Graphene at a stretch

Researchers say they have found a simple way to improve the semiconducting properties of the world's thinnest material – simply by stretching it.

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NASA funds micro propulsion

Five Boise State University engineering professors have been awarded a $630,479 (£396,044) NASA grant to develop a micro-propulsion system that could strategically point small satellites and enable them to maintain position while in orbit.

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Slime-Dispensing Hulls Could Boost Fuel Efficiency For Ships

Slime ships ahoy! A vessel that oozes a continual slick layer of slime from its hull could shed barnacles and other marine life forms, and possibly cut its fuel consumption by up to 20 percent.
Such a novel idea tackles the problem of removing marine plants, barnacles and tube worms from ship hulls every year, lest the buildup cut into both speed and fuel efficiency.

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3-D Scanning Brings the Future of Fingerprinting

Fingerprinting with ink or even sensor plates poses a chore for everyone involved, except possibly 10-year-old kids. But that could change with a 3-D system that projects light patterns onto a finger and analyzes the image within a second.

The method works by beaming a series of striped lines so that they wrap around a finger. A 1.4 megapixel camera captures the lines at almost 1,000 pixels per inch, and creates a highly detailed 3-D map of the fingerprint ridges and valleys.

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DARPA Sat Project Could Change Industry

A fractionated satellite concept that replaces large satellites with clusters of wirelessly-linked modular spacecraft flying in loose formation has the potential to drive cultural change and reinvigorate a “mature” U.S. space industry, proponents say.

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Small, Accurate Missile In High Demand

Spike--a 2-ft.-long, high-speed, guided missile capable of hitting relatively fast-moving targets--for an estimated $5,000.

he Spike program is a poster child for cheap innovative weaponry. The missile comes with a spectrum of operational advantages--all associated with survival--for those who fire it.

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Perfect Image Without Metamaterials And A Reprieve For Silicon Chips

It is the waviness of light that limits the resolution of lenses. Apparently, nobody had tried to calculate the imaging of light waves in Maxwell's fish-eye. The new research proves that the fish-eye has unlimited resolution in principle, and, as it does not need negative refraction, it may also work in practice.

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New findings could help hybrid, electric cars keep their cool

Understanding precisely how fluid boils in tiny “microchannels” has led to formulas and models that will help engineers design systems to cool high-power electronics in electric and hybrid cars, aircraft, computers and other devices.

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Ants vs. worms: New computer security mimics nature

In the never-ending battle to protect computer networks from intruders, security experts are deploying a new defense modeled after one of nature's hardiest creatures — the ant.

Unlike traditional security devices, which are static, these "digital ants" wander through computer networks looking for threats, such as "computer worms" — self-replicating programs designed to steal information or facilitate unauthorized use of machines. When a digital ant detects a threat, it doesn't take long for an army of ants to converge at that location, drawing the attention of human operators who step in to investigate.

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Discovery brings new type of fast computers closer to reality

Physicists at UC San Diego have successfully created speedy integrated circuits with particles called "excitons" that operate at commercially cold temperatures, bringing the possibility of a new type of extremely fast computer based on excitons closer to reality.

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Cosmic rays hit space age high

Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high.

"In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. "The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions."

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Panasonic Develops 50-inch Full HD 3D PDP and High-Precision Active Shutter Glasses

Panasonic Corporation has developed a 50-inch Full HD 3D compatible plasma display panel (PDP) and high-precision active shutter glasses that enable the viewing of theater-quality, true-to-life 3D images in the living rooms. Aiming to bring Full HD 3D TVs to the market in 2010, the company steps up its efforts in developing the related technology.

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A fuel cell that harvests electricity from glucose and other sugars

A spoonful of herbicide helps the sugar break down in a most delightful way.

Researchers at Brigham Young University have developed a fuel cell – basically a battery with a gas tank – that harvests electricity from glucose and other sugars known as carbohydrates.
The human body’s preferred energy source could someday power our gadgets, cars or homes.

“Carbohydrates are very energy rich,” said BYU chemistry professor Gerald Watt. “What we needed was a catalyst that would extract the electrons from glucose and transfer them to an electrode.”

The surprising solution turned out to be a common weed killer.

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Avalex partnering with Gyrocam on surveillance system for U.S. Marine Corps

Avalex Technologies is proud to partner with Gyrocam Systems and the U.S. Marine Corps on the Expeditionary FlyAway Rapid Deployment Surveillance System.

These free-standing, portable systems include a telescoping 32-foot mast that can be raised and lowered in minutes. They can be easily deployed at strategic locations, even in the most extreme terrains, and provide a bird's eye view of activity in an area.

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ISS Could Get its Own Electron-Beam Fabrication 3D Printer

Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication, or EBF3, takes place in a vacuum chamber in which an electron beam is focused on a source of metal that is constantly fed into the beam. The electron beam melts the metal atop a rotating surface, applying the molten feedstock in layers as directed by a detailed 3-D drawing of the object being produced. The process continues until the object is done, rendered completely from drawing to usable metal part.

