📌 TOPINDIATOURS Hot ai: ICE Reportedly Stole a 10th Grader’s Phone, Then Seemingly

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents reportedly stole a teenage boy’s phone — and then seemingly pawned it afterwards for cash.

That detail comes from alarming new reporting from ProPublica that documents more than forty cases of ICE agents putting civilians in chokeholds and other moves that can block breathing.

One of these civilians was tenth grader Arnoldo Bazan, who was getting McDonald’s with his father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, when they were pulled over by masked agents. According to Arnoldo, after several agents violently tackled his father — who is undocumented — to the ground, with one pressing a knee into his neck, another put the 16-year-old in a suffocating chokehold. When he told the agent that he was a citizen and a minor, the agent didn’t stop.

“I started screaming with everything I had, because I couldn’t even breathe,” Arnoldo told ProPublica. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die.”

Arnoldo took footage of the encounter, but his phone was confiscated after he was taken into custody. Later, when he used the Find My feature to track down his device, it led him to a vending machine for used electronics several miles away and near an ICE detention center, according to the reporting. Someone — we can only guess who — had apparently sold Arnoldo’s phone after ICE had confiscated it.

The idea of ICE stealing and then selling somebody’s phone is jarring.

“Not the key part of this story, obviously,” wrote tech journalist Mike Masnick in response, “but they *sold* his phone?”

“Yes,” ProPublica clarified, writing that “immigration agents not only took Arnoldo’s phone, the 10th grader had to use Find My Phone to locate it — in a vending machine for used electronics, close to an ICE detention center.”

Arnoldo’s story comes after the killing of a woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last week becoming a flashpoint for ICE’s increasingly visible presence in several US cities, where they have brutalized civilians, wantonly detained both citizens and non-citizens alike, and clashed with onlookers and protestors. The woman, 37-year-old Renee Good, was shot by veteran ICE agent Jonathan Ross in her car after Good began turning her vehicle away from the officer. Moments after gunning her down, the agent can be heard calling Good a “f**king b**ch.”

President Trump defended the actions and accused Good of behaving “horribly,” and even asserted that she didn’t simply try to run the agent over, but had actually done so, despite every available shred of video evidence to the contrary.

After being detained and released by ICE, Arnoldo’s family took him to Texas Children’s Hospital, where staff moved him to a trauma unit after identifying signs of the chokehold, according to ProPublica. Records show that doctors ordered dozens of CT scans and x-rays, including for his head, neck, and spine. His family says that the agents threatened to charge Arnoldo with assaulting an officer if his dad didn’t agree to be deported. The father is now in Mexico.

More on ICE: ICE Is Now Wandering the Streets, Scanning People’s Faces to Check If They’re Citizens

The post ICE Reportedly Stole a 10th Grader’s Phone, Then Seemingly Sold It for Cash appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Update ai: New quantum state found as electrons defy physics laws

Scientists have uncovered a previously unthinkable state of matter that challenges decades of assumptions about how electrons behave, opening novel possibilities for quantum computing, sensing and advanced materials.

The discovery was achieved by researchers at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) in Austria, who worked together with theorists at Rice University in Texas. It showed that topological states can form even when electrons no longer behave like well-defined particles, contrary to long-held scientific beliefs.

Topology, which is a concept borrowed from mathematics, describes properties that remain unchanged despite distortions. In physics, topological materials are prized because their electronic behavior is unusually robust. This makes them attractive for low-power electronics and quantum technologies.

Until recently, such states were believed to depend on electrons behaving like identifiable particles with clear velocities and energies. However, that view has now been overturned by experimental evidence.

Breaking electron rules

For the study, the researchers used a material composed of cerium, ruthenium and tin (CeRu₄Sn₆). They then evaluated its behavior at temperatures less than one degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or -273.15 degrees Celsius).

According to Diana Kirschbaum, a researcher at TU Wien and first author of the study, the material exhibited a specific type of quantum-critical behavior when exposed at temperatures near absolute zero.

“The material fluctuates between two different states, as if it cannot decide which one it wants to adopt,” she explained. “In this fluctuating regime, the quasiparticle picture is thought to lose its meaning.”

At extremely low temperatures, the team detected a distinct topological signal in the form of a spontaneous, or anomalous, Hall effect. In the Hall effect, charge carriers are normally deflected by a magnetic field.

In the current case, the deflection appeared without any external field, which was an unmistakable sign of topological behavior. The charge carriers behaved like particles, even though the usual particle model no longer applied in this material.

Surprisingly, the effect was strongest exactly where quantum fluctuations were most intense. “When these fluctuations are suppressed by pressure or magnetic fields, the topological properties disappear,” Kirschbaum continued.

A new quantum state

According to Silke Bühler-Paschen, PhD, a physics professor at TU Wien, the result came as a major surprise and shows that topological states need to be defined in broader terms.

“In fact, it turns out that a particle picture is not required to generate topological properties,” Bühler-Paschen pointed out in a statement. “The concept can indeed be generalized – the topological distinctions then emerge in a more abstract, mathematical way.”

The experiments further suggested that topological properties can emerge even in the absence of particle-like states. The newly discovered state, which the team calls emergent topological semimetal, was also supported by theoretical work carried out in collaboration with Rice University in Texas.

Lei Chen, a researcher and co–first author of the study working in the group of Qimiao Si, PhD, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, developed a new model that links quantum criticality with topology.

“By merging these fields, we ventured into uncharted territory,” Chen noted in a press release. “We were surprised to find that the quantum criticality itself could generate topological behavior, especially in a setting with strong interactions.”

According to the scientists, the discovery offers a practical roadmap for finding new topological materials. Quantum-critical behavior is already known in many classes of compounds and is relatively easy to identify experimentally.

“Knowing what to search for allows us to explore this phenomenon more systematically,” Si concluded. “It’s not just a theoretical insight, it’s a step toward developing real technologies that harness the deepest principles of quantum physics.”

The study has been published in the journal Nature Physics.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com