What started out as 'blue-sky' thinking by a group of European researchers could ultimately lead to the commercial mass production of a new generation of optoelectronic components for devices ranging from mobile laboratories to mobile phones.
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Friday, December 11, 2009
Tiny Nuclear Batteries to Power Micro Devices
Typical chemical batteries just don't cut it when a device needs to run for years without fail. Enter the betavoltaics, or tiny nuclear batteries that harvest energy from radioactive sources such as tritium.
New Russian missile fails again in testing:
Russia's new nuclear-capable Bulava missile has suffered a new failure in testing which was the likely source of a mysterious light that appeared over Norway, Russian newspaper reports said Thursday.
MIT Plans to Rebuild Artificial Intelligence from the Ground Up
After 50 years and countless dead ends, incremental progress, and modest breakthroughs, artificial intelligence researchers are asking for a do-over. The $5 million Mind Machine Project (MMP), a patchwork team of two dozen academics, students and researchers, intends to go back to the discipline's beginnings, rebuilding the field from the ground up.
Americans Consume 34 Gigabytes Daily Per Person
Info-delivery gadgets in U.S. homes helped Americans collectively consume 3.6 zettabytes of data in 2008. Just one zettabyte would fill 1,000 datacenters, or, as the report suggests, 3.6 zettabytes of text in books stacked tightly across the continental U.S. and Alaska would create a massive pile 7 feet high.
Google Demonstrates Quantum Algorithm Promising Superfast Search
Google has spent the past three years developing a quantum algorithm that can automatically recognize and sort objects from still images or video.
Ultrafast graphene photodetector
We demonstrate ultrafast transistor-based photodetectors made from single- and few-layer graphene. The photoresponse does not degrade for optical intensity modulations up to 40 GHz, and further analysis suggests that the intrinsic bandwidth may exceed 500 GHz.
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Scientists create atom transistor to speed up computers
An international team of scientists has created a tiny transistor that could one day help quantum computers process impossibly large amounts of information.
The researchers are the first to make a transistor's electrical current pass through a single atom in a controllable way, another step towards the quantum computer chip.
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The researchers are the first to make a transistor's electrical current pass through a single atom in a controllable way, another step towards the quantum computer chip.
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Surge will break Taliban momentum in a year
The NATO commander in Afghanistan on Tuesday predicted a surge of US troops will reverse the momentum of Taliban insurgents within a year and ensure their ultimate defeat.
Up to $318M to Lockheed Martin to Support Counter-IED Teams
The counter-IED teams examine explosive signatures, chemical traces, and blast patterns to provide an overview of how an IED attack unfolded. The data are analyzed at the team-level and sent to the relevant agencies and military components for external analysis.
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Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Nvidia announces 3D Blu-ray for 2010
Nvidia has announced that 3D Blu-ray movies will begin appearing in the Summer of 2010.
Nvidia will support the standard through its 3D Vision technology, with Berraondo noting that the new films will use bit rates of around 60Mbits/second – twice that of a standard movie.
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Nvidia will support the standard through its 3D Vision technology, with Berraondo noting that the new films will use bit rates of around 60Mbits/second – twice that of a standard movie.
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Paper Batteries Could Power Almost Anything
Take ordinary office paper, a little carbon and a dash of nanomaterials, and you have a perfectly functional battery.
Wireless Brain-to-Computer Connection Synthesizes Speech
A system that turns brain waves into FM radio signals and decodes them as sound is the first totally wireless brain-computer interface.
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New species evolve in bursts
New species might arise as a result of single rare events, rather than through the gradual accumulation of many small changes over time, according to a study of thousands of species and their evolutionary family trees.
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NASA Drops A Helicopter From Midair to Test New Anti-Crash Tech
No stranger to rough landings, NASA just engineered a crash of its own design to test a new crash countermeasure for helicopters. NASA dropped a donated Army MD-500 carrying four crash test dummies from 35 feet, to determine whether a new honeycomb cushion made of Kevlar strapped to the bottom of the copter could absorb the brunt of the impact.
Philips to light Times Square ball and numerals with LEDs
Philips Electronics (Somerset, NJ) has illuminated the world-famous Times Square ball for the past ten years, as the company just announced. The past two years, Philips used its Luxeon LEDs to light the ball (which is actually a geodesic dome, and is also a lot bigger than it used to be). Now, for the 2009-2010 New Year's celebration, Philips will be lighting the Times Square ball numerals (which, unsurprisingly, are 2-0-1-0) as well, meaning that the entire display will be lit by LEDs.
