United Kingdom

Cheap CD player lenses to revolutionise quantum networks

London, Oct 15 : Using cheap lenses like those used in CD players, scientists have devised a new way to collide individual photons and atoms, which may revolutionise quantum networks, making them cheaper and easier to build.

Collision of single atom with a single photon is vital for operating many prototype quantum communications methods, including quantum networks and sending data using "spooky action at a distance".

The new technique uses cheap lenses to transfer data between light and matter.

And, according to physicists from Singapore and Germany, the new method that Quantum communications offers theoretically unbreakable security by encoding data into the quantum characteristics of photons.

Islam should be treated more sensitively than Christianity: BBC

London, Oct 15 : Islam should be treated more sensitively by the media than Christianity, according to the director general of the BBC.

Unemployment in Britain on the rise as slowdown takes hold

London - Unemployment in Britain has risen sharply to reach 1.79 million or 5.7 per cent of the workforce, its highest level since 1999, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Wednesday.

The figures relate to the second quarter of this year, up to the end of August, a period during which unemployment increased by 164,000.

The rise - the biggest since 1991 - took the official unemployment rate to 5.7 per cent from 5.2 per cent in the previous quarter.

In September, the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance increased by 31,800 to 939,900, the eighth consecutive monthly rise and the highest figure for almost two years.

The giant knitted pink rabbit that can be seen from space!

London, Oct 15 : A Viennese art collective group has knit a 200-foot-long giant pink rabbit, which has been placed on the side of the Colletto Fava mountain in Italy – and is visible from the space!

The pink rabbit was knitted by Gelitin, the Viennese art collective, as an outdoor sculpture for people to climb on, sleep on, and generally play with.

The rabbit, which has been made of soft pink wool and waterproof material and is stuffed with straw, by many grannies, has been attracting multifarious visitors each year and via satellite can be seen on the Internet also.

"It was knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool,” The Telegraph quoted Gelitin, as saying.

Seals have an oxygen reservoir within their muscles

London, October 15 : Seals have an oxygen reservoir within their muscles that enables them to dive underwater for up to 80 minutes at a time without taking a breath, according to a study.

Thomas Jue and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis, have discovered that seals’ muscles contains 20 times as much myoglobin—a protein that stores and transfers oxygen within their cells—as humans.

The researchers believe that the way seals stop breathing for 20 minutes at a time while asleep on land helps them conserve energy.

Brit women thrice as dirty as men, when it comes to washing hands!

London, Oct 15 : British women are three times more likely to have dirty hands than men, says a new study.

The survey, which claims that female cleanliness is a myth, found that the difference between the sexes was starkest in London, where 21 per cent of women were carrying faecal bacteria on their hands, compared with 6 per cent of men.

Women in Birmingham and Cardiff also outranked men for bacterial contamination, but in the north – Newcastle and Liverpool – stereotypes reasserted themselves and men had the filthiest hands, the Dirty Hands study found.

The research highlighted poor hygiene habits as part of the first Global Handwashing Day today.

Commuters'' at five train stations were swab-tested for bacteria.

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