News Analysis: Arizona Medicaid Cuts Seen as a Sign of the Times

With enrollments exploding, revenues shrinking and the low-hanging fruit plucked long ago, virtually every state has had to make painful cuts to its Medicaid program during the economic downturn.

What distinguishes the reductions recently imposed in Arizona, where coverage was eliminated on Oct. 1 for certain transplants of the heart, liver, lung, pancreas and bone marrow, is the decision to stop paying for treatments urgently needed to ward off death.

The cuts in transplant coverage, which could deny organs to 100 adults currently on the transplant list, are testament to both the severity of fiscal pressures on the states and the particular bloodlessness of budget-cutting in Arizona.

?It?s a real sign of the times,? said Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy. ?And I think this is a precursor to a much larger number of states having this discussion.?

Policy choices with such life-threatening implications are all the more striking given the partisan framing of the health debate.

Republicans have argued that the new health law will lead to rationing, warning even of ?death panels.? Democrats have responded that care is already rationed, with 50 million people going largely without insurance, and that the law will bring greater equity.

The Arizona case, said Diane Rowland, director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, ?is a classic example of making decisions based not on medical need but based on a budget.? And, she added, ?it results, potentially, in denial of care to individuals in a life-or-death situation.?

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services do not monitor which states use Medicaid money for transplants. But health experts said no other state had withdrawn coverage for patients pursuing transplants.

Arizona?s decision, by Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, and the Republican-controlled Legislature, was made after state officials assessed success and survival rates for a number of transplant procedures. National transplant groups call the figures misleading.

?It seems inappropriate that life-saving care has the potential to be withheld based solely on budgetary issues and the bureaucratic determination of relative benefits,? said Dr. Robert S. Gaston, president-elect of the American Society of Transplantation.

There is usually a long-term consequence to short-term cuts in safety-net programs like Medicaid, which insures low-income Americans and is financed by state and federal governments.

When payments to doctors are cut, fewer providers are willing to treat Medicaid patients. When eligibility levels are lowered, more people are left to seek charity care in emergency rooms. When optional benefits like dental services and prescription drugs are eliminated, conditions worsen until they require more expensive care.

But no other state in recent memory has made such a numbers-driven calculation pitting the potential loss of life against modest savings.

Jennifer Carusetta, the legislative liaison for Arizona?s Medicaid agency, said the transplant cuts would save a mere $800,000 in the current fiscal year, and only $1.4 million for a full year.

The cuts were imposed in an effort to close a $2.6 billion shortfall in the state?s $8.9 billion budget for this year.

The options available to states for cutting Medicaid have been limited because the federal stimulus package and the health care law have required them to maintain eligibility levels. That has left states to cut payments to providers and trim benefits not required by federal regulations.

Many states, including Arizona, have done both. A September report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 39 states cut provider payments and 20 cut optional benefits in their 2010 fiscal years, with similar numbers planning to do so in 2011.

Arizona reduced Medicaid payments to doctors by 5 percent last year and has frozen payments to hospitals and nursing homes for two years. All providers will undergo another 5 percent cut on April 1, Ms. Carusetta said.

This year, Arizona became the only state to eliminate its Children?s Health Insurance Program, which would have affected 47,000 children of working-class parents. Lawmakers reversed course before the effective date only after concluding that the state might run afoul of federal requirements and lose billions of dollars in matching money.

The state has also enacted a wide range of Medicaid cuts, eliminating coverage for emergency dental procedures, insulin pumps and orthotics. ?We realize this has serious impacts on people,? Ms. Carusetta said. ?Unfortunately, given the fiscal constraints facing our state, the Legislature has limited options at this point.?

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News Analysis: Arizona Medicaid Cuts Seen as a Sign of the Times

With enrollments exploding, revenues shrinking and the low-hanging fruit plucked long ago, virtually every state has had to make painful cuts to its Medicaid program during the economic downturn.

What distinguishes the reductions recently imposed in Arizona, where coverage was eliminated on Oct. 1 for certain transplants of the heart, liver, lung, pancreas and bone marrow, is the decision to stop paying for treatments urgently needed to ward off death.

The cuts in transplant coverage, which could deny organs to 100 adults currently on the transplant list, are testament to both the severity of fiscal pressures on the states and the particular bloodlessness of budget-cutting in Arizona.

