Quantum theory's 'spooky action at a distance' has now been confirmed officially with new loophole-free experiment.
It has been proved by physicists that particles behave in some weird ways, in the sense that though they are separated by distance they can still influence each other.
Earlier this year, physicists explained that according to "Quantum Entanglement" two particles which are light years away can still influence each other; for instance if one particle is poked then another particle which is placed at a distance of light year can also respond to this poking without any messages being passed through the space. This sort of 'intimate connection' between the particles is termed as "Entanglement" by "quantum physics".This law of 'Quantum Entanglement' defies Einstein's "law of relativity" - according to which no particle can travel faster than speed of light. Thus, Einstein termed this intimate connection in between the separated particles as "spooky action at a distance" and he believed the spookiness of quantum theory to be totally weird.
Many papers have proved the existence of quantum entanglement; however, physicists at Netherlands have posted a new research paper online on August 24 to the arXiv.The paper titled "Experimental loophole-free violation of a Bell inequality using entangled electrons spins separated by 1.3 km" describes the first loophole free experiment with which physicists actually succeeded in meeting the mathematical gold standard for proving entanglement- a goal that was set down some fifty years ago.
Currently, the paper has to go undergo a review from other physicists and it is being reviewed at a scientific journal but it has already drawn attention in the community of quantum physics.
"It’s a shame that Einstein didn’t live long enough to learn about this," say Christoph Simon, a theoretical quantum physicist at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. "The universe is not as reasonable as he wanted it to be."
First loophole free Quantum experiment to prove the "Quantum spookiness"
Physicists from Netherlands, UK and Spain entangled pairs of electrons which were separated by a distance of 1.3 km. This first loophole free quantum experiment was led by B. Hensen, researcher from Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. During the experiment, the research team measured one of the electrons and simultaneously another group closely watched its partner to check if was affected.
It was in 1960s when an Irish physicist John Bell conducted an experiment get some clear explanation for this quantum entanglement. The experiment is known as 'Bell experiment' and it has always showed that quantum entanglement theory is real. Practically speaking, most of the physicists believe that the correlation between the particles should cease completely as the particles move far away from each other; however quantum theory defies this belief and proves that the particles continue communicating with each other and is not affected by distance.
Physicists have been repeatedly conducting the Bell experiment for almost 3 decades and it has always proved the quantum theory to be real.
If the quantum theory and quantum entanglement was already proved then why are physicists conducting it again and again? Well, this question might arise in most of our minds!
Now, here comes the real hitch, physicists believe that the Bell experiment has a 'lot of loopholes'.
In the Bell experiment, physicists used 'entangle photons', photons are super-fast in nature and hence it is very hard to pin them down and measure. So literally speaking 80 percent of the photons were usually lost even before they were measured thus leading to vague results.
Physicists then started using 'entangled ions' instead of 'entangled photons' just to close the loophole and to derive some clear conclusions. Using the entangled ions presented some other complications and in fact it opened another loophole! It is a fact that you cannot keep ions apart from each other for a long time and by default some information does pass between the entangled particles, which could be at a rate less than that of the light's speed.
Thus, this new loophole free experiment is very much important. Physicists claim they have finally managed to close both the loopholes as they have combined the benefits of photons with that of the electrons thus ensuring that they can be measured.
The research team conducted the experiment by entangling the spin of two electrons with that of two different photons. Initially, the two electrons were located in different laboratories which were separated by a distance of 1.3 km and the photons were sent to some third location. Then these were separately entangled with each other.
A writer at science report, FQXi Blogs writes: "As soon as the photons are entangled, BINGO, so too are the two original electron spins, seated in vastly distant labs. The team carried out 245 trials of the experiment, comparing entangled electrons, and report that Bell’s bound is violated."
So far, scientists used to blame the loopholes in the Bell experiment for proving the quantum theory; however a loophole free experiment also proved the existence of quantum entanglement proving "spooky" quantum behavior definitely exists.
For now the early results of this new research has been posted at the arXiv, and authors write: "Our experiment realizes the first Bell test that simultaneously addresses both the detection loophole and the locality loophole." The experiment is now being screened for publication in a science journal for peer review.
While speaking to Jacob Aron over at New Scientist, Anton Zeilinger, leader of a rival team at the University of Vienna, Austria and not a part of the research team told: "It’s a very nice and beautiful experiment, and one can only congratulate the group for that. I expect they have improved the experiment, and by the time it is published they’ll have better data ... There is no doubt it will with stand scrutiny."
