New Wi-Fi Standard Takes the Slow Road

by Marguerite Reardon ZDNet News, 19 May 2005 The process to establish the next-generation Wi-Fi standard, which promises to quadruple transmission speeds, has stalled as members of the working group developing the standard failed to pass the main proposal onto the next stage. Read the article

Tyke's Trike Becomes a Bike

by Abby Christopher Wired News, 19 May 2005 A new dual-mode tricycle-cum-bicycle promises to make learning to ride a bike truly easy, according to its inventors. Called Shift, the three-wheeler bike transforms into a bicycle and back again depending on how the person riding it distributes his or her weight. Read the article

Map Reveals Wind Power Potential

by Amit Asaravala Wired News, 23 May 2005 Wind power could generate enough electricity to support the world's energy needs several times over, according to a new map of global wind speeds that scientists say is the first of its kind. The map, compiled by researchers at Stanford University, shows wind speeds at more than 8,000 sites around the world. The researchers found that at least 13 percent of those sites experience winds fast enough to power a modern wind turbine. If turbines were set up in all these regions, they would generate 72 terawatts of electricity. Read the article

Latest Buzz Words in Science: Robot Swarms

by Gregory M. Lamb USATODAY.com, 19 May 2005 It sounds like classic sci-fi: Robots, linked by a common network, roam the land. When one unit discovers something, they all know it instantly. They use artificial intelligence to carry out their mission. Soon, such marching orders will be real, carried out by robot groups known as "swarms" or "hives." Read the article

Ashes to Ashes, Brain to Disk

The Australian, 23 May 2005 Death could become a thing of the past by the mid-21st century as computer technology becomes sophisticated enough for the contents of a brain to be "downloaded" on to a supercomputer, according to a leading British futurologist. Read the article

Roadmap for the Future of the Photonics Industry Released at MIT

For the optical communications industry to prosper in the long-term, electronics and photonics must converge and result in a new breed of telecom devices that is cheaper to manufacture in much larger volumes. That's the verdict of a comprehensive four-year study (Microphotonics: Harware for the Information Age) released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week. Read the news item Read the report

Human-Powered Hydrofoil Seeks Jumpy Riders

by Duncan Graham-Rowe NewScientist.com, 23 May 2005 The first human-powered commercial hydrofoil, resembling a bizarre cross between a pogo stick and a jet ski, has gone on sale. Riders operate the "Pumpabike" by bouncing up and down on a small platform at the rear of the contraption, whilst holding onto a steering column at the front. Read the article

Water Induced Hydrophobic Surface

by Umit Makal & Kenneth J. Wynne Langmuir, 31 Mar 2005 (web release) A polyurethane coating is described that has hydrophilic wetting behavior when dry and hydrophobic when wet. A difference of ~25 in advancing contact angles for dry and wet states is found by sessile drop and dynamic methods. The term "contraphilic" is suggested for this reversible change opposite customary amphiphilic behavior. Contraphilic behavior results from a soft block containing semifluorinated and 5,5-dimethyhydantoin segmers. Amide inter/intramolecular hydrogen bonding is proposed for the hydrophilic (dry) state, while surface-confined, amide-water hydrogen bonding "releases" semifluorinated groups, giving the hydrophobic state. Water-induced hydrophobic surfaces may lead to applications for easily switched wetting, such as in microfluidics. Read the article

Texture Classification Using a Polymer-Based MEMS Tactile Sensor

by Sung-Hoon Kim et al. Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, May 2005 We classify surface textures using a polymer-based microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) tactile sensor array and a robust statistical approach. We demonstrate that a MEMS tactile sensor resembling a flexible sensor 'skin' built using a polyimide substrate can successfully classify textures. Texture classification is achieved by using a maximum likelihood decision rule that optimally classifies patterns in the presence of noisy signal to cope with texture variation and random noise. Using a 4 × 4 sensor array, a variety of simple textures are distinguished despite low sensitivity mechanical strain gauges serving as a transduction element. The final result analyzed using leave-one-out cross validation yields acceptable overall performance of 68% correct classification. Directions for future work to improve identification performance of the system are also presented. Read the article

Optical Excitation of Nanoelectromechanical Oscillators

by B. Ilic et al. Applied Physics Letters, 9 May 2005 We report a method of optical excitation of nanomechanical cantilever-type oscillators. The periodic driving signal with a controlled modulation amplitude was provided by a 415 nm diode laser, wherein the laser spot was located at some distance away from the clamped end of the cantilever. The measured resonant response of the cantilever was obtained at distances in excess of 160 µm with varying oscillator dimensions. The effectiveness of the driving mode is studied for different combinations of materials, namely Si-SiO2 and Si3N4-SiO2. These observations were considered within the theoretical framework of the mechanism of heat transfer. We show that measurable amplitudes of vibrations can be obtained at temperature changes much less than 1°. Read the article

Boston University Engineers Develop Underwater Listening Device

EurekaAlert, 20 May 2005 Jason Holmes, a mechanical engineering graduate student at Boston University and guest researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, has devised a low-cost, highly sensitive array of underwater ears that is perking up interest in both homeland security and ocean research circles. Holmes' device -- an underwater hydrophone array designed to be towed by a small, autonomous submarine -- can monitor for ocean-going threats to America's waterways or for sound for ocean acoustics studies. Read the article

What Good Is 17.24 Bits of Flicker-Free Res?

by Keith Odland EE Times, 23 May 2005 We all understand that 2 raised to the power of 24 is a very large number -- 16,777,216, to be exact. But when we talk about data converters and their effective resolution, it is sometimes easy to get mixed up. Think about it: One part in 16 million is a highly granular measurement. What we find in reality is that without significant oversampling and a random distribution of noise, 24-bit resolution is difficult to achieve. Read the article

Line Blurs between Graphics IC and CPU

by Rick Merritt EE Times, 23 May 2005 The latest speedy videogame consoles may blur the traditional lines between graphics accelerators and host processors. That was part of the picture that emerged at the E3 conference in Los Angeles last week, where ATI Technologies Inc. and Nvidia Corp. gave a glimpse into graphics processors they are designing for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3, respectively. The console efforts may also hint at the direction of future graphics processors for PCs and other systems. Read the article

Memory Marquee

by R. Colin Johnson EE Times, 23 May 2005 With SRAM, DRAM and flash high-stepping down the road map for both standalone and embedded designs, any competing memory chip technology faces an uphill battle. Nevertheless, other types of memory -- in various stages of development -- are rumbling offstage. Read the article

Is the Day of the Architect Over?

by Ron Wilson EE Times, 23 May 2005 What's to become of the generation of designers who grew up aspiring to be computer architects? With even Intel throwing in the towel on making faster CPU cores and switching its focus to on-chip multiprocessing, it appears that the age of the architect is over. Read the article

Sensors Rev Auto IQ

by Rick DeMeis EE Times, 23 May 2005 Sensors to measure such quantities as pressure, temperature and acceleration have been a staple of automotive electronics for many years. But the myriad systems required for such functions as emissions control, fuel economy and safety (including "smart" airbag systems and tire pressure monitoring) go far beyond sticking a simple transducer where needed and wiring it back to a control box. Read the article

Keys to the New Car Sensor

by Scott Monroe EE Times, 23 May 2005 As the automobile's electronic content continues to increase, the need for low-cost, reliable sensing systems becomes even more important. While there are many challenges to overcome to meet those needs, advances in interconnect architectures and mixed-signal processes have combined to greatly increase intelligence, lower cost and improve reliability -- and more advances are on the way. Read the article

Keep High-Speed Circuit Board Layout on Track

by John Ardizzoni EE Times, 23 May 2005 Printed-circuit board layout is one of the last steps in the design process, but for high-speed circuits, it often proves to be one of the most critical. Many of today's high-speed amplifiers can operate well into the RF spectrum. At these frequencies, circuit performance is heavily dependent on the board layout. A poor or sloppy layout can take your high-flying circuit and cause it to crash and burn. Thinking ahead and paying attention to detail throughout the layout process will help ensure that the circuit performs as expected. Read the article

