But it looks like we could be hearing more about graphene as the future of devices that convert light to electricity: solar cells and optoelectronics. Researchers have dramatically boosted the amount of light graphene can absorb by adding carefully positioned, nanoscale bits of metal.

For a good description of the research and its potential uses, check out physicsworld.com’s article.

I’ve also been following some of the silliness around the launch of the Google+ field trial.

I wonder how long it will be before someone comes up with a front end that allows you to be in all of your social networks at once.

That is, if it actually is a quantum computer. A majority of quantum computing researchers are skeptical of D-Wave Systems’ claims, largely because the company has revealed very little about its technology. The company’s researchers published a paper in Nature last month that shines a little light inside the black box. Here’s hoping there’s more to come.

Separately, another Nature paper shows that quantum mechanics might be able to improve conventional computers. The paper’s principal author, writing in Scientific American, explained that it comes down to negative entropy. It’s all about having the energy used to fetch data from memory cool a computer rather than heat it.

And a feature article in Nature News looks at a way that environmental noise — normally an enemy of quantum processes — could be used to make quantum computers more stable. This idea has been kicking around for a while. Researchers came up with a similar approach nearly a decade ago (see TRN story).

A study published a few years ago in the Journal of Biochemistry shows that cellphone EMFs affect proteins. And ongoing research in Germany details how low-level EMFs inhibit tamoxifen, an anticancer drug widely used to treat breast cancer.

Most of us live in EMFs that are higher than humans evolved with. In that sense we’re all guinea pigs. It’s time we had more research on the biochemical effects of EMFs.

But the improbability of fragile quantum states surviving in living beings, not to mention a pronounced lack of evidence, has led most physicists to view the notion with vigorous skepticism.

In the last few years, however, research results have begun to suggest that quantum processes can survive long enough in biological systems to play a role in how those systems work. In particular, a paper published a year ago in Nature showed that a marine algae uses quantum coherence to perform photosynthesis efficiently.

Now a model reported in a paper in Physical Review Letters suggests that the observed quantum sensitivity of birds’ eyes can be explained by an entanglement-based quantum system that allows birds to see Earth’s magnetic field.

It’s looking increasingly like quantum physics is relevant to biology. That doesn’t mean that a quantum theory of mind necessarily follows, but maybe the notion isn’t so outlandish after all.

Seven years ago TRN covered the app’s predecessor prototypes: PDA translates speech and Cell phone melds video and data. In the 14th paragraph of the PDA translator story we wrote:

The prototype also has a camera attachment that translates text like that on street signs, said Waibel. Snap a picture of a sign with the camera and it automatically extracts the text region, puts the text through a character recognition program, then translates it, he said. “What you then see on the screen is the picture of the scene with a sign and then underneath an English subtitle,” he said.

It takes a lot of years to build such cool gizmos.