Concert performances with deceased stars became much more of a reality last week when Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg used hologram technology to bring Tupac Shakur out on to the stage during their headline slot at the Coachella festival. The Tupac hologram was actually Peppers Ghost with updated computer graphics. Pepper’s ghost is an illusionary …
Boston Consulting Group – In the G-20 nations, the Internet economy will grow more than 10 percent a year through 2016, according to a new report published by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as part of its Connected World series. In the developed markets of the G-20, the Internet economy will grow approximately 8 percent …
Our galaxy may be awash in homeless planets, wandering through space instead of orbiting a star. There may be 100,000 times more “nomad planets” in the Milky Way than stars, according to a new study by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute of Stanford University and the …
Semiconductor Manufacturing and Design – Does the transition to 450mm wafers offer the ultimate opportunity to switch to maskless lithography (ML2)? That was the suggestion made by Burn Lin, senior director of micropatterning at TSMC in his keynote for the SPIE Alternative Lithography Conference in San Jose Feb. 14. The 450mm transition would appear to …
Stanford researchers have designed a new technology that could lead to wireless charging of electric vehicles while they cruise down the highway. This wireless transfer scheme has an efficiency of 97 percent. The transfer range is one fifteenth of the wavelength. The range is 2 meters for a 10 megahertz system. The transfer efficiency can …
NIST – A team of physicists from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Harvard University has developed a theory describing how to both detect weak electrical signals and cool electrical circuits using light and something very like a nanosized loudspeaker.* If demonstrated through experiment, the work could have …
1. Astroblogger – Comet Lovejoy survived its passage over the Sun C/2011 W3 Lovejoy in SOHO C3 (16 December UT), astonishingly, it has left its tail behind (the comet the is bright object to the right of the occulting disk). 2. Weareallinthegutter – Comet Lovejoy covered the expectation before and after the passage. The comet …
Global oil supply rose by 0.9 mb/d to 90.0 million barrels per day in November from October, driven by lower non‐OPEC supply outages. A yearly comparison shows similar growth, with OPEC supplies standing well above year‐ago levels. Non‐OPEC supply growth averages 0.1 mb/d for 2011 but rebounds to 1.0 mb/d in 2012, with strong gains …
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi confirmed on Tuesday that he would stand down after a new budget law is approved in parliament. “After the approval of this finance law, which has amendments for everything which Europe has asked of us and which the Eurogroup has requested, I will resign, to allow the head of state …
Technology Review – Polymer solar cells are inefficient compared to silicon solar cells, but they are much cheaper to make. Organic materials—whether made of polymers or so-called “small molecules,” which are organic compounds with a low molecular weight—can be made into inks and printed over large areas. They’re also lightweight and flexible, which makes them …
NY Times – Chinese companies startled some Americans by unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a missile-armed drone taking out an armored vehicle and attacking a United States aircraft carrier. The United States’ near monopoly on armed drones was coming to an end, with far-reaching consequences for American …