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| Neophyte scuba divers tend to expect underwater vistas akin to those in tropical-island brochures-bright, clear water, filled with colorful fish. The harsh reality is that most underwater scenes are poorly lit at best, with the norm being dark, monotone and murky. To compensate, the octopus' visual system has adapted to spotting prey in the worst waters. Indeed, who would be a better model for a low-visibility vision system than an animal that, when attacked itself, sprays its own low-visibility "ink"? Accordingly, researchers sponsored by a National Science Foundation effort are intent on imparting the vision abilities of an octopus to undersea autonomous robots. By mimicking the octopus' ability to see well underwater with an analog silicon octopus retina ("o-retina"), the University of Buffalo group believes it can revolutionize space and undersea exploration, and improve visibility in hazardous environments and hard-to-reach places such as underground pipes. |
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| Ben Finn, co-founder of Sibelius Software Ltd., describes successfully applied the principles of artificial intelligence to give the performances of its music software a more humanlike sound. By crafting a rule system that simulates a human virtuoso, Sibelius and its new "guitar-only" version, called G7, perform music convincingly enough to turn heads. |
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| Panos Datskos at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is claiming a new world's record by detecting just 5.5 femtograms with the Lab's silicon micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) sensor. |
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| A new shape for semiconductor nanocrystals?tetrapods, rather than simple spheres, rods and disks?could double the efficiency of "plastic" solar cells, according to Paul Alivisatos, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Alivisatos claimed tetrapod-based solar cells promise to convert twice as much incident light into electricity, thus improving chemical sensors, biomedicine and optoelectronic devices, as well as serving as strengthening additives to plastic composites. |
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| Rodney McKee at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and fellow researchers are creating a model of the so-called Schottky barrier in hopes of finding a missing tool from the engineer's tool box. For instance, ferroelectric transistors—ultra-small gateless two-terminal junctions between semiconductor and oxide—switch by reversing the polarity of their junction. But because the region's actions are not well understood, no one has successfully stabilized the ferroelectric transistor, leaving it a glint in the eye of starry-eyed researchers. Now McKee thinks his group has identified the missing tool they need.
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| Semiconducting polymers embedded with lead-sulphide nanocrystals could produce a light source for integrated photonic chips, according to recent work by professor Ted Sargent at the University of Toronto. The technique, producing infrared light at wavelengths used in communications systems, could be used to create photonic components orders of magnitude less expensive than current components, which can cost as much as $1,000. |
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| Shelley Minteer describes research looking at an alternative to hydrogen fuel cells that would tap known biological processes to generate electricity. |
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| Michael Priestnall describes super-charging fuel cells by premixing the fuel with the oxygen, holding out the promise of super-slim fuel cells that can be manufactured on a printing press. |
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| Johns Hopkins University researcher Marc Ostermeier described a single-molecule switch engineered from a strand of a living protein—an enzyme. Such molecular switchs could be applied as super-sensitive sensors that detect even a single molecule of a biological warfare agent. Medically, molecular switches have even wider-scale potential, from early detection of hard-to-diagnosis maladies, to "lethal drug" delivery only to cancerous cells. |
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| Francis daCosta explains Advanced Cybernetics Group's claim to have developed a "write anywhere, run anywhere" technology, called Eclipse, that compiles Java programs into an embedded-C program that has no operating system. Next, ACG intends to compile the C program as software not only for embedded microcontrollers but also for hardware field-programmable gate arrays. Eventually, the company wants to program every chip in a system — not just the CPU — with Java. |
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| Rudolf "Ruud" Tromp described his groundbreaking work in the study of the growth of organic-semiconducting crystals, such as pentacene, which is being applied in flat-panel display technology. Tromp's work today follows naturally from pioneering research he initiated at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in 1983. Indeed, the work he began there in understanding the structure and growth of semiconductor surfaces and interfaces has been rewarded by the American Physical Society, which has presented him with its Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics. |
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| Richard Kiehl describes patterning a silicon substrate with DNA coded "tiles" that serve as breadboards for nanocomponents measuring in angstroms (10 angtroms = nanometer). The researchers have not built all the reading/writing circuitry needed to utilize nanoparticles as single-electron memories, but have made the first steps toward such devices by sucessfully demonstrating the "scaffold" interconnection method for test nanocomponents. |
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| Michael Lloyd-Hart describes the world's first closed-loop adaptive optics (AO) system, demonstrated atop the University of Arizona's 6.5 meter (21 foot) spin-cast borosilicate mirror, enables the ground-based telescope to create near perfect images. |
MP3.com CD: Space & Robotics Vol.1 -  buy it!