Robotic Surgery

Surgical robots, now used in operating rooms worldwide, are not performing surgical tasks on their own, but "lend a helping hand to surgeons," as discussed in this article from the Food and Drug Administration. How Stuff Works provides a nice overview of some of the robotics systems currently in use and how they are used. This next website from the USC Robotic Surgery Institute, which was founded by the cardiothoracic surgeon who was one of the first "to see the potential for robotic surgery," discusses the medical procedures benefiting from this technology and includes a few videos of the surgeries (not for the faint of heart). This next article from Science Daily reports on two studies from UPenn "that demonstrate the effective use of the daVinci Surgical Robotic System to perform Trans-Oral Robotic Surgery which greatly reduces surgical trauma for patients." Another way that robotic technology is used in surgery is to allow doctors to perform surgery remotely. The history of this development known as telesurgery is described on this next website. This article from The Engineer Online describes a project by researchers in the United Kingdom that aims to develop an image guidance system that uses 3-D images to improve the range of medical procedures for which robotics can be used. Brown University's website also provides a nice overview of the history of Robotic Surgery as well as some basics on costs and demographics, and interviews with doctors and patients. Finally, PBS offers this lesson idea, providing students a "journey to the operating room of the future." [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 20 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005]

Engines 101

NASA's Ultra-Efficient Engine Technology program offers this website with links to online resources that provide basic information about the science of aeronautics and about jet engines. The various resource websites are organized by topic and address questions students might have about aeronautics as a discipline in general, the basic principles of aeronautics, how engines work, the different types of engines, current technologies used for designing engines, careers in engineering, and the history of engine development. The site also provides links to various test facilities and tutorials on a range of topics, such as wind tunnels, materials and structures, and emission reduction. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 20 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity

The Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (ECCC), maintained by the University of Trier in Germany, offers resources on computational complexity, including research reports, surveys and books. The database includes over 700 articles and can be browsed by year or publication type. The website also provides information on how to submit articles, contribute to the discussion forum, and join the mailing list to receive periodical emails announcing new ECCC publications. The complexity scientists who collaborated to develop this resource, introduced in 1994, also offer some solutions to reducing the time between the submission of a paper and its publication as ECCC-report and still maintaining high scientific quality. They also provide some background how they are protecting copyright, guaranteeing long-term citability, safely archiving reports, and supporting communication among researchers. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 20 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Active Logic, Metacognitive Computation, and Mind

The long-term goal of the Active Logic, Metacognitive Computation, and Mind project at University of Maryland, College Park, Computer Science Department is "to design and implement common sense in a computer." The website offers an explanation for what a project of this nature involves and the challenges of achieving "cognitive adequacy." A Primer section provides an introduction to active logic, which the project describes as a formal architecture that is more flexible than traditional artificial intelligence systems because it explicitly reasons in time and incorporates a history of its reasoning as it runs, making it most suitable for commonsense, real-world reasoning. Examples of logic interfaces are provided as one of the Primers. The website also discusses the project hypothesis regarding a limited and formalizable set of generic strategies of metareasoning and explain why its researchers focus on the study of conversations, particularly human-computer natural-language dialog, to better understand these metacognitive strategies. The Publications section posts forthcoming and previously published articles as well as dissertations. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 20 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

This is the website for Columbia University’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, which is “concerned with the design, analysis, and control of production and service operations and systems.” The website describes two of the Department's research centers. The first, the Center for Applied Probability, supports interdisciplinary research on probability and its applications. The second, the Computational Optimization Research Center, specializes in "the design and implementation of state-of-the-art algorithms for the solution of large-scale optimization problems arising from a wide variety of industrial and commercial applications." Separate websites provide a description of research conducted at the Centers along with links to various publications. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 20 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Contextual Computing Group

The Contextual Computing Group is a research organization at Georgia Tech College of Computing that focuses on the field of contextually-aware, wearable computing systems. The group is interested in "how the continued emergence of on-body computational resources will impact society." Topics addressed in its work include Wearable Computing, Augmented Reality, Lifelong Everyday Interfaces, Natural Gestural Interfaces, First-Person Perceptive Agents, Contextual Computing Devices, Human Computer Interaction, Computer Vision, Memory Prostheses, Embedded Computers, and Sensor Fusion. Projects related to Wearable Computing have yielded hardware products that are available to purchase. Resources that the group has found useful are available to download free of charge. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 20 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Systems Research - Harvard University

This website features Systems Research at Harvard University. Projects described on this website focus on distributed computing, sensor networks, file systems, and systems integration. Researchers from the System Group also develop educational resources, including a platform for teaching an Introduction to Computer Sciences course and an instructional operating system. The researchers provide overviews of their projects and related publications are available to download. Past projects include a project that explored methodologies for application-specific benchmarking and a project that proposed a framework for developing Web applications with client-side storage. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 20 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Control at the Quantum Level

by Thomas F. Krauss Science, 20 May 2005 Controlling the interaction between an emitter and an optical cavity resonator in the solid state is of great interest for quantum devices, such as single-photon emitters and, eventually, quantum computers. In his Perspective, Krauss highlights the report of Badolato et al., who achieve much greater control than hitherto possible in a quantum dot-photonic crystal nanocavity system. Krauss concludes that this work is a significant step toward producing practical devices. Read the article

Deterministic Coupling of Single Quantum Dots to Single Nanocavity Modes

by Antonio Badolato et al. Science, 20 May 2005 We demonstrate a deterministic approach to the implementation of solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) systems based on a precise spatial and spectral overlap between a single self-assembled quantum dot and a photonic crystal membrane nanocavity. By fine-tuning nanocavity modes with a high quality factor into resonance with any given quantum dot exciton, we observed clear signatures of cavity QED (such as the Purcell effect) in all fabricated structures. This approach removes the major hindrances that had limited the application of solid-state cavity QED and enables the realization of experiments previously proposed in the context of quantum information processing. Read the article

Like the Famous Doughboy, Nanotubes Give When You Poke 'em

EurekaAlert!, 17 May 2005 Smaller, faster computers, bullet proof t-shirts and itty-bitty robots, such are the promises of nanotechnology and the cylinder-shaped collection of carbon molecules known as nanotubes. But in order for these exciting technologies to hit the marketplace (who wouldn't want an itty-bitty robot), scientists must understand how these miracle-molecules perform under all sorts of conditions. For, without nanoscience, there would be no nanotechnology. Read the article

Fuel-Cell Tanks Buck Convention

by Mark Anderson Wired News, 16 May 2005 On the road to petroleum independence and greenhouse-gas reduction, the old internal combustion engine will someday need to be scrapped. That will only occur when the alternative -- most likely the hydrogen-powered fuel cell -- is as cheap and convenient to use as the conventional automobile is today. Read the article

Mobile Army Requires Solar Soldiers

by John Gartner TechnologyReview.com, 16 May 2005 Today's soldiers are more power hungry than ever, and the army believes flexible solar cells can provide the extra juice. The military is testing lightweight materials that harness the sun's rays and feed electronic devices wherever mobile warriors travel. Read the article

Coming Soon: The 10-Year Nuclear Battery

by Lucy Sherriff The Register, 18 May 2005 Scientists in the US have developed a new fabrication technique that will lead to nuclear batteries that could last for decades. The researchers, based at the University of Rochester, claim that the technique is already ten times more efficient than current nuclear batteries, and has the potential to outstrip them nearly 200 times. Read the article

Channeling Chaos by Building Barriers

by C. Chandre et al. Physical Review Letters, 25 Feb 2005 Chaotic diffusion often represents a severe obstacle for the setup of experiments, e.g., in fusion plasmas or particle accelerators. We present a complete test of a method of control of Hamiltonian chaos, with both its numerical test and its first experimental realization on a paradigm for wave-particle interaction, i.e., a travelling wave tube. The core of our approach is a small apt modification of the system which channels chaos by building barriers to diffusion. Its experimental realization opens the possibility to practically achieve the control of a wide range of systems at a low additional cost of energy. Read the article

Identification of a Point Source in a Linear Advection-Dispersion-Reaction Equation: Application to a Pollution Source Problem

by A. El Badia, T. Ha-Duong, & A. Hamdi Inverse Problems, June 2005 We consider the problem of identification of a pollution source in a river. The mathematical model is a one-dimensional linear advection-dispersion-reaction equation with the right-hand side spatially supported at a point (the source) and a time-dependent intensity, both unknown. Assuming that the source becomes inactive after the time T*, we prove that it can be identified by recording the evolution of the concentration at two points, one of which is strategic. Read the article

Vision Chip for New Generation of 'Human' Robots

PhysOrg, 18 May 2005 The University of Manchester is to help develop a new generation of robots with ‘human’ instincts. The REVERB project, which involves BAE Systems and a number of other leading UK Universities, is aimed at developing new technologies which will enable robots to respond to events and multi-task in similar ways to humans and animals. As part of the project The University of Manchester will develop a state of the art Vision Chip. Read the article

With A Little Help From Your Friends: A New Way To Block Spam

PhysOrg, 18 May 2005 Friends can help friends block spam -- or at least their computers can. So says a University of Florida computer engineer who has pioneered a new approach to zapping the junk e-mail that slows productivity and poses an increasing security threat to computer users worldwide. With colleagues at the University of California-Los Angeles, Oscar Boykin, a UF assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has simulated a system that taps a user’s "social network" of friends and colleagues to root out spam. Read the article

