Information Technologies
CDC app lets you solve disease outbreaks at home
February 19, 2013 2:34 pm | by MIKE STOBBE - AP Medical Writer - Associated Press | News | CommentsYou may not be a disease detective, but now you can play one at home. The nation's public health agency has released a free app for the iPad called "Solve the Outbreak." It allows users to run through fictional outbreaks and make decisions: Do you quarantine the village? Talk to people who are sick?
Production process doubles speed, efficiency of flexible electronics
February 19, 2013 10:44 am | News | CommentsStretched-out clothing might not be a great practice for laundry day, but in the case of microprocessor manufacture, stretching out the atomic structure of the silicon in the critical components of a device can be a good way to increase a processor's performance.
Chip cleans up common flaws in amateur photographs
February 19, 2013 8:28 am | by Helen Knight, MIT News correspondent | News | CommentsYour smartphone snapshots could be instantly converted into professional-looking photographs with just the touch of a button, thanks to a processor chip developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The chip can perform tasks such as creating more realistic or enhanced lighting in a shot without destroying the scene's ambience, in just a fraction of a second. The technology could be integrated with any smartphone, tablet computer, or digital camera.
Professor brings access to previously untapped higher frequency bandwidth
February 19, 2013 8:26 am | News | CommentsSociety's increasing technology use and data consumption is causing an information bottleneck, congesting airwave frequencies and sending engineers searching for access to higher capacity bandwidths. Until now, no technology has existed to tap into and successfully use these frequencies, which span 30 to 100 GHz.
Organic electronics: Better contact between carbon compounds and metals
February 18, 2013 9:00 am | News | CommentsA recurring problem in organic electronics technology has been the difficulty in establishing good electrical contact between the active organic layer and metal electrodes. Organic molecules are frequently used for this purpose, but, until recent research at the Helmholtz Center in Germany unraveled this mystery, it was practically impossible to accurately predict which molecules performed well on the job.
Researchers propose breakthrough architecture for quantum computers
February 15, 2013 1:19 pm | News | CommentsA team of researchers in Canada has proposed a new computational model that may become the architecture for a scalable quantum computer. They say the model should use multi-particle quantum walks for universal computation. In a multi-particle quantum walk, particles live on the vertices of a graph and can move between vertices joined by an edge. Furthermore, nearby particles can interact with each other.
Researchers invent “acoustic-assisted” magnetic information storage
February 14, 2013 2:29 pm | News | CommentsElectrical engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a way to use high-frequency sound waves to enhance the magnetic storage of data, offering a new approach to improve the data storage capabilities of a multitude of electronic devices around the world.
Team creates MRI for the nanoscale
February 14, 2013 11:59 am | News | CommentsMagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reveals details of living tissues, diseased organs and tumors inside the body without x-rays or surgery. What if the same technology could peer down to the level of atoms? Physicists in New York and Germany have worked together to make this type of nanoscale MRI possible. To do this, researchers used the tiny imperfections in diamond crystals known as nitrogen-vacancy centers.
Quantum information joined to quantum storage
February 14, 2013 10:38 am | News | CommentsPhysicists in Finland have successfully connected a superconducting quantum bit, or qubit, with a micrometer-sized drum head. With this invention they have transferred information from the qubit to the resonator and back again. This work represents the first step towards creating exotic mechanical quantum states which can preserve the qubit’s information (as a vibration) for a longer period of time.
Spider skin image takes top prize in FEI’s nanoscale image contest
February 13, 2013 5:20 pm | News | CommentsMicroscope manufacturer FEI Company this week announced that Maria Carbajo from the Universidad de Extemadura, Spain, is the winner of the FEI Image Contest for her “Spider Skin” image. The image was obtained using an FEI Quanta DualBeam scanning electron microscope.
Sandia awards information technology contracts to three firms
February 13, 2013 2:14 pm | News | CommentsSandia National Laboratories has issued three information technology (IT) contracts totaling $353 million over a potential term of seven years. The awards streamline IT contracting at the laboratories.
Engineers show feasibility of superfast materials
February 13, 2013 1:44 pm | News | CommentsUniversity of Utah engineers demonstrated it is feasible to build the first organic materials that conduct electricity on their edges, but act as an insulator inside. These materials, called organic topological insulators, could shuttle information at the speed of light in quantum computers and other high-speed electronic devices.
Metamaterials provide active control of slow-light devices
February 13, 2013 10:49 am | News | CommentsWireless communications and optical computing could soon get a significant boost in speed, thanks to “slow light” and specialized metamaterials through which it travels. Researchers have made the first demonstration of rapidly switching on and off “slow light” in specially designed materials at room temperature. This work opens the possibility to design novel, chip-scale, ultrafast devices for applications in terahertz wireless communications and all-optical computing.