?It?s a real sign of the times,? said Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy. ?And I think this is a precursor to a much larger number of states having this discussion.?

Policy choices with such life-threatening implications are all the more striking given the partisan framing of the health debate.

Republicans have argued that the new health law will lead to rationing, warning even of ?death panels.? Democrats have responded that care is already rationed, with 50 million people going largely without insurance, and that the law will bring greater equity.

The Arizona case, said Diane Rowland, director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, ?is a classic example of making decisions based not on medical need but based on a budget.? And, she added, ?it results, potentially, in denial of care to individuals in a life-or-death situation.?

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services do not monitor which states use Medicaid money for transplants. But health experts said no other state had withdrawn coverage for patients pursuing transplants.

Arizona?s decision, by Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, and the Republican-controlled Legislature, was made after state officials assessed success and survival rates for a number of transplant procedures. National transplant groups call the figures misleading.

?It seems inappropriate that life-saving care has the potential to be withheld based solely on budgetary issues and the bureaucratic determination of relative benefits,? said Dr. Robert S. Gaston, president-elect of the American Society of Transplantation.

There is usually a long-term consequence to short-term cuts in safety-net programs like Medicaid, which insures low-income Americans and is financed by state and federal governments.

When payments to doctors are cut, fewer providers are willing to treat Medicaid patients. When eligibility levels are lowered, more people are left to seek charity care in emergency rooms. When optional benefits like dental services and prescription drugs are eliminated, conditions worsen until they require more expensive care.

But no other state in recent memory has made such a numbers-driven calculation pitting the potential loss of life against modest savings.

Jennifer Carusetta, the legislative liaison for Arizona?s Medicaid agency, said the transplant cuts would save a mere $800,000 in the current fiscal year, and only $1.4 million for a full year.

The cuts were imposed in an effort to close a $2.6 billion shortfall in the state?s $8.9 billion budget for this year.

The options available to states for cutting Medicaid have been limited because the federal stimulus package and the health care law have required them to maintain eligibility levels. That has left states to cut payments to providers and trim benefits not required by federal regulations.

Many states, including Arizona, have done both. A September report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 39 states cut provider payments and 20 cut optional benefits in their 2010 fiscal years, with similar numbers planning to do so in 2011.

Arizona reduced Medicaid payments to doctors by 5 percent last year and has frozen payments to hospitals and nursing homes for two years. All providers will undergo another 5 percent cut on April 1, Ms. Carusetta said.

This year, Arizona became the only state to eliminate its Children?s Health Insurance Program, which would have affected 47,000 children of working-class parents. Lawmakers reversed course before the effective date only after concluding that the state might run afoul of federal requirements and lose billions of dollars in matching money.

The state has also enacted a wide range of Medicaid cuts, eliminating coverage for emergency dental procedures, insulin pumps and orthotics. ?We realize this has serious impacts on people,? Ms. Carusetta said. ?Unfortunately, given the fiscal constraints facing our state, the Legislature has limited options at this point.?

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Protection or targeting? A new Facebook campaign brings out the best and worst of the Internet. [TNW Facebook]

There are great ideas behind social causes and Facebook is a place where people can easily organize the cause of their choice with a viral push behind it. The latest, in case you haven?t noticed all of your friends turning into cartoon characters, is a campaign to raise awareness against child abuse.

The idea is simple ? change your picture to draw attention to the fact of child abuse. It?s supposed to serve as a reminder with the hope that you?ll then donate to the child protection service or organization of your choice. However, it?s also on the Internet, which means that some people will be crying wolf:

TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO CHANGED THEIR PICTURES TO CARTOONS FOR NSPCC: IT WASNT FOR NSPCC, IT WAS FOR A GROUP OF PEADOPHILES WHO SET IT UP SO THAT CHILDREN WOULD ACCEPT FRIEND REQUESTS FASTER AS IT WAS A CARTOON PICTURE. THIS WAS ON AN INTERNET FRAUD PROGRAM AND THE NEWS TONIGHT. COPY AND PASTE AS YOUR STATUS TO LET EVERYONE KNOW

To us, the all-caps message looks like something that you?d see in a spammy, forwarded email promising you money for continuing to forward it. However, our investigation of the source behind the campaign leaves us a bit stumped. Though the NSPCC has backed the original campaign, there is no information about who started it or where it?s from.