Laser-Doppler Velocity Profile Sensor with Submicrometer Spatial Resolution That Employs Fiber Optics and a Diffractive Lens

by Lars Büttner, Jürgen Czarske, & Hans Knuppertz Applied Optics, 20 Apr 2005 We report a novel laser-Doppler velocity profile sensor for microfluidic and nanofluidic applications and turbulence research. The sensor's design is based on wavelength-division multiplexing. The high dispersion of a diffractive lens is used to generate a measurement volume with convergent and divergent interference fringes by means of two laser wavelengths. Evaluation of the scattered light from tracers allows velocity gradients to be measured in flows with submicrometer spatial resolution inside a measurement volume of 700-µm length. Using diffraction optics and fiber optics, we achieved a miniaturized and robust velocity profile sensor for highly resolved velocity measurements. Read the article

Woman Fitted with World's First 'Bionic' Device

New Scientist, 21 May 2005 A 46-year-old woman has been fitted with the world's first "bionic" device that is capable of producing coordinated fine hand and arm movement. The woman has suffered two strokes that have affected her control over her left arm. On 13 May neuro-rehabilitation experts at the University of Southampton in the UK inserted five implants into the limb, each measuring 1.7 centimetres by 2.4 millimetres. These receive power and stimulation commands from a radio-frequency coil fitted to her arm and connected to a control unit. The implants are selectively placed to stimulate key nerves controlling both deep and superficial muscles, allowing the patient to extend her elbow and wrist and open her hand. The system is intended to re-educate weak and paralysed muscles by supporting, rather than replacing, voluntary movements.

The Poop Hits the Turbines in Canada

New Scientist, 21 May 2005 Canadians have a new four-letter word for manure -- IMUS. The Integrated Manure Utilization System, launched on 6 May at a Canadian cattle farm, converts manure into energy. It is the only biogas plant in the world to run on solid organic waste. The plant, at Highland Feeders of Vegreville, Alberta, extracts methane by digesting the waste with heat-loving anaerobic bacteria. Burning the methane produces 300 kilowatts of electricity for the farm and another 700 kilowatts to supply 700 nearby households. "We have the ability to expand the plant by 10 or more times this capacity, which would make it the largest biogas producer in the world," says project director Mike Kotelko. The plant also extracts clean water for irrigation, as well as nitrogen and phosphorus compounds for use as fertilisers. Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York, may soon get in on the act. It hopes to be become the first zoo to run on energy from its animals' daily output of 500 kilograms of dung.

Cryogenically Enhanced Magneto-Archimedes Levitation

by A.T. Catherall et al. New Journal of Physics, 11 May 2005 The application of both a strong magnetic field and magnetic field gradient to a diamagnetic body can produce a vertical force which is sufficient to counteract its weight due to gravity. By immersing the body in a paramagnetic fluid, an additional adjustable magneto-buoyancy force is generated which enhances the levitation effect. Here we show that cryogenic oxygen and oxygen–nitrogen mixtures in both gaseous and liquid form provide sufficient buoyancy to permit the levitation and flotation of a wide range of materials. These fluids may provide an alternative to synthetic ferrofluids for the separation of minerals. We also report the dynamics of corrugation instabilities on the surface of magnetized liquid oxygen. Read the article

Smart Shoes Decide on Television Time

by Will Knight NewScientist.com, 18 May 2005 Sports shoes that work out whether their owner has done enough exercise to warrant time in front of the television have been devised in the UK. The shoes -- dubbed Square Eyes -- contain an electronic pressure sensor and a tiny computer chip to record how many steps the wearer has taken in a day. A wireless transmitter passes the information to a receiver connected to a television, and this decides how much evening viewing time the wearer deserves, based on the day's exertions. Read the article

Carbon Nanotubes Used in Computer and TV Screens

New Scientist, 21 May 2005 The next generation of computer and television screens could be built using carbon nanotubes. Next week a prototype high-definition 10-centimetre flat screen made using this technology will be launched in Boston at the Society for Information Display conference. The new screen, called a nano-emissive display or NED, is made from two sheets of glass, one covered by a layer of nanotubes standing on end, the other by a layer of blue, red or green phosphors similar to those used in conventional cathode ray tube screens. When charged, the nanotubes direct electrons at the phosphors, making them light up. Because the electrons have only a short distance to travel, even a 105-centimetre NED would use relatively little power, says maker Motorola. A screen that size will also have a wide viewing angle and could sell for less than $400, the company claims.

Particle Smasher Gets a Super-Brain

by Hazel Muir NewScientist.com, 21 May 2005 Sometime in 2007, physicists are going to come closest to seeing what the universe was like a split-second after the big bang. Inside a 27-kilometre-long circular tunnel that straddles the border of France and Switzerland 100 metres underground, the Large Hadron Collider will push protons to almost the speed of light and smash them head-on at energies never before created on Earth. Read the article

An Optical Lattice Clock

by Masao Takamoto et al. Nature, 19 May 2005 The precision measurement of time and frequency is a prerequisite not only for fundamental science but also for technologies that support broadband communication networks and navigation with global positioning systems. The SI second is currently realized by the microwave transition of Cs atoms with a fractional uncertainty of 10-15. Thanks to the optical frequency comb technique, which established a coherent link between optical and radio frequencies, optical clocks have attracted increasing interest as regards future atomic clocks with superior precision. To date, single trapped ions and ultracold neutral atoms in free fall have shown record high performance that is approaching that of the best Cs fountain clocks. Here we report a different approach, in which atoms trapped in an optical lattice serve as quantum references. The 'optical lattice clock' demonstrates a linewidth one order of magnitude narrower than that observed for neutral-atom optical clocks, and its stability is better than that of single-ion clocks. The transition frequency for the Sr lattice clock is 429,228,004,229,952(15) Hz, as determined by an optical frequency comb referenced to the SI second. Read the article

Micrometre-Scale Silicon Electro-Optic Modulator

by Qianfan Xu et al. Nature, 19 May 2005 Metal interconnections are expected to become the limiting factor for the performance of electronic systems as transistors continue to shrink in size. Replacing them by optical interconnections, at different levels ranging from rack-to-rack down to chip-to-chip and intra-chip interconnections, could provide the low power dissipation, low latencies and high bandwidths that are needed. The implementation of optical interconnections relies on the development of micro-optical devices that are integrated with the microelectronics on chips. Recent demonstrations of silicon low-loss waveguides, light emitters, amplifiers, and lasers approach this goal, but a small silicon electro-optic modulator with a size small enough for chip-scale integration has not yet been demonstrated. Here we experimentally demonstrate a high-speed electro-optical modulator in compact silicon structures. The modulator is based on a resonant light-confining structure that enhances the sensitivity of light to small changes in refractive index of the silicon and also enables high-speed operation. The modulator is 12 micrometres in diameter, three orders of magnitude smaller than previously demonstrated. Electro-optic modulators are one of the most critical components in optoelectronic integration, and decreasing their size may enable novel chip architectures. Read the article

Nanometer Patterning with Ice

by Gavin M. King et al. Nano Letters, 29 Apr 2005 (web release) Nanostructures can be patterned with focused electron or ion beams in thin, stable, conformal films of water ice grown on silicon. We use these patterns to reliably fabricate sub-20 nm wide metal lines and exceptionally well-defined, sub-10 nanometer beam-induced chemical surface transformations. We argue more generally that solid-phase condensed gases of low sublimation energy are ideal materials for nanoscale patterning, and water, quite remarkably, may be among the most useful. Read the article

Fibre Networks Deliver as DSL Demand Soars

fibers.org News, 9 May 2005 More and more homes and businesses are signing up to Digital Subscriber Line broadband services. At the same time, Europe's service providers must ensure that their optical backhaul networks can support robust access connectivity and track rising bandwidth demands. Read the article

Innovation: Pick of the Latest Patent Applications

fibers.org News, 11 May 2005 Joe McEntee reveals his pick of the latest patent applications in the field of optical networking.

