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A global quantum network
Friday, 14 June 2013 13:52

By quantum-mechanically coupling laser-cooled atoms to glass fiber cables, Vienna University of Technology researchers have developed a way to store quantum information over a long enough period of time to allow for entangling atoms hundreds of kilometers apart via fiber cables.

This finding is a fundamental building block for a global fiber-based quantum communication network, the researchers suggest.

Atoms and light

“In our experiment, we connect two different quantum physical systems,” explains Arno Rauschenbeutel (Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology and Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics of the Vienna University of Technology). “We use fiber-guided light, which is perfect for sending quantum information from A to B, and atoms, which are ideal for storing this information.”

By trapping atoms at a distance of about 200 nanometers from a glass fiber (which itself only has a diameter of 500 nanometers), a very strong interaction between light and atoms can be implemented. This allows one to exchange quantum information between the two systems. This information exchange is the basis for technologies like quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation.

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Producing cheaper and more flexible multiple thin crystalline silicon wafers
Thursday, 13 June 2013 14:57

A team of researchers from the Nanoengineering Research Centre (CRNE) and the Department of Electronic Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPCn) has found a way to make the manufacture of crystalline silicon materials faster and more affordable. The results of their research have recently been published in the online version of the landmark journal Applied Physics Letters.

Thin crystalline silicon wafers measuring around 10 µm (micres) are costly but also very sought after in the field of microelectronics, especially in view of the growing demand for 3D circuit integration with microchips. Silicon wafers also have potential photovoltaic applications in the medium term in the conversion of sunlight to electricity and the production of more affordable, more flexible and lighter solar cells.

In recent years, techniques have been developed to obtain increasingly thinner crystalline silicon wafers from monocrystalline cylindrical ingots. Layers cut from the ingots using a multithreaded saw impregnated with abrasive material have a minimum thickness of around 150 µm. Obtaining wafers that are any thinner is more complicated, as existing methods only allow such wafers to be obtained one at a time. Furthermore, 50% of the silicon is lost in the process.

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The Remarkable Properties of Mythological Social Networks
Thursday, 13 June 2013 14:46

Ten years ago, few people would have heard of a social network. Today, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn permeate our lives. They show us how we are linked to each other and how we are more broadly placed within society.

What fascinates scientists is that the general properties of social networks seem to be invariant regardless of where they crop up. For example, one of the remarkable properties of social networks is their small world character. This means it is possible to go from one part of a network to any other part in a small number of steps (this is where the phrase 6 degrees of separation comes from).

That was entirely unexpected and counterintuitive when it was discovered in the 1960s by the American social psychologist Stanley Milgram. But it is as true today of Facebook and Twitter as it was of the society in which Milgram carried out his experiments.

Today,  P J Miranda at the Federal Technological University of Paraná in Brazil and a couple of pals study the social network between characters in Homer’s ancient Greek poem, the Odyssey. Their conclusion is that this social network bears remarkable similarities to Facebook, Twitter and the like and that this may offer an important clue about the origin of this ancient story.

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Animal invisibility cloak makes cat and fish vanish
Tuesday, 11 June 2013 11:44
Scientists have shown off their latest "invisibility cloak" by making a pet goldfish and a small cat vanish from plain sight.

The device is crude and unlikely to pass muster with the pupils of Hogwarts, but researchers said it marked a significant step forward in the science of the unseen.

In video footage of the device in action, a goldfish suddenly appears as it swims out of a cloak submerged in its tank. In another clip, the lower half of a cat disappears as it steps inside a cloak placed on a table.

Scientists led by Baile Zhang at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore created the cloaks from thin panels of glass that make objects invisible by bending light around them.

Though rudimentary - the devices only hide objects from certain angles, and in both cases the cloaks themselves were partially visible – they are better than earlier versions that worked only with polarised light, or with microwaves instead of the visible wavelengths that humans see in.

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When will my computer understand me?
Tuesday, 11 June 2013 11:34

It's not hard to tell the difference between the "charge" of a battery and criminal "charges." But for computers, distinguishing between the various meanings of a word is difficult.

For more than 50 years, linguists and computer scientists have tried to get computers to understand human language by programming semantics as software. Driven initially by efforts to translate Russian scientific texts during the Cold War (and more recently by the value of information retrieval and data analysis tools), these efforts have met with mixed success. IBM's Jeopardy-winning Watson system and Google Translate are high profile, successful applications of language technologies, but the humorous answers and mistranslations they sometimes produce are evidence of the continuing difficulty of the problem.

Our ability to easily distinguish between multiple word meanings is rooted in a lifetime of experience. Using the context in which a word is used, an intrinsic understanding of syntax and logic, and a sense of the speaker's intention, we intuit what another person is telling us.

"In the past, people have tried to hand-code all of this knowledge," explained Katrin Erk, a professor of linguistics at The University of Texas at Austin focusing on lexical semantics. "I think it's fair to say that this hasn't been successful. There are just too many little things that humans know."

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Feynman: his birthday, his diagrams and his lectures
Monday, 13 May 2013 16:42

Yesterday was the 95th anniversary of the birth of Richard Feynman, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. An excuse for an unusual party.

This evening BBC2 will show a documentary by Chris Riley about a remarkable man; Richard Feynman. Yesterday, on the 95th anniversary of Feynman's birth, Riley showed some clips and discussed the programme, and the man, with Robin Ince, Christopher Sykes and an audience at the Bloomsbury Theatre. Sykes met Feynman several times, and made three films with him starting with "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out". Riley expressed envy of Sykes, for having met Feynman. I felt the same.

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