Who invented the Trachtenberg system of mathematics?

A system of speed mathematics, it was developed by Jakow Trachtenberg when he spent long years at a concentration camp during WWII

The Trachtenberg system is a system of speed arithmetic. With this system, you can do multiplication, division, addition, subtraction and square root operations very quickly and without a calculator. Multiplication and division can be done without the use of multiplication tables. In order to learn this system, all that you need is the ability to count.

This system was developed by Jakow Trachtenberg (1888-1953), a Russian Jewish mathematician and engineer. Trachtenberg developed his unique system of mathematics when he spent long years at a concentration camp during World War II. He was surrounded by violence, disease and death. But he escaped into a world of his own-a world of numbers, logic and order. He visualised gigantic numbers to be added and he tried calculating mentally. He invented a fool-proof method that would make it possible for even a child to add thousands of numbers together without ever adding a number higher than eleven! He scribbled his theories on whatever bit of paper he could lay his hands on - wrapping paper, old envelopes. German worksheets, etc.

In 1944, he and his wife escaped to Switzerland. There, he perfected his mathematics system.

The first students to whom Trachtenberg taught his system were children especially those who were doing poorly in studies. The results were heartening and successful.

In 1950, he founded the Mathematical Institute in Zurich, where both children and adults were taught the system. The system has been thoroughly tested in Switzerland and is found to increase the self-confidence and general aptitude to study, as the students develop outstanding arithmetic abilities.

It is a fool-proof method that would make it possible for even a child to add thousands of numbers together without ever adding a number higher than eleven.

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When was the first world's first commercial atomic clock unveiled?

The Atomichron, unveiled on October 3, 1956, was the world's first commercial atomic clock. At a time when timekeeping is more accurate than ever before.  

In his work of fiction The Time Keeper, American author Mitch Albom has one of his characters say that "man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still- until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost. While the last part of the statement is rather too deep, and well beyond the scope of this column, there might be some truth with respect to the counting consuming us.

Comes down to counting When we started, we looked up at the sun and the moon to get a sense of time. We picked up stones, collected water, and were able to tell time even better. And now, we have come to a stage where the best of our clocks are so precise that it would take around 30 billion years for it to lose even one second.

And yet, at the heart of it, the fundamental process remains the same as we count a periodic phenomenon. In a grandfather clock, the pendulum swings back and forth. In a wristwatch, an electric current ensures that a tuning fork-shaped piece of quartz oscillates. And when it comes to atomic clocks, we use certain resonance frequencies of atoms and count the periodic swings of electrons as they jump between energy levels.

What are atomic clocks? The best of our clocks, by the way, are atomic clocks. As we learned more of the atom's secrets, we were able to build practical applications, including these clocks.

We now know that an atom is made up of a nucleus - consisting of protons and neutrons- that is surrounded by electrons. While the number of electrons in an element can vary, they occupy discrete energy levels, or orbits.

Electrons can jump to higher orbits around the nucleus on receiving a jolt of energy. As an individual element responds only to a very specific frequency to make this jump, this frequency can be measured by scientists to measure time very accurately.

Been around since 1950s

By the mid 1950s, atomic clocks with caesium atoms that were accurate enough to be used as time standards had been built.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research of Electronics developed the first commercial atomic clocks around the same time, and these were manufactured by the National Company, Inc. (NATCO) of Malden, Massachusetts.

Initially, the atomic beam clocks that NATCO were building were called just that: ABC. By 1955, the prototypes bore the working name National Atomic Frequency Standard (NAFS). As this acronym was clearly not pleasing to the ear, there was a need for a better name to market the first practical commercial atomic clock.

Quantum electronics equipment

They came up with the name Atomichron, which NATCO then made its generic trademark for all their atomic clocks. In a well publicised event at the Overseas Press Club in New York, the Atomichron was unveiled to the world on October 3, 1956.

The first commercial atomic clock was indeed the first piece of quantum electronics equipment made available to the public. In the years that followed, 50 Atomichrons were made and sold to military agencies, government agencies, and universities.

