Spooky Quantum Entanglement Created in Everyday Objects

Quantum entanglement is one of those strange facets of quantum mechanics that produces baffling behaviors in objects at the quantum level, isn't easy to find in our everyday world that appears to be governed by good old-fashioned classical physics. Yet, according to quantum theory, even objects in our everyday macro-size world should have this property. And in a new study in today?s edition of the journal Science, researchers have shown that they could entangle diamond crystals, the first time entanglement has been shown in objects under real-life conditions.

Quantum entanglement happens when two particles, such as photons or electrons, interact and become linked. Even when the particles are moved miles apart, the molecules? mechanical states (such as their spin, momentum, and polarization) remain mysteriously coupled. If the state of one entangled particle is changed, its faraway twin will be instantaneously affected. It?s a bizarre property Einstein famously called "spooky action at a distance."

This spooky property of matter has a powerful effect on the outcome of events in the quantum world. "In the classical world, chance outcomes have no strange correlations?the events at one roulette wheel in a casino have no effect on events at the other tables," says physicist Luming Duan from the University of Michigan, in a separate article in Science. But "in a quantum casino, we could imagine that roulette wheels are entangled, so that if one ball dropped on a black number, the ball at the next table must drop on red." Another strange thing about entanglement: The information seems to travel faster than light between the two objects, breaking the universe's apparent speed limit.

Scientists have been able to entangle particles in the lab before, but only under special conditions, by isolating them and cooling them to ultra-low temperatures. "What we did was to demonstrate that you could make these wacky states in these everyday normal objects sitting in a regular laboratory under no particularly special conditions," study author Ian Walmsley says. To do this, his team used a laser to start the crystals of a millimeter-size diamond vibrating. The vibrations were reflected in the diamond?s entangled twin a few centimeters away. The researchers used ultra-fast optical technology to create and measure the entangled state before it broke up.

It was this fast detection that made the diamond entanglement experiment possible. Most physicists, Walmsley says, believe that quantum entanglement is a property present in all objects in our macro world; we just don?t see it happening. "In the everyday environment, objects are connected to other objects," he says. "They?re sitting on the floor, wafting in the wind, and those connections are ways in which information and energy can leak out of one system into another." So objects lose their entanglement quickly. By using super-speedy technology, this team caught the diamonds acting entangled before environmental interactions overcame the effect.

Walmsley says that future experiments will focus on getting the quantum interactions to hang on longer, and in bigger objects. The bigger the objects gets, the harder it is to home in on quantum interactions. But, he says, to put quantum entanglement to technological use, it has to be done.

One dream is to use quantum entanglement to create super-powerful quantum computers. Quantum computing would use a new fundamental design based on the properties of quantum mechanics, which would basically allow these computers to "explore a great number of options simultaneously in a very efficient way," Walmsley says. But because a computer is a hefty, macroscopic thing, to to build a practical quantum computer, scientists will have to create entanglement on a much bigger scale.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/spooky-quantum-entanglement-created-in-everyday-objects-6606439?src=rss

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Sex harassment? Boy, 7, accused after groin punch

By msnbc.com staff

A 7-year-old boy has been accused of sexual harassment after punching a fellow first-grader in the groin, but the boy's mother says he was acting in self-defense.

Tasha Lynch?told The Boston Globe?that her son, Mark Curran,?was being choked during the Nov. 22 incident on a school bus,?and has been afraid to go back to school in South Boston ever since.

?I think my kid was right to fight back [after he was choked],?? she said. ?He wasn?t doing anything except protecting himself.??

A spokesman for the Boston public schools confirmed the incident had been classified as possible sexual harassment, but declined to comment it. Curran faces suspension or being transferred to another school if his actions are deemed to be sexual harassment, according to a letter from his school.

?Any kind of inappropriate touching would fall under that category,?? school spokesman Matthew Wilder said to The Globe. ?The school administration is conducting a full investigation that has not concluded yet. Certainly, once that investigation is through, we?ll then make a final conclusion as to who will be disciplined and how.??

Boy took his gloves, choked him, kid says
Lynch said she could tell?her son?was upset when she picked him up from the bus stop after school on Nov. 22. She said she asked him what was wrong, and he told her another boy had choked him and taken his new gloves.

Furious, Lynch said she went up to the bus driver and demanded to know what had happened.

