Concerns about bioterrorism and infectious diseases have prompted Boston and a growing number of other cities to start electronic tracking systems to quickly detect outbreaks. By compiling data from emergency rooms, poison control centers and other sources, ``syndromic surveillance'' can both serve as an early warning system and help eliminate false alarms, health officials say.
Separate teams of physicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Harvard University have managed to trap light and release it again, a feat that could aid the development of high-speed quantum computers and a quantum Internet.