Defining a second

By 1967, the official definition of a second by the International System of Units (SI) was based on caesium. This meant that the internationally accepted unit of time was now defined in terms of movements inside atoms of caesium.

Atomic clocks, however, aren't going to come home soon. At about the size of a wardrobe, it consists of interwoven cables, wires, and steel structures that are connected to a vacuum chamber that holds the atoms.

These clocks, however, are already in use everywhere around us. Be it satellite navigation, online communication, or even timed races in the Olympics, atomic clocks are in action. The best of our atomic clocks, as you might guessed, are employed in research and experiments to further our understanding of the universe around us.

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What is the backstory behind the invention of the Xerox machine?


 

Young Chester Carlson worked as a patent analyser for a manufacturer of electrical components. This required laborious paperwork - he had to submit multiple copies when registering his company's inventions and ideas at the patent office. Each duplicate had to be written by hand. Carlson suffered from arthritis. He knew there had to be another way of doing his job.

Working in his kitchen during his free time, Carlson discovered that some materials changed their electrical properties when exposed to light called photo-conductivity. After years of research, he came up with a patent in 1942 for a reproduction technique based on this, which he named 'electric photography. Another 20 years went by before he found a company interested enough to manufacture the machine. He was turned away by the likes of IBM, GE and RCA, until in 1960, the Haloid company finally thought his idea marketable.

The company was later named Xerox. The process became so popular all over the world that the word ‘xeroxing’ (a trademark) is used instead of the correct term-‘photocopying’!

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WHO COINED THE TERM GENETICS?

William Bateson was an English biologist who was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscovery in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns. His 1894 book Materials for the Study of Variation was one of the earliest formulations of the new approach to genetics.

Bateson became the chief popularizer of the ideas of Mendel following their rediscovery. In 1909 he published a much-expanded version of his 1902 textbook entitled Mendel's Principles of Heredity. This book, which underwent several printings, was the primary means by which Mendel's work became widely known to readers of English.

"Bateson first suggested using the word "genetics" (from the Greek [Offsite Link]  genn?, ?????; "to give birth") to describe the study of inheritance and the science of variation in a personal letter to Alan Sedgwick... dated April 18, 1905. Bateson first used the term genetics publicly at the Third International Conference on Plant Hybridization in London in 1906. This was three years before Wilhelm Johannsen used the word "" to describe the units of hereditary information. De Vries had introduced the word "pangene" for the same concept already in 1889, and etymologically the word genetics has parallels with Darwin's concept of pangenesis.

Bateson co-discovered genetic linkage with Reginald Punnett, and he and Punnett founded the Journal of Genetics in 1910. Bateson also coined the term "epistasis" to describe the genetic interaction of two independent traits.

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WHAT IS AN INNOVATIVE METHOD DETECTS A NON-VISUAL TRACES OF FIRE THAT HAS BEEN 800,000 YEARS AGO?

Researchers from Weizmann Institute of Science have developed an advanced, innovative method to detect non-visual traces of fire. Using this method, they have discovered one of the earliest known pieces of evidence for the use of fire, dating back at least 8,00,000 years. Their results have been published in an article late in June in PNAS.

Ancient hominins are a group that includes humans and some of our extinct family members. The controlled use of fire by this group dates back at least a million years. Archaeologists believe that this was the time when Homo habilis began its transition to Homo erectus.

Cooking hypothesis

A working theory called the "cooking hypothesis", in fact, postulates that the use of fire was instrumental in our evolution. Controlled fire not only allowed for staying warm, crafting tools, and warning off predators, but also enabled cooking, paving the way for the growth of the brain.

Traditional archaeological evidence relying on visual identification of modifications resulting from combustion has provided widespread evidence of fire use no older than 2,00,000 years. Sparse evidence of fire dating back to 5,00,000 also exists.

