Comedian Patrice O'Neal dies at 41

Patrice O'Neal, RIP.

The outsized funnyman who kept America laughing via a series of cable specials and capped in August by an uproarious appearance on Comedy Central's "Roast of Charlie Sheen" has died from complications due to a stroke suffered last month.

He was 41.

MORE: Charlie Sheen Tweets Get Well to Pal Patrice O'Neal

"Yes it's true that our pal Patrice O'Neal has passed away. The funniest and best thinker i've ever known PERIOD," tweeted Opie from Sirius XM Radio's "Opie and Anthony Show," where O'Neal frequently guested.

The shockjock also linked to a YouTube video of O'Neal joking around in the studio.

On Oct. 19, Opie and Anthony broke the news via Facebook that O'Neal endured a stroke and urged listeners to keep him in their prayers as it was unclear whether he'd recover.

Besides being a regular guest of the radio cut-ups, O'Neal was best known for a string of half-hour HBO and Showtime stand-up specials following his breakthrough on HBO's "Def Comedy Jam" in 2007. His first hourlong special, "Elephant in the Room," debuted on Comedy Central last February.

The comedian was also a regular on Comedy Central's "Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn" for two years and performed on "The Late Show With David Letterman" and "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."

He also had guest shots on "The Office," "Arrested Development," and "Chappelle's Show" among others.

No word yet on funeral plans.

GALLERY: Celebrity deaths of 2011

Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45480282/ns/today-entertainment/

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UAE president pardons 5 convicted activists

With a view of towers along the Sheikh Zayed highway in background, an Asian laborer fixes new fence around a horse race track which was divided to two parts by a new road construction at Al Barsha district Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

With a view of towers along the Sheikh Zayed highway in background, an Asian laborer fixes new fence around a horse race track which was divided to two parts by a new road construction at Al Barsha district Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

With a view of towers at Marina district in background, Asian laborers fix new fence around a horse race track which was divided to two parts by a new road construction at Al Barsha district Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

(AP) ? Five political activists in the United Arab Emirates received a presidential pardon on Monday and are to be released from custody just a day after they were convicted of anti-state crimes, their lawyer said.

Attorney Mohammed al-Roken told The Associated Press the public prosecutor's office confirmed President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan's pardon. There was no immediate word from the president's office.

The activists, including a prominent blogger and an economics professor, were convicted on Sunday of insulting the UAE's top leadership and endangering national security.

They were sentenced to up to three years in prison by the Gulf country's security court in the capital Abu Dhabi. They had no right to appeal the verdict, which along with the activists' trial has been harshly criticized by international human rights groups.

Among the activists are blogger Ahmed Mansour and economics professor Nasser bin Gaith, who has lectured at Paris' Sorbonne university in Abu Dhabi. Bin Gaith also served as a legal adviser to the UAE's armed forces until he was taken into custody by federal security agents from his Dubai home eight months ago.

The five were arrested in April after signing an online petition demanding political reforms, including free elections for parliament. UAE's current parliament serves as an advisory body and its 40 members are either directly appointed by the ruling sheiks or elected by voters hand-picked by the rulers.

The charges against the five included insulting the country's top leadership, endangering national security, inciting people to protest and urging a boycott of the existing, limited form of elections. The last vote, held in September, was only the second election since the foundation of the UAE 40 years ago.

The UAE has not been hit by the Arab Spring unrest that has spread across much of the rest of the Middle East, including neighboring Bahrain. But the activists' trial appeared to have reflected Abu Dhabi's strategy of snuffing out any sign of dissent that could pose a challenge to the tight political controls in country.

On Sunday, a three-judge panel sentenced Mansour to three years in prison. Bin Gaith and other received two-year jail terms.

The UAE has faced an outcry from rights groups over the trials, which were held in the country's highest court that normally tries terrorism suspects and has no recourse for appeal.