Quantum Dots Enhance LED Lighting
Tiny semiconductor crystals could produce better colors for lighting and computer displays.
Quantum dots are nanometer-size bits of semiconductor material, such as cadmium selenide, that fluoresce when excited by photons or electrons. By choosing a certain material and a certain size, researchers can precisely tune the wavelength of light emitted.
Bomber, Space Surveillance Eye Boost
U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz says that the service’s forthcoming budget request, though pinched by the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will likely include money for a new bomber and a new space surveillance system.
First Production F-35 Electro-Optical Targeting System Delivered
Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has marked successful entry into low rate initial production on the F-35 Lightning II Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS). The first production units have been delivered to Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, TX, for integration onto the aircraft.
Airbus A400M military ready for takeoff
After years of delays, the Airbus A400M, designed to replace aging military cargo carriers, is set to take off on its maiden flight this week.
The A400M is one of Europe's most ambitious defense projects, and any flight trial -- the maiden takeoff is expected as early as Wednesday -- would give the company a much-needed boost.
US forces on track to leave Iraq despite attacks: Mullen
US forces remain on track to begin withdrawing from Iraq in large numbers next year despite coordinated suicide attacks on Tuesday that killed 126 people, the top US military officer has said.
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India, Russia settle aircraft carrier deal
Ending a protracted logjam over the pricing of a naval aircraft carrier purchase, Russia and India have reached agreement on a key defense deal.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Air Force-funded research is shattering traditioinal notions of laser limits
Air Force Office of Scientific Research and National Science Foundation-funded professor, Dr. Xiang Zhang has demonstrated at the University of California, Berkeley the world's smallest semiconductor laser, which may have applications to the Air Force in communications, computing and bio-hazard detection.
The semiconductor, called a plasmon, can focus light the size of a single protein in a space that is smaller than half its wavelength while maintaining laser-like qualities that allow it to not dissipate over time.
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The semiconductor, called a plasmon, can focus light the size of a single protein in a space that is smaller than half its wavelength while maintaining laser-like qualities that allow it to not dissipate over time.
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IP routing takes one giant leap into space
A joint venture between the Defense Department, Cisco and Intelsat reached a major milestone with the launch of the Intelsat 14 (IS-14) satellite that contains an Internet router designed for the rigors of operation in space. The router onboard IS-14 is intended to demonstrate Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) capabilities to the military.
The Power of Aggregated Broadband
A growing small or medium-sized enterprise will likely need to scale up its facility's bandwidth. However, making the jump from T1 to T3, for example, may be more of a leap than it's ready to take. By aggregating bandwidth from multiple broadband connections, a business might be able to get more bang -- and more reliability -- for the buck.
Air Force extends plug-and-play spacecraft
Looking to build strategic satellites in day if need be, rather than months, the Air Force is pushing forward with what it calls plug-and-play spacecraft.
This week it awarded a $500,000 order to Northrop Grumman to begin designing the plug-and-play spacecraft "bus" which will offer standard interfaces for a variety of payload components, much like a laptop computer that immediately recognizes new hardware when it's plugged in.
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This week it awarded a $500,000 order to Northrop Grumman to begin designing the plug-and-play spacecraft "bus" which will offer standard interfaces for a variety of payload components, much like a laptop computer that immediately recognizes new hardware when it's plugged in.
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Swipe Your Credit Card on a Cell Phone
With a small card reader that attaches to a cell phone, a new company is making it easier for small businesses and even individuals to accept credit card payments. The San Francisco start-up, called Square, which opened just last week, is headed by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey.
New platinum compound shows promise in tumor cells
MIT chemists have developed a new platinum compound that is as powerful as the commonly used anticancer drug cisplatin but better able to destroy tumor cells.
Lotus leaf solar cells soak up more power
SOLAR cells have an unfortunate habit of reflecting back much of the light that hits them, rather than converting it into electricity. A technique that peppers the cells' surface with nanoscale domes could curb this tendency and improve efficiency by as much as 25 per cent.
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Microsoft To Kill Windows XP SP2 Support
Microsoft is reminding customers that the end date for support for Windows XP Service Pack 2, as well as some other versions of the Windows operating system, is already on the horizon.
The company will officially end support Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Client on July 13, 2010, according to an official company blog post.
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The company will officially end support Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Client on July 13, 2010, according to an official company blog post.
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