On Information : Transmission & Storage.

What happens if the information superhighway- (or infobahn if you prefer) gets clogged? Choc-a-block like any other highway? The rate at which new users hop on to internet, this indeed is a possibility, though the danger is not imminent.   Traffic in the information superhighway  has been increasing   by 60% annually for the last 15 years. Though we haven't yet reached danger level, still it is imperative that we take note of the situation and have solutions in place.  

Courtsy: wikipedia

Silica, the material used for optical fiber,  has exceptional properties. Extremely low signal loss (attenuation coefficient ~4.6x10^-5m^-1) and an equally small nonlinear refractive index -(n₂₌2.5x10^-20m²W^-1 ). So light undergoes total internal reflection inside the hollow fiber wth the walls just containing and steering its its path. But overcrowding can change all that. Nonlinear error (also called Kerr effect) could add up over volume and distance and distort signals. Another term used for such distortion is crosstalk.  A  fiber material with  n₂=0, will be the ideal solution.  In that case there will be no interference and no cross-talk whatsoever. 

Professor Radic and his team at the University of California, San Diego thought differently. What if we can cancel these nonlinear responses?  To achieve this Radic and team designed  "frequency combs" which synchronized the frequency variations in the optical data flow and  demonstrated that carrier coherence is the critical requirement to eliminate crosstalk. Because under such circumstances cross-talk is predictable and reversible.  Their results are published in the 26th June issue of Science. This study implies possibilities beyond the current limits of the reach and volume in optical fiber communication. 

Transmission is one thing; what about storage? Just to cite an example: Human Genome Project and  International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) would have by generated data running into  petabytes.(One petabyte =10¹⁵ bytes ). Cloud Services (which includes storage and computing facilities) is one platform where such enormous volume of data could reside. This would provide easy and fast access and usage to multiple research teams across the globe. Of course there is price tag attached. Currently alongside titans such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, there are smaller firms too offering this service.  It is reliably learned that National Institutes of Health, USA  will soon move some of its information wealth  to a cloud storage facility. Europe is perhaps is planning its own version. 

But some remain skeptical, what if your cloud bank  bursts?.  

Reference:
1.Overcoming Kerr-induced capacity limit in optical fiber transmission. Temprana et al Science: 26 June 2015 pp1445-48. 
2.Cloud Cover: Nature 9 July 2015 pp 128
3.Create a cloud Commons:Stein et al  Nature 9 July 2015 pp 149-151.
4.Europe sets its sights on Cloud: Gibney,E-Nature 9 July 2015 pp136-37 
5 Cloud's worst case scenario- What to do if your provider goes belly up