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Issue no. 18, 2003 Published: May 02, 2003
Song-swap fight to go on despite defeat
Italy cracks down on CD piracy
Apple to offer cheap online music
Squeezing light from nanotubes
Proteins produce nano-magnetic computer memory
Metal expands electrically
Screen-edge arcs widen view
Nanotubes grown to wire chips
Net scan finds like-minded users
Military robots to get swarm intelligence
Desktop cords could reach halfway to moon
Software turns shower singers into virtuosi

Song-swap fight to go on despite defeat
The music industry pledged this week to fight on with its global legal battle to stifle online copyright abuse despite last week's unexpected setback in a US court. US District Court Judge Stephen Wilson on Friday dealt a blow to the major music labels and Hollywood studios in their fight against online piracy, ruling internet file-sharing services Grokster and Morpheus can remain open for business, because they cannot control what is traded over their systems even if the material is copyright-protected. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), had sought a court injunction to shut down Grokster, Morpheus and a third party, Kazaa, for operating services that allow internet users to trade copyright-protected materials. In the US, the MPAA and RIAA have vowed to appeal. Overseas, the media are playing down the significance of the decision, saying that local courts will determine the legality of file-sharing country-by-country.
CNN / Reuters Apr 29, 2003	back to top

Italy cracks down on CD piracy
Italy is fighting back in the battle against music piracy by introducing tough laws for those illegally buying and selling pirated music on street stalls. Street vendors could be fined €103 for every copy they sell and may also face between six months and three years in prison. Buyers of illegal CDs, who up until now have gone unpunished, will be fined €154 if caught buying illegal CDs and repeat offenders could be hit with a fine of €1,000. Italy has one of Europe's largest counterfeit markets and the music industry estimates that one in four compact discs sold is pirated. The illegal trade is worth an estimated €120m annually and the Italian record industry has experienced losses of about 11 per cent in the past three years.
BBC News Apr 29, 2003	back to top

Apple to offer cheap online music
Apple Computer has said it will give its customers the chance to download music for 99 cents per song, without subscription fees. The online store will offer some 200,000 songs from music giants BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner. The Apple venture, called 'iTunes Music Store' allows customers to download songs as well as 'burn' music for their own personal use and make unlimited copies of the songs onto CDs, which can also be copied without restrictions. The songs will be offered in AAC audio format, rather than MP3, as Apple says this offers better quality sound. For now the service is only available in the US and only for Mac users, though the company plans a Windows version by the end of the year.
BBC News Apr 29, 2003	back to top

Squeezing light from nanotubes
Scientists at IBM Research have discovered a new way to get carbon nanotubes to emit light, a breakthrough that might one day lead to advances in fibre-optic technology. At the University of Toronto, meanwhile, researchers have managed to produce light by injecting electrons into a polymer embedded with 'quantum dots', microscopic crystals made of lead sulphide. In IBM's research, the light appears when a negative charge is applied to one end of the nanotube and a positive charge to the other. The light emitted by the nanotubes featured a wavelength of 1.5 microns, the same wavelength used in fibre optics today. That means arrays of light-generating nanotubes have the potential to be used inside fibre-optic cables to transmit data. The University of Toronto's prototype uses nanocrystals measuring about 5 nanometres wide that sit in deep depressions in a polymer sheet. When electrons enter the polymer, they fall into the depressions and create light at wavelengths ranging from 1.3 microns to 1.6 microns.
ZDNet May 01, 2003	back to top

Proteins produce nano-magnetic computer memory
Computer hard drive capacity could be increased a hundredfold by using a common protein to fabricate nano-scale magnetic particles, according to UK company Nanomagnetics It uses the protein apoferritin, the main molecule in which iron is stored in the body, to create a material consisting of magnetic particles each just a few nanometres in diameter. Each particle can store a bit of information and together they can be packed onto a disk drive at much greater density than is possible using existing hard disk manufacturing methods. Nanomagnetics expects its technology will surpass conventional hard disk density by the end of 2003. Currently, about 450 gigabits of data can be squeezed onto a square centimetre of disk. Manufacturers believe this could eventually be improved to a maximum of 3000 gigabits per square centimetre. But Nanomagnetics believes its new material could allow 5000 gigabits per square centimetre to be stored.
New Scientist Apr 27, 2003	back to top

Metal expands electrically
Researchers from Germany and Austria, have found a way to make metal expand and contract like piezoceramics, which are commonly used as actuators in inkjet printers and automobile fuel injection nozzles. The expanding metal, however, requires less voltage than piezoceramics. The researchers made metal expandable by electrically adding or withdrawing electrons from metal surfaces. The method works in wet environments, and could eventually be used to power valves on labs-on-a-chip, or devices immersed in biological fluids in living systems, according to the researchers. Key to the method was gaining a lot of surface area and thus access to more electrons by using clumps made from tiny bits of metal. The researchers used platinum crystals measuring less than 50 nanometres across to prove it is possible to change the material by injecting or withdrawing electrons. As they injected electrons, the bonds at the surface of the metal expanded, and when they withdrew electrons the bonds shrunk.
Technology Review / TRN Apr 29, 2003	back to top