Quantum Cryptography:
One of the other goals as to why physicists have been constantly working on conducting a "loophole-free" Bell experiment is because this will be a huge step in the direction of 'Quantum cryptography'.
Quantum Cryptography: Chris Monroe, an experimental quantum physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland says that the a loophole-free Bell test can be used for a new kind of communications network or we can say 'quantum version' of the internet.
When entangled particles are sent over internet it would be protected against hackers and even eavesdropper will not be able to tap any information, further if anyone tries to even eavesdrop it will not go unnoticed.
"The security of the information is guaranteed by the fundamental laws of physics," says Monroe.
According to the report by Devin Powell at Popular Science, Dutch scientists, Hensen et al at the Delft University of Technology used two diamond chips for conducting this loophole free experiment.
Powell writes: "Whether such un-hackable internet networks, if ever developed, will need to be made of diamond remains to be seen. During its nine-day run, Hensen’s glittering contraption popped out a mere 245 pairs of entangled particles. A commercially viable system would need to spit out thousands or more a minute.With only 245 events, statistics dictates a four percent chance that the result was due to chance, meaning that Bell’s threshold may not have actually been crossed."
On the contrary, Paul Kwiat, an an experimental quantum physicist who works with photons and is also in the race at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says: "In other words, there’s a 96 percent chance that they won the race. The nail’s not very deep in the coffin, and I’m certain that before long there will be results that have a much lower statistical uncertainty."
Well, it goes without saying that such an un-hackable internet is the need of the hour, in today's world where internet plays a very important and literally has become part and parcel of everyone's lives. Thus it seems Hensen et al has finally nailed the issue of hacking and at the same time proved the existence of Quantum spookiness with a loophole-free experiment.
After this week's buzz regarding Stephen Hawking's black hole theory, it is the turn of "Quantum spookiness" to be in the spotlight and seek attention from all the lovers of physics.
Hadeel Ayoub, a designer and student of Goldsmiths, University of London has developed a smart glove that translates sign language from hand gestures to visual text on a screen and audible dialogue. The wireless SignLanguageGlove is designed to make communication easier for those with disabilities or impediments, and has already gone through three prototype stages.
The original version of the SignLanguageGlove translated sign language gestures into visual letters on a screen, which comprised of flex sensors, an accelerometer, a microcontroller board, and a four digit graphic numerical display. Five flex sensors were attached to the glove to track five fingers, to detect bends and curvatures then reporting the values to a serial monitor. An accelerometer was attached to detect the orientation of the hand.
Hadeel also developed a computer programme that recognizes the output values of the sensors and accelerometer and matches them with a series of statements that determine what letters to display on a screen.
She then followed up with a second prototype with an improved model that was faster and more robust, featuring smaller, more discreet hardware and text that scrolled on a screen, deleting the old and adding the new. The third and latest prototype features a text-to-speech chip with the hardware sewn into the lining of the glove. This model went on to be displayed at the Goldsmiths MA/MFA Computational Arts end-of-degree show earlier this month.
"I didn't want all the wires to intimidate users, making them feel the glove will be complicated to use or really fragile," Hadeel explained. "People tend to lean to the cautious side when approached with new high-tech products which contradicts the main purpose of this glove, which is to help make lives easier."
Hadeel is now working on the fourth prototype of the device, which will include an accompanying smartphone application that will receive the glove's output through Wi-Fi. As an Arabic, French and English speaker, she also intends to introduce a translation feature into the app, enabling text translation in real-time, a motion sensor for better mapping and a small glove that would be suitable for children - a new challenge to minimize glove's hardware to make it light enough for young users.
Hadeel has been approached by many companies who are interested in producing the glove, and the fourth prototype is expected to cost approximately £255 ($385). However, Hadeel hopes that if the glove is made available on a large scale, users with disabilities will not have to pay for it. Instead, schools and companies will purchase them for their employees, students and patients.
Hadeel says: "I had one mission when I started this project and it was to facilitate communication between all kinds of disabilities, eliminating barriers between people who have a visual, hearing or speech impairment. The prototypes each have a new additional feature, an LED light, and a speaker for example, that took me one step closer to my goal.
Once I've incorporated WiFi and translation features into it the glove will be useful for all -- no exclusions as to who the user can reach, wherever, whoever, from any country at any time."
Philips has launched a brand new Hue Bridge 2.0 with HomeKit support, bringing HomeKit compatibility to existing Hue bulbs and lamps. With the Hue Bridge 2.0, its line of Philips Hue lights are able to work with Apple's home automation platform, allowing all existing and future Hue bulbs to be controlled with Siri voice commands.