Political activity is severely restricted in the UAE, an oil-rich alliance of seven semiautonomous states, each ruled by a hereditary sheik. There are no official opposition groups in the country and political parties are banned.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-11-28-ML-Emirates-Activist-Trial/id-4103906b053e4c4eb60c037db5189ef4

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Stockard Channing shrugs off pain to hit the stage

FILE - In this June 7, 2009, file photo, actress Stockard Channing arrives at the 63rd Annual Tony Awards in New York. Channing, the Tony Award-winning star of Broadway?s play ?Other Desert Cities,? has had to leave the production after undergoing knee surgery. The play also features Stacy Keach, Judith Light and Rachel Griffiths in her Broadway debut. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, file)

FILE - In this June 7, 2009, file photo, actress Stockard Channing arrives at the 63rd Annual Tony Awards in New York. Channing, the Tony Award-winning star of Broadway?s play ?Other Desert Cities,? has had to leave the production after undergoing knee surgery. The play also features Stacy Keach, Judith Light and Rachel Griffiths in her Broadway debut. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, file)

(AP) ? Stockard Channing has made a speedy ? some might say miraculous ? return to Broadway.

The 67-year-old Tony Award-winner performed in "Other Desert Cities" on Friday night and plans to continue in the show despite undergoing arthroscopic surgery on her right knee less than a week ago.

Channing felt her knee collapse backstage after the Nov. 18 show and missed seven performances. She plans to perform in Saturday night's show and Sunday's matinee. An understudy performed Saturday's matinee and will do Wednesday's matinee.

The Jon Robin Baitz play, about a dysfunctional family wrestling with a deep secret, opened Nov. 3.

In an interview Friday before her return, Channing said: "This is maybe stupid. I don't know. But if it doesn't blow up or get painful, I'm doing the right thing."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2011-11-26-Theater-Stockard%20Channing/id-3b9a97db64c64c7b86353d9c9efb88ab

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Receding floods reveal crocs lurking in Bangkok

Murky floodwaters are receding from Bangkok's inundated outskirts to reveal some scary swamp dwellers who moved in while flooded residents were moving out ? including crocodiles and some of the world's most poisonous snakes.

Special teams from the Thai Fishery Department have responded to numerous reports of reptilian menaces, like the 3-foot-long croc that Anchalee Wannawet saw sitting next to the outhouse one morning, its toothy jaw wide open.

"I ran away, and it ran into there," the 23-year-old said, pointing toward the reedy swamp behind the construction site where she works in Bangkok's northern Sai Mai district. "I haven't dared to go the bathroom since. I'm peeing in a can."

Thailand has long been a center for the breeding, exporting and trafficking of exotic animals, especially crocodiles. Farmed both legally and illegally, crocs are popular because of the value they fetch for their meat, bones and especially their skins, used to make luxury bags and accessories.

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This year's record monsoon rains, which prompted Thailand's worst flooding in a half century and killed more than 600 people, also swamped some of the country's estimated 3,000 crocodile farms. Many of the reptiles escaped ? though probably not as many as residents think they are seeing around the city.

Thais adjust to life in waist-deep water

"We get a lot of reports at the Fishery Department, but only about 5 to 10 percent of them turn out to be true," said Praphan Lipayakun, a fishery department official, adding that many false reports end up being large monitor lizards, which are generally shy and harmless.

"We even get reports of people being bitten, but when we follow up, we can't get in touch with the supposed patient, or when contacted, the doctor that treated the wound says that it in no way resembled a crocodile bite."

Still, officials and volunteer veterinarians have confirmed many flood-affected animals on the loose or in distress ? and not only reptiles.

Monkeys, lions, bears
A team of volunteer veterinarians rescued scores of animals ? from deer and Capuchin monkeys to lions, tigers and bears ? from the yards and homes of Thailand's rich.

"Most of the ones we found in the Bangkok area are privately owned, and a lot of them are for fun or for pleasure ? like a farm or some exotic species in the house," said Nantarika Chansue, president of the Zoo and Wildlife Veterinary Society of Thailand and a member of the team of volunteers.

