Physicists Successfully Store and Retrieve Nothing
By Adrian Cho
ScienceNOW Daily News - 29 February 2008

It sounds like a headline from the spoof newspaper The Onion, but for physicists, this is actually an achievement: Two teams have stored nothing in a puff of gas and then retrieved it a split second later. Storing a strange form of vacuum builds on previous efforts in which researchers stopped light in its tracks (ScienceNOW, 22 January 2001) and may mark a significant step toward new quantum information and telecommunication technologies.

To stop light, researchers first shine an intense and continuous beam of laser light into a gas of atoms. That "control beam" tickles the atoms to allow a pulse of laser light of another wavelength to enter the gas. To trap the pulse, researchers turn off the control beam, which causes the pulse to imprint itself on the atoms. To release it again, they turn on the control laser.

So storing a vacuum might sound ridiculously simple: Follow the same procedure but leave out the pulse, and you store nothing. However, Alexander Lvovsky of the University of Calgary in Canada and his colleagues and Mikio Kozuma of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan and his group have stored a very peculiar type of nothingness called a "squeezed vacuum."

To see what this is, begin with a normal light wave. Classically, this is a smooth wave of electromagnetic fields with equally spaced peaks and dips. But throw in quantum mechanics and things get more complicated. The precise height of the wave becomes uncertain, so the wave gets fuzzy (see figure). Physicists have learned how to manipulate that inevitable uncertainty--for example, making it smaller at the peaks and larger in between. That makes "phase-squeezed light." Now imagine turning down the intensity of the phase-squeezed light to zero. The wave itself goes away, but the waxing and waning uncertainty remains, creating a squeezed vacuum.

This is what Lvovsky and Kozuma stored. To make a pulse of squeezed vacuum, both used a device called an optical parametric amplifier, the heart of which is a crystal whose optical properties can be controlled by laser light. Kozuma and colleagues stored pulses of squeezed vacuum for up to 3 microseconds in rubidium atoms chilled to near absolute zero, they report in a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters. Lvovsky and colleagues stored their pulses for 1 microsecond in warm rubidium gas and say they reconstructed the squeezed vacuum in greater detail. Their results will appear in the same journal.

Proving that the squeezed vacuum survived its confinement is tricky, as it's hard to measure nothing. To probe the retrieved vacuum, researchers "mixed" it with the same ordinary laser light that was used to excite the optical parametric amplifier and make the squeezed vacuum. They then observed the telltale up and down in the uncertainty in that light beam, which was effectively transferred from the resurrected vacuum.

"I'm very impressed," says physicist Alexander Kuzmich of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "It's a real technical achievement." The ability to store squeezed states could help pave the way to new types of quantum networks that would carry uncrackable coded messages, says Kuzmich, who in 2006 stored and retrieved a single photon. More conceptually, such experiments might help spell out the boundary between the quantum and classical realms, he says. "There is something we still don't understand about that transition."

Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship - 2nd Edition (2007)

The British government is launching the citizenship test for foreigners who want to become British. If you want the passport, then you'll have to read Life in the UK, a special book, and sit a 45-minute test on society, history and culture. But do you know what it is to be British?
Can you pass a citizenship test?
If not see…
http://www.lifeintheuktest.gov.uk/
http://www.lifeintheuktest.gov.uk/textsite/test_intro_20.html

Pass the Citizenship test with 'Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship' - the only official test book and study guide - written by the Home Office Life in the UK Advisory Group, the people who set the citizenship test....more
• Published: 26 Mar 2007
• ISBN 13: 9780113413133

Transport Canada wants anti-skid vehicles starting after 2011

Technology helps prevent crashes after control lost

Nicolas Van Praet, Financial Post Published: Tuesday, March 11, 2008
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=366141

Excerpt:
Transport Canada said yesterday it is working on regulations requiring all new passenger vehicles to have anti-skid technology within three years, part of a wider push by the Harper government to integrate the country's auto industry with its Nafta partners.

The department will mandate that manufacturers selling in Canada put a feature called electronic stability control, or ESC, on all new light cars and trucks built after Sept.1, 2011, according to its Web site.

Transport Canada Releases New Video on Vehicle Safety Benefits of Electronic Stability Control

OTTAWA — As part of the department's mandate to promote the safety of Canadians and to promote awareness of important life-saving technology related to transportation, Transport Canada today released video footage that demonstrates the benefits of Electronic Stability Control (ESC) on dry, snow-covered and wet pavement. A description of the video is available below.
The video is available at: http://ram.canadacast.ca/asxgen/transport/ESC_english.wmv.

Cholera Threatens Arusha's Reputation
http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200803090030.ht
Arusha Times (Arusha)
9 March 2008 By Stanley Daniel Arusha

Arusha Municipal authorities say cholera epidemic is still prevalent in the city and its environs mainly because of poor hygienic conditions. This was sounded in Arusha by the Arusha Municipality Mayor Lawrence Heddi when he was speaking to the media last week.

Heddi told news reporters that the water-borne disease was still a very serious epidemic in Arusha as 160 people were admitted over the period of January-February this year. The mayor gave the break down of victims as follows: 64 males and 30 females came from Sokon I, Muriet and Sombetini wards.

From neighbourhood areas in Arumeru district, 31 females and 33 males were admitted. These came from Kiranyi, Ilkiurei, Kioga and Siwandeti. He argued that since the disease revolve in populous municipal slum areas, the effort to fight it must be in the localities themselves.

He explained that it was shameful for the city of international repute such as Arusha to suffer from hygienically controllable water-borne disease such as cholera. The mayor said Arusha needs to maintain its reputation as the centre of tourism in the northern circuit and a home to several international organizations.

Weather No Bar For Goan Seniors Attending
WHIST DRIVE – 29TH FEBRUARY, 2008

An unexpected snow storm that even the meteorologists didn’t forecast tried to put a damper on our whist event. But TEGSA members true to form made a determined effort to brave the weather and not disappoint the organizers. Some 70 whist enthusiasts did attend. Not bad at all! By all accounts everyone had a good time.

Guests were treated to a “Fisherman’s Platter”, a snack box full of patties, croquets, sandwiches, samosas and desert. A meal so tasty that the remaining boxes for those who did not show up were sold off with little trouble.

Joe Lobo as expected did a great job at organizing the whist. Our sincere thanks to Joe. Many, many prizes were awarded to both winners and some losers.

Dogs to Sniff Out DVD Piracy in Malaysia
http://southernledger.com/technology/
By Vincent Thian (AP)

Malaysian authorities said Monday they hope two specially trained dogs will help police sniff out pirated DVDs and clean up the country's reputation as an abuser of intellectual property rights.

Two male Labradors from Northern Ireland, named Paddy and Manny and trained to smell chemicals used in DVD production, will become the world's first permanent canine national anti-piracy unit when they go into action next month, according to Malaysia's Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs.
The dogs can't distinguish between real and pirated DVDs