Nature: The worldwide financial crisis of 2008 hit Ireland with particular severity. Much of the country’s recently acquired wealth lay in property, whose once sky-high values plummeted. In a Q&A with Nature‘s Dick Ahlstrom, the director-general of Science Foundation Ireland, John Travers, looks back at what Ireland’s scientific investments have achieved and forward at the challenge of continuing those investments. Travers asserts that
Ireland’s global scientific reputation has arguably never been so strong, and our attractiveness as a location for multinationals remains undiminished. Investment in research, therefore, is a pre-requisite for Ireland to re-establish itself as a buoyant economy with the ambition, and the ability, to spearhead innovations.
An ultracold atomic gas can sync into a single quantum state. Researchers uncovered a speed limit for the process that has implications for quantum computing and the evolution of the early universe.