• Quantum cryptography moves up a gear
• Microphotonic platform can pump up the power
• Packet management just got simpler in PON links
• Gripping device will keep optical fibres in position
• PCBs use fibre optics to streamline data transfer
• Optical coating improves fibre-detector couplings
• Secure transmission can enhance Ethernet PONs
• Armoured cable offers simple, fast installation
• FSO networks deal with power, alignment issues

Read the article

Photonics Roadmap Calls for III-V Design Rules

Compound Semiconductor News, 17 May 2005 A four-year study into the future of optical communications concludes that the convergence of electronics and photonics will have massive implications for the III-V manufacturing industry. Read the article

Robo-Docs Boost London Hospitals

BBC News, 18 May 2005 Patients at St Mary's Hospital in London are being seen by a medical robot as part of a new trial. "Sister Mary" glides between beds and allows the controlling doctor to visually examine and communicate with a patient from anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, a patient at London's Guy's Hospital has recently undergone a live kidney transplant surgery carried out by a robot -- the UK's first. The da Vinci robot has also been used to remove bladders and repair hearts. Read the article

Programmable Cells: Engineer Turns Bacteria into Living Computers

EurekaAlert!, 27 Apr 2005 In a step toward making living cells function as if they were tiny computers, engineers at Princeton have programmed bacteria to communicate with each other and produce color-coded patterns. The feat, accomplished in a biology lab within the Department of Electrical Engineering, represents an important proof-of-principle in an emerging field known as "synthetic biology," which aims to harness living cells as workhorses that detect hazards, build structures or repair tissues and organs within the body. Read the article

Traffic Studied Using Computer-Linked Cars

RedNova News, 24 Apr 2005 Picking up doughnuts on the way to work recently, George List slid back into the driver's seat and heard a voice from the cup holder suggest an alternate route. The car wasn't talking, exactly. The voice came from a handheld computer nestled in the holder that links his car to 200 other vehicles in the area. Data from all the vehicles -- where they are, how quickly they move -- is being used to create snapshots of area traffic patterns. Read the article

Is It Time for Clockless Chips?

by David Geer Computer, March 2005 Vendors are revisiting an old concept -- the clockless chip -- as they look for new processor approaches to work with the growing number of cellular phones, PDAs, and other high-performance, battery-powered devices. Clockless processors, also called asynchronous or self-timed, don't use the oscillating crystal that serves as the regularly "ticking" clock that paces the work done by traditional synchronous processors. Rather than waiting for a clock tick, clockless-chip elements hand off the results of their work as soon as they are finished. Recent breakthroughs have boosted clockless chips' performance, removing an important obstacle to their wider use. Read the article

Spintronics: Breakthroughs for Next Generation Electronics

byKim Evans innovations report, 27 Apr 2005 Traditional silicon chips in computers and other electronic devices control the flow of electrical current by modifying the positive or negative charge of different parts of each tiny circuit. However it is also possible to use of the mysterious magnetic properties of electrons -- know as “spin” -- to control the movement of currents. Many large companies have spent millions of dollars trying to solve some of the problems faced by this technology, but progress has remained slow. Discoveries made in Oxford solve several of the most difficult problems and open up this exciting new world of possibilities. Read the article

Optical Clocks

by Patrick Gill and Helen Margolis Physics World, May 2005 Invented 50 years ago this month, atomic clocks have revolutionized how we measure time. But optical clocks, which use light rather than microwaves, promise to be even more accurate and could lead to the second being redefined. Read the article

Grid Computing: A Real-World Solution?

by Quocirca The Register, 13 May 2005 The problem with grid computing has traditionally been tying it down into a real-world context. The theory is great -- getting lots of individual technical components working together as if they were one big resource -- but it’s the wackier or conversation stimulating applications that have received all of the attention. Read the article

Intel: Next-Gen Dual-Cores Not NetBurst

by Tony Smith The Register, 13 May 2005 Intel has confirmed its second-generation dual-core desktop, notebook and server processors will not be based on the Pentium 4's NetBurst architecture, but something more akin to the Pentium III. We knew this already, of course, but it's nice to see Intel going public at long last. Read the article

A Three-Dimensional Porous Silicon p-n Diode for Betavoltaics and Photovoltaics

by W. Sun et al. Advanced Materials, 3 May 2005 (online release) A battery with a lifespan measured in decades is in development at the University of Rochester, as scientists demonstrate a new fabrication method that in its roughest form is already 10 times more efficient than current nuclear batteries -- and has the potential to be nearly 200 times more efficient. Read the article

NIST Demonstrates Key Step in Use of Quantum Computers for Code-Breaking

PhysOrg, 12 May 2005 A crucial step in a procedure that could enable future quantum computers to break today’s most commonly used encryption codes has been demonstrated by physicists at the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. Read the article

Atmosphere May Cleanse Itself Better Than Previously Thought

PhysOrg, 12 May 2005 A research team from Purdue University and the University of California, San Diego has found that the Earth’s atmosphere may be more effective at cleansing itself of smog and other damaging hydrocarbons than was once thought. Read the article

Nanotechnology Product for Car Windshields Now Available in the USA

PhysOrg, 12 May 2005 Nanotec Pty Ltd based in Sydney, Australia announced today that the first innovative partner company is offering Nanoprotect Automotive Glass in the USA. Windshield Welding Systems in Woodbridge, VA is offering the nanotechnology treatment for the automotive glass. The specialist in glass and clear plastic repair and restoration field is introducing the Nanotec treatments to the automotive industries, marine, emergency services and aviation in the U.S. They are also looking to include architectural glass protection for the building industry. Nanoprotect Automotive Glass is a special nanotechnology product with a long-term effect on glass surfaces. The treatment, only about as thick as 20 nm (An atom of silver is about 1/4 nm diameter) repels water and dirt and provides a very easy to clean surface. Most conventional silicon based coatings have a film thickness between 10 and 500 micron. Nanoprotect Automotive Glass is between 500 and 25,000 times thinner than these coatings. The ultra thin treatment is abrasion resistant, extremely long lasting and UV stable. On a windshield the lifetime is up to 50,000 kilometres (over 30,000 miles) and on car windows, not pointing in the driving direction the product provides its hydrophobic properties for 5 years and more.

Robots Move From the Battlefield to Your Home

by Johan Bostrom PCWorld.com, 12 May 2005 Mobile robots that may soon appear on the consumer market likely will be built using technologies driven by the U.S. military, according to an analyst covering emerging technologies. The development of mobile military robots is being pushed by a congressional mandate that at least a third of all military vehicles be autonomous by 2015. Read the article

Light Scanner Based on a Viscoelastic Stretchable Grating

by A. N. Simonov, O. Akhzar-Mehr, & G. Vdovin Optics Letters, 1 May 2005 We present a new technique for light scanning by use of viscoelastic-based deformable phase diffraction gratings. Mechanical stretching of the grating permits control of its spatial period, and thus the orders of diffraction can be spatially deflected. In the experiments the viscoelastic gratings with triangular and rectangular profiles have been characterized at lambda = 633 nm. It is demonstrated that the reversible elongation can exceed 20% of the initial length. For the triangular profile grating, the diffraction angle of the first order changed from 6.6° to 5.4° while the diffraction efficiency remained almost constant at ~17%. Dynamic scanning of a laser beam at frequencies of ~1 kHz is demonstrated by use of electromechanically driven viscoelastic gratings. Read the article

Plastic Guitars May Help Rare Trees out of the Woods

New Scientist, 14 May 2005 Gordon Giltrap, one of the world's leading guitarists, will next month give a free concert at Loughborough University in the UK. But this will be a concert with a difference, for Giltrap will be playing a plastic guitar. Developed at the university, the guitar is designed to reproduce the sound and feel of a wooden acoustic guitar. The soundboard is made of a polycarbonate foam rather than the traditional spruce. "If you inject different quantities of hydrogen into it you can replicate the densities of different woods. And it is not inert like plastic; it resonates," says Alan Greensall, who is in charge of licensing the technology for Loughborough University Enterprises. The instrument could ease the pressure on endangered tree species. Guitar bodies are also often made of Brazilian rosewood, which is so rare that it cannot be traded. Jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman famously played a plastic instrument in the 1960s, but they never caught on.

World's Most Powerful Battery Created

New Scientist, 14 May 2005 What do you get if you connect 13,760 rechargeable nickel-cadmium cells weighing a total of 1300 tonnes? The world's most powerful battery, according to Guinness World Records. Known as a battery energy storage system (BESS), the massive storage device has been installed by battery maker Saft of Bagnolet, France, for an electrical cooperative in Fairbanks, Alaska, to bridge the frequent electricity outages from the local grid. With temperatures as low as -50 °C, being without power can be a big problem for the area's 90,000 residents. So the BESS has been designed to provide 27 megawatts for 15 minutes -- long enough for the utility company to bring back-up generation online. The previous biggest battery delivered 21 megawatts for 15 minutes at the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority at Sabana Llana.