"Some of the owners left home already and left the animals in the cage as the water rose. Some of them have illegal animals and are afraid of being prosecuted, so they are afraid to tell us and just leave them there."

Some of the rescued animals had had to be treated for respiratory diseases from inhaling disease-infested floodwaters, Nantarika said.

Calls about snakes have spiked from the usual two per day to about 10, said Sompob Sridaranop, a snake rescue expert from the Thai Marine Department. Most residents report pythons ? but occasionally the calls are about highly venomous cobras and pit vipers, he said.

Video: Man in Thailand volunteers as snake catcher (on this page)

"A lot of snakes are coming out now because they, too, are flooded. Their homes are usually under houses, or in pipes, but they can't sleep in the water, so they are escaping," he said.

In Nakhon Sawan province, north of Bangkok, Anan Dirath said his family found about 10 nonpoisonous snakes in the house since the waters receded, while his neighbors found cobras, which they caught and sold for their meat.

In Bangkok's Sai Mai district, not far from where Anchalee spotted the crocodile, a large zoo called Safari World was flooded, endangering primates, giraffes, dolphins and other exotic animals in captivity. At the height of the flooding, zoo official Litti Kewkacha said staff were piling up earth, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to stay higher than the flood levels.

Crocodile farms were not so successful at keeping their wards safe in captivity.

Since the floods began in July, the Fishery Department's crocodile teams have captured 10 that have escaped and found their way into residential areas in Bangkok and suburbs just to the north. Some have been easy catches: Residents had closed them into fenced yards.

'Footprints'
Then there are those like the one Anchalee saw, lurking in areas that are boxed in, but large, and with plenty of vegetation for cover. That one proved a special challenge for the crocodile chasers.

"These are its footprints. It's around here," Praphan said under a mid-afternoon sun.

Video: Experience life amid Thailand's floodwaters (on this page)

As the team toured the area's perimeter by boat, 42-year-old crocodile zoo performer and volunteer Chalaew Busamrong concurred that the trapped animal must be a crocodile.

"It has been floating around here a long time," Chalaew said. "It can't find its way out. If it were a monitor lizard, it would have found its way out by now."

The team decided that the area was too wide and wild to try to close in on the beast, so they baited their giant-sized hooks with raw chicken carcasses. It's a tactic with an often-inconclusive result, because if local residents find a trapped crocodile, they're likely to grab it and sell it.

"We've left bait before in other areas, but because crocodiles are so valuable, we're never sure if they are captured or not," Praphan said.

As they attached the wires to nearby trees in the swamp and prepared to head home, they heard a heavy movement in the reeds. The team stiffened, fell quiet, and backed away, hoping the crocodile might move forward.

Video: Stranded animals rescued in Thailand (on this page)

Suspecting the crocodile might be hungry enough to take the bait, Chalaew decided to stay the night.

Nearby, construction workers slept uneasily, but there were no sounds of frantic splashing, as had been hoped. As the sun rose, the chicken carcasses remained untouched.

One week later, the area remained flooded. Neighbors told Anchalee that they shot and killed two crocodiles a few streets away.

Foul-smelling water
"I don't know if it's true or not, but that's what they say," she said by phone. "We haven't seen it since, and the chicken has all fallen off into the water. We only hear the dogs howling."

Meanwhile, knee-deep in foul-smelling water, workers piled office equipment, documents and food onto fiber boats that ferry them from one building on Hana Microelectronics' 12-acre company site in Ayutthaya, about 50 miles north of Bangkok, to another with more space on higher floors.

The firm, Thailand's biggest semiconductor packager, managed to get its integrated circuits ?a vital part in virtually all electronic equipment from mobile phones and tablets to computers ? outside the flood zone a week before the water breached defensive dikes on October 13.

Video: Thailand submerged by floods (on this page)

But it could do nothing about the dozens of machines weighing up to 5 tons each on the ground floor of the main building, which was almost entirely submerged.

