Sunday, June 1, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

Finnish supercomputer gets quantum upgrade

Published 10 October 2024
– By Ivana Bratovanova
The names "LUMI" and "HELMI" mean "snow" and "pearl" in Finnish.

LUMI, Europe’s fastest and the world’s fifth fastest supercomputer, has been integratated with the HELMI quantum computer.

The resulting hybrid system is, according to LUMI Director Pekka Manninen, “the most powerful quantum-enabled supercomputing infrastructure in the world”.

Located in Kajaani, Finland, LUMI is renowned for its immense computational power, equivalent to approximately 1.5 million laptops. Now, the VTT Technical Research Centre has connected LUMI to the HELMI 5-qubit quantum computer, creating a hybrid computational architecture with enhanced capabilities and research potential.

“We see great potential in quantum computing for accelerating innovation for the benefit of companies and the whole society”, says Pekka Pursula, Research Manager at VTT.

The integration of LUMI and HELMI combines the processing power of classical supercomputing with the advanced capabilities of quantum computing. In this hybrid system, classical computing manages large-scale data processing, while HELMI tackles optimization challenges. This combination boosts efficiency and enables breakthroughs in fields like science, environmental modeling, logistics, and finance.

According to Pekka Manninen, Director of the LUMI Leadership Computing Facility at CSC – IT Center for Science, the upgrade makes it “the most powerful quantum-enabled supercomputing infrastructure in the world”.

LUMI’s hybrid architecture is already supporting a wide array of critical research projects. For instance, it is aiding in the prediction of global weather patterns, advancing artificial intelligence research, and supporting drug discovery. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Salerno used LUMI to analyze thousands of potential drug candidates, improving the efficiency of the drug development process.

The hybrid supercomputer is also proving useful in the study of space phenomena. Aalto University researcher Maarit Korpi-Lagg uses LUMI to study solar magnetism and its impact on solar activity. Her research involves numerical simulations to predict future solar behavior, helping society better understand the effects of solar storms.

Given the high energy demands of such advanced infrastructures, LUMI’s location in central Finland was chosen for its access to low-cost hydroelectric power and naturally cold climate. The system also recycles its heat output to warm nearby buildings, reducing energy costs and emissions.

“Quantum computers are in many respects strange and unfamiliar, and it will be exciting to see how our customers end up using them”, comments Mikael Johansson, Quantum Technologies Manager at CSC, IT Center for Science in Espoo.

TNT is truly independent!

We don’t have a billionaire owner, and our unique reader-funded model keeps us free from political or corporate influence. This means we can fearlessly report the facts and shine a light on the misdeeds of those in power.

Consider a donation to keep our independent journalism running…

Fines increased for killing protected species in Finland

Biodiversity

Published yesterday 11:52
– By Editorial Staff
The fine for killing an Arctic fox in Finland is €17,656.

The Finnish Ministry of the Environment has significantly increased the fines for killing protected animals. For example, killing a freshwater pearl mussel is now three times more expensive than before.

Recently, it was decided to update the list of protected animals and the penalty for killing one of them. In Finland, the list was last updated in 2002, when a total of 286 animal species were included.

The new updated list now includes 320 animal species as well as 158 plant species that are protected and therefore illegal to kill or harm. Among others, the viper has been added.

The fines for killing a protected species have also been increased. For example, the fine for killing a Arctic fox has increased from €7,400 to €17,656. For the species black tern, it has increased from €185 to €9,865. The freshwater pearl mussel has increased from €589 to €1,496.

Some species on the list have received smaller fines, such as the white-tailed eagle, which has gone from €7,400 to just €407.

The value of a species is assessed on a number of criteria. These include the size of the population, how threatened the species is and how fast it is reproducing.

Worrying trend: More people driving under the influence of drugs

Published yesterday 7:23
– By Editorial Staff
Genre image - traffic accident. There is no information that drugs are related to this particular incident.

In Sweden, it is now more common for drivers to be under the influence of drugs than alcohol, while in Finland it is still more common to drive drunk than under the influence of drugs.

Between 2018 and 2022, 81 people died in Finland in traffic accidents where the driver who caused the accident was under the influence of at least one drug. This corresponds to 11 percent of all fatal traffic accidents during the period when drug testing was possible.

– Alcohol is still the most common intoxicant in fatal traffic accidents, but drugs are becoming increasingly common. This is particularly true of amphetamines, which are often linked to high speeds and risky decisions. Cannabis is also common among those who drive while intoxicated, says Kalle Parkkari, Director of Traffic Safety at the Finnish Accident Investigation Board, to Swedish Yle.