The team of scientists involved in this research had pioneered the application of Al and spectroscopy in archaeology to find indications of controlled burning of stone tools. For this research, they developed a more advanced Al model capable of finding hidden patterns across a multitude of scales. Output of the model could thus estimate the temperature to which the stone tools were heated.. providing insights into past human behaviours.

Assess heat exposure

The researchers took their method to Evron Quarry, an open-air archaeological site first discovered in the 1970s. The site is home to fossils and tools dating back to between 8,00,000 and 1 million years ago, but without any visual evidence of heat. With their accurate Al, the team assessed the heat exposure of 26 flint tools. The results showed that these tools had been subjected to a wide range of temperatures, with some even being heated to over 600 degree Celsius. The presence of hidden heat puts the traces of controlled fire to at least 8,00,000 years ago.

Apart from identifying non-visual evidence of fire use, the scientists hope that their newly developed technique will provide a push toward a more scientific, data-driven archaeology that uses new tools. The researchers believe that this will help us understand the behaviour of our early ancestors and the origins of the human story.

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WHAT IS RESEARCH OF MAKING CEMENT FROM FOOD WASTE BY JAPANEES?

Food waste is a huge problem worldwide. In Japan alone, the edible food waste produced in 2019 amounts to 5.7 million tons. While their government aims to reduce that to around 2.7 million tons by 2030, there are others who are working on the same problem differently. Researchers from Tokyo University, for instance, have found a new method to create cement from food waste.

In addition to addressing the issue of food waste, the researchers also hope to reduce global warming in this way. Apart from the estimate that cement production accounts for 8% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, there is also the fact that wasted food materials rotting in landfills emit methane. By using these materials to make cement, scientists hope to reduce global warming.

The researchers borrowed a heat pressing concept that they had employed to pulverise wood particles to make concrete. By using simple mixers and compressors that they could buy online, the researchers used a three-step process of drying. pulverising, and compressing to turn wood particles into concrete.

Heat pressing concept

Following this success, they decided to do the same to food waste. Months of failures followed as they tried to get the cement to bind by tuning the temperature and pressure. The researchers say that this was the toughest part of the process as different food stuff requires different temperatures and pressure levels.

The researchers were able to make cement using tea leaves, coffee grounds, Chinese cabbage, orange and onion peels, and even lunch-box leftovers. To make this cement waterproof and protect it from being eaten by rodents and other pests, the scientists suggest coatings of lacquer.

Cement that can be eaten!

Additionally, the researchers tweaked flavours with different spices to arrive at different colours, scents, and taste of the cement. Yes, you read that right. This material can even be eaten by breaking it into pieces and then boiling it.

The scientists hope that their material can be used to make edible makeshift housing materials for starters, as they are bound to be useful in times of disasters. If food cannot be delivered to evacuees, for instance, then they could maybe eat makeshift beds prepared from food cement. The food cement that they have created is reusable e and biodegradable.

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HOW DID MATZELIGER LASTING MACHINE CHANGE THE SHOE INDUSTRY?

On May 29, 1885, self-tought inventor Jan Ernst Matzeliger conducted the first public demonstration of his shoe-lasting machine. By automating a stage of shoe production that everyone thought was impossible to do, Matezliger forever change the shoe manufacturing industry.  

Do you know what the term "lasting" means in the shoe industry? Lasting corresponds to the operation of stretching the shoe upper over the foot form or "last". There are many ways in which these lasting operations are performed and almost all shoes in today's world are lasted in some way.

For the longest time it was believed that lasting could not be automated. Even as the rest of the shoe-making process was mechanised, hand lasters held a special place in the footwear factory as they continued to pull uppers over and nail them onto the lasts. Dutch inventor Jan Ernst Matzeliger changed all that with his shoe-lasting machine.

Matzeliger was born in 1852 on a coffee plantation in Dutch Guiana-now Suriname, a small country on the northern coast of South America. Even at the young age of 10, Matzeliger demonstrated a natural aptitude for machinery as an apprentice in machine shops.