Centrifugal Weapon Could Deliver Stealth Firepower

by Will Knight NewScientist.com, 11 May 2005 A gun that spits out ball bearings after spinning them to extreme speeds is being developed by a US inventor. The novel design has already caught the imagination of some defence industry experts. Read the article

Granular Media: Information Propagation

by Stefan Luding Nature, 12 May 2005 The transmission of force through granular matter such as sand is a crucial consideration in certain applications. The behaviour observed depends on the particle interactions as well as on the length scale involved. Read the article

Atomistic Mechanisms of Fatigue in Nanocrystalline Metals

by D. Farkas, M. Willemann, & B. Hyde Physical Review Letters, 29 Apr 2005 We investigate the mechanisms of fatigue behavior in nanocrystalline metals at the atomic scale using empirical force laws and molecular level simulations. A combination of molecular statics and molecular dynamics was used to deal with the time scale limitations of molecular dynamics. We show that the main atomistic mechanism of fatigue crack propagation in these materials is the formation of nanovoids ahead of the main crack. The results obtained for crack advance as a function of stress intensity amplitude are consistent with experimental studies and a Paris law exponent of about 2. Read the article

Friction Enhances Elasticity in Granular Solids

by C. Goldenberg & I. Goldhirsch Nature, 12 May 2005 For years, engineers have used elastic and plastic models to describe the properties of granular solids, such as sand piles and grains in silos. However, there are theoretical and experimental results that challenge this approach. Specifically, it has been claimed that stress in granular solids propagates in a manner described by wave-like (hyperbolic) equations, rather than the elliptic equations of static elasticity. Here we report numerical simulations of the response of a two-dimensional granular slab to an external load, revealing that both approaches are valid -- albeit on different length scales. For small systems that can be considered mesoscopic on the scale of the grains, a hyperbolic-like, strongly anisotropic response is expected. However, in large systems (those typically considered by engineers), the response is closer to that predicted by traditional isotropic elasticity models. Static friction, often ignored in simple models, plays a key role: it increases the elastic range and renders the response more isotropic, even beyond this range. Read the article

Nonlinear Elasticity in Biological Gels

by Cornelis Storm et al. Nature, 12 May 2005 The mechanical properties of soft biological tissues are essential to their physiological function and cannot easily be duplicated by synthetic materials. Unlike simple polymer gels, many biological materials -- including blood vessels, mesentery tissue, lung parenchyma, cornea and blood clots -- stiffen as they are strained, thereby preventing large deformations that could threaten tissue integrity. The molecular structures and design principles responsible for this nonlinear elasticity are unknown. Here we report a molecular theory that accounts for strain-stiffening in a range of molecularly distinct gels formed from cytoskeletal and extracellular proteins and that reveals universal stress-strain relations at low to intermediate strains. The input to this theory is the forc-−extension curve for individual semi-flexible filaments and the assumptions that biological networks composed of these filaments are homogeneous, isotropic, and that they strain uniformly. This theory shows that systems of filamentous proteins arranged in an open crosslinked mesh invariably stiffen at low strains without requiring a specific architecture or multiple elements with different intrinsic stiffness. Read the article

Self-Reproducing Machines

by Victor Zykov et al. Nature, 12 May 2005 Self-reproduction is central to biological life for long-term sustainability and evolutionary adaptation. Although these traits would also be desirable in many engineered systems, the principles of self-reproduction have not been exploited in machine design. Here we create simple machines that act as autonomous modular robots and are capable of physical self-reproduction using a set of cubes. Read the article

Harley-Davidson Presents Prototype Noiseless, Electric V-Rod

by Mark Devlin Industrial Market Trends, 13 May 2005 In a surprise announcement, Harley-Davidson has announced ‘the next generation’ of street bike performance: a quiet, electric-powered V-Rod capable of sub-3-second 0-60 times. Read the article

Startup Says New Product Will Revolutionize Routing

by Dylan McGrath EE Times, 12 May 2005 Two-year-old EDA startup Silicon Design Systems introduced its first product, an IC router that the company says will revolutionize routing the way that physical synthesis did placement. K-Route, shorthand for Killer Router, applies "interconnect synthesis" technology to routing with an automated flow, and fully automatic geometrical and electrical convergence. K-Route is also placement independent, allowing it to be plugged into any design flow. Read the article

Custom PowerPC Drives New Xbox 360 to Tflop Performance

by Rick Merritt EE Times, 13 May 2005 Microsoft Corp. shifted up from the X86 to a custom triple-core, dual-threaded PowerPC for its Xbox 360 which the company claims delivers 1 teraflop of system-level, floating-point performance. The system marks a further step in the evolution of video game consoles into powerful home entertainment servers. Read the article

Cars Safe from Computer Viruses

BBC News, 11 May 2005 A security firm has proved that today's cars cannot catch computer viruses. After exhaustive testing Finnish security firm F-Secure has failed to make a virus leap from a mobile phone handset to a car's onboard communications system. Read the article

US Robot Builds Copies of Itself

by Roland Pease BBC News, 11 May 2005 US researchers have devised a simple robot that can make copies of itself from spare parts. The robot's creators say their experiment shows the ability to reproduce is not unique to biology. Read the article

Implementation of the Semiclassical Quantum Fourier Transform in a Scalable System

by J. Chiaverini et al. Science, 13 May 2005 We report the implementation of the semiclassical quantum Fourier transform in a system of three beryllium ion qubits confined in a segmented multizone trap. The quantum Fourier transform is the crucial final step in Shor's algorithm, and it acts on a register of qubits to determine the periodicity of the quantum state's amplitudes. Because only probability amplitudes are required for this task, a more efficient semiclassical version can be used, for which only single-qubit operations conditioned on measurement outcomes are required. We apply the transform to several input states of different periodicities; the results enable the location of peaks corresponding to the original periods. This demonstration incorporates the key elements of a scalable ion-trap architecture, suggesting the future capability of applying the quantum Fourier transform to a large number of qubits as required for a useful quantum factoring algorithm. Read the article

Nanotechnology for the Intelligence Community

by the Committee on Nanotechnology for the Intelligence Community, National Research Council National Academies Press, 2005 The intelligence community of the U.S. must face the revolutionary advance in scientific understanding and its application across many new technologies. One example is nanotechnology and the development of new tools to analyze and manipulate matter at the molecular level. The pace of technology growth and its rate of proliferation around the world also presents major new challenges. The opportunities that these advances represent require new and more aggressive ways to extract positive advantage. The ability of terrorists and other threats to access these advances is a growing concern relating to our security. Read the book

High-Performance Structural Fibers for Advanced Polymer Matrix Composites

by the Committee on High-Performance Structural Fibers for Advanced Polymer Matrix Composites, National Research Council National Academies Press, 2005 The development pathways of high-performance carbon and organic fibers have been driven by decidedly different cost and performance requirements. These different pathways strongly affect the future prospects for military and commercial applications of these fibers. Read the book

Voice Over the Future

by William L. Miller Military Information Technology, 24, Apr 2005 With voice communications over closed IP-based networks already being transmitted under battle conditions, Voice over Internet Protocol technology is poised to transform military telephony. This growing communications technology from the commercial sector, transplanted to the defense world, works more efficiently to take advantage of common infrastructures and adds advantages of share applications, ensuring that needed information is provided to all layers of end users. Its ability to scale and agile footprint work in concert with legacy applications to protect current mission-critical applications while paving a way for future evolution. Read the article

Duke 'All-Optical' Switch Could Advance Light-Based Telecommunications

Duke UniversityNews & Communications, 28 Apr 2005 Duke University physicists have developed a switching technique that uses a very weak beam of light to control a much stronger beam. The achievement could make optical telecommunications devices perform far more efficiently, and perhaps also aid in the development of futuristic quantum communications devices, the scientists said. Read the article

Wringing Watts from Waves

by Willie D. Jones IEEE Spectrum Online, accessed 11 May 2005 Generating electricity from wave power is an old idea that gained new life when the quest for alternative energy sources began in the 1970s. Now 17-year-old Aaron Goldin has found an elegant way to do the job with a buoy, a gyroscope, and a generator. Read the article

Protect Your Patents: A Cautionary Tale

by Harry Goldstein IEEE Spectrum Online, accessed 11 May 2005 Although inventor Coliss Orville Burandt may never see a penny of the profits, many hybrid cars on the market today implement one of his inventions -- a method of variable valve timing that enables hybrid cars to control the amount of air and fuel introduced during combustion. Burandt transferred the rights to his patent in exchange for funding and subsequently lost the rights to his invention when the patent expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fees. Read the article

Harnessing the Power of the Sun to Clean Water

by Frank Urquhart The Scotsman, 29 Apr 2005 Scientists in Scotland are leading research to develop new technology that can harness the power of the sun to clean up polluted water -- while producing electricity at the same time. Read the article