Further, the new Bridge supports other connected home platforms so it’s future-proof, while the original round-shaped Bridge will continue to be supported with software updates. Ironically, existing Hue users will need to purchase a brand new bridge as the existing bridge is not compatible with HomeKit.
The integration of the Hue connected lighting system with HomeKit allows users to control their Hue lights through Siri on their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Apple Watch.
After installing the new Hue bridge and updating the app, you can ask Siri a few things to customize your lights, such as “Hey Siri, turn all lights yellow” or “Hey Siri, set the living room lamp to 20 percent.”
The company writes "You can ask Siri to ‘wake up’ your home, turning on your Philips Hue lights and setting the thermostat to a comfortable temperature helping you and your family have a pleasant start to the day."
“At night you can ask Siri to recall light scenes you’ve created using the Philips Hue app, or set your home to ‘night mode’ turning off your lights and locking your front door.”
Currently, the Philips Hue app only supports the Siri part. As a result, you cannot integrate Hue lights with other products. However, this could change in a future software update. If your other product supports pairing with HomeKit products, you can actually add Hue lights from their apps.
"Lighting is the most accessible aspect of the connected home, and as the lighting expert for the Internet of Things we are taking connected lighting to the next phase," said Eric
Rondolat, Chief Executive Officer at Philips Lighting. "By integrating Philips Hue with Apple HomeKit, we are broadening people's experience of light beyond what has been previously possible, providing seamless interoperability with other connected home devices."
HomeKit device makers include ecobee3, Elgato, iHome, Insteon, Lutron, iDevices and Schlage. Other manufacturers are still working on updated software or hardware products.
The original Hue Bridge will not be updated with HomeKit compatibility, as it does not have the necessary hardware, but Philips plans to continue to support it with software updates.
The new bridge doesn’t have any additional feature. It has a new app icon-shaped design and still comes in white.
The new Hue Bridge 2.0 looks similar to the existing Hue Bridge, but it is square like the Apple TV rather than round. Along with the new bridge, Philips is also debuting a new set of lights. The new Hue bulbs are somewhat brighter at 800 lumens instead of 600 lumens. The white bulbs also have a new brighter variant at 800 lumens instead of 750 lumens. The LightStrip was also updated. All these new bulbs come with “increased internal storage.”
The square shaped Hue Bridge 2.0 is controllable via the Philips Hue app, which has been refreshed with full support for HomeKit and iOS 9. The new Hue Bridge 2.0 costs $60, and existing Hue owners can get a $20 discount. The connected home accessory will be available in Europe and North America from Tuesday, October 6, 2015 as a standalone product, or in a package with updated Hue light bulbs.
Most of the Cloud-Based Security Providers (CBSP) are not effective in keeping the websites safe from DDoS attacks shows recent research paper. The main reason is that they are not able to completely hide the origin website's IP address from attackers.
In order to place itself between the attackers and the target website, most cloud-based security solutions work by changing a website's DNS settings.
However, the problem is that if the attackers know the website's origin IP, then this kind of DDoS mitigation can be easily bypassed. The mitigation service can be bypassed in this case by being able to send the DDoS traffic directly to the IP.
There are eight methods through which these mitigations services can be bypassed, claim five security researchers from the US and Belgium.
While four of them were extensively spoken about after Allison Nixon and Christopher Camejo presented them (PDF) at the Black Hat USA 2013 security conference, four new methods were also discovered by the researchers.
The four older methods of getting a website's origin IP address depend on hackers searching in DNS records, through historical Web traffic databases, subdomains that settle to the main domain directly, and the site's own source code.
The researchers further also discovered that the origin IP can be found out during the temporary exposure of the IP when the protection service is paused for maintenance or server migrations, through SSL certificates, sensitive files hosted on the server, and by triggering outbound connections.
After scanning 17,877 websites for six months, the researchers found out during their studies that 71.5% of the sites disclosed the origin IP address mostly through the FTP subdomain.
The researchers put together CloudPiercer, a tool that compares a version of the website obtained from the real IP address, with one obtained through the cloud mitigation service, to aid the webmasters recognize issues with their own websites.
"Complete mitigation of origin exposure is hard, as administrators are required to fully understand the potential risks and comprehensively address all vulnerabilities in order to fully prevent an attacker from circumventing the CBSP," say the researchers. "However, a tool similar to CloudPiercer could be deployed by CBSPs to proactively scan their client's domains for exposed origins, creating awareness and helping administrators fix specific vulnerabilities."
The entire Maneuvering Around Clouds: Bypassing Cloud-based Security Providers report is available for download. Provided below is a sample of the CloudPiercer report.