"As you can see, it's still a big mess here," said general manager Bruce Stromstad, as he directed some of the 50 staff? ? skilled workers mucking in with the rest ? scrubbing dirty floors and removing sandbags in the burning sun.

Damage to equipment could go as high as $30 million, with the whole clean-up costing several million dollars more, said the 67-year-old executive from Silicon Valley, California.

Two crocodiles have been spotted in the parking lot and a cobra snuck into the building.

With the slow-moving water still washing through some parts of Thailand, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has proposed spending 130 billion baht ($4.2 billion) on reconstruction and steps to prevent future floods.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45451370/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/

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Nokia Siemens to lay off 17,000 worldwide (AP)

HELSINKI ? Nokia Siemens Networks is slashing 17,000 jobs worldwide by 2013 ? nearly 23 percent of its work force ? as it strives to cut costs by euro1 billion ($1.35 billion).

The mobile infrastructure company said Wednesday the measures are part of "an extensive global restructuring program," which includes streamlining the organization to improve long-term competitiveness and profitability.

The Finnish-German joint venture said they will also include "a significant reduction of suppliers."

Nokia Siemens Networks CEO Rajeev Suri said the company will focus on mobile network infrastructure and services market.

"We believe that the future of our industry is in mobile broadband and services. We aim to be an undisputed leader in these areas," Suri said. "At the same time, we need to take the necessary steps to maintain long term competitiveness and improve profitability in a challenging telecommunications market."

He described the planned layoffs as regrettable but necessary.

"As we look towards the prospect of an independent future, we need to take action now to improve our profitability and cash generation," Suri said.

Nokia Siemens, which has been struggling against rival network companies in recent years, is a 50-50 joint venture between Finland's Nokia Corp. and Germany's Siemens AG.

Nokia shares were trading up more than 2 percent at euro4.27 ($5.78) in Helsinki.

The company has 74,000 employees in 150 countries.

____

Online:

http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111123/ap_on_hi_te/eu_finland_nokia_siemens_layoffs

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Netanyahu calls for tougher sanctions on Iran (Reuters)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) ? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Wednesday for stronger sanctions on Iran than those imposed this week by the United States, Britain and Canada to try to curb its nuclear ambitions.

"Iran is developing nuclear weapons. If anyone had any doubts, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) report certainly dispelled them," Netanyahu told parliament, referring to the U.N. body's findings on November 8 that suggested Iran had worked on designing a nuclear bomb.

"It is important to impose sanctions, tough sanctions, on this regime - even tougher than those that have been imposed over the past few days," he said, without elaborating on measures he believes should be taken.

On Monday, the United States, Britain and Canada announced new sanctions on Iran's energy and financial sectors, steps analysts said may raise pressure on Tehran but were unlikely to halt its nuclear program.

The United States named Iran as an area of "primary money laundering concern," a step designed to dissuade non-U.S. banks from dealing with it; blacklisted 11 entities suspected of aiding its nuclear programs; and expanded sanctions to target companies that aid its oil and petrochemical industries.

The United States stopped short, however, of targeting Iran's central bank, a step that could have cut it off from the global financial system, sent oil prices skyrocketing and jeopardized U.S. and European economic recovery.

In a coordinated action, Britain ordered all British financial institutions to stop doing business with their Iranian counterparts, including the Iranian central bank

Canada said it would ban the export of all goods used in Iran's petrochemical, oil and gas industry and "block virtually all transactions with Iran," including with its central bank, with an exception for Iranian-Canadians to send money home.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned Netanyahu on Monday to brief him on the new sanctions. Like the United States, Israel has said all options, including a military one, are on the table in trying to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear arms.

In a statement issued after his conversation with Clinton, Netanyahu's office quoted him as saying: "Such sanctions make clear to the Iranians the price (they will pay) will be high if they continue to their nuclear program."

Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful and is aimed at generating electricity. Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only atomic power, has said a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a danger to its existence.

Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called for "lethal sanctions" against Iran, including steps to halt imports of Iranian oil and exports of refined petroleum to the Islamist Republic.

But he said such moves would require the cooperation of the United States, Europe, India, China and Russia, and he did not believe such a coalition could be formed.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Alison Williams)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111123/wl_nm/us_iran_nuclear_israel

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How ink flows, speedy neutrinos may leave LHC trails, and seeing Schroedinger's cat

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 21-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: James Riordon
riordon@aps.org
301-209-3238
American Physical Society

News from the American Physical Society

Hydrodynamics of writing with ink

Jungchul Kim, Myoung-Woon Moon, Kwang-Ryeol Lee, L. Mahadevan, and Ho-Young Kim

Physical Review Letters (forthcoming)

For millennia, writing has been the preferred way to convey information and knowledge from one generation to another. We first developed the ability to write on clay tablets with a point, and then settled on a reed pen, as preserved from 3000 BC in Egypt when it was used with papyrus. This device consisted of a hollow straw that served as an ink reservoir and allowed ink to flow to its tip by capillary action. A quill pen using a similar mechanism served as the instrument of choice for scholars in medieval times, while modern times have seen the evolution of variants of these early writing instruments to a nib pen, a ballpoint pen, and a roller ball pen. However, the fundamental action of the pen, to deliver liquid ink to an absorbent surface has remained unchanged for five thousand years.

Writing with ink involves the supply of liquid from a pen on to a porous hydrophilic solid surface, paper. The resulting line width depends on the pen speed and the physicochemical properties of the ink and of paper. Here we quantify the dynamics of this process using a combination of experiment and theory. Our experiments are carried out using a minimal pen: a long narrow tube that serves as a reservoir of liquid, which can write on a model of paper: a hydrophilic micropillar array. A minimal theory for the rate of wicking or spreading of the liquid is given by balancing capillary force that drives the liquid flow and viscous force exerted by the substrate. This allows us to quantitatively predict the shape of the front and the width of the line laid out by the pen, the results corroborated by experiments.


Faster-than-light neutrinos may leave trails at the LHC

Hooman Davoudiasl and Thomas G. Rizzo

Physical Review D (forthcoming)

Is Einstein's venerated theory of special relativity challenged by neutrinos? The LHC may help provide the answer. The OPERA experiment, at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, has reported observation of neutrinos that travel faster than light. This result, if confirmed, would violate one of the defining laws of special relativity -- a pillar of fundamental physics for over a century-- that forbids faster-than-light (FTL) travel. If neutrinos, which are extremely elusive by nature, can travel at FTL speeds it has been predicted that they would emit easy-to-detect particles, such as electron anti-electron pairs, along their paths. In our paper, we suggest looking for these conspicuous trails that would be left in the wake of neutrinos -- if they traversed the LHC detectors faster than light -- as a way of testing the FTL neutrino hypothesis implied by the OPERA results. The requisite neutrinos can originate from decays of top quarks that are copiously produced at the LHC.


Why it's hard to see Schroedinger's cat

Sadegh Raeisi, Pavel Sekatski, and Christoph Simon

Physical Review Letters (forthcoming)

Why do we not see quantum physical effects in our daily lives? This question was raised by Schroedinger in his famous cat paradox. One answer is that quantum superposition states, such as the cat being both dead and alive at the same time, are very fragile. When the cat interacts with its environment even just a tiny bit, the superposition is destroyed. This effect is known as decoherence, and it has been studied intensively over the last few decades. But it turns out that decoherence is not the only reason why quantum effects are hard to see. In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, researchers point out an even more basic difficulty: seeing quantum effects requires extremely precise measurements. Studying a concrete example for such a "cat" motivated by recent experiments, a particular quantum state involving a large number of photons, they show that in order to see the quantum nature of this state, one has to be able to count the number of photons in it perfectly. This becomes more and more difficult as the total number of photons is increased. Distinguishing one photon from two photons is within reach of current technology, but distinguishing a million photons from a million plus one is not. This shows that seeing Schroedinger's cat is hard also because it would require exceptionally good eyesight.