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| Diamonds are forever, aren't they? Not so, according to a new interpretation of the crystalline structure of silicon wafers. Until now, the accepted wisdom was that crystalline facets met each other at atomically sharp edges. But new research suggests that crystalline facets on the surface of silicon, gallium arsenide, glass and even diamond, are all continually changing phases in a process of rounding-off their edges. By harnessing this force at the nanoscale, Ohio State University researchers hope to enable nanowires and quantum dots to be prepatterned onto future silicon wafers. Source interview for a story in EETimes, page 55 of issue 1289, Sept. 29, 2003. |
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| Michael Levene explains how at Cornell University researchers perforated the top layer of a chip with two million 40nm "holes" that serve as nanoscale waveguides for a 488-nanometer laser, allowing them to film individual molecules during chemical reactions. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.4 - buy it!
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.5 - buy it!
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| Professor David Culler describes how self-organizing wireless-sensor networks, a realization of the Pentagon's "smart-dust" concept, have reached the prototype stage worldwide. The smart sensors, or Motes, were created by the University of California at Berkeley and Intel, and are being tested out worldwide today. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.4 - buy it!
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.5 - buy it!
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| Professor James Taylor at the University of Wisconsin describes a way to create 20-nanometer chip feature sizes with 100-nm masks, giving an unexpected leap to Moore's Law and possibly extending the life of current lithography. The so-called "bright-peak technology" adjusts the phase of X-ray lithography to control diffraction — a technique that works for X-rays or even traditional optical lithography. The work was performed with professor Franco Cerrina and researcher Lei Yang. |
MP3.com CD: Microchips & Materials Vol.1 - buy it!
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.4 - buy it!
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.5 - buy it!
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| Joel Levine, NASA scientist, describes the Ares unmanned flyer--one of four proposals NASA is considering for its planned Mars Scout mission slated for 2007. Ares would include robotics technology, flight instrumentation and cameras to record data that can be relayed back to Earth. |
MP3.com CD: Space & Robotics Vol.1 - buy it!
MP3.com CD: Robotics Vol.1 - buy it!
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| High-speed physics researcher Richard Haight of IBM Corp.'s T.J. Watson Research Center announces that IBM is releasing its sub-100-nanometer lithographic mask repair technology for general license. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.3 - buy it!
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| James Martin revises the common view that amorphous materials are simply jumbled collections of atoms, offering instead a more ordered theory of the materials' formation, according to experiments conducted at the University of North Carolina. Studies of an amorphous form of zinc chloride have revealed an unexpected order at nanoscale distances that may lead to new engineered materials in a wide number of industries.
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MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.3 - buy it!
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| An international consortium of researchers believes its electron-beam method for joining nanotubes could be applied to the construction of ultradense circuits. Rather than add a "glue" material between nanotubes, the electron beam knocks out atoms from between touching nanotubes. The tubes heal the defect by sharing an atom and thereby create a weld between them. Researchers from Belgium, England, France, Germany, Mexico and the United States cooperated to demonstrate how the welding technique can yield both crossbar and transistor-like three-terminal devices. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.3 - buy it!
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| The future of nanotechnology revealed in an interview with Philip Wong, senior manager of Nanoscale Material Process and Devices, IBM Research Laboratory, Yorktown Heights, N.Y. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.3 - buy it!
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| Margaret Murnane describes a small, inexpensive tabletop laser system that can produce coherent extreme-ultraviolet laser light has been built by a research team at the University of Colorado. The system uses a hollow optical fiber filled with argon gas as a nonlinear optical waveguide that upconverts visible laser light into the extreme-ultraviolet range — a critical part of the spectrum for advanced lithography systems. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.3 - buy it!
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| Wim Bohm discusses a C compiler developed for systems that use a microprocessor and a field-programmable-gate-array coprocessor. The Single-Assignment C compiler not only speeds up computationally intensive algorithms but does so without a software developer's needing to know the specifics of the FPGA architecture. |
MP3.com CD: Robotics Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Ganapathiraman Ramanath discusses a new chemical-vapor deposition technique has been applied to carbon nanotubes to give them unusual electronic properties, according to researchers here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The treated nanotubes could be used by chip makers to interconnect single-electron transistors with high-efficiency wires. The group aims to build a nanotube architecture that will exhibit.o |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.2 - buy it!