Now that the rumor mill has started, others are fighting hard to spread whichever side they happen to believe. On the page for the campaign itself, messages such as this have been posted in reply to the rumors of foul play:

While we can verify that the page is full of links to child support groups and organizations, the rumors continue to fly. So, choose whichever side you feel is true, but do stop by and donate while you?re at it. Facing facts, cartoon characters as an avatar aren?t going to accomplish much in the way of financial help.

In the mean time, we?re continuing to dig around and find what we can about whomever started the movement. We?ll let you know what we stumble upon.

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PlayStation Phone shown off running Android 2.3

The PlayStation Phone, codenamed Zeus Z1, has received a nice new leak, this time in video form. It reveals just how fat the Sony Ericsson phone really is and also clearly shows that the device is running Android 2.3 (codenamed Gingerbread). The audio-less video in question is embedded below, but if you want to make sure that there really is a PlayStation icon for the dedicated PlayStation app, check out the second shorter video.

Separately, seven pictures taken with the phones camera have leaked to Picasa. If the camera is a big factor in your decision for a phone, check the pictures out; they're not half bad.

Less than two months ago, details of the PlayStation Phone leaked out. The phone will supposedly come with a custom Sony Marketplace for purchasing and downloading games designed for the new platform. The device sports a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655, 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and a screen ranging from 3.7 to 4.1 inches. The handset also includes a long touchpad in the center which is apparently multitouch, as well as familiar PlayStation shoulder buttons. There's no Sony Memory Stick slot, but there is support for microSD cards. Right now, a 2011 release is most likely.

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Viacom: YouTube ruling will "completely destroy" copyright

Media giant Viacom has filed its appeal of a June ruling in favor of Google's YouTube, the latest move in the companies' ongoing battle over alleged copyright infringement. Viacom wants to overturn a previous ruling that the company feels let YouTube off the hook for hosting thousands of pirated video clips of some of its popular programs, according to Wired.

"If affirmed by this Court, that construction of Section 512(c) would radically transform the functioning of the copyright system and severely impair, if not completely destroy, the value of many copyrighted creations," reads Viacom's 73-page appeal. "It would immunize from copyright infringement liability even avowedly piratical Internet businesses."

Viacom's attempt to collect more than $1 billon in alleged damages from YouTube is the latest episode in a legal battle that has already dragged on for nearly four years. US District Judge Louis Stanton originally concluded that YouTube had complied with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and dismissed Viacom's lawsuit before a trial.

Viacom is now arguing that YouTube became the world's leading online video channel after its 2005 debut by turning a blind eye to copyright-protected clips, which attracted far more viewers than amateur videos. Google branded YouTube as "a 'rogue enabler' of content theft" before it bought the service in 2006, according to internal documents unearthed in the lawsuit.

Viacom points to evidence that YouTube could have done more to prevent pirated clips from being uploaded, but did not because the site's managers knew viewership would plunge. Now, YouTube has over 35 hours of content uploaded every minute, and Google monitors it all for copyrighted content.

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For Pentagon Lawyer Who Co-Wrote Report on Gays, Military Bias Hits Home

As Mr. Johnson recounted in an interview at the Pentagon last week, ?A year ago, this subject was so sensitive that whenever I had a conversation with anybody about it in the building, it was always a group of three or less, behind closed doors.?

As he wrote the report, which is a crucial factor in the Congressional debate over reversing the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy, he had to navigate the growing legal challenges to the 17-year-old law, which requires gay men and lesbians in the military to keep their sexual orientation secret or face discharge.

In October, a series of court decisions whipsawed the Pentagon into suspending and then resuming enforcement of the law over the course of little more than a week, creating bewilderment at recruiting stations and confusion among Defense Department lawyers. Wrangling in the courts continued into November.

?In the space of eight days we had to shift course on the worldwide enforcement of the law twice, and in the space of a month faced the possibility of shifting course four different times,? Mr. Johnson told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.