Fights language barrier

 At the age of 19. Matzeliger went to the sea, spending two years as a mechanic on a merchant ship before settling in Philadelphia, the U.S. As he spoke very little English, he had to be content doing odd jobs. including that of a shoemakers apprentice, for the next few years. When he moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1877, he was looking to pursue his interest in shoe making.

Finding work in a shoe factory, Matzeliger did everything that was entrusted upon him during his 10-hour work day. He spent the evenings and nights educating himself, studying English to improve his fluency in the language and studying other subjects to enhance his mechanical abilities. He dabbled with art as well, painting pictures that he gifted to his friends and even conducting classes in oil painting.

Looks to automate lasting

Matzeliger noticed that while shoe companies had machinery for most purposes, lasting was still done by hand. While many believed that it was impossible for a machine to replicate this important step, Matzeliger took it upon himself to automate the process.

Years of experimentation followed as he tried to duplicate the movements of the hand lasters that he observed in the machine he was building. Apart from securing a working space and access to machine tools at the company he worked with, he also scraped through their junkyards and factory dumps to find usable machinery that he could alter for his requirements. By 1882, he had a working device ready.

Matzeliger filed for a patent on January 24, 1882. The text and drawings of his 15-page document, however, were so complex that an inspector had to visit him to understand the workings of his machine.

Better than the best

Matzeliger received a patent for his lasting machine on March 20, 1883. This machine employed pincers to hold an upper, pulled it over the last and held it in place, before pinning the leather to the last and discharging the completed shoe. Matzeligers machine could easily outdo even the best of hand lasters, who managed 60 pairs of shoes a day.

In the next couple of years. Matzeliger further tweaked this device with engineering improvements to make it industry-ready. When he was finally satisfied, he held a public demonstration on May 29, 1885. The machine reproduced the technique used by hand lasters. but at a much greater speed-it was capable of producing as many as 700 pairs of shoes each day.

Along with two investors who provided capital in exchange for two-thirds ownership of the device, Matzeliger formed a company to market his machine. With the demand for the lasting machine increasing rapidly, the organisation grew fast and soon merged with many other shoe manufacturers to form the United Shoe Machinery Company.

Matzeliger, however, didn't enjoy the financial windfall that followed as he died from tuberculosis in 1889 at the young age of 36. Despite the prejudices that he suffered, both because of his colour and the fact that he lacked formal education, Matzeliger not only revolutionised footwear production, but also made high-quality shoes affordable for everyone. We don't have to look beyond the shoes we wear each day to see the lasting impact that one young man who was tirelessly driven by an idea has had.

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What is Pallas the asteroid? Who discovered it?

When we learn about the solar system, we are introduced to a class of objects called asteroids. Most of these asteroids exist in the main asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. While this much is common knowledge these days, the existence of this asteroid belt wasn't even known a little over 200 years back.

Pallas, third largest asteroid in the asteroid belt and the second such object to be discovered, by the German astronomer and physician Wilhelm Olbers on March 28, 1802, following the discovery of Ceres the year before. It is named after Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. A.s. Ganesh takes a look at the third largest asteroid in the asteroid belt……..

Late in the 18th Century, German astronomers Johann Daniel Titius and Johann Elert Bode arrived at a mathematical expression now known as Titius-Bode law. These calculations not only predicted the positions of the planets then known, but also suggested possible positions of others.

The search begins

When the discovery of Uranus in 1781 corresponded to that predicted by this law, there was a sense of anticipation as the law suggested another between Mars and Jupiter. Among the group of astronomers hunting down the missing planet was Wilhelm Olbers, a German physician who did his astronomical work by setting up his own house for the purpose.

Ceres, which was discovered by Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi in January 1801, was believed to be the missing planet and was tracked down for a while before it went behind the sun. It was Carl Friedrich Gauss, a young mathematician who later became a good friend of Olbers, who devised a way to find out the orbit of an object using limited observations.

