Submitted by:

John Israel R. CatedralIV-Maxwell

Submitted to:

Ms. Aimee Pareño

Atomic Antennas Transmit Quantum Information Across a Microchip(Feb. 26, 2011) — The Austrian research group led by

physicist Rainer Blatt suggests a fundamentally novel architecture for quantum computation. They have experimentally demonstrated quantum antennas, which enable the exchange of quantum information between two separate memory cells located on a computer chip. This offers new opportunities to build practical quantum computers.

Six years ago scientists at the University of Innsbruck realized the first quantum byte -- a quantum computer with eight entangled quantum particles; a record that still stands. "Nevertheless, to make practical use of a quantum computer that performs calculations, we need a lot more quantum bits," says Prof. Rainer Blatt, who, with his research team at the Institute for Experimental Physics, created the first quantum byte in an electromagnetic ion trap. "In these traps we cannot string together large numbers of ions and control them simultaneously."

To solve this problem, the scientists have started to design a quantum computer based on a system of many small registers, which have to be linked. To achieve this, Innsbruck quantum physicists have now developed a revolutionary approach based on a concept formulated by theoretical physicists Ignacio Cirac and Peter Zoller. In their experiment, the physicists electromagnetically coupled two groups of ions over a distance of about 50 micrometers. Here, the motion of the particles serves as an antenna. "The particles oscillate like electrons in the poles of a TV antenna and thereby generate an electromagnetic field," explains Blatt. "If one antenna is tuned to the other one, the receiving end picks up the signal of the sender, which results in coupling." The energy exchange taking place in this process could be the basis for fundamental computing operations of a quantum computer.

Antennas amplify transmission

"We implemented this new concept in a very simple way," explains Rainer Blatt. In a miniaturized ion trap a double-well potential was created, trapping the calcium ions. The two wells were separated by 54 micrometers. "By applying a voltage to the electrodes of the ion trap, we were able to match the oscillation frequencies of the ions," says Blatt.

"This resulted in a coupling process and an energy exchange, which can be used to transmit quantum information." A direct coupling of two mechanical oscillations at the quantum level has never been demonstrated before. In addition, the scientists show that the coupling is amplified by using more ions in each well. "These additional ions function as antennas and increase the distance and speed of the transmission," says Rainer Blatt, who is excited about the new concept. This work constitutes a promising approach for building a fully functioning quantum computer.

"The new technology offers the possibility to distribute entanglement. At the same time, we are able to target each memory cell individually," explains Rainer Blatt. The new quantum computer could be based on a chip with many micro traps, where ions communicate with each other through electromagnetic coupling. This new approach represents an important step towards practical quantum technologies for information processing.

'Brain Suites' Replacing Operating Rooms

January 2011

Why CT scans are dangerous? CT scans use X-rays to image the body. X-rays can pass through most materials. It all depends on the size of the atoms that make up the material; larger atoms absorb X-ray photons, while smaller atoms do not, and the X-rays pass right through. For instance, the soft tissue in the body is composed of smaller atoms, so it doesn't absorb X-rays very well. But calcium atoms in the bones are much larger and do absorb X-rays. A camera on the other side of the patient records the patterns of X-ray light passing through the patient's body. In a CT scan, a series of X-ray beams is directed through the body from different angles. This creates cross-sections so scientists can get a better view of the body. The images are put together by a computer into a stack of pictures that can be viewed rapidly, like flipping through a deck of cards.

BALTIMORE, MD (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Each year, 20 million Americans undergo surgery. But surgeries can be risky, and complications can happen during and after a procedure. Now, a new high-tech operating room is helping make surgeries safer.

Riding horses is David Buffamoyer's passion, but after back surgery left him partially paralyzed, he thought he'd never ride or walk again.

"The first thing I thought about was, man I can't walk," Buffamoyer told Ivanhoe.David is walking today thanks to Neurosurgeon, Ali bydon at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, and to this, a new highly sophisticated surgical suite that's helping doctors perform better, safer surgeries.

"I know that my patients get a better outcome and a better operation out of it, and I know that there's less risk of infection," Dr. Bydon said.

The Brainsuite iCT is a digital operating room with a combination of GPS like navigation technologies that allows surgeons to view images during surgery of the back and neck, where surgical precision is critical.

"When we're doing surgery for example I cannot see anterior to my bone, I cannot see through the bone, but navigation allows me to be able to, so if there’s a nerve root on the other side of the bone, navigation allows me to see that," Dr. Bydon said.

In the room is a CT scanner on tracks that can be moved to take a scan at anytime. The operating table has a radiolucent tabletop that allows x-rays to be taken without ever moving or awakening the patient from anesthesia. Ceiling mounted cameras work with GPS navigation technology to give doctors live, 3D views inside a patient's body during surgery. Live images allow doctors to check their work after surgery.

"Before we leave the operating room we are either 100% satisfied or we're not, and if we're not, we have a chance to fix it," Dr. Bydon said.

The high tech state of the art operating room was the guide Dr. Bydon needed to get David back on his feet.