Network Security: How to Hook Worms

by James Riordan, Andreas Wespi, & Diego Zamboni IEEE Spectrum Online, accessed 11 May 2005 Because it cannot ward off every last Internet worm, a computer network must sound an alarm the minute one appears. But is that enough? Systems must not only protect themselves from Internet worms but also snag the ones that manage to slither in. Read the article

IEEE Journal Assesses Security of Energy Supply Networks

The May 2005 issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE examines the challenge of energy infrastructure defense mechanisms. From power grids to telecommunications wires, the articles in this special issue address the most recent infrastructure protection initiatives and the breakthrough technologies behind energy supply network security. Proceedings of the IEEE

Jeepers Creepers, Bionic Peepers

by Cyrus Farivar Wired News, 5 May 2005 Scientists are helping blind people see again, one pixel at a time. If all goes well, an artificial retina could be commercially available within three years. Artificial retinas have been successfully implanted in six patients, allowing them to see light and detect motion. Read the article

Materials by Numbers: Computations as Tools of Discovery

by Uzi Landman Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10 May 2005 Current issues pertaining to theoretical simulations of materials, with a focus on systems of nanometer-scale dimensions, are discussed. The use of atomistic simulations as high-resolution numerical experiments, enabling and guiding formulation and testing of analytic theoretical descriptions, is demonstrated through studies of the generation and breakup of nanojets, which have led to the derivation of a stochastic hydrodynamic description. Subsequently, I illustrate the use of computations and simulations as tools of discovery, with examples that include the self-organized formation of nanowires, the surprising nanocatalytic activity of small aggregates of gold that, in the bulk form, is notorious for being chemically inert, and the emergence of rotating electron molecules in two-dimensional quantum dots. I conclude with a brief discussion of some key challenges in nanomaterials simulations. Read the article

Chemical Engineer to Investigate Ways to Help Plastic Conduct Electricity

PhysOrg, 10 May 2005 Dr. Yueh-Lin Loo at The University of Texas at Austin has received a 2005 Young Investigator Award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation to find ways to improve the ability of polyanaline to conduct electricity. Loo will use the award to seek a 10-fold increase in the conductive ability of the plastic. Read the article

First Tests: AMD's Dual-Core Chip Delivers Real Power Boost

by Anush Yegyazarian PCWorld.com, 9 May 2005 AMD fans need wait no longer for dual-core desktop processors -- they're ready now. And in our exclusive tests of an AMD reference system, we found that it beat Intel's dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition across the board. Read the article

Future Intel Chips Signal Design Shift

by Tom Krazit PCWorld.com, 10 May 2005 Last week, Intel confirmed the existence of two future processor designs that are expected to begin the company's shift away from separate architectures for desktop, server, and mobile chips toward a common architecture around 2007. Read the article

Patent Highlights, 5 May 2005

The pick of this week's patents including an LED jacket that could make cycling safer. • Title: Electrowetting display device • Title: Intracavity frequency-tripled CW laser • Title: Signalling device and item of clothing provided therewith Read the article

Chip Maker Develops Denser Storage Method

by John Markoff New York Times, 9 May 2005 The maker of a novel computer memory chip has developed a new generation of its technology, pushing forward in the quest for chips that are smaller and denser, and thus less expensive for use in consumer electronics. Read the article

Hot Chips Chilled with Liquid Metal

by Will Knight NewScientist.com, 5 May 2005 Piping hot processors could be cooled more efficiently and quietly using liquid metal instead of using fans to blow away the heat, says a Texan company which has developed such a system. Read the article

Vacuum Elevator Gives Users a Gentle Lift

by Will Knight NewScientist.com, 6 May 2005 A one-person vacuum elevator that slots into buildings with a minimum of fuss has gone on sale in the US. The tube-shaped transporter carries a person upwards at a steady speed of 15 centimetres per second using turbines to suck air out of a pressurised chamber above the passenger capsule. The capsule is lowered when the pressure in the upper section is returned to normal. Read the article

To Conquer Venus, Try a Plane with a Brain

by Paul Marks NewScientist.com, 8 May 2005 Crushing atmospheric pressures, fierce winds, baking temperatures and acidic clouds have quickly destroyed every probe or lander ever sent to Venus. So the prospect of emulating the spectacular success of NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity on Venus might seem bleak. But there is hope. Space scientists in the US believe a solar-powered aircraft could explore the atmosphere of the second rock from the sun, and carry a flying "brain" to control a toughened rover on the ground. Read the article

The Filthy Truth about Diesel 'Mules'

by Mick Hamer New Scientist, 9 May 2005 Loaded down with goods and livestock, China's home-grown three-wheeled vehicles are a common sight chugging along rural roads. These so-called "Chinese rural vehicles" (CRVs) are often held up as a triumph of appropriate technology. But now it turns out they have a dirty secret. A new survey reveals that they present a worrying environmental problem because of the amount of fuel they consume and the copious emissions they produce. Read the article

Solar Sail Completes First Crucial Tests

by Kelly Young NewScientist.com, 10 May 2005 A lightweight solar sail that could one day allow spacecraft to be propelled by the power of the Sun has passed its first crucial test. The sail, made by NASA and Alliant Techsystems was successfully deployed and its orientation controlled in the world’s largest vacuum chamber -- which mimics the space environment -- it was announced on Tuesday. Read the article

New Radio Telescope Is Super-Smart

New Scientist, 7 May 2005 One of the world's most powerful supercomputers is to be the brain of a revolutionary new radio telescope called LOFAR -- the low-frequency array for radio astronomy. The telescope will map the Milky Way's magnetic field and seek sources of high-energy cosmic rays. But instead of using one large and expensive rigid dish, or a few tens of smaller dishes, LOFAR will use thousands of simple radio antennas distributed across the Netherlands and northern Germany. The signals will then be woven together at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands by Stella, a new supercomputer that is the third most powerful on the planet. LOFAR needs its own supercomputer because the ionosphere bends radio waves unpredictably, making any cosmic radio source "twinkle" like starlight. This can be compensated for by using some of the radio measurements to monitor the ionosphere, and modelling fluctuations in this signal with Stella.

Magnetic Assembly

by Charlene Lobo Nature Materials Update, 28 Apr 2005 The field of molecular electronics has undergone a period of reanalysis in recent years, with researchers turning to relatively simple devices in an attempt to differentiate the properties of the metal contacts from intrinsic device characteristics. Read the article

Manipulating Spin and Charge in Magnetic Semiconductors Using Superconducting Vortices

by Mona Berciu, Tatiana G. Rappoport, & Boldizsár Jankó Nature, 5 May 2005 The continuous need for miniaturization and increase in device speed drives the electronics industry to explore new avenues of information processing. One possibility is to use electron spin to store, manipulate and carry information. All such 'spintronics' applications are faced with formidable challenges in finding fast and efficient ways to create, transport, detect, control and manipulate spin textures and currents. Here we show how most of these operations can be performed in a relatively simple manner in a hybrid system consisting of a superconducting film and a paramagnetic diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS) quantum well. Our proposal is based on the observation that the inhomogeneous magnetic fields of the superconducting film create local spin and charge textures in the DMS quantum well, leading to a variety of effects such as Bloch oscillations and an unusual quantum Hall effect. We exploit recent progress in manipulating magnetic flux bundles (vortices) in superconductors and show how these can create, manipulate and control the spin textures in DMSs. Read the article

A Hard Look at Glass

by Paul Madden Nature, 5 May 2005 Glass constitutes an 'ill-condensed' state of matter. Salmon and colleagues present unprecedentedly detailed studies of the structure of two glassy materials. Their findings may help to explain why the molecules in the materials that form glasses fail to find the lowest-energy arrangement when cooled to low temperatures, and this should aid our understanding of these scientifically and technologically important materials. Read the article

Labs on a Chip: Meet the Stripped Down Rat

by Roxanne Khamsi Nature, 5 May 2005 For Michael Shuler, downsizing is not a dirty word. In the mid-1990s, his lab bench was cluttered with flasks connected by surgical tubing. Each flask contained cells from a different organ, suspended in nourishing fluids. Shuler's goal was to model how chemicals entering the body can be metabolized into more toxic forms. Today, the apparatus has been shrunk to a tiny device that looks like something from the insides of your mobile phone. Read the article

Hotwire My Heart

by Duncan Graham-Rowe Nature, 5 May 2005 Growing numbers of people are being implanted with electronic devices that can automatically restart a failing heart. But have the risks and benefits been adequately assessed? Read the article