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| Hicham Fenniri describes his experimental nanotubes measuring just 100 atoms in diameter have been created from designer molecules that were customized to self-assemble into angstrom-sized circuit elements, according to researchers at Purdue University. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.2 - buy it!
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| Curtis Mowry discusses his five-minute handheld biological agent detector--the ultimate goal of a Sandia National Laboratories research project that recently reported having successfully tested all of its subcomponents. A football-sized analysis unit was made possible by microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based components, enabling all but one subsystems necessary for the device to be integrated into a single handheld unit.. |
MP3.com CD: BioTechnology Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Christopher Carothers discusses his Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute research on reversible computer simulations--the elixir for unsnarling tough networking problems, such as the illusive 1,000,000 node TCP simulator He recently won a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation for Networking Research on reversible computing. |
MP3.com CD: Robotics Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Munir Nayfeh discusses his method of producing fluorescent red, blue, green and yellow nanoparticles from plain-vanilla silicon wafers. The new materials could yield microscopic lasers. They also hold the promise of putting optical communications on electronic chips.g |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.2 - buy it!
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| Arthur Epstein discusses the world's first photo-induced magnetism in a polymer here at Ohio State University and at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. d |
MP3.com CD: Microchips & Materials Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Michael Sailor describes his accidental discovery of a silicon form of "gunpowder" that is pointing the way toward integrating nanoscale explosives onto silicon chips, a technology that might provide microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) with a means for rocket propulsion. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.4 - buy it!
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| Kakkattukuzhy Isaac discusses how he was motivated by the notion that the Mars landscape may prove easier to navigate by air than with ground-based rovers. NASA is backing a research project to build flying robots, modeled on the entomology of insects, th at can hover like helicopters.c |
MP3.com CD: Space & Robotics Vol.1 - buy it!
MP3.com CD: Robotics Vol.1 - buy it!
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| John Rabolt, University of Delaware,describes his device that identifies airborne chemical and biological weapons whith a planar-array infrared (PA-IR) spectrograph patented here. The shoe-box sized PA-IR spectrograph identifies substances from there IR "signature" which it obtains in 10 ms, compared to 30 minutes with laboratory-bound Fourier Transform IR (FT-IR) spectrographs. G |
MP3.com CD: BioTechnology Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Michael Colicos harnesses "photoconductive" properties of novel silicon neuro-chips, here at the University of California, uncovering the long-sought Holy Grail of neural learning--direct observation of the physical changes resulting from learning. By noninvasively firing specific neurons grown atop a silicon chip, the researchers were able to identify the exact physical changes (observed with a fluorescent tracer). Laboratory observations during learning regimes were able to verify the specific physical changes resulting in short- (a la RAM) and long- (a la ROM) term memories. |
MP3.com CD: Microchips & Materials Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Jeanne Small discusses her pulsed-laser photoacoustics device which detects airborne
biohazardous particles. The U.S. Postal Service may tailor her research prototype to sniff
out biohazards at the nation's mail-handling facilities.
Source interview from which a story for EE Times was written at:
http://eet.com/story/OEG20011105S0051ˇ |
MP3.com CD: BioTechnology Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Christine Schmidt, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin, discusses how she attached quantum dots directly to neurons thereby establishing an electrical interface that could someday control their every twitch. By using the molecular-recognition capabilities of living cells, Schmidt has made selective electrical contacts to neurons. The cadmium sulfide contacts act as photodetectors, allowing researchers to communicate with the cells using precise wavelengths of light. S |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.2 - buy it!