Olbers applied Gauss' method and observed Ceres later in 1801. He continued this exercise on an everyday basis and discovered a similar object on March 28, 1802. Named after the Greek goddess of wisdom Pallas Athena, 2 Pallas (number based on order of discovery) can even be considered the first asteroid to be discovered as 1 Ceres was classified as a dwarf planet in 2006.

Remnants of a planet?

Apart from being the second such object to be discovered in what we now know as the asteroid belt, Pallas is also the third largest asteroid in the region. The discovery of Ceres and Pallas, along with Juno and Vesta over the next few years, led to the idea that asteroids are remnants of an actual planet. Even though this is no longer accepted, the idea that asteroids are pieces of the missing planet predicted by the Titius-Bode law endured for a long time.

While little was known about Pallas for over 200 years, a study in the past few years revealed that this asteroid has a violent, cratered past. In order to analyse Pallas' shape and surface in detail, scientists used the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) imager on the Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.

Pockmarked surface

 Researchers were able to capture 11 images of the asteroid's surface. Using these images along with their own simulations, the scientists were able to tell that there were numerous craters ranging from 30 to 120 km wide on Pallas surface and that its appearance could even resemble that of a golf ball.

Even though the orbital eccentricity of Pallas is moderate, its orbital inclination is unusually large. This means that Pallas' orbit is highly inclined with respect to the plane of the asteroid belt and the asteroid is therefore rather inaccessible to spacecraft. Plenty still remains unknown about this asteroid and even though missions are planned, Pallas is for now the largest asteroid that hasn't been visited by a spacecraft yet.

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Why is it said that the discovery of palladium was unique?

William H. Wollaston discovered Palladium in 1803. He experimented on the residues left after dissolving platinum in aqua regia. He successfully isolated palladium by heating palladium cyanide to produce palladium metal. But Wollaston decided to announce his discovery in an unconventional manner. He gave a quantity of the metal for sale to a mineral dealer in London, and posted handbills describing the property of the new metal, anonymously.

Many doubts came up with this peculiar way of announcement, and Richard Chenevix, a renowned chemist of the time stated that palladium was just an alloy of platinum and mercury. In response to that, Wollaston announced a reward of twenty guineas to anyone who could produce the metal artificially. Nobody claimed the money. In 1805, Wollaston made a speech before the Royal Society of London about the properties of palladium and how to isolate it. He revealed he was the discoverer of the metal at the end of the speech. He explained that he remained anonymous to use the time to study and reveal more properties of the metal.

Palladium is named after an asteroid called ‘Pallas’, which refers to the Greek goddess of wisdom.

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When was rhodium discovered?

English chemist William H. Wollaston discovered rhodium in 1803 while he was experimenting on a platinum ore in Peru. Hippolyte- Victor Collet- Descotils alerted Wollaston about the chance of a new element as he believed that the red colour of some platinum salts was due to the presence of an unidentified metal.

To find out this new metal, Wollaston, dissolved crude platinum in aqua regia, which is a concentrated solution of hydrochloric and nitric acids. After that he precipitated platinum by dissolving the solution in ammonium chloride. But there was no new element.

Further experiments produced a deep red powder, sodium rhodium chloride. When this compound was treated with zinc, it gave a black and flaky precipitate of rhodium. Wollaston named the element rhodium based on the Greek word ‘rhodon’, which means rose.

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What makes technetium unique?

Technetium is the first artificially produced element. Dmitri Mendeleev, the Russian chemist who created the periodic table, is the first person to predict the existence of technetium, atomic number 43. But he called it eka-manganese. Three scientists: lda Take, Walter Noddack, and Otto Berg examined some platinum ores and columbite minerals in hopes of discovering eka-manganese and rhenium, atomic number 75.

They published the X-ray analysis of their experiment and claimed that they found 2 new elements. Element 43 was named as masurium by them. But their findings were disregarded by the scientific community then. After three years, their finding of rhenium, element 75, was approved but masurium was not.

Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segre were credited with the discovery of technetium at the University of Palermo in Italy in 1937.