Energy Start-Ups Bank On Nanotechnology

nanotechweb.org News, 3 May 2005 Existing technologies for producing solar cells remain too costly to enable widespread adoption of photovoltaic modules. But a new clutch of start-ups are starting to commercialize nanostructured solar cells that promise to deliver high efficiencies at much lower prices. Read the article

Controlled Fabrication of Hierarchically Branched Nanopores, Nanotubes, and Nanowires

by Guowen Meng et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 May 2005 Here, we report a generic synthetic approach to rationally design multiply connected and hierarchically branched nanopores inside anodic aluminum oxide templates. By using these nanochannels, we controllably fabricate a large variety of branched nanostructures, far more complex than what exists today. These nanostructures include carbon nanotubes and metallic nanowires having several hierarchical levels of multiple branching. The number and frequency of branching, dimensions, and the overall architecture are controlled precisely through pore design and templated assembly. The technique provides a powerful approach to produce nanostructures of greater morphological complexity, which could have far-reaching implications in the design of future nanoscale systems. Read the article

Computerized Sneakers Make for a Cushy Run

by Frank Bajak USATODAY.com, 26 Apr 2005 The world's first computerized shoes, Adidas 1, won't teach you how to stride with the grace and economy of Abebe Bikila or Zola Budd -- to name a pair of famous barefoot runners. But this footwear actually does help. Every time the foot swings upward off the ground, the shoes adjust their cushioning to the individual wearer's running style and pace and to changes in terrain. Read the article

Frost Report Urges RFIC Makers to Get Scalable

Compound Semiconductor News, 9 May 2005 Market analyst company Frost & Sullivan says that RF semiconductor manufacturers must develop scalable solutions to cope with faster design cycles of cellphone handsets. Increasing deployment of multimode and multiband wireless handsets developed for the latest wireless communications standards is set to bring about a huge requirement for RF semiconductors. Read the article

Virtual Cars Rack Up Race Miles

by Mark Ward BBC News, 7 May 2005 Long before a BAR Honda car gets on the race track many different virtual versions of it will have driven thousands of miles on simulated circuits. The car used on race day will have been exhaustively tested, every last inch of it. Read the article

National Technology Transfer Center

The National Technology Transfer Center (NTTC) "provides access to federal technology information, technology and market assessment services, technology marketing and assistance in finding strategic partners." The purpose of the Center is to help make "commercialization deals happen" by fostering relationships with federal clients, showcasing technologies and facilitating partnerships between clients and US industry. The technologies showcased here have been assessed by a team of market and technology analysts for their commercial potential. This extensive database of technologies, which largely seems to come from NASA, can be searched by keyword or browsed by category, such as medical devices, communications, software, or aerodynamics. NTTC's services and programs that promote business partnerships are described further on this website. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 6 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library

The Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library (K-MODDL) is a collaborative effort of Cornell University librarians and faculty in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics to provide open access, multimedia resources for learning and teaching about Kinematics. The website provides an overview of Kinematics, which is "the geometry of pure motion," along with a discussion of its history and contribution to a theory of machines. Funded by the National Science Digital Library of the National Science Foundation, K-MODDL is intended as "a pedagogical space" for use by teachers and researchers, and learners of all levels. The key feature of K-MODDL is the Reuleaux Collection of Mechanisms and Machines, which includes several interactive photographic animations and descriptions that illustrate kinematic mechanisms. Visitors may browse the models in the collection by category, or search by title words or by keyword (in English or German). Also available are educational tutorials, historical and contemporary texts related to the history and theory of machines and mechanisms, biographical information on important players in the history of machines and the field of kinematics, and finally, stereolithography files for printing working physical replicas. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 6 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Texas A&M Energy Systems Laboratory

Texas A&M University's Energy Systems Laboratory (ESL) is a division of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station and is affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the College of Architecture. The Laboratory, which was established in 1939, today continues to work on developing and transferring energy-efficiency technology. Its research projects, funded largely by grants, focus on metering and modeling energy use in buildings; optimization of heating, ventilation, and cooling systems; and modeling and analysis of other data it collects. The website describes the lab's research and educational programs. The Resources section provides links to related national laboratories, university research centers, energy societies and international entities, a listing of publications by ESL faculty, staff and students along with ordering information, and descriptions of the software packages it has developed. The ESL software applications can be used to calculate and analyze energy use and are available for evaluation or purchase. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 6 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Calit2 Live Webcasts

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) conducts research on the scientific and technological components needed to "extend the reach of the Internet throughout the physical world." This section of the Institute website features live webcasts and video footage of guest speakers who visited the Institute. Topics range from robot design to Internet plagues, and from Telematics to the Internet marketplace. Upcoming live webcasts for May 2005 will address Non-Magnetic Data Storage Principles, Potential and Problems; Quantum Codes: Constructions and Parameters; and Biotechnology Entrepreneurship. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 6 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

Modeling & Simulation

Modeling & Simulation is a journal published by The Society for Modeling and Simulation International. The Society has made its 2004 Modeling and Simulation Resource Guide available free to download. The directory provides descriptions and contact information for the many modeling and simulation software packages currently available, as well as listings for various modeling and simulation organizations worldwide. Two guest articles describe techniques for the application of real-time simulation in simulations that are complex. Previously published articles are also posted in the online archive. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 6 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

DesignTheory.org

DesignTheory.org is the official website of a research project hosted at the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London, and funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The goal of the project is "to cover theoretical, computational, and statistical aspects of combinatorial designs" and to develop an online database of various resources for Design Theory. The library includes an Encyclopaedia of Design Theory (which is still under development), documentation on The External Representation of Designs, and various preprints, research reports, and books. The site also provides a database of (binary, connected) block designs and free software packages for the creation, analysis, and application of combinatorial/statistical designs. [from The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, 6 May 2005 - Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2005] Visit the website

House Sets Priorities for Use of Supercomputers

The House passed amendments to the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991. HR 28, sponsored by Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), is designed to boost high-performance computer use in the U.S and calls for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to coordinate supercomputing projects among federal agencies. HR 28 also requires the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department to ensure U.S. researchers and engineers have access to the most advanced computers and computer networks. See the bill

Shrinking Dimensions Spur Research Into Ever-Slimmer Batteries

by Robert F. Service Science, 6 May 2005 As electronic devices shrink toward paper-thinness, researchers and companies are scrambling to come up with novel materials and designs for two-dimensional batteries to power them. Read the article

Electronic Paper: A Revolution About to Unfold?

by Marie Granmar & Adrian Cho Science, 6 May 2005 Developers have high hopes for paper-thin flexible displays, but some technologists say "killer apps" to drive the technology remain to be found. Read the article

An Octane-Fueled Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

by Zhongliang Zhan & Scott A. Barnett Science, 6 May 2005 There are substantial barriers to the introduction of hydrogen fuel cells for transportation, including the high cost of fuel-cell systems, the current lack of a hydrogen infrastructure, and the relatively low fuel efficiency when using hydrogen produced from hydrocarbons. Here, we describe a solid oxide fuel cell that combines a catalyst layer with a conventional anode, allowing internal reforming of iso-octane without coking and yielding stable power densities of 0.3 to 0.6 watts per square centimeter. This approach is potentially the basis of a simple low-cost system that can provide substantially higher fuel efficiency by using excess fuel-cell heat for the endothermic reforming reaction. Read the article

The Optical Resonances in Carbon Nanotubes Arise from Excitons

by Feng Wang et al. Science, 6 May 2005 Optical transitions in carbon nanotubes are of central importance for nanotube characterization. They also provide insight into the nature of excited states in these one-dimensional systems. Recent work suggests that light absorption produces strongly correlated electron-hole states in the form of excitons. However, it has been difficult to rule out a simpler model in which resonances arise from the van Hove singularities associated with the one-dimensional bond structure of the nanotubes. Here, two-photon excitation spectroscopy bolsters the exciton picture. We found binding energies of ~400 millielectron volts for semiconducting single-walled nanotubes with 0.8-nanometer diameters. The results demonstrate the dominant role of many-body interactions in the excited-state properties of one-dimensional systems. Read the article

Motorcycles Gain Traction with New 2WD System

by Katrina C. Arabe Industrial Market Trends, 6 May 2005 The world's first two-wheel drive production motorcycle roars to life, thanks to a groundbreaking 2WD system that uses hydraulics to deliver power to the front wheel when the rear wheel slips. And the system can be installed on almost any bike. Read the article

First Fuel-Cell Motorbike is Snazzy but Silent

by Katrina C. Arabe Industrial Market Trends, 5 May 2005 Sure, the revolutionary new bike looks cool and is nearly emission-free, but potential customers point out that it's too quiet and thus, potentially dangerous. Read the article