Statistics show that drivers under the influence of drugs are more likely to collide with other vehicles, while drivers under the influence of alcohol tend to drive off the road or crash in off-road terrain. However, Parkkari points out that the number of cases is so limited that it is difficult to draw firm conclusions.

– There is nevertheless a slight trend indicating an increase in drug-related driving under the influence. Traffic is part of society, and drug use in society appears to be on the rise. It is therefore inevitable that drugs will also begin to appear more frequently in traffic, Parkkari notes.

Sweden stands out in the statistics

In Sweden, the trend is more alarming. Between 2012 and 2022, 23 percent of drivers who died in traffic accidents were under the influence of drugs, compared to 11 percent who had alcohol in their system. Drug-related drunk driving has thus overtaken alcohol as the most common cause.

Lars-Olov Sjöström, traffic safety manager at the Swedish Motorists’ Sobriety Association, points to a change in attitude among young people as a possible explanation.

– For a hundred years, we have taught people not to drive with alcohol in their system, but the surveys we have conducted in collaboration with authorities in Norway show that the same young people who refrain from driving when under the influence of alcohol do not think as carefully when it comes to cannabis. We are lagging behind in providing information about cannabis and other drugs.

“We can learn from each other”

He believes that a more liberal and permissive view of “recreational drugs” among young people makes the work more difficult, but still sees hope for change within five to ten years. Both Parkkari and Sjöström emphasize the importance of cross-border cooperation to manage the development.

– It would be enormously helpful if we could learn from other countries’ experiences in this area. While the situation in Finland is still under control, it is very important to ensure that it does not get worse, says Parkkari.

Sjöström agrees, adding:

– We are seeing the same pattern in Finland as we have seen in Sweden, so we can learn from each other and discuss methods for dealing with the problem.

The first patient in the world treated with a new gene editing technology

Published 26 May 2025
– By Editorial Staff
The only CRISPR-based treatment approved for clinical use so far costs around $2 million per treatment session.

A teenager with a rare immune disorder has become the first in the world to be treated with the new gene editing technique prime editing. The aim: to restore the function of the body’s white blood cells.

One month after the procedure, the first results show that the technique seems to work – apparently without any serious side effects.

The treatment was performed on a teenager with chronic granulomatous disease – a rare, inherited condition in which the immune cells lack an enzyme that normally helps kill bacteria. This makes it difficult for the body to fight infections. Through prime editing, the researchers were able to correct the mutation in the DNA that causes the disease.

According to the biotech company Prime Medicine, which developed the treatment, after one month, enzyme function was restored in two-thirds of the patient’s neutrophils – a type of white blood cell that plays an important role in the body’s defense against bacteria. This was announced by the company on May 19.

Prime editing is a new and more precise variant of the well-known CRISPR technique, often described as a “gene scissors”. While traditional CRISPR cuts out parts of DNA and replaces them, prime editing works more like a text editor that can correct errors in the genetic code without making major changes to the genome. The technique was developed in 2019 and is considered both safer and more versatile than previous methods.

Extremely expensive method

Despite the promising results, Prime Medicine says it does not plan to continue developing the treatment, known as PM359, on its own.

– The science has moved far enough that many patients would benefit from these gene-editing treatments. But it boils down to an issue not just of science and technology, but of economics, says David Liu, a chemical biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and co-founder of the company.

For very rare diseases, development costs are often high relative to the limited number of patients. The only CRISPR-based treatment approved for clinical use so far, for blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia, currently costs more than $2 million per treatment.

– It’s like upgrading your iPhone. NThere are new versions coming out all the time and the tools are constantly being refined, says Joseph Hacia, a medical geneticist at the University of Southern California.

Longer follow-up needed

Prime editing is one of several emerging techniques developed as alternatives to classical CRISPR. It has the potential to treat more diseases with greater precision, but time and follow-up are needed before firm conclusions can be drawn about its long-term effects.

It will take between six months and a year to be certain that the edited stem cells are thriving, says Annarita Miccio, a gene therapy expert at the Imagine Institute in Paris.

Critics have also raised several ethical concerns about prime editing and similar techniques, even though they are described as highly accurate. A recurring objection is the risk of genetic changes occurring in the wrong place in the genome and thus causing unwanted side effects and mutations.

Concerns have also been raised that the technology could be used in the future to modify traits rather than treat diseases – raising the debate about so-called ‘designer babies’ and how far we are prepared to go in altering the human genetic code.