Screen-edge arcs widen view
Viewing a large map on a small screen can be frustrating, especially if you are trying to keep track of positions and distances of locations that fall far beyond the range of the screen. Researchers from Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) have hit upon a solution that allows people to keep a sense of the relative distances of key offscreen locations. The software, dubbed Halo, was inspired by the arc of light that appears around streetlights. As a person navigates a map on a handheld computer, the software causes arcs representing selected offscreen locations to appear on the edge of the screen, as if the locations were surrounded by circles large enough that a portion of the arc just reached onto the screen. The user can sense how far away an offscreen location is by the curve and translucence of its arc, which indicates the size of the full circle and thus the distance to its centre. The software could ease small-screen map and three-dimensional environment navigation, and also keep track of moving targets such as hazards or friends, according to the researchers.
Technology Review / TRN Apr 29, 2003	back to top

Nanotubes grown to wire chips
Minimising the size of interconnects - the electrical links between different circuit components on a silicon microchip - is a challenge for conventional fabrication techniques. Now researchers may have found a solution in the shape of carbon nanotubes. At present, interconnects are generally thin copper wires. At high current densities their metal atoms migrate, disrupting flow. Their electrical conductivity is also degraded at very small scales by electron scattering at surfaces and grain boundaries. Making these wires typically involves etching a hole or via through the insulating film and then depositing the metal inside it. As interconnects become narrower, it is difficult to keep their sides straight. Filling very narrow channels completely with metal is also difficult. Researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center in California essentially reverse the procedure: they grow vertical nanotubes at selected positions on a silicon chip, and then surrounded them with insulating silicon dioxide so that they cut a conducting channel through the film.
Nature Apr 28, 2003	back to top

Net scan finds like-minded users
When you search for information on the web, chances are that there are like-minded groups of webusers searching for the same sorts of things. Researchers from the University of Chicago have shown that is possible to identify these groups by analysing browsing patterns. The researchers' method of graphing information across data distribution systems such as the internet shows that computer users can be grouped according to their common interests based only on their requests for data. The information-request graphing method can be used to design scalable, adaptive methods for locating and delivering data, and could theoretically be used by anyone to target communities of interest. In an analysis of six months worth of scientists' requests for data, the researchers found that group-based collaboration is visible in the way the information is requested. The same pattern held in a larger analysis of general web requests. The researchers are working on using the patterns to design more efficient services for resource-sharing environments such as Grid computing.
Technology Review / TRN Apr 25, 2003	back to top

Military robots to get swarm intelligence
A battalion of 120 military robots is to be fitted with swarm intelligence software to enable them to mimic the organised behaviour of insects. The project is aimed at developing ways to perform missions such as minesweeping and search and rescue with minimum intervention from human operators. The project is run by US software company Icosystems, which specialises in creating programs that mimic behaviours found in nature. Their software will use simple rules to co-ordinate complex behaviour among the robots. The robots' behaviour has been modelled in a computer environment but Icosystems will now be able to test different approaches in the real world. The 120 robots were built by I-Robot. Swarm intelligence describes the way that complex behaviours can arise from large numbers of individual agents each following very simple rules. For example, ants use the approach to find the most efficient route to a food source.
New Scientist Apr 25, 2003	back to top

Desktop cords could reach halfway to moon
Lay all the desktop cords in the US end to end, and you could circle the earth four times or reach halfway to the moon, according to a study released this week by Logitech. The study suggests that cable 'spaghetti' contributes to US businesses losing more than 1.3bn hours in labour annually, because the average respondent spends 7.3 minutes a day organising their desktop, both untangling cords and tidying up generally. The survey involved 1,000 internet users. According to Logitech, the average internet user has 105 cm of desktop cable, while nearly one in five has 180 cm or more. One in four respondents said they had damaged or soiled items on the desktop because of cable entanglement, or had to stop working because of tangled cords. Forty-four per cent of respondents said they would like a cordless mouse, while 37 per cent wanted a cordless keyboard.
ZDNet / CNET Apr 28, 2003	back to top

Software turns shower singers into virtuosi
A caterwaul can now become a croon, thanks to computer scientists of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Their new software makes weak voices sound professional. It could help recording engineers to make singers sound better or synthesised voices more human. The researchers taught their software what constitutes a good voice by using recordings of opera singers. The package can change each of the half-dozen strong frequencies in singing voices. The balance between these frequencies makes the difference between, say, Jessye Norman and Britney Spears. Good singers tend to be strong across the range. The researchers are working on teaching their software to reproduce good country and Broadway voices, although 'quality' in these genres is less clearly defined than in opera. They also hope to use their package as the basis of a gizmo that will convert karaoke singers' bawls into mellifluous tones.
Nature Apr 29, 2003	back to top