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| Engineers hosted a panel discussion on how technology can combat future terrorist threats at a panel discussion entitled "Technology vs. Terrorism: Designing Against the Threat of Assault" at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (Nov. 11-16, 2001) hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). |
MP3.com CD: BioTechnology Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Bruce Wheeler is attemping to decipher the communications codes used by mammalian brain cells at the University of Illinois. Wheeler is using chip lithography to "microprint" furrows that growing brain cells will follow when budding inputs (dendrites) and outputs (axons).. |
MP3.com CD: BioTechnology Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Dean Parker describes IBM's new PowerPC 405LP which not only reduces power 10x over previous PowerPCs, but also sports hardware accelerators for speech recognition and encryption. The device is aimed at energy constrained wireless devices, such as cell phones, as well as power sensitive wired devices such as DSL modems, communications routers and switches. (Also see diagram and photo under "Images" tab above)) |
MP3.com CD: Artificial Intelligence: Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Analyst Frank Dzubeck, Communications Network Architects, says that on-chip "smarts" of new IBM PowerPC chip will become benchmark at which competitors will aim.i |
MP3.com CD: Artificial Intelligence: Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Mark Deyong explains how artificial-intelligence techniques derived from military applications have been incorporated into automated inspection systems from Photon Dynamics Inc. Tricks from neural networks and expert systems are used in a smart-vision engine called AIMS — an automatic inspection and management system for finished printed-circuit boards, specifically printed-wiring assembly and high-density interconnect.
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MP3.com CD: Artificial Intelligence: Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Purdue's Albert Chang describes the world's first quantum-dot chip, which he fabricated with electron-beam lithography recently. The two quantum-bit (qubit) device harbors two tiny 50-to-120nm round quantum dots just below the surface of a traditional gallium arsenide substrate, by casting off electrons from around them with energized metal electrodes.eer |
MP3.com CD: Quantum Computing Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Sandia National Labs' physicist Gary Kellogg describes how future chips could use nano-templates to precisely control the deposition of atoms into self-assembled nanostructures that "prefab" a new wafer for a specific application. |
MP3.com CD: Quantum Computing Vol.1 - buy it!
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.1 - buy it!
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| MicroElectroMechanicalSystems (MEMS) take a bite out of living cells in a prototype that may someday inject drugs only into selected cells, such as the red blood cells passing through the device dialosis-style in the test application here at Sandia National Laboratories. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Paul R. Berger, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Ohio State University, speaks about a National Science Foundation award aimed at crafting a chip-manufacturing technology that can serve any of the diverse approaches to quantum computer architectures now being proposed. The quantum-chip-making process proposed will be repeatable, reliable and attain good yields at room-temperature operation.d |
MP3.com CD: Quantum Computing Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Sylvian Ray at the University of Illinois has demonstrated a self-aiming camera technology modeled on the brain. The system simulates a section of the human brain with an artificial neural network to point a camera automatically at objects of interest.aa |
MP3.com CD: Space & Robotics Vol.1 - buy it!
MP3.com CD: Artificial Intelligence: Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Fender engineer Keith Chapman describes how the CyberTwin team created the world's first recofigurable guitar amplifier. |
MP3.com CD: Artificial Intelligence: Vol.1 - buy it!
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| University of Rochester researcher Ian Walmsley discusses his demonstration of how readily available optical components can be used to build a quantum database that harnesses interference among light waves.
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MP3.com CD: Quantum Computing Vol.1 - buy it!
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| IBM Corp.'s Praveen Chaudhari discusses a patented new manufacturing process that could save the LCD industry as much as $20 billion a year by simplifying display production, the company said. IBM will license the process to other manufacturers.. |
MP3.com CD: Microchips & Materials Vol.1 - buy it!
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| All LCD manufacturers may need to license IBM's new process to stay competitive, claims analyst. IBM's process replaces the step wherein display substrates were polished manually with a velvet cloth and instead uses a low-energy ion beam to precisely etch microscopic grooves to "auto align" liquid crystals. |
MP3.com CD: Microchips & Materials Vol.1 - buy it!
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| IBM Corp.'s Thomas Theis discusses their new bulk process for producing carbon-nanotube transistors to could extend Moore's Law. They measure only 10 atoms wide, are 500 times smaller that current silicon transistors, and 1000 times stronger than steel. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.1 - buy it!
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| Isaac Chuang discusses the world's largest quantum computer to date-a 5-bit computer squeezed onto a single molecule at IBM's Almaden Research Center. The five fluorine atoms in the molecule each represent a quantum bit, or "qubit," which enabled the computer to become the first ever to solve a problem related to code cracking, called the order-finding problem, in a single step. |
MP3.com CD: Quantum Computing Vol.1 - buy it!
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| IBM Corp.'s Thomas Theis discusses creating the world's first nanotechnology memory device at Forschungslaboratorium Zurich, Big Blue's research center in Switzerland. |
MP3.com CD: Nanotechnology Vol.1 - buy it!
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