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Photons emitted in a coherent beam from a laser. Source: Wikipedia.org

Photons emitted in a coherent beam from a laser. Source: Wikipedia.org

Issue no. 32, 2009 Published: Sep 25, 2009
Photon 'machine gun' could power quantum computers
Polymer battery breaks new records
New computing tool could lead to better crops and pesticides say researchers
Galactic-scale observatory planned
MIT retinal implant could help restore some vision
Honda shows small light 'personal mobility' device

Photon 'machine gun' could power quantum computers
There is a simple rule of computing that holds true even in the quantum world: increase the number of units of information available to boost computing power. But raising the number of quantum bits, or qubits, has proven tricky because of the difficulty of reliably producing entangled particles. Now a team at Technion in Israel has designed a system that should fires barrages of entangled photons with machine-gun regularity. At the heart of the 'photonic machine gun' is a quantum dot - a nanoscale crystal within a semiconducting device - chilled to a low temperature. When a short, strong pulse of light hits the dot, one of the electrons inside is raised to an excited state. As it 'relaxes' back to its resting energy state it throws out a photon. A practical version of the gun could be built within a few years, according to the researchers.
New Scientist / Physical Review Letters Sep 25, 2009	back to top

Polymer battery breaks new records
Researchers in Sweden have designed a simple polymer battery that has the highest ever reported charge capacity and charging rate. The device, which is made of cellulose fibres of natural origin coated with a 50 nm polymer layer, is environmentally friendly and might find use in 'smart' packaging and other paper-based products and textiles. Batteries made from conducting polymers could be used in a variety of new applications, like smart clothing and textiles. However, such batteries suffer from slow charging rates - partly because thick layers of polymer are needed to achieve high charge capacities. Now, researchers at Uppsala University have made a novel nanostructured high-surface-area electrode material for energy-storage applications composed of cellulose fibres extracted from algae coated with a 50 nm layer of polypyrrole. The battery can be charged within just 11 seconds and has a capacity of about 38-50 Ah/kg - the highest values reported to date for a polymer paper-based battery. The paper has a surface area of 80 m2/g and batteries based on the material can be charged with currents as high as 600 mA/cm2. What's more, they only lose 6% of their capacity after being charged and discharged more than 100 times.
NanoTechWeb / Nano Letters Sep 18, 2009	back to top

New computing tool could lead to better crops and pesticides say researchers
A new computing tool that could help scientists predict how plants will react to different environmental conditions in order to create better crops, such as tastier and longer lasting tomatoes, is being developed by researchers at Imperial College London. Scientists are keen to develop new strains of crops such as drought resistant wheat and new pesticides that are more environmentally friendly. However, in order to do this, they need to predict how the genes inside plants will react when they are subjected to different chemicals or environmental conditions. The researchers have developed a prototype of the new tool, which they are currently testing. It can analyse in a matter of minutes, instead of months, which genes are responsible for different processes inside a plant, and how different genes work together. It uses a type of computer programming that relies on 'machine learning', a set of sophisticated algorithms that allows a computer to 'learn' based on data that it is analysing. The researchers say the tool will recognise complex patterns in that data to find 'nuggets' of information about plant biology that might previously have taken months or even years to find. The 'machine learning' ability of the new tool means that researchers can develop an understanding of different plants even when they are lacking information about some aspects of their inner workings.
EurekaAlert Sep 22, 2009	back to top

Galactic-scale observatory planned
Physicists have drawn up ambitious plans to detect very low-frequency gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space-time that general relativity predicts ought to pervade the universe. But rather than looking for them using existing facilities like the LIGO detectors in the US, which are designed to detect tiny changes in the interference patterns of laser beams sent down pairs of kilometre-long pipes positioned at right angles to one another, the idea is instead to use radio telescopes on Earth. The telescopes would measure tiny variations in the output of pulsars spread thousands of light-years apart. The galactic observatory, proposed by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), would rely on minute changes in the relative timing of emissions from different pulsars - rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit very regular pulses of radio waves. A gravitational wave passing between a pulsar and a radio telescope affects the time it takes for the emissions to arrive, and so an array of pulsars with different lines of sight to the Earth would reveal the presence of any wave as well as its direction of propagation and polarisation. This idea was first put forward in the late 1970s but requires such high-precision measurements that it has not been technically feasible until now. The NANOGrav team says that it should be possible to correlate the output of 40 pulsars, each with a timing precision better than 100 ns, within the next decade. This would allow astronomers to observe gravitational waves with wavelengths of several light-years coming from sources such as the black-hole binaries that form when galaxies merge, as well as early-universe phenomena such as cosmic strings or inflation.
PhysicWorld Sep 22, 2009	back to top

MIT retinal implant could help restore some vision
MIT engineers have designed a retinal implant for people who have lost their vision from retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration, two of the leading causes of blindness. The retinal prosthesis would help restore some vision by electrically stimulating the nerve cells that normally carry visual input from the retina to the brain. The chip would not restore normal vision but could help blind people more easily navigate a room or walk down a sidewalk. Patients who received the implant would wear a pair of glasses with a camera that sends images to a microchip attached to the eyeball. The glasses also contain a coil that wirelessly transmits power to receiving coils surrounding the eyeball. When the microchip receives visual information, it activates electrodes that stimulate nerve cells in the areas of the retina corresponding to the features of the visual scene. The electrodes directly activate optical nerves that carry signals to the brain, bypassing the damaged layers of retina. The research team recently reported a new prototype that they hope to start testing in blind patients within the next three years, after some safety refinements are made. Once human trials begin and blind patients can offer feedback on what they're seeing, the researchers will learn much more about how to configure the algorithm implemented by the chip to produce useful vision.
EurekaAlert Sep 23, 2009	back to top

Honda shows small light 'personal mobility' device
Honda's new 'personal mobility' device looks like a unicycle, but all you need to do to zip around on it - sideways as well as forward and back - is lean your weight into the direction you want to go. The U3-X was designed to be small, safe and unobtrusive enough to mingle with pedestrians, according to Honda. The single wheel on the U3-X is made up of many tiny motor-controlled wheels, packed inside the bigger wheel, allowing the device to swerve in any direction. It stands upright on its own. Sit on it as though it is a stool, and shift your weight to drive. The thing maintains its own balance as it scoots along at a speed of up to 6 kilometres per hour. The device weighs less than 10 kilograms, runs on a full charge for an hour, and has a lithium-ion battery. Honda said the machine is aimed at the elderly. Japan is one of the most rapidly aging societies in the world, and concerns are growing about helping the elderly get around.
Google News / AP Sep 24, 2009	back to top