It is the first element that was created synthetically. Technetium was derived from the Greek word ‘technetos’, which means artificial. Technetium is a silver grey metal that is rare. It gets damaged slowly in moist air.

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Why is Carl Scheele known as “hard luck Scheele”?

The mineral molybdenite (molybdenum sulphide) was often mistaken for graphite or lead ore until 1778. This soft black mineral was analyzed by German chemist Carl Scheele, who discovered that it was neither of these substances, and that it was a totally new element. But Scheele did not have a suitable furnace to reduce the mineral to a metal. As a result, it took a few more years until it was actually identified. Although Scheele made a number of chemical discoveries such as oxygen, the credit was always given to someone else because he couldn’t come to a final analysis. As a result, he later became known as “hard luck Scheele”.

For many years, scientists continued to assume that molybdenite had a new element, but they could not reduce the mineral to the metal and isolate it. Later, Peter Jacob Hjelm, a Swedish chemist, ground molybdic acid with carbon in linseed oil to form a paste. Then he allowed this paste to be in close contact with carbon and the molybdenite. This mixture was then heated in a closed crucible to produce the metal. He named it molybdenum (atomic number 42) after the Greek word “molybdos”, which means lead. According to the Royal Society of Chemistry, this new element was announced in the autumn of 1781.

Molybdenum has silvery-white appearance and it is ductile and highly resistant to corrosion. It also has one of the highest melting points of all pure elements. Only tantalum and tungsten have higher melting points than molybdenum. This element is also a micronutrient that is essential for life.

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When was niobium discovered?

Niobium, atomic number 41, was discovered by Charles Hatchett, an English scientist in 1801. It was recognised in an ore sent to England from the American colonies, more than a century earlier by John Winthrop the Younger, who was the first governor of the state of Connecticut. The ore was called columbite and Hatchett named this element columbium (symbol Cb).

Later, in 1846, a German chemist named Henrich Rose independently discovered the element and named it niobium. This metal was first isolated by Christian Blomstrand, a Swedish scientist, in 1864.

Internationally, the name niobium was adopted in 1950. Niobium is a shiny, white, ductile metal. Due to its many properties, niobium is used in many areas of research and in creating magnets. One of the strongest superconducting magnets in the world makes use of niobium alloy wires such as niobium-tin and niobium-titanium.

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Why is yttrium named so?

The discovery of yttrium (atomic number 39) began in 1787 when Carl Arrhenius found a mineral that resembled coal in a quartz mine near Ytterby of Sweden. Arrhenius named this black mineral ‘ytterbite’ based on Ytterby, where it was found.

In Finland, Johan Gadolin received a sample of ytterbite from Arrhenius. He carried out a detailed analysis of it in 1794 and found that it contained an unknown earth metal. The new metal was named yttrium. His results were confirmed by Anders Ekeberg, a Swedish chemist in 1797.

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When was strontium discovered?

Strontium, atomic number 38, was recognized as a new element in 1790. A mineral sample from a lead mine near Strontian in Scotland (after which the element is named) was analysed by Adair Crawford, leading to this discovery. Until then, the scientific community thought that strontium and barium were the same element. Scientists had only discovered barium’s existence by then. It was initially called strontianite (strontium carbonate). Strontium was first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in 1808 while working in London. He used electrolysis to isolate it.

Strontium is very common in nature and is the 15th most abundant element in the planet’s crust. Physically, strontium is a soft, silvery metal. It is used to block X-rays emitted by TV picture tubes. It causes paint to glow in the dark and is responsible for the bright red colours in fireworks. Strontium is also vital in understanding the origin of the species as anthropologists study the levels of strontium ions in fossils to determine the geographic origins of ancient humans and animals. The compound strontium chloride is used in toothpaste to help people with sensitive teeth. Strontium oxide also improves the quality of pottery glazes.

Natural strontium is harmless, but one of its isotopes, Sr-90, is a very dangerous by-product of nuclear fallout. The world’s most accurate atomic clock is based on strontium atoms.

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