The experiences have turned Mr. Johnson into a force behind the Pentagon?s argument that Congress has to repeal ?don?t ask, don?t tell,? and soon, or the courts will do it for them. Although it is not at all clear whether the Supreme Court would strike down the law, Mr. Johnson and his boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, are warning of the dangers of repeal by abrupt ?judicial fiat,? which they said would not give the Pentagon enough time to prepare the armed forces for change.

But Mr. Johnson, 53, an early fund-raiser for President Obama in New York and the first black partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, also has a window into the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? debate from beyond the courtroom ? from his own family history.

His uncle, Robert B. Johnson, was not only one of the Tuskegee Airmen, but was also a participant in what is known as the Freeman Field Mutiny in 1945, when a group of the airmen were arrested for entering an all-white officers? club at Freeman Field in Indiana. The airmen were imprisoned for 10 days until the Army chief of staff, Gen. George C. Marshall, intervened. Three years later, President Harry S. Truman integrated the military by executive order.

Although Mr. Johnson says that discrimination based on race and sexual orientation are different ? sexual orientation, he maintains, is ?not a self-identifier? ? he has found similarities in the way the armed forces reacted in both cases to the prospect of change. The study Mr. Johnson wrote with Gen. Carter F. Ham found that, over all, 70 percent of the troops surveyed said the repeal of ?don?t ask, don?t tell? would have little effect, but about 60 percent of Marines predicted a negative impact.

The opposition to integrating the armed forces in the 1940s, Mr. Johnson said, was as high as 80 percent. ?The lesson to be drawn from that,? he said, ?is that very often the predictions about what is going to happen overestimate the negative consequences and underestimate the military?s ability to adapt.?

Mr. Johnson said he did not consider his work on the study as an assignment to advance civil rights. As the Defense Department?s lawyer and the report?s co-author, his position is that the Pentagon could make the change, but whether it should, he said, is up to Congress.

In the meantime, Mr. Johnson is handling a raft of other issues like the stalled efforts to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay and legal reviews of all United States military operations, including drone strikes. He supervises 10,000 Defense Department lawyers around the world and a staff of 200 at the Pentagon.

Mr. Johnson?s first name, pronounced ?Jay,? is taken from a Liberian chief whom his grandfather, Charles S. Johnson, a sociologist who was president of Fisk University, met during a League of Nations mission to Africa in 1930. He has never served in the military, but when Bill Clinton was president, Mr. Johnson told their mutual friend, the lawyer Vernon E. Jordan Jr., that he wanted to work in the new administration and got the job of Air Force counsel, in part, he said, to advance diversity.

?I had never set foot in the Pentagon,? he said.

Mr. Johnson served in the Pentagon from 1998 to 2001 and then returned to his job as a litigator at Paul, Weiss, but he wanted to go back to the capital. ?The scent and allure of Washington was very compelling to him,? said Gordon Davis, a former New York City parks commissioner and the founding chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center who is a friend of Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson, who is married and has two children, now has a home in Georgetown, but he has kept his old house in Montclair, N.J. Most of his waking hours are spent at the Pentagon.

As he told the Senate Armed Services Committee about what he faces on ?don?t ask, don?t tell?: ?This legal uncertainty is not going away anytime soon.?

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Predicting How Long You'll Live

For most of the past century, the financial-services industry has used actuarial tables to design life-insurance policies, pensions, and other products based on predictions of human lifespan. These "life tables" rely on historical death rates to predict the future longevity of broadly defined population groups. But human life expectancy has increased dramatically?from 47 years in 1900 to 77 today in the United States, with similar surges around the world, leading to skyrocking pension and healthcare costs. What's more, sizable variations in longevity have emerged among different subgroups. Thus the financial-services industry no longer considers life tables adequate, as they leave too much room for companies to lose money.

A growing number of corporations and governments are turning to an emerging group of lifespan modelers. These experts are studying the living in an attempt to predict who will make it well into old age?and who won't. "Life tables are crude and based on the past," says S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-founder of GD Analytics, a longevity consulting firm. Olshanksy says we now need to "generate much more finely grained estimates of survival."

A couple of years ago, Olshansky traveled around the world lecturing J.P. Morgan Chase executives on the rapidly changing face of human longevity. It was an eye-opening lesson for many at the Wall Street firm. "He had striking visuals showing the growth of obesity in the western world," recalls Guy Coughlan, a managing director in J.P. Morgan's London office. "He showed us how individual trends specific to a country, or social class, or occupation, all play into longevity."