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SpaceX successfully tests DragonEye LIDAR on Space Shuttle

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX; Hawthorne, CA) announced the successful demonstration of a proximity sensor or laser imaging detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensor called DragonEye, launched aboard NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-127 mission on July 15th, 2009. DragonEye was tested in proximity of the International Space Station (ISS) in preparation for future visits by SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

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Photonics Breakthrough for Silicon Chips

Light pressure equals beam power divided by c, the speed of light. A one-milliwatt laser pointer, therefore, presses its object with the force of 3.3 piconewtons.

Why not use light as an actuator, reaching right into the guts of an integrated circuit to throw tiny switches, either to control electronic circuits or, better yet, to reroute light itself, and the data that it carries?

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Hacking DNA

A relatively new oxymoron is synthetic biology, coined by the geneticist Waclaw Szybalski in 1974. Synthetic biology (also called synbio) uses engineering methods to produce something new by treating a living system not so much as a biological entity but as a kind of technology. Hence synthetic biology is also called biological engineering or just bioengineering.

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The Spaser Nanolaser

n late August, two groups of researchers reported the construction of a new kind of nanometer-scale laser. Surface plasmon resonance nanolasers, or spasers, are the smallest lasers yet made, and their creators say the devices could pave the way toward ultrafast optical computing.

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The Brain-Machine Interface

Wireless brain-machine interfaces would be much more practical and could be implanted in several different areas of the brain to tap into more neurons. A typical scheme would have electrodes penetrating brain tissue, picking up neuronal electrical impulses, called spikes. A chip would amplify and process the signals and transmit them over a broadband RF connection through the skull to a receiver.

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Raytheon Delivers First Joint Standoff Weapon C to Australia

aytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) delivered the first Joint Standoff Weapon C to Australia in July for the Royal Australian Air Force's new F/A-18F Hornet fighter aircraft.

In addition to the JSOW C, the RAAF has placed an order for the JSOW C-1, which is currently in production; deliveries will begin in 2010. The JSOW C-1 maintains the land attack capability of JSOW C and adds a moving maritime target capability by incorporating a datalink.

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Melting memory chips in mass production

South Korean manufacturer Samsung Electronics announced this week that it has begun mass production of a new kind of memory chip that stores information by melting and freezing tiny crystals. Known as phase-change memory (PCM).

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Microchip can detect type and severity of cancer

University of Toronto researchers have used nanomaterials to develop a microchip sensitive enough to quickly determine the type and severity of a patient's cancer so that the disease can be detected earlier for more effective treatment.

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Time Lens Speeds Up Optical Data Transmission

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a device called a "time lens" which is a silicon device for speeding up optical data. The basic components of this device are an optical-fiber coil, laser, and nanoscale-patterned silicon waveguide.

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Researchers unravel brain's wiring to understand memory

Using a powerful microscope, Karel Svoboda, a brain scientist at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Va., peers through a plastic window in the top of a mouse's head to watch its brain's neurons sprout new connections -- a vivid display of a living brain in action.

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NASA Sets Target Date for Ares I-X Rocket's Test Launch

NASA is targeting Tuesday, Oct. 27, for the flight test of the Ares I-X rocket, pending successful testing and data verification. Senior managers made the decision after a meeting Monday at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

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Explaining Intel's Turbo Boost technology

Intel promotes the Turbo Boost technology in its new Core i7 Mobile processors as a way to adapt to the needs of the software and get more performance from the chip, but this isn't the real reason the technology exists.

The new "Clarksfield" Core i7 Mobile processors introduced at the Intel Developer Forum last week are certainly very impressive. They're huge high-performance quad-core chips with Hyper-Threading, support for two channels of DDR3-1333 DRAM, and an on-die PCI Express controller for the fastest possible connection to discrete graphics chips.

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Is Qualcomm's Mirasol The Future of Low-Power Displays?

It's not that Qualcomm is trying to keep its Mirasol display technology under wraps—the tech is now in a handful of products and has won six technology awards—it is just that the product hasn't yet found its killer app. This unique reflective display tech has not yet been packed into a touchscreen e-reader, a computer tablet or a smartphone. If it makes it to one of these mainstream devices (or a combination thereof), Mirasol could quickly become a household name.

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Self-Regulated Morphine Delivery for Wounded Warfighters

Medics still use morphine to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers on the modern battlefield, but have to watch out for morphine reducing breathing and blood pressure to dangerous levels. That may all change with a DARPA-backed combination drug that has successfully limited morphine delivery when it detects low blood oxygen levels.

The drug relies upon nanotech particles that carry both morphine and its antagonist, known as Naloxone. That creates a self-regulating feedback system where Naxolone only activates to suppress morphine when blood oxygen levels drop too low.

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New hybrid solar cell promises higher efficiency

RoseStreet Labs Energy, Inc. (RSLE; Phoenix, AZ) claims to have demonstrated the world's first nitride/silicon tandem solar cell. Utilizing the same nitride material technology as solid-state lighting and blue lasers, the company fabricated and tested a working photovoltaic cell that couples a silicon solar cell with a nitride thin film.

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