Evidently undeterred by their potential susceptibility to being hacked, scientists the world over are working hard to create viable quantum computing platforms. A Japanese team claim to have made progress towards creating controllably coupled qubits (which is even harder to achieve than it is to say quickly); a European group are proposing a system based in the interaction of laser light with metallic structures in a ring shape; and an Australian crew have developed a theory that implies it would be possible to make photons of light that behave as solid particles, which could lead to the cracking of hitherto insoluble quantum problems. It’s good to know that progress is marching on, even if the details are way over your head.

Breaking news – the University of Portsmouth (which would be my ‘alma mater’, had I actually, you know, bothered to finish my course) has announced the founding of the first degree-level education program in Securities Technology – stuff like encryption techniques, retinal scanning systems and so on. Apparantly there’s a gap in the market for qualified professionals in this line of work – though I’d have thought that the regular trickle of headlines about successful self-taught hackers would have counted as a demonstration that a degree isn’t the only badge of competance around.

I think we can all agree that NASA needs to find a reliable source of funding, but I’m inclined to agree with the team at Engadget – Congressman Ken Calvert’s suggestion that NASA sell advertising space on their rolling stock is more than a little distasteful. But then, the marriage of corporate sponsorship and space exploration is almost inevitable, in a way, so maybe we should just get used to the idea. I can think of a fair handful of science fiction stories that have already suggested it.

Hot on the heels of the announcement that language affects the way different people perceive the world around them comes the news that your cultural background also has a part to play. Apparently older East Asian people respond less strongly to changes in the foreground of an image than Westerners, which the researchers assume has something to do with the greater emphasis on the context of an image in Asian cultures.

I’m not sure how these things pan out over the pond, but us Brits have a national holiday on next Monday, which means we have a three day weekend – and extra down-time means extra reading time, in this household at least. So I think I’ll devote some time to taking a look at the second issue of the free-to-read webzine Coyote Wild, which calls itself a quarterly magazine of speculative fiction and poetry. [SFBC]