For example, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 are not as healthy as the generation that preceeded them into retirement, Olshansky says. People born in the United Kingdom in the 1930s?often called the "golden cohort"?have lower death rates than the generations that came before and after them. Insights like these are vital to J.P. Morgan, which is among a growing number of Wall Street firms that offer "longevity swaps"?insurance policies that pension funds use to hedge the risk that pensioners will outlive their funds' reserves.

In addition to correlating health conditions with longevity, lifespan modelers drill far deeper into individual traits than traditional actuaries do. So, says Olshansky, he's not just a 56-year-old white male in the United States. "I'm also a Jewish male with a given level of education," he says. "Education and religious background actually play an important role, as does the state you live in, and the duration of your parents' lives."

Other companies are creating models based on what people buy online, what magazines they read, and even what hobbies they pursue. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Deloitte Consulting uses models that predict individuals' risk of developing specific illnesses based on their exercise habits, shopping patterns, and hankering for fast food. Future models may even include genetic test results and data from wireless health monitors. Scrutinizing all these factors yields insights about specific subgroups of the population, which financial professionals can then use to predict the longevity of individuals and the average longevity of groups.

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For Pentagon Lawyer Who Co-Wrote Report on Gays, Military Bias Hits Home

As Mr. Johnson recounted in an interview at the Pentagon last week, ?A year ago, this subject was so sensitive that whenever I had a conversation with anybody about it in the building, it was always a group of three or less, behind closed doors.?

As he wrote the report, which is a crucial factor in the Congressional debate over reversing the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy, he had to navigate the growing legal challenges to the 17-year-old law, which requires gay men and lesbians in the military to keep their sexual orientation secret or face discharge.

In October, a series of court decisions whipsawed the Pentagon into suspending and then resuming enforcement of the law over the course of little more than a week, creating bewilderment at recruiting stations and confusion among Defense Department lawyers. Wrangling in the courts continued into November.

?In the space of eight days we had to shift course on the worldwide enforcement of the law twice, and in the space of a month faced the possibility of shifting course four different times,? Mr. Johnson told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.

The experiences have turned Mr. Johnson into a force behind the Pentagon?s argument that Congress has to repeal ?don?t ask, don?t tell,? and soon, or the courts will do it for them. Although it is not at all clear whether the Supreme Court would strike down the law, Mr. Johnson and his boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, are warning of the dangers of repeal by abrupt ?judicial fiat,? which they said would not give the Pentagon enough time to prepare the armed forces for change.

But Mr. Johnson, 53, an early fund-raiser for President Obama in New York and the first black partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, also has a window into the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? debate from beyond the courtroom ? from his own family history.

His uncle, Robert B. Johnson, was not only one of the Tuskegee Airmen, but was also a participant in what is known as the Freeman Field Mutiny in 1945, when a group of the airmen were arrested for entering an all-white officers? club at Freeman Field in Indiana. The airmen were imprisoned for 10 days until the Army chief of staff, Gen. George C. Marshall, intervened. Three years later, President Harry S. Truman integrated the military by executive order.

Although Mr. Johnson says that discrimination based on race and sexual orientation are different ? sexual orientation, he maintains, is ?not a self-identifier? ? he has found similarities in the way the armed forces reacted in both cases to the prospect of change. The study Mr. Johnson wrote with Gen. Carter F. Ham found that, over all, 70 percent of the troops surveyed said the repeal of ?don?t ask, don?t tell? would have little effect, but about 60 percent of Marines predicted a negative impact.

The opposition to integrating the armed forces in the 1940s, Mr. Johnson said, was as high as 80 percent. ?The lesson to be drawn from that,? he said, ?is that very often the predictions about what is going to happen overestimate the negative consequences and underestimate the military?s ability to adapt.?

Mr. Johnson said he did not consider his work on the study as an assignment to advance civil rights. As the Defense Department?s lawyer and the report?s co-author, his position is that the Pentagon could make the change, but whether it should, he said, is up to Congress.

In the meantime, Mr. Johnson is handling a raft of other issues like the stalled efforts to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay and legal reviews of all United States military operations, including drone strikes. He supervises 10,000 Defense Department lawyers around the world and a staff of 200 at the Pentagon.