?He just smiled and shrugged,?? she said. She called school officials but no one got back to her, so the following week she had her older son took Mark into the principal's office to tell her, reported The Globe.

?I just thought they were going to call the parents, tell us both to come in and make the boys shake hands,?? Lynch said. Or, at least, make the other boy return her son's gloves. Instead, Tynan Elementary school officials began questioning Mark about his role in the scuffle.

?They didn?t believe me,?? Curran told The Globe on Thursday. ?I didn?t get my gloves back.??

Tynan Elementary School Principal Leslie Gant didn't believe that Mark was acting out of self-defense, Lynch told The Globe.

?She said, ?It doesn?t matter who hit who first,? ?? Lynch said. ??He said he hit him in the testicles. That?s assault. That?s sexual assault.?"

I said: ?The kid choked my son first and that?s called attempted murder. He said he couldn?t breathe.???

The school sent a letter to?stating her son?was accused of sexual harassment and endangering physical safety of other students.

A hearing for Curran will be held on Monday.

Lynch has told the school she doesn't want?her son?riding the bus without an adult there to make sure he's safe.

More news and feature stories from msnbc.com:

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/02/9166620-sexual-harassment-boy-7-accused-after-groin-punch

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Can Male Circumcision Stem the AIDS Epidemic in Africa?

News | Health

As a preventive measure, voluntary male circumcision is gaining favor as a large-scale attack against HIV's spread. But scaling it up will cost billions of dollars

By Katherine Harmon ?| November 29, 2011?|

CUTTING RISK: Is investing in an imperfect prevention method a wise attack on HIV/AIDS in Africa? Image: iStockphoto/muzon

For the Xhosa in South Africa, a boy's coming of age is often marked by an elaborate and lengthy set of rituals. One of the ordeals is circumcision, which is traditionally performed by a healer and occasionally leads to an ineffective cut, infection or even death. The young men who emerge from the ceremony healthy, however, achieve not only new social status but are also much less likely to become infected with HIV.

Adult male circumcision, in which the foreskin of the penis is surgically removed, has emerged as one of the more powerful reducers of infection risk. Some studies are finding that it decreases the odds that a heterosexual man will contract HIV by 57 percent or more. With HIV vaccine research still limping along, condoms being underused and the large-scale vaginal gel trial Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (VOICE) just called off early last week after disappointing results, the operation has been gaining ground.

For the past three years 13 countries in southern and eastern Africa at the heart of the HIV/AIDS epidemic have been on a mission to circumcise 80 percent of their men by 2015 in an effort to cut in half the rate of sexual transmission of the disease from 2011 levels. And a new series of nine papers, published online Tuesday in PLoS Medicine, assesses whether the ambitious goals could work?and whether they are worth it.

The analyses "give a pretty optimistic assessment," says Atheendar Venkataramani, a resident physician and researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the new papers. But from his own research in the field, he says, he is inclined to share the optimism.

Cutting costs
Because HIV and AIDS are still incurable, infection means a lifetime of antiretroviral therapy. So with more people getting infected every day, the cost of treatment for the ever growing global HIV population is increasing. A surgical procedure, such as a circumcision, is not cheap either, but when compared with indefinite treatment, the one-time cut is poised to be a cost saver.

The estimated price tag for all of the 13 countries (Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe) to reach the 80 percent male circumcision rate by 2015 would be somewhere on the order of $1.5 billion, the authors of one of the papers suggest. To keep that saturation constant for another 10 years would cost a further $500 million. These 20.3 million circumcisions, however, could prevent some 3.4 million new HIV infections in both men and women, according to the new findings. From 2016 to 2025, after accounting for the initial expenditures, the programs would save some $16.5 billion.

Previous research had concluded that male circumcision programs would be cost-effective, but this is some of the first large-scale work to incorporate information specific to country?and in some cases, region?to assess costs and savings. The recent data can go straight to the countries' respective ministers of health and, perhaps even more important, to the countries' ministers of finance, points out Emmanuel Njeuhmeli of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who is a co-author of several of the papers. "Understanding the science is not enough?they need to have the resources," he says of the countries' health ministries. And that can be a lot to ask of a sub-Saharan African country such as Lesotho, which has a GDP of $2.1 billion and where much of the population lacks even basic medical care.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=1cded83af93a2bab3f78315c753508ce

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