Quantum entanglement holds together life's blueprint

Entanglement is a quantum property where two or more objects are linked and in "superposition" - existing in many possible states at once. When this happens, it is impossible to describe the state of each object individually - the entangled objects must be considered as a whole.

When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA's helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours (arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053v1). "If you didn't have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA," says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford.




For full article see www.newscientist.com, 15 July 2010 by Anil Ananthaswamy

Icy claim that water has memory

A paper published in the reputable journal Physica A, claims to show that even though they should be identical, the structure of hydrogen bonds in pure water is very different from that in homeopathic dilutions of salt solutions. Could it be time to take the "memory" of water seriously?

The paper's author, Swiss chemist Louis Rey, is using thermoluminescence to study the structure of solids. The technique involves bathing a chilled sample with radiation. When the sample is warmed up, the stored energy is released as light in a pattern that reflects the atomic structure of the sample.

Twin peaks

When Rey used the method on ice he saw two peaks of light, at temperatures of around 120 K and 170 K. Rey wanted to test the idea, suggested by other researchers, that the 170 K peak reflects the pattern of hydrogen bonds within the ice. In his experiments he used heavy water (which contains the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium), because it has stronger hydrogen bonds than normal water. "Much to our surprise, the thermoluminescence glows of the three systems were substantially different," he says. He believes the result proves that the networks of hydrogen bonds in the samples were different.

For rest of article see www.newscientist.com, 11 June 2003 by Lionel Milgrom

Victory for Homeopathy

Today’s response by Government to the Science and Technology Committee report ‘Evidence Check2: Homeopathy’ reaffirms homeopathy belongs in the NHS where patients can best benefit from doctors integrating it into healthcare.  News which was welcomed by the Faculty of Homeopathy and the British Homeopathic Association.

The response clearly states that ‘local NHS and clinicians, rather than Whitehall, are best placed to make decisions on what treatment is appropriate for their patients – including complementary or alternative treatments such as homeopathy – and provide accordingly for those treatments.’