Mr. Johnson?s first name, pronounced ?Jay,? is taken from a Liberian chief whom his grandfather, Charles S. Johnson, a sociologist who was president of Fisk University, met during a League of Nations mission to Africa in 1930. He has never served in the military, but when Bill Clinton was president, Mr. Johnson told their mutual friend, the lawyer Vernon E. Jordan Jr., that he wanted to work in the new administration and got the job of Air Force counsel, in part, he said, to advance diversity.

?I had never set foot in the Pentagon,? he said.

Mr. Johnson served in the Pentagon from 1998 to 2001 and then returned to his job as a litigator at Paul, Weiss, but he wanted to go back to the capital. ?The scent and allure of Washington was very compelling to him,? said Gordon Davis, a former New York City parks commissioner and the founding chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center who is a friend of Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson, who is married and has two children, now has a home in Georgetown, but he has kept his old house in Montclair, N.J. Most of his waking hours are spent at the Pentagon.

As he told the Senate Armed Services Committee about what he faces on ?don?t ask, don?t tell?: ?This legal uncertainty is not going away anytime soon.?

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Android to pass iOS before iOS catches up to BlackBerry

60.7 million people in the US owned smartphones during the last quarter, up 14 percent from the preceding three month period. The number of smartphone owners who use Google's Android OS is about to pass the number of users on Apple's iOS, but the number of Americans on RIM's BlackBerry OS is still ahead of both. Based on the data provided by tracking firm comScore, Android saw a huge sales jump while iOS gained a little and BlackBerry dropped quite a bit.

In the three months ending in October, RIM dropped from 39.3 percent to 35.8 percent. Apple's share rose less than a single percentage point, going from 23.8 percent to 24.6 percent. Meanwhile, the share of Google users rose sharply from 17.0 percent to 23.5 percent.

If iOS and Android were neck and neck a month ago, it looks like the latter will pass the former in the current quarter, especially given that it includes the 2010 holiday season. BlackBerry should remain in first this year, but that lead won't last for long.

Microsoft's share dropped from 11.8 percent to 9.7 percent of smartphone subscribers. Palm's numbers fell from 4.9 percent to 3.9 percent. Despite losing share to Android, most smartphone platforms are still gaining users because the smartphone market overall continues to grow.

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Electricity and Light in One Chip

Today's computer chips are chunks of silicon that use electrical pulses to crunch data. But IBM researchers are now making chips for tomorrow: chunks of silicon that also contain pathways for light pulses.

These optical circuits can exchange information with the conventional, electronic circuits in the same chip. This could transport data inside a computer significantly faster, because light signals can transport larger quantities of data at higher speeds than conventional copper electrical wiring can. A chip could use its optical?photonic?circuits for high-speed input and output.

"We need faster ways to shuttle information around," says Solomon Assefa, a member of the research team at IBM's Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. "Our main motivation is to build, in five years or so, exascale systems that will be 1,000 times faster than what we have now."

Today's supercomputers are dubbed "petascale" because their power is measured in petaflops, or quadrillions of floating-point operations per second. The U.S. Department of Energy has urged the development of machines capable of exaflops?quintillions of operations per second?to enable more powerful simulation-based research into climate change and renewable and nuclear energy.

Over the past seven years, IBM's researchers have developed a chain of individual silicon components that together can convert a chip's electrical signals into light signals and back again. Now they've found a way to build all of those components on the same chip without inhibiting the transistors' performance, using the standard complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) techniques used to build processors and other chips today.

Now that this goal has been achieved in the lab, says Assefa, "the next step is to transfer this to a commercial fab, like those making chips today." Although the technology is not expected to be market-ready for around five years, IBM is keen to test its techniques on the production equipment for which they are designed.

This is a significant advance, says Bahram Jalali, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped kick-start silicon photonics when he developed the first silicon laser in 2004. "Integration with CMOS is a very difficult thing that has been a vision of many in the field for some time," he says.

Other companies have been developing silicon photonics as well. Earlier this year, Intel unveiled a collection of dedicated photonic chips that can be used to carry data between conventional electronic chips. Caltech spinoff Luxtera puts photonic components on a silicon wafer after the electronic silicon components have been completed.

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