The headache of brain cell masses: How human consciousness baffles neuroscientists

Man and consciousness

The thesis that human consciousness emanates from the brain cell mass is not as self-evident as the broad stream of research fields today would like to claim. This is what Cecilia Gustafsson writes, who takes a closer look at some of the questions that physical science has left unanswered.

Published 25 May 2025

Brain research has been conducted for decades, accumulating extensive knowledge about the brain’s functions and reactions, both electrochemical and biochemical. Today, the structure and composition of a brain cell can be described in great detail, and its function has been clarified. The brain has been established as the central organ of the nervous system, transmitting impulses enabling, among other things, motor functions. Humanity has thus gained a wealth of knowledge about the brain, as well as other physical organs, which is beneficial in cases of dysfunction, injury, treatment and surgery.

What has not been mapped, proven or explained, however, is human beings and human consciousness. Nevertheless, science, and implicitly large parts of brain researchers, stubbornly maintain that the human being is the brain and that the brain controls the entire human consciousness, i.e. everything that the human being thinks, feels, says, remembers, can and does. The brain is thus not only given the function of being the overall part of the nervous system, but is attributed the overall, or leading, position over the human being itself. How such reasoning has been allowed to pass as scientific fact, and is also widely accepted as truth within mainstream natural science, may seem absurd to an independently thinking individual.

What has not been mapped, proven or explained, however, is human beings and human consciousness.

If brain research, and thus physical science, cannot scientifically prove how the brain produces everything that a human being thinks, feels, and remembers, then how can it so confidently claim that it does? Moreover, how can such claims serve as the foundation for public discourse about the brain? Across websites, television programs, and institutions in healthcare and education, we are constantly presented with this “knowledge” about the brain’s supposed influence over us. However, none of the claims regarding the brain’s role in producing human consciousness and memory have been scientifically verified.

Not only are these explanations often contradictory (they depict the brain and the human self as separate entities), but they also defy reason by reducing the human being, this living entity with dreams, desires, willpower, reflection, intelligence, and agency, to a passive slave under the control of a wrinkled mass of organic matter and its electrochemical signals.

Here some quotes with following comments, to illustrate the contradictory arguments and how you as a human being are presented, taken from, among others, a national and well-known healthcare site on the internet:

“The outer layer of the cerebrum is called the cerebral cortex. It consists of gray matter that contains nerve cells. The cerebral cortex is responsible for our awareness of different sensory impressions. The cortex is where our thoughts, feelings and memories are created”.

“The brain is involved in almost everything we do, feel, and experience. It gives us our personality and emotions. The brain is what allows us to have consciousness, to think, and to remember”.

“The brain uses very few neurons to remember things it sees”.

“Research claims that neurons act as thought cells, capable of specializing on certain memories previously selected by the brain”.

Note how the cerebral cortex is described as a gray matter containing neurons, and how this gray matter is responsible for the consciousness of sensory impressions – “it sees”, “it remembers”. Further, how the brain is ascribed properties that allow you to think and remember and that it also “selects” memories based on “what it sees”. You have no say in these representations, you have to rely on the fact that “the brain sees correctly”, that the neurons “remember what the brain sees”. In other words, you are entirely subordinate, and who you are or what the brain needs you for is not made clear. How the brain, with its nerve cells, “chooses,” “sees,” and “remembers” cannot be explained by physicalist research, yet it is not willing to reconsider its claims.

From this reductionist view of man and consciousness, allow me to take a somewhat humorous look at the “life of the brain cell mass Edgar”:

The brain cell mass Edgar was created at the same time as the physical body in which the brain cell mass Edgar is located at the top. They both came in the “same package” via the body of another brain cell mass, as a result of this second brain cell mass, called mother, together with a third brain cell mass, called father, previously jointly deciding to breed a new brain cell mass.

The brain cell mass Edgar is now an adult and lives in his own apartment. Not far from Edgar the brain cell mass lives his best friend, another brain cell mass called Agaton. They spend a lot of time together and it’s easy to mistake them for twins. They are both extremely similar to each other. They both have a pinkish-gray hue with a wrinkled appearance, they weigh about the same, are similarly shaped and divided into the same number of lobes and ventricles each. Both have identical cerebellums and brain stems, and the cerebral cortex of both brain cell masses, which unites the two divided halves, is deceptively similar. The thalamus, hypothalamus and limbic system of the two also look the same and are located in the same places. In short, their structure, organization and function are not at all different and it is very easy to mistake the two at a glance.

