Communicating via ignorance: Increasing communication capacity via superposition of order

Classically, no information can be transmitted through a depolarising, that is a completely noisy, channel. We show that by combining a depolarising channel with another channel in an indefinite causal order---that is, when there is superposition of the order that these two channels were applied---it becomes possible to transmit significant information. We consider two limiting cases. When both channels are fully-depolarising, the ideal limit is communication of 0.049 bits; experimentally we achieve $(3.4{\pm}0.2){\times}10^{-2}$ bits. When one channel is fully-depolarising, and the other is a known unitary, the ideal limit is communication of 1 bit. We experimentally achieve 0.64${\pm}$0.02 bits. Our results offer intriguing possibilities for future communication strategies beyond conventional quantum Shannon theory

A new study of shower age distribution in near vertical showers by EAS air shower array

The air shower array has been developed since it started operation in 1931. The array covering an area of 900 sq m now incorporates 21 particle density sampling detectors around two muon magnetic spectrographs. The air showers are detected in the size range 10 to the 4th power to 10 to the 6th power particles. A total of 11000 showers has so far been detected. Average values of shower age have been obtained in various shower size ranges to study the dependence of shower age on shower size. The core distance dependence of shower age parameter has also been analyzed for presentation

Eprints@NML: Digital Repository of National Metallurgical Laboratory (CSIR),India

The National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML) of India established its EPrints repository in September 2009, providing its researchers with an easy solution for Open Access. This has allowed their researchers to promote their research and to draw an attention among their counterparts over the globe. By the end of this first year of operation, interest in their work has increased phenomenally and their repository has achieved a ten-fold increase in traffic, with over 80,000 document downloads per month and a cumulative total of 5 million hits

Digital Repository of National Metallurgical Laboratory (CSIR),India

India's National Metallurgical Laboratory is preparing to adopt a green OA mandate to follow the spring 2009 recommendation of its parent organization, India's Council of Scientific & Industrial Research. NML also releases data on the rapid growth in deposits and usage of its IR in the nine months since its launch. Written by Peter Suber Editor, SPARC Newsletter, Harvard University, US