Quantum sensor effect in bird navigation? Institute for Electronic Structure and Lasers, Foundation for Research and Technology, Heraklion | University of Crete In arXiv:0804.2646, arXivblog, and Slashdot reports, Kominis investigates the potential for Zeno effect-based quantum sensing in bird navigation. "How birds use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate has puzzled researchers for decades. In recent years, a growing body of evidence has pointed to the possibility that a weak magnetic field can influence the outcome of a certain type of chemical reaction involving the recombination of pairs of ions in bird retinas. The trouble is that the ion recombination is known to happen too quickly for the Earth's weak magnetic field to have any effect. Now it looks as if the quantum Zeno effect may explain the process (abstract). This is the "watched-pot-never-boils" effect, in which the act of observing a quantum system maintains it for longer than expected. This is extraordinary news, because it means a quantum sensor is determining the macroscopic behavior of living birds. Kominis says we may well see these effects elsewhere, and mentions that a similar mechanism might be at work in photosynthesis."

MagiQ Research Labs Andrew Hammond | MagiQ Technologies MagiQ Technologies (NYC) has founded MagiQ Research Labs in Somerville, MA. The lab will provide a technical, engineering and production facility base for public and private sectors in medical optics, quantum information, fiber sensing, aerospace and defense applications, and has been established under research grants from ARO, DARPA, and NASA.

Room-temperature quantum oscillations in diamond crystals UCSB|CNSI|Kavli TU Delft|Ames DOE In Science Express, Science and concurrent UCSB press release, Hanson, Awschalom et al. report on striking experimental observations of quantum oscillations in diamond crystals at room temperature. "We were stunned by these unexpected experimental results, and extremely excited by the ability to control and monitor single quantum states, especially at room temperature," said David Awshalom. "To our surprise, when looking at longer times, the oscillations disappeared, then re-appeared. At first it looked like an artifact, but repeated measurements reproduced this behavior," said co-author Ronald Hanson, a postdoctoral student at UCSB during this period who is now a professor at Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands.

Workshop on Neuromorphic Computing DSO As profiled in Wired and BAA SN08-16, DSO is hosting a workshop on neuromorphic adaptive plastic scalable electronics to be held on 04 March, 2008. "Briefly, the vision for the anticipated DARPA SyNAPSE program is to enable electronic neuromorphic machine technology that is scalable to biological levels. As compared to biological systems, today’s intelligent machines are less efficient by a factor of one million to one billion in real world, complex environments. The key to achieving the vision of the SyNAPSE program will be an unprecedented multidisciplinary approach that can coordinate aggressive technology development activities in the following SyNAPSE areas: 1) hardware; 2) architecture; 3) simulation; and 4) environment. Hardware includes neuromorphic electronics with novel, high density, plastic, synaptic components; architecture includes neuromorphic design from microcircuit to complete system; simulation includes large-scale digital simulation of neuromorphic circuits and functional neuromorphic systems; and environment includes virtual training, testing and benchmarking for neuromorphic systems realized in hardware or simulation. "

QuanTalk EU QIST Via the Pontiff, a new web-based initiative supported by the European Union under ERA-Pilot QIST grant, QuanTalk. " The purpose of the project is to provide a central facility for open review and discussion of research in quantum information science worldwide. The heart of the site is the Articles section, wherein we provide three main features, (1) Open scientific discussion of the latest research in quantum information. The system will be familiar to those who use forum systems or blogs, but it differs in its approach to permanence and accountability. (2) A community review process, open peer review, to which authors may submit their work. This feature is not yet available during the current beta test of quantalk.org. (3) An open archive where authors can deposit digital material that they wish to make available to the community. During the beta phase, hosting is restricted to PDF documents."