KAIST develops wireless power transfer tech for high capacity transit
February 13, 2013 9:51 am | News | CommentsEngineers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Korea Railroad Research Institute have designed a wireless technology that can be applied to high capacity transportation systems such as railways, harbor freight, and airport transportation, and logistics. The technology supplies 60 kHz and 180 kW of power remotely to transport vehicles at a stable, constant rate.
Self-assembled biological filaments form 3D microelectronics
February 12, 2013 1:24 pm | News | CommentsThe size of electronic components is reaching a physical limit. While 3D assembly can reduce bulk, the challenge is in manufacturing these complex electrical connections. Biologists and physicists in France have recently developed a system of self-assembled connections using actin filaments for 3D microelectronic structures. Once the actin filaments become conductors, they join the various components of a system together.
New initiative to improve lithium-ion batteries
February 12, 2013 10:23 am | News | CommentsA Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory team is working to improve lithium-ion battery performance, lifetime, and safety. Working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the scientists are developing a new methodology for performing first-principles quantum molecular dynamics simulations at an unprecedented scale to understand key aspects of the chemistry and dynamics in lithium-ion batteries, particularly at interfaces.
Chemistry trick kills climate controversy
February 12, 2013 7:48 am | News | CommentsVolcanoes are well known for cooling the climate. But just how much and when has been a bone of contention among historians, glaciologists, and archeologists. Now a team of atmosphere chemists, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen, has come up with a way to say for sure which historic episodes of global cooling were caused by volcanic eruptions.
New MRI technique has ability to scan individual cells
February 12, 2013 7:35 am | News | CommentsResearchers have recently demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on the molecular scale through the use of artificial atoms, diamond nanoparticles doped with nitrogen impurity. Conventional MRI responds to the magnetic fields of atomic nuclei, but this new method improves resolution nearly one million times, allowing scientists to probe very weak magnetic fields such as those generated in some biological molecules and even proteins.
Invisible tool facilitates new wave of quantum experiments
February 11, 2013 10:10 pm | News | CommentsResearchers in Austria have succeeded in constructing a novel matter wave interferometer which enables new quantum studies with a broad class of particles, including atoms, molecules, and nanoparticles. hese lumps of matter are exposed to three pulsed laser light gratings which are invisible to the human eye, exist only for a billionth of a second and never simultaneously.
Protein “filmed” while unfolding at atomic resolution
February 11, 2013 10:55 am | News | CommentsUsing nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and low temperatures, researchers have now succeeded for the first time in "filming" the complex process of protein folding. The process, visualized at atomic resolution, reveals how a protein progressively "loses its shape." The findings may help to gain deeper insights into how proteins assume their spatial structure and why intermediate forms of certain proteins misfold in the event of illness.
Old imaging technique improves nanoscale X-ray microscopy
February 11, 2013 9:13 am | News | CommentsResearchers in Europe have recently developed an analysis method that allows objects to be imaged using X-rays or visible light with high accuracy despite fluctuations in wavelength or vibrations. Their method is based on a technique called ptychography, which was invented in the 1960s for microscopy using electrons and has further been developed during recent years to be a reliable high-resolution microscopy technique applicable with X-rays and visible light.
Agilent commits $90 million gift to Georgia Tech
February 11, 2013 8:11 am | News | CommentsAgilent Technologies Inc. announced the largest in-kind software donation ever in its longstanding relationship with the Georgia Institute of Technology. Last year, Georgia Tech dedicated a new laboratory to Agilent after the company made a substantial donation to the Institute's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Peering into living cells without dye or fluorophore
February 8, 2013 11:31 am | News | CommentsTwo scientists in Switzerland have developed a device that can create 3D images of living cells and track their reaction to various stimuli without the use of contrast dyes or fluorophores. Using their combination of holographic microscopy and computation image processing, 3D images of living cells can be obtained in just a few minutes at a resolution of less than 100 nm.
3D micrometer-scale printer is world’s fastest
February 8, 2013 11:09 am | News | CommentsAt the Photonics West conference in San Francisco this week, the Germany-based company Nanoscribe showcased the world’s fastest 3D printer of micro- and nanostructures. With this printer, small 3D objects, often smaller than the diameter of a human hair, can be manufactured with minimum time consumption and maximum resolution. The printer is based on a new laser lithography method.
Creating new quantum building blocks
February 8, 2013 8:00 am | News | CommentsScientists have long dreamed of creating a quantum computer—a device rooted in the bizarre phenomena that transpire at the level of the very small, where quantum mechanics rules the scene. It is believed that such new computers could process currently unsolvable problems in seconds. Researchers have tried using various quantum systems, such as atoms or ions, as the basic, transistor-like units in simple quantum computation devices. Now Caltech researchers are laying the groundwork for an on-chip optical quantum network.