AFDX Technology to Improve Communications on Boeing 787

by John McHale Military & Aerospace Electronics, April 2005 An Ethernet-based technology called AFDX, for Avionics Full-DupleX, is speeding up communications aboard Boeing’s next-generation aircraft, the 787 Dreamliner. Read the article

DARPA Solicitation - Optical Communications Technology

Presolicitation Notice BAA05-36 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is soliciting innovative research proposals in the areas of coherent optical transmitter/receiver technology and phase preserving wideband nonlinear optical mixer technology in support of next generation tactical free-space optical communications. This development addresses the need for waveform, wavelength and symbol rate agile digital optical links providing increased capacity on demand, receiver sensitivity, link availability, and physical layer security. Proposed research should address novel transmitter/receiver and wavelength translation approaches for high-capacity coherent digital optical communications that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices or systems. Visit the website

Fusion Experiment Close, No Cigar

by Associated Press Wired News, 27 Apr 2005 A tabletop experiment created nuclear fusion long seen as a possible clean energy solution under lab conditions, scientists reported. But the amount of energy produced was too little to be seen as a breakthrough in solving the world's energy needs. Read the article

Testing a Sun-Powered Space Sail

by Associated Press Wired News, 1 May 2005 Scientists working with a synthetic material 100 times thinner than a piece of paper are testing their theory that the sun can power interplanetary spacecraft. They believe that streams of solar energy particles called photons can push a giant, reflecting sail through space the way wind pushes sailboats across water. Read the article

Smart Car Seeks Small Niche

by John Gartner Wired News, 3 May 2005 Europe's popular but money-losing Smart car is heading to the United States, where promoters hope it will follow in the tracks of the Mini Cooper and Toyota Prius and become the next automotive fad. Read the article

Ethanol Grows as Gas Alternative

by John Gartner Wired News, 4 May 2005 Workers are clearing Iowa fields, hoping that if they build it, cars will come. The "it" is a processing plant that turns corn into ethanol, a fuel that is increasingly replacing gasoline today and may help to power the fuel-cell vehicles of tomorrow. Read the article

New Computers Make Grocery Carts Smarter

by Steven Senne USATODAY.com, 3 May 2005 Supermarkets are trying out new computers that make grocery carts more intelligent. They won't take over your trip to the store, as HAL took over the mission in "2001: A Space Odyssey." But they will help shoppers find lemon cake mix or light bulbs, let them order ahead to avoid the deli line and keep a running tally of the bill. Read the article

Decomposition of Ammonia and Hydrogen on Ir Surfaces: Structure Sensitivity and Nanometer-Scale Size Effects

by Wenhua Chen, Ivan Ermanoski, & Theodore E. Madey Journal of the American Chemical Society, 19 Mar 2005 (web release) The adsorption and decomposition of ammonia and hydrogen have been studied on surfaces of clean planar Ir(210) and clean nanoscale-faceted Ir(210), which are prepared from the same crystal in situ. We find evidence for structure sensitivity in recombination and desorption of H2 and in thermal decomposition of NH3 on clean planar Ir(210) versus clean faceted Ir(210). Moreover, the decomposition kinetics of NH3 on faceted Ir(210) exhibit size effects on the nanometer scale, which is the first observation of size effects in surface chemistry on an unsupported monometallic catalyst with controlled and well-defined structure and size. Read the article

Ignition Test of Technology Demonstrator Engine for Future Launch Vehicles a Success

PhysOrg, 3 May 2005 An engine developed to demonstrate advanced rocket technologies for future launch vehicles was successfully ignited April 28 at 9:10 p.m. CDT during its test firing at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss. The purpose of the test series was to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of the full-flow, staged combustion rocket engine cycle, and to demonstrate advanced engine component technologies. Read the article

New Robot to Adopt Human Thought Processes

PhysOrg, 4 May 2005 A team of computer scientists at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth have secured a major grant to build a robot that uses the same 'thought processes' used by the human brain. Read the article

Intel Strives for Increased Integration in Future Chips

by Tom Krazit PCWorld.com, 29 Apr 2005 Intel's vision of a future chip design contains some departures from its current philosophies -- moves that are necessary to improve overall system performance as the chipmaker packs more cores onto a single chip. Read the article

Intel's Dual-Core Chip Aces First Test

byAnush Yegyazarian PC World, June 2005 Intel's first dual-core desktop processors are ready to ship, and our tests show they'll deliver some real benefit when you run software on them that's designed to take advantage of the two cores, or when you're performing multiple tasks simultaneously -- running a virus check while surfing the Web, for instance. Read the article

Your Phone Is Calling Your Car

by Wilson Rothman New York Times, 4 May 2005 Hop in your car, turn the key and your phone book stares up at you from the liquid crystal display screen in your dashboard. Scroll through a list of missed calls or recently dialed numbers. Find the name you're looking for, press a button and the call rings through the car's sound system, all while your phone remains untouched in your jacket pocket. Read the article

Bandwidth Advance Hints at Future Beyond Wi-Fi

by John Markoff New York Times, 4 May 2005 One barrier that has held back the much-hyped convergence of the computer and consumer electronics industries has been the tangle of wires that is needed to connect the cascade of home video, audio, Internet and game gadgets. Now the drive to unwire the living room is about to get a push. Read the article

Squeaky Clean Fossil Fuels

by Fred Pearce New Scientist, 2 May 2005 Can we continue to burn fossil fuels and still hope to halt global warming? It seems unlikely -- and with the cost of generating wind and solar electricity falling, perhaps unnecessary. Despite this, big money and big politics are lining up behind the development of "zero-emission" power plants that burn coal or gas but release no carbon dioxide. Read the article

'Personal Supercomputer' Goes on Sale

by Will Knight NewScientist.com, 4 May 2005 A personal computer that packs the processing punch of a miniature supercomputer has gone on sale in the US. The DC-96 computer was developed by Orion Multisystems in California, US, and is aimed at scientists and engineers who routinely carry out computationally intensive calculations. Read the article

Electromechanical Imaging of Biological Systems with Sub-10 nm Resolution

by Sergei V. Kalinin et al. arXiv.org e-Print Archive, 11 Apr 2005 Electromechanical imaging of tooth dentin and enamel has been performed with sub-10 nm resolution using piezoresponse force microscopy. Characteristic piezoelectric domain size and local protein fiber ordering in dentin have been determined. The shape of a single collagen fibril in enamel is visualized in real space and local hysteresis loops are measured. Because of the ubiquitous presence of piezoelectricity in biological systems, this approach is expected to find broad application in high-resolution studies of a wide range of biomaterials. Read the article

Bluetooth Group to Use UWB in Future Roadmap

by Spencer Chin EE Times, 3 May 2005 In a sign the wireless communications industry is maturing, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group announced it will work with the Ultrawideband Forum and WiMedia Alliance to develop an architecture leveraging the strengths of both wireless technologies. Read the article

Robots to Help Out Blind Shoppers

by Geoff Adams-Spink BBC News, 4 May 2005 Computer scientists in the US have developed a robot that could help blind people to shop or find their way around large buildings. It uses radio frequency identification tags to locate items and a laser range finder to avoid collisions. Read the article

Electrochemically Assisted Microbial Production of Hydrogen from Acetate

by Hong Liu, Stephen Grot, & Bruce E. Logan Environmental Science and Technology, 22 Apr 2005 (web release) Hydrogen production via bacterial fermentation is currently limited to a maximum of 4 moles of hydrogen per mole of glucose, and under these conditions results in a fermentation end product that bacteria are unable to further convert to hydrogen. It is shown here that this biochemical barrier can be circumvented by generating hydrogen gas from acetate using a completely anaerobic microbial fuel cell (MFC). By augmenting the electrochemical potential achieved by bacteria in this MFC with an additional voltage of 250 mV or more, it was possible to produce hydrogen at the cathode directly from the oxidized organic matter. More than 90% of the protons and electrons produced by the bacteria from the oxidation of acetate were recovered as hydrogen gas, with an overall Coulombic efficiency of 60-78%. This is equivalent to an overall yield of 2.9 mol H2/mol acetate. This bio-electrochemically assisted microbial system, if combined with hydrogen fermentation that produces 2-3 mol H2/mol glucose, has the potential to produce ca. 8-9 mol H2/mol glucose at an energy cost equivalent to 1.2 mol H2/mol glucose. Production of hydrogen by this anaerobic MFC process is not limited to carbohydrates, as in a fermentation process, as any biodegradable dissolved organic matter can theoretically be used in this process to generate hydrogen from the complete oxidation of organic matter. Read the article