The Physics arXiv Blog produces daily coverage of the best new ideas from an online forum called the Physics arXiv on which scientists post early versions of their latest ideas. Contact me atKentuckyFC @ arxivblog.comThere's gossip afoot in the quantum world.

For decades, Alice and Bob have served the quantum community to the highest standards of dedication and loyalty. In countless experiments, the pair have lent their formidable observing prowess to the proceedings, whether it be for quantum cryptography, teleportation or just plain old quantum communication.Today, however, Fabio Bagarello at the University of Palermo and Francesco Oliveri at the University of Messina, both in Italy, suggest that there may be more to Alice and Bob's relationship than anyone expected. And Alice, the poor soul, is in for a shock.Bagarello and Oliveri today investigate the nature of love affairs using the physics of quantum mechanics as their microscope. [Read the full article]

Municipal WiFi was the free, ubiquitous mesh of wireless internet access that was supposed to carpet bomb the digital divide back to the stone age.So what happened? Eric Fraser, author of the superlative new guide to what went wrong with the dream of Municipal WiFi, A Postmortem Look at Citywide WiFi, has the answer. The short version is, no technology happens in a vacuum, and where the laws of the land abut the laws of nature, physics will carve your best-laid plans into a heap of sundered limbs every time.Case in point: the 2010 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plan, Connecting America, doesn't even mention municipal WiFi. Contrast that with the Federal Trade Commission's 2006 report, Municipal Provision of Wireless Internet, "which listed WiFi first in its list of major technologies used to provide citywide wireless internet access," Fraser notes. [Read the full article]

Could a technology that urges people to take their medications help cut the cost of health care?It's like flipping a coin with your health. Despite the fact that medications can save or extend lives, the average patient fails to follow his pill prescription half the time. The reasons behind this failure are varied--ranging from simple forgetfulness to confusion to ambivalence--but the problem costs an estimated $290 billion in emergency-room visits and other avoidable medical expenses in the United States alone, according to the New England Healthcare Institute. Large organizations have been trying to tackle this problem for years. Drug-store chains send paper reminders in the mail--to little avail. HMOs have tried calling patients daily--but they found this labor-intensive solution way too expensive.David Rose, founder of the startup Vitality, had an altogether different idea: to build reminder technology right into the pill bottle itself. [Read the full article]

In August, Facebook rolled out Facebook Places, its entrant into the rapidly bloating field of services that tell everyone in your (probably more expansive than you realize) network of online friends where you are right now.The problems with a service like this are myriad - burglars have already used it to identify when their victims are away from home, and one reporter showed how it could be used to stalk a random woman. And they all begin with a typically lax attitude toward your privacy.Even if you aren't the sort to whip out your smart phone every time you arrive at whatever drab locales comprise your daily routine ("Cheating at on my diet at Long John Silver's! Hush puppies FML - LOL!1!!"), Facebook Places has two glaring errors in the design of its privacy features.The first problem with the default settings for Places that it's opt-out, not opt-in, meaning that unless you've switched it off, you are already using it. [Read the full article]