6 | NewScientist | 13 October 2012

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WHEN quantum theory was born, applications such as quantum computers and super-accurate atomic clocks would have seemed virtual impossibilities. This year’s Nobel prize in physics rewards the pioneers who made today’s quantum technology possible.

Serge Haroche at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, and David Wineland at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado, Boulder, both invented ways to measure and control tiny quantum particles without destroying their fragile quantum states.

Haroche’s optical cavities, small superconducting mirrors that can

cage photons, enable a single-atom probe to reveal the photon’s quantum state. Wineland’s work takes the opposite approach, trapping charged atoms or ions

...and quantum too within electrical fields and firing lasers at them to force the ions into a quantum state.

Both techniques allow unprecedented control over the quantum world. That bodes well for quantum computers, which promise to exploit the weird properties of quantum systems to solve problems that stymie ordinary computers. Wineland’s trapped ions formed the first quantum logic gate in 1995.

His work is also the basis for the world’s most precise clock, which keeps time via the regular oscillations of an aluminium ion.

Better hash chosenA NEW king of online security has been crowned: the mathematical algorithm known as Keccak. But it seems we might not need to start using it right away.

Keccak was last week named the winner of the Secure Hash Algorithm 3 (SHA-3) competition. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, ran the contest after cybersecurity experts suggested there might be flaws in the existing standard, SHA-2, used by government

agencies and businesses worldwide to make online transactions secure, store passwords and verify digital files and signatures.

The new algorithm uses a different cryptographic structure from SHA-2, making it unlikely that a single attack would crack them both. It is also faster, more flexible and consumes less power.

But it turns out SHA-2 does not have the alleged flaws – so there’s little incentive to switch. NIST says that, at present, it is not encouraging anyone to abandon SHA-2 for SHA-3.

SpaceX deliveryTHE darling of private spaceflight has finally got serious. SpaceX, of Hawthorne, California, is in the midst of delivering critical cargo to the International Space Station, a first for a commercial firm. But the launch of its Dragon capsule on 7 October was not flawless: an engine problem means a satellite hitching a ride with the mission was released into the wrong orbit.

Though Dragon first docked with the ISS in May, it was carrying

–Stem cell sorcerers–

–Commercial spaceflight is go–

Nobel for stem cell trick…PIONEERS of cellular sorcery have won this year’s Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. John Gurdon at the University of Cambridge and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan rewrote biology textbooks by showing that mature cells could be reprogrammed into embryonic cells that can be turned into all other tissues of the body.

In 1962 Gurdon showed that you could clone a frog by replacing the nucleus of a frog egg with the nucleus of an adult cell. Then, in 2006, Yamanaka showed that by inserting four “rejuvenation” genes into mouse skin cells, he could rewind their genetic code, turning them back into embryo-like cells that he called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).

Yamanaka’s breakthrough raised

the prospect of growing tissues from a person’s own cells. Tissues had been grown previously using human embryonic stem cells but the process is widely opposed because it involves destroying embryos. Yamanaka’s technique overcame this hurdle.

Nobody has yet been treated with iPSCs as there are still safety issues to be resolved – primarily a risk of reprogrammed cells triggering cancer. At a press conference in London, Gurdon criticised the US Food and Drug Administration for placing “immense conditions on approval”.

Nevertheless, the first clinical trial could begin next year. Japanese researchers plan to treat a form of blindness using retinal pigment epithelium created from iPSCs.

“Trapped ions are the basis of the first quantum logic gate – and the world’s most precise clock”

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