According to researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad, carbon from candle soot could be used to power the kind of lithium ion battery in plug-in hybrid electric cars.
The authors of the study, Dr. Chandra Sharma and Dr. Manohar Kakunuri claim that their findings could open up possibilities for using carbon in more powerful batteries, which could drive down the costs of portable power.
“We are very excited about the results. This new approach is very easy and the costs involved are minimal – it would make battery production cheaper,” said Sharma.
Sharma estimated that one hybrid car would need ten kg of carbon soot, which would be deposited in about an hour using candles.
Lithium ion batteries are used to power a wide range of devices, including smartphones, digital cameras, electric cars and even aircraft. The batteries produce current through two electrically charged materials suspended in a liquid. Carbon, which is used as one of the materials in smaller batteries, is considered unsuitable because of its structure in bigger and more powerful batteries, as it cannot yield the required current density.
However, the carbon in candle soot is suitable for use in bigger batteries because of the shape and configuration of the tiny carbon nanoparticles, found Sharma and Manohar Kakunuri in their new study. It is also a scalable approach to making batteries, because the soot could be produced quickly and easily.
"If you put a water droplet on candle soot it rolls off -- that's an observation that's been made in the last few years. The material candle soot is made of, carbon, also has electric potential. So why not use it as an electrode?" asked Dr. Sharma, author of the study from the Indian Institute of Technology. "We looked into it and saw it also shows some exceptional electrochemical properties, so we decided to test it further."
Soot, which is made of carbon, is produced when a candle burns. The team observed the soot collected from the tip and middle of a candle flame and compared the size, shape and structure of the carbon for the study. They found that nanoparticles of carbon that are 30 to 40 nanometers were formed by the burning process. They also found that the soot recovered from the tip of a candle flame, which burned at 1,400 degrees Celcius, made it perform better as an electrical conductor, as it had fewer impurities like wax.
The researchers analysed the effectiveness of soot as a conducting material to use in a battery, using a technique called cyclic charge-discharge (CCD). Depending on the rate of charge or discharge, the method shows how powerful the battery is: the higher the rate, the more powerful the battery. Testing showed the candle soot worked best at high charge-discharge rates. Researchers published the results in the journal Electrochimica Acta.
The researchers now plan to develop a candle soot battery to test the technology further.
They are also looking at testing hybrid materials that contain candle soot to determine if they can make it better for batteries.
As much as I like the book,it's got one major flaw - there's no map with the location of the objects, so it's a poor choice for trip planning. So I created a custom map with mapy.cz using their custom point feature. Initially I included names of the authors, but I quickly ran into length limitations (they store all the info in the URL and impose their own limits; a sign of poor QA, the limit to save the map is somewhat longer than the limit to load it), so there're just the names of the objects. Here's the map.
General Information 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100 4G Network No SIM Dual mini SIM Status Available April 2015
Body Dimensions 143 x 71.9 x 8.93 mm Keyboard Touchscreen Colors White, Black, Silver Cover Plastic
Display Type IPS capacitive touchscreen with 16,000,000 colors Size 5.0 inches, 720 x 1280 pixels, 294 pixels per inch (PPI)
Memory And OS Card slot MicroSD card, up to 32GB Internal 16GB OS Android 4.4.2 KitKat Processors 1.3GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU, MediaTek MT6582 chipset, Mali-400MP2 GPU RAM 1GB
Audio Alert types Vibration, MP3 ringtones Loudspeaker Yes Audio port 3.5mm jack
Connectivity 2G GPRS – up to 85.6 kbps; EDGE – up to 236.8 kbps 3G Up to 21 mbs downlink; Up to 5.76 mbs uplink 4G No WIFI Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, WIFI hotspot, Wi-Fi direct Bluetooth Yes GPS A-GPS NFC No USB MicroUSB v2.0
Camera Primary 8MP, up to 2448 x 3264-pixel pictures, HDR, autofocus, Geo-tagging, panorama camera with LED flash Video 1080p@30fps Secondary 2MP, up to 1600 x 1200-pixel pictures
Battery Capacity 2020mAh Li-Ion battery Stand-by Talk time Music play
Other Features Sensors Accelerometer, Proximity Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM Browser HTML5 Java No - SNS integration – MP4/MPEG4/H.263/H.264 player – MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player – Document viewer – FM radio – Image viewer and editor – Voice memo/dial/command – Predictive text input – Preloaded apps – Gmail, Gtalk, Google Now, Youtube, Flash Share, Facebook, Palmchat
