London, England (Credit: Diliff)

Not a lot of good has come out of the riots that rocked London and other English cities in 2011. In the year that has followed, economic indicators haven't improved and social disparities haven't disappeared. The neighborhoods that saw street violence and larcenous looting are as rough as ever. But a recent immigrant from the opposite side of the world is determined to find a diamond in all of that rough – or if not, then at the very least, create one.

In the aftermath of pitched battles between disaffected youth and police officers, Mexican artist Teresa Margolles collected the ashes of buildings that had been set ablaze and burnt to the ground. Then, using the HPHT process – used to morph the cremated remains of loved ones into valuable gems - she converted them into a literal diamond weighing three-quarters of a carat. Margolles says that she metamorphosed the charred architecture into a polished diamond in order to preserve its memory. Now if only we could apply the HPHT process to all the causes of social strife, and not only to their symptoms.

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Diamond-encrusted Rubik's Cube (Credit: Chaim Moskovitz)

Truly, when cheesy childhood tchotchkes receive the bejeweling treatment, you know that the boundaries of what are and are not considered appropriate objects to be diamond-ized is have expanded. This week, Rubik's cube creator Erno Rubik will travel to the United States to open a special exhibit in honor of the three-dimensional puzzle popularized in the 1980's, which is set to include a polished diamond-encrusted cube worth $2.5 million!

But a search through the archives at IsraeliDiamond.co.il reveals that the Texas team that produced the cube is not nearly the only one; local diamondier Chaim Moskovitz, who has worked in Israel, designing and manufacturing mainly diamond jewelry for the last 25 years, has turned the colorful cube into a light-hearted luxury item, as well. And the popular puzzle isn't Moskovitz's only diamond adaptation of a kid's toy: he's also produced jewelry made out of a set of diamond-plated Lego blocks.

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Handling a diamond (Credit: Israeli Diamond Industry)

As chip research advances at exponential rates, the amazing feats that computers are capable of performing multiply at astounding speed, while the size of the mainframe machines shrink down from the size of entire buildings to tablets no larger than a pad of paper and telephones that fit in the palm of your hand. Could the next logical step be nano-computers that fit right onto your hand itself – in the shape of polished diamond jewelry?

Scientists at the University of California have just reported that they have successfully built a quantum computer inside of a diamond, according to technology blog Tom's Hardware. The brains behind the experiment were mum about the commercial potential of "intelligent" jewelry.

The insanely small polished diamond computers wouldn't be in direct competition with luxury jewelers, however, since the latter seek out diamonds that are free of structural imperfections, whereas the former consciously seek them out. Apparently, it is the very molecular imperfections themselves that create the conditions for its use as a quantum computer.

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