Scientists has used nanopatterning to closely pack more of the miniature structures that hold information in the form of bits, per unit area. Dr Joel Yang’s IMRE research team, working with peers from A*STAR’s DSI and NUS, has used nanopatterning to create uniform arrays of magnetic bits that can potentially store up to 3.3 Terabit/in2 …
Nissan has released its next generation fuel cell stack (2011 model) for fuel cell electric vehicles. Through improvements to the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) and the separator flow path, Nissan has increased the stack’s power density to 2.5 times greater than its 2005 model, claiming a record among automotive OEMs’ fuel cell stacks of 2.5kW …
Harold White’s presentation on warp drive from the 100 year Starship symposium Warp Field Mechanics 101 by Sonny White (33 pages) This paper will begin with a short review of the Alcubierre warp drive metric and describes how the phenomenon might work based on the original paper. The canonical form of the metric was developed …
New processes that allow nanoparticles to assemble themselves into designer materials could solve some of today’s technology challenges The controlled self-assembly of nanoparticles could help researchers create new materials with unique electrical, optical, mechanical or transport properties. “Nanoparticle self-assembly has entered the LEGO era,” Travesset said. “You can really work with nanoparticles in the same …
Oct 13, 2011, the Google translate app now can translate among 14 spoken languages. Along with English and Spanish, the app now translates between Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish. The number of languages supported for text and text-to-speech translations continues to grow, with 63 languages …
Forbes – iRobot (maker of the Roomba) has a new robot, called Ava. iRobot made it compatible with applications written for Apple’s iOS operating system and Google’s Android platform. “To truly accelerate the robot industry, we need more people developing for it,” said iRobot Chief Executive Colin Angle in an interview. “Now, if you can …
Nanoletters – Materials that have subwavelength structure can add degrees of freedom to optical system design that are not possible with bulk materials. Researchers demonstrate two lenses that are composed out of lithographically patterned arrays of elliptical cross-section silicon nanowires, which can dynamically reconfigure their imaging properties in response to the polarization of the illumination. …
1. University of Buffalo – New Knowledge About “Flawed” Diamonds Could Speed The Development of Diamond-Based Quantum Computers Diamonds with defects known as “nitrogen-vacancy centers” can be used in applications including quantum information processing. * One problem preventing scientists from fully understanding these defective diamonds is that at the point of defect, the high-symmetry energy …
A map of the Moon combining observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths shows a treasure trove of areas rich in Titanium ores. The new map of the moon has uncovered a trove of areas rich in precious titanium ore, with some lunar rocks harboring 10 times as much of the stuff as rocks here on …
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has awarded a contract to Cray Inc. to increase the Jaguar supercomputer’s science impact and energy efficiency. The upgrade, which will provide advanced capabilities in modeling and simulation, will transform the DOE Office of Science-supported Cray XT5 system, currently capable of 2.3 million billion calculations per second …
Arxiv – A robust, scanning quantum system for nanoscale sensing and imaging Controllable atomic-scale quantum systems hold great potential as sensitive tools for nanoscale imaging and metrology. Possible applications range from nanoscale electric and magnetic fi eld sensing to single photon microscopy, quantum information processing, and bioimaging. At the heart of such schemes is the …