Heart Health: Looking Inside X-Ray-Free

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) is a dangerous condition where the heart beats irregularly. It's a major cause of stroke and affects over two million Americans -- mostly the elderly. Treatment is possible, but it doesn't come without risks. Now, there's a new, safer way to treat A-Fib.

One night, Joann Mooney's heart started racing. She was terrified.

"I thought I was having a heart attack," Mooney recalled.

She has A-Fib, an irregular heart rhythm. Traditionally, cardiologists use X-rays to see inside the body and guide a flexible tube to the heart to fix the condition. The surgery can last up to six hours, exposing patients and doctors to large amounts of radiation.

"There are many known dangers to X-ray exposure, predominately an increased incidence of both skin cancer and other forms of cancer," John Ferguson, M.D., a cardiologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va., explained.

Now, doctors have a new method to treat the condition, completely eliminating the need for X-rays.

"We think we can get better imaging of the cardiac tissue using this technique, than traditional X-ray techniques," Dr. Ferguson said.

Doctors use an ultrasound catheter -- a flexible tube with a miniaturized ultrasound on the tip of the tube to see inside the body. Combined with a 3-D image of the heart, surgeons can guide the catheter to fix the areas of the heart causing the irregular heart rhythm.

"Being able to complete a long and complex procedure without any X-ray, I think is almost certainly going to be beneficial to patients," Dr. Ferguson said.

Mooney's surgery was a success, bringing her a new lease on life.

"I'm like a new person," she said. "I'm enjoying life to the fullest."

She made a full recovery, X-ray free.

Pregnant women with abnormal heart rates can also be safely treated using this technique. The procedure also uses MRI for all imaging needed prior to surgery. Traditionally, CT scans were used, but CT uses X-ray beams.

Liquid Body Armor

BACKGROUND: Engineers have designed a way to make police officers and soldiers safer with better body armor. The secret is a new "shear-thickening" fluid. When fabric has been saturated in this new fluid, it becomes strong enough to stop a bullet, but remains lightweight enough to wear comfortably.

NEWARK, Del. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Hard, heavy, stiff and bulky is how most cops describe their bullet-proof vests, but relief could be in sight. One coat of this gooey liquid turns soft fabric into a tough, stab-proof, bullet-proof material.

It's not just in the movies. Our men and women in blue put their lives on the line every day, and this may be their next weapon against crime. It's no normal, flimsy piece of fabric after it's soaked in shear-thickening fluid, which turns soft material into solid protective gear.

"The material becomes very hard and prevents the projectile from moving through the fabric," Norman Wagner, Ph.D., a rheologist at the University of Delaware in Newark, tells Ivanhoe.

Rheologists, who study the unusual flow of materials, developed the liquid. Now, it's being tested on Kevlar to make bullet-proof vests as comfortable as regular clothing.

"A normal vest is 30, 40 layers of Kevlar fabric tightly packed together," Wagner says. "We can potentially reduce the number of layers, making the material lighter, more flexible, better -- easier to wear."

To prove the liquid's toughness, an ice pick goes right through untreated fabric, but it's stopped by fabric coated with the new liquid. Tiny, hard particles in the liquid cluster together and jam when struck by a sudden force. Fabric coated in the liquid becomes hard enough to stop a bullet, while remaining flexible.

Wagner says, "We want to improve current body armor technology and make it resistant to many different threats -- not just ballistic, but also fragmentations such as bombs."

The military plans to use the liquid technology to improve Kevlar vests for troops, a must-have body armor that saves lives. Researchers will also test the liquid technology in fabric for pants and sleeves, areas that aren't covered by a traditional Kevlar vest.

Star Wars 'telepresence' tantalisingly close

In 1977 audiences were wowed by the special effects of the first Star Wars film, which included a hologram of Princess Leia making a distress call to Obi-Wan Kenobi after her ship had fallen under attack by the Empire. Now, the idea of real-time, dynamic holograms depicting scenes occurring in different locations is almost a reality, thanks to a breakthrough at the University of Arizona and Nitto Denko Technical Corporation.

Current interest in 3D display technology is higher than ever, spurred by the demonstration of 3D TV and the release of films produced in this format, such as Avatar. The action appears to come out of the screen because two perspectives combine to generate a 3D image. But to see 3D images, viewers have to wear specialized glasses with two different lenses that let through light polarized in different directions.

Holography is different from this, producing many perspectives that allow the viewer to see the "object" from multiple angles. With this approach the amplitude and phase of the light are reproduced by diffraction, allowing the viewer to perceive the light as it would have been scattered by the real object. In practice this is achieved by creating a screen – out of materials such as silver halide films or photopolymers – that provides the viewer with a slightly different perspective, depending on the observation angle.

Progress towards achieving more dynamic holograms, with the ultimate goal of real-time reproduction, took a major step forward two years ago when a team led by Nasser Peyghambarian created a monochromatic display that could produce a new image every four minutes. Now, with this latest work the researchers have taken a dramatic leap by unveiling a 17 inch display that can reproduce an object in colour every two seconds.