Despite their incredible similarity, there is a significant difference between them. Since its inception, the Agaton brain cell mass has been very adept at producing beautiful sounds on various instruments. The brain cell mass Edgar, on the other hand, is, despite many and valiant attempts, completely untrainable when it comes to making music, and also completely tone deaf. They have both asked themselves on several occasions how this can be. After all, the two brain cell masses are so similar and both have the same functions in their respective parts. Edgar the brain cell mass once asked Agaton the brain cell mass how it is that he is so musically skilled. Did the brain cell mass Agaton’s brain cell mass parents play a lot of music? The Agaton brain cell mass searched feverishly in itself, both in the place in itself called the cerebral cortex and in the gray matter where the so-called “short-term memories” and “long-term memories” are said to be located, but without result. The brain cell mass Agaton could not, in itself, find where the interest in music arose, when it arose or how the skill to handle different instruments emerged. Growing up, there was no other music-making brain cell mass in the immediate vicinity.

Some of Edgar’s cortical neurons found this realization frustrating and reacted with sadness, generating a state of melancholy. Other neurons deemed it unfair. The two brain masses debated the issue extensively, communicating by emitting bursts of sound through the largest hole in the head.

Such a representation of the human being raises a host of questions, only a few of which are addressed in this text. The thinking reader, with intelligent ability and with the perception of himself as the possessor of self-activated thought, can certainly ask more questions.

What cells are missing from the brain cell mass of Edgar, who cannot learn to play music, that the brain cell mass of Agaton seems to have had since its creation? Which brain cells decide what to select, what to learn, where to store what has been learned, and how do the cells decide where to store it? Why such individual differences between brain cell masses despite the same diligent training, similar upbringing, the same conditions, and sometimes even the same parents (if siblings are involved)? If the brain cell mass creates the thoughts and feelings, as both brain cell masses have been taught by other brain cell masses involved in brain research and education, which brain cells get upset and sad, as in the case of the Edgar brain cell mass above, and how do the brain cells create these feelings? If brain cells have the same function in all healthy brain cell masses, what is it that makes, say, one and the same phenomenon make the brain cells in the cerebral cortex upset and sad in some brain cell masses, but not in others? How is this determined and by what?

Furthermore, if, for example, you don’t remember something at a certain time, but then remember it clearly at a later time, is it the case that the brain cells that stored the specific memory you wanted were busy with other things or were off duty at the first time, and then were “back on duty” at the later time, and can then retrieve the memory? How do the “memory-carrying” brain cells pick up the memory image itself? And how does it become a picture for your mind? How is the memory, which is spread over several neurons, assembled? And “oneself”, by the way, is it oneself who wants to remember something, or is it the brain? Because if it is “oneself” who wants to remember and sees the memory image “in one’s mind”, then this “oneself” must be something other than the brain itself. How, then, do these two entities relate to each other?

Such questions, and more, cannot be answered by physical science, which dismisses them as irrelevant. But if science is to be a guide to knowledge, it should follow scientific practice and thus stick to what it knows and does not know, what is ascertainable and what is not, and not create guesses and theories to fill the gaps in knowledge. Science knows that the brain is an organ which, like other organs, belongs to the physical organism.

Such questions, and more, cannot be answered by physical science, which dismisses them as irrelevant.

Science knows how nerve cells work and what electrochemical and biochemical impulses they transmit to each other. Science knows that these signals transmit and trigger other signals and activities in other organs of the organism. However, today’s science neither knows nor can explain what consciousness is. And because of its ignorance of the latter, it reduces living people to intelligence-free and will-less gray matter. Pressing inappropriate pieces into an already established puzzle and at the same time rejecting pieces they cannot fit.

Physical scientists often defend this by saying that much of what concerns the brain is still a mystery and that this is largely because it is difficult to research the brain. But the real mystery is not the physical brain itself, it is the living being, the human with consciousness, that remains unexplained. To somewhat dispel the headache that therefore prevails about this “mystery of the brain”, it may be helpful for further development in the field if those who carry out the research did not so dogmatically claim that human memory and consciousness are created in and by an organic gray mass of brain cells; is only the secondary result of brain cell impulses.

 

Cecilia Gustafsson

 


Sources and references:

1177 – Så fungerar hjärnan

Utforska sinnet – Vårt minne: hur fungerar det egentligen?

Our independent journalism needs your support!
We appreciate all of your donations to keep us alive and running.

Our independent journalism needs your support!
Consider a donation.

You can donate any amount of your choosing, one-time payment or even monthly.
We appreciate all of your donations to keep us alive and running.

Dont miss another article!

Sign up for our newsletter today!

Take part of uncensored news – free from industry interests and political correctness from the Polaris of Enlightenment – every week.