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Ladislaus Bortkiewicz

Ladislaus Bortkiewicz was born in Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia, to two ethnic Polish parents: Józef Bortkiewicz and Helena Bortkiewicz (née Rokicka). His father was a Polish nobleman who served in the Russian Imperial Army.

Bortkiewicz graduated from the Law Faculty in 1890. In 1898 he published a book about the Poisson distribution, titled The Law of Small Numbers. [ 1 ] In this book he first noted that events with low frequency in a large population follow a Poisson distribution even when the probabilities of the events varied. It was that book that made the Prussian horse-kicking data famous. The data gave the number of soldiers killed by being kicked by a horse each year in each of 14 cavalry corps over a 20-year period. Bortkiewicz showed that those numbers followed a Poisson distribution. The book also examined data on child-suicides. Some [ 2 ] have suggested that the Poisson distribution should have been named the “Bortkiewicz distribution.”

In political economy, Bortkiewicz is important for his analysis of Karl Marx’s reproduction schema in the last two volumes of Capital. Bortkiewicz identified a transformation problem in Marx’s work. Making use of Dmitriev’s analysis of Ricardo, Bortkiewicz proved that the data used by Marx was sufficient to calculate the general profit rate and relative prices. Though Marx’s transformation procedure was not correct—because it did not calculate prices and profit rate simultaneously, but sequentially—Bortkiewicz has shown that it is possible to get the correct results using the Marxian framework, i.e. using the Marxian variables constant capital and variable capital it is possible to obtain the profit rate and the relative prices in a three-sector model. This “correction of the Marxian system” has been the great contribution of Bortkiewicz to classical and Marxian economics but it was completely unnoticed until Paul Sweezy’s 1942 book “Theory of Capital ist Development”

Google is powering Belgium’s digital future with a two-year €5 billion investment in AI infrastructure

Google is investing an additional €5 billion in Belgium over the next two years to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure. This includes expansions of our data center campuses in Saint-Ghislain and will add another 300 full time jobs. We’ve also announced new agreements with Eneco, Luminus and Renner which will support the development of new onshore wind farms and support the grid with clean energy.

Our commitment goes beyond infrastructure. We’re also equipping Belgians with the skills needed to thrive in an AI-driven economy, at no cost and will fund non-profits to provide free, practical AI training for low-skilled workers.

This is an extraordinary time for European innovation and its digital and economic future. Google is deepening its roots in Belgium and investing in its residents to unlock significant economic opportunities for the country, helping to ensure it remains a leader in technology and AI.

2025 Nobel Prize in Physics Peer Review

Introduction.

Grounded in the scientific method, it critically examines the work’s methodology, empirical validity, broader implications, and opportunities for advancement, aiming to foster deeper understanding and iterative progress in quantum technologies. ## Executive Summary.

This work, based on experiments conducted in 1984–1985, addresses a fundamental question in quantum physics: the scale at which quantum effects persist in macroscopic systems.

By engineering a Josephson junction-based circuit where billions of Cooper pairs behave collectively as a single quantum entity, the laureates provided empirical evidence that quantum phenomena like tunneling through energy barriers and discrete energy levels can manifest in human-scale devices.

This breakthrough bridges microscopic quantum mechanics with macroscopic engineering, laying foundational groundwork for advancements in quantum technologies such as quantum computing, cryptography, and sensors.

Overall strengths include rigorous experimental validation and profound implications for quantum information science, though gaps exist in scalability to room-temperature applications and full mitigation of environmental decoherence.

Framed within the broader context, this award highlights the enduring evolution of quantum mechanics from theoretical curiosity to practical innovation, building on prior Nobel-recognized discoveries like the Josephson effect (1973) and superconductivity mechanisms (1972).

Continue reading “2025 Nobel Prize in Physics Peer Review” | >

Palladium filters could enable cheaper, more efficient generation of hydrogen fuel

Palladium is one of the keys to jump-starting a hydrogen-based energy economy. The silvery metal is a natural gatekeeper against every gas except hydrogen, which it readily lets through. For its exceptional selectivity, palladium is considered one of the most effective materials at filtering gas mixtures to produce pure hydrogen.

Today, palladium-based membranes are used at commercial scale to provide pure for semiconductor manufacturing, food processing, and fertilizer production, among other applications in which the membranes operate at modest temperatures. If palladium membranes get much hotter than around 800 Kelvin, they can break down.

Now, MIT engineers have developed a new palladium that remains resilient at much higher temperatures. Rather than being made as a continuous film, as most membranes are, the new design is made from palladium that is deposited as “plugs” into the pores of an underlying supporting material. At high temperatures, the snug-fitting plugs remain stable and continue separating out hydrogen, rather than degrading as a surface film would.

TSMC Fast-Tracks Production of Cutting-Edge Nodes in The US, With A16 (1.6nm) To Now Debut a Year Earlier Amid US-Taiwan Parity Pressure

TSMC plans to accelerate US manufacturing, with its new Arizona fab now expected to introduce high-end nodes, such as the A16, significantly ahead of the original timeline.

For those unaware, there’s still a concern by the US administration around TSMC’s operations in the US and Taiwan, and according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the USG is now demanding that TSMC produce ‘50% of its total chip capacity’ in America, to ensure that the nation is safeguarded from geopolitical tensions between China and Taiwan. According to a report by the Taiwan Economic Daily, the new Arizona Fab 3 is set to introduce 2nm and A16 in America by 2027, a year ahead of the original timeline.

TSMC is currently pursuing mass production of 4nm in its Arizona facility, and 3nm production lines are also being laid, with production expected to commence by year-end. More importantly, TSMC plans to introduce both 2nm and A16 (1.6nm) with TSMC’s fourth Arizona fab by 2027, which means that relative to Taiwan, the US will just be a year behind, which is a considerable progress in just a span of ‘few months’. In general, TSMC’s 2nm production is slated for next quarter, while A16 will be introduced around H2 2026.

Is violent AI-human conflict inevitable?

Are you worried that artificial intelligence and humans will go to war? AI experts are. In 2023, a group of elite thinkers signed onto the Center for AI Safety’s statement that “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

In a survey published in 2024, 38% to 51% of top-tier AI researchers assigned a probability of at least 10% to the statement “advanced AI leading to outcomes as bad as human extinction.”

The worry is not about the Large Language Models (LLMs) of today, which are essentially huge autocomplete machines, but about Advanced General Intelligence (AGI)—still hypothetical long-term planning agents that can substitute for human labor across a wide range of society’s economic systems.

$793M Economic Impact: SEALSQ to Launch Spain’s First Post-Quantum Semiconductor Center with Quantix

SEALSQ partners with Quantix Edge Security on €19.6M government-backed quantum chip facility in Murcia, Spain. Project starts H1 2026, includes QS7001 chip launch in November 2025.

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