The system works by taking multiple images of an object with 16 different cameras positioned at a range of different angles. A computer processes all this information into "hogel data", which is transferred to a second computer via an ethernet link. At this location three different holograms are written into the material at different angles. Illuminating the polymer with incoherent emission from red, blue and green LEDs creates colour images.

The key to the breakthrough is the material from which the screen is fabricated – a photorefractive polymer. Switching to this polymer has slashed the time taken for a laser to "write" on a holographic pixel, known as hogel, from a second to just six nanoseconds. "[The latest polymer] can also be erased with the same beams used to write the image, so a separate erasing set-up is not required," explains lead author Pierre-Alexandre Blanche from the University of Arizona.

Towards telepresence

Peyghambarian believes that his team's technology could aid medical operations. "The cameras would be sitting around where the surgery is done, so that different doctors from around the world could participate, and see things just as if they were there," he says.

To commercialize the system, writing speeds must increase to 30 frames per second, and the display must be larger, deliver a better colour palette and have a higher resolution. "If you want a true, real-time telepresence you need to go to at least 6–8 feet by 6–8 feet, so that the human person can be demonstrated as they are," says Peyghambarian.

The ultimate goal is to achieve "telepresence", where you could chat with others via 3D replications. In moving towards this, the technology will have to improve its resolution as well as its speed.

Super-Powered Stethoscope

BALTIMORE (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- The roar of a fire truck ... the whine of ambulance sirens ... MedEVAC helicopters overhead. They're first at an accident scene, but they're also loud -- making some emergencies too noisy for paramedics and doctors to listen to a patient's vital signs with a stethoscope.

"You can't hear lung sounds. You can't hear heart sounds inside of a running helicopter," Donald Lehman, a flight paramedic with the Maryland State Police in Pikesville, tells Ivanhoe.

William Bernhard, M.D., an anesthesiologist and Master Flight Surgeon with the U.S. Army in Perryville, Md., says traditional stethoscopes do not work well because of all the outside noise that interferes with the sounds they're trying to listen to. Now a new, ultrasound stethoscope ignores outside noise, allowing medics to hear life-saving sounds inside the body.

"It's extremely helpful because it's the only thing out there on the market that will work," Dr. Bernhard tells Ivanhoe.

Developed by electrical engineers, the device sends an ultrasound wave into the body. When it hits moving organs -- like the heart or lungs -- it bounces back at a different frequency, called the Doppler effect. This change in frequency is converted into sound that medics can hear.

"The exciting thing now is that we have a simple, hand-held device and can be used in these very high noise environments and gives a very, very clean, audible signal," Electrical Engineer Adrian Houtsma, Ph.D. of the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory (USAARL), tells Ivanhoe.

The new device is being field tested for the Army, where loud war zones make a standard stethoscope useless ... helping save lives one sound at a time.

Researchers like Dr. Houtsma are in the process of obtaining FDA approval for the device and are working to make sure it doesn't generate signals that interfere with aircraft or other equipment. It will first be manufactured to sell to the armed forces and could cost between $250 and $700.

The traditional stethoscope has hardly changed since its invention in the 1800s by French inventor and physician René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec.

Anti-hydrogen Captured, Held For First Time

Can warp drive be far behind? A paper published in this week’s edition of Nature reports that for the first time, antimatter atoms have been captured and held long enough to be studied by scientific instruments. Not only is this a science fiction dream come true, but in a very real way this could help us figure out what happened to all the antimatter that has vanished since the Big Bang, one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe. “We’re very excited about the fact that we can actually now trap antimatter atoms long enough to study their properties and see if they’re very different from matter,” said Makoto Fujiwara, a team member from ALPHA, an international collaboration at CERN.

Antimatter is produced in equal quantities with matter when energy is converted into mass. This happens in particle colliders like CERN and is believed to have happened during the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe.

“A good way to think of antimatter is a mirror image of normal matter,” said team spokesman Jeffrey Hangst, a physicist at Aarhus University in Denmark. “For some reason the universe is made of matter, we don’t know why that is, because you could in principle make a universe of antimatter.”

In order to study antimatter, scientists have to make it in a laboratory. The ALPHA collaboration at CERN has been able to make antihydrogen – the simplest antimatter atom – since 2002, producing it by mixing anti- protons and positrons to make a neutral anti-atom. “What is new is that we have managed to hold onto those atoms,” said Hangst, by keeping atoms of antihydrogen away from the walls of their container to prevent them from getting annihilated for nearly a tenth of a second.

The antihydrogen was held in an ion trap, with electromagnetic fields to trap them in a vacuum, and cooled to 9 Kelvin (-443.47 degrees Fahrenheit, -264.15 degrees Celsius). To actually see if they made any antihydrogen, they release a small amount and see if there is any annihilation between matter and antimatter.

The next step for the ALPHA collaboration is to conduct experiments on the trapped antimatter atoms, and the team is working on a way to find out what color light the antihydrogen shines when it is hit with microwaves, and seeing how that compares to the colors of hydrogen atoms.