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Physicists have just discovered a new form of light that doesn’t follow our existing rules of angular momentum, and it could shake up our understanding of the electromagnetic radiation and lead to faster, more secure optical communication.

Because of how well-studied and, well, everywhere, light is, you might assume that we’ve pretty much learnt all there is to know about it. But just last year, researchers identified a fundamental new property of light, and now a team of Irish scientists has shown that light can take on unexpected new forms.

One of the ways we measure a beam of light is through its angular momentum — a constant quantity that measures how much light is rotating. And until now, it was thought that for all forms of light, the angular momentum would be a whole number (known as an integer) multiple of Planck’s constant — a physical constant that sets the scale of quantum effects.

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The age of the restaurant self-service kiosks has dawned, and it’s the end of fast food as we know it.

McDonald’s is striding into the 21st century with the rollout of the “Create Your Taste” touchscreen kiosks, on which custom burgers can be built as well as full-menu ordering.

The kiosks are incredibly convenient and improve order accuracy, to which I can personally attest.

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The world is about to see a mind-blowing demographic situation that will be a first in human history: There are about to be more elderly people than young children.

For some time now, demographers and economists have observed that the proportion of elderly adults around the world is rising, while the proportion of younger children is falling.

But within a few years, just before 2020, adults aged 65 and over will begin to outnumber children under the age of 5 among the global population, according to a chart shared by a Bank of America Merrill Lynch team led by Beijia Ma, citing an earlier report from the US Census Bureau.

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