###


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[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 21-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: James Riordon
riordon@aps.org
301-209-3238
American Physical Society

News from the American Physical Society

Hydrodynamics of writing with ink

Jungchul Kim, Myoung-Woon Moon, Kwang-Ryeol Lee, L. Mahadevan, and Ho-Young Kim

Physical Review Letters (forthcoming)

For millennia, writing has been the preferred way to convey information and knowledge from one generation to another. We first developed the ability to write on clay tablets with a point, and then settled on a reed pen, as preserved from 3000 BC in Egypt when it was used with papyrus. This device consisted of a hollow straw that served as an ink reservoir and allowed ink to flow to its tip by capillary action. A quill pen using a similar mechanism served as the instrument of choice for scholars in medieval times, while modern times have seen the evolution of variants of these early writing instruments to a nib pen, a ballpoint pen, and a roller ball pen. However, the fundamental action of the pen, to deliver liquid ink to an absorbent surface has remained unchanged for five thousand years.

Writing with ink involves the supply of liquid from a pen on to a porous hydrophilic solid surface, paper. The resulting line width depends on the pen speed and the physicochemical properties of the ink and of paper. Here we quantify the dynamics of this process using a combination of experiment and theory. Our experiments are carried out using a minimal pen: a long narrow tube that serves as a reservoir of liquid, which can write on a model of paper: a hydrophilic micropillar array. A minimal theory for the rate of wicking or spreading of the liquid is given by balancing capillary force that drives the liquid flow and viscous force exerted by the substrate. This allows us to quantitatively predict the shape of the front and the width of the line laid out by the pen, the results corroborated by experiments.


Faster-than-light neutrinos may leave trails at the LHC

Hooman Davoudiasl and Thomas G. Rizzo

Physical Review D (forthcoming)

Is Einstein's venerated theory of special relativity challenged by neutrinos? The LHC may help provide the answer. The OPERA experiment, at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, has reported observation of neutrinos that travel faster than light. This result, if confirmed, would violate one of the defining laws of special relativity -- a pillar of fundamental physics for over a century-- that forbids faster-than-light (FTL) travel. If neutrinos, which are extremely elusive by nature, can travel at FTL speeds it has been predicted that they would emit easy-to-detect particles, such as electron anti-electron pairs, along their paths. In our paper, we suggest looking for these conspicuous trails that would be left in the wake of neutrinos -- if they traversed the LHC detectors faster than light -- as a way of testing the FTL neutrino hypothesis implied by the OPERA results. The requisite neutrinos can originate from decays of top quarks that are copiously produced at the LHC.


Why it's hard to see Schroedinger's cat

Sadegh Raeisi, Pavel Sekatski, and Christoph Simon

Physical Review Letters (forthcoming)

Why do we not see quantum physical effects in our daily lives? This question was raised by Schroedinger in his famous cat paradox. One answer is that quantum superposition states, such as the cat being both dead and alive at the same time, are very fragile. When the cat interacts with its environment even just a tiny bit, the superposition is destroyed. This effect is known as decoherence, and it has been studied intensively over the last few decades. But it turns out that decoherence is not the only reason why quantum effects are hard to see. In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, researchers point out an even more basic difficulty: seeing quantum effects requires extremely precise measurements. Studying a concrete example for such a "cat" motivated by recent experiments, a particular quantum state involving a large number of photons, they show that in order to see the quantum nature of this state, one has to be able to count the number of photons in it perfectly. This becomes more and more difficult as the total number of photons is increased. Distinguishing one photon from two photons is within reach of current technology, but distinguishing a million photons from a million plus one is not. This shows that seeing Schroedinger's cat is hard also because it would require exceptionally good eyesight.

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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/aps-hif112111.php

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