp

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) June 15, 2023

O God, we know and believe in the love thou bearest towards us. May we, by dwelling in that love, dwell in thee, and thou in us. We would learn to love and to serve him whom we have not seen, by loving and serving our brethren whom we have seen; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

On the East Lawn our Environment Group have created a Wildflower bed.

Native wildflowers have been sown to provide a food source for pollinators.

These flowers, along with the ones in the Physick & Almonry Gardens, will help support bees, hoverflies & other insects. pic.twitter.com/TjthPY6JcM

— Ely Cathedral (@Ely_Cathedral) June 15, 2023

In thee, O LORD, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame! In thy righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline thy ear to me, and save me! Be thou to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for thou art my rock and my fortress. Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man. For thou, O Lord, art my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth. Upon thee I have leaned from my birth; thou art he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of thee. I have been as a portent to many; but thou art my strong refuge.

–Psalm 71:1-7

Hopefully, you'll forgive us for more hay meadow photographs! 🙏 We just love this time of year in the #YorkshireDales 🏵️

This is #Arncliffe in #Littondale. The village is famous for the Falcon Inn, the original setting for the Woolpack Inn used on fEmmerdale Farm.

📸 Andy Kay pic.twitter.com/1Iso0GEPh8

— Yorkshire Dales National Park (@yorkshire_dales) June 15, 2023