Issue no. 36, 2004
Published: Oct 29, 2004 |
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 Biometric passports win EU approval |
| UK agency backs open-source software |
| First silicon laser pulses with life |
| Brain prosthesis passes live tissue test |
| Brain cells in a dish fly fighter plane |
| Mechanical memories take off |
| Super-tough coating for cellphones and discs |
| US scientists enjoy big bandwidth boost |
| Simplicity is 'next big thing' in IT - Economist |
| Peeping Tom filter lets phones see through bikinis |
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| Biometric passports win EU approval |
The European Union has agreed to adopt biometric passports, bringing it
into line with US requirements. Ministers for EU member states agreed on
Tuesday to adopt biometric passports.
The first biometric passports are set to arrive in 18 months and
initially will record the facial characteristics of the bearer. In three
years, European travellers will also have to provide a fingerprint for
the passport. The facial and fingerprint data will be stored on an
embedded chip, along with a digital copy of the bearer's photo.
The decision, made at a meeting of interior ministers in Luxembourg, is
not yet final. Austria, Finland and the Netherlands have voiced minor
concerns about the proposal. The European push for biometrics is heavily
influenced by a US policy change for passports for people from 'visa
waiver' countries. By 26 October next year, all visitors from these
countries will have to provide a machine-readable passport with
biometric data. |
| Yahoo / ZDNet
Oct 28, 2004 |
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| UK agency backs open-source software |
The UK government's procurement agency, the Office of Government
Commerce (OGC), has mounted a substantial challenge to Microsoft's
dominance of operating systems for desktop computers.
OGC, which is charged with promoting efficiency and value for money,
says in a report published on Thursday that open-source software is 'a
viable desktop alternative for the majority of government users' and
'can generate significant savings'. The OGC findings are likely to
prompt government agencies, local authorities, health bodies and other
organisations across Europe to look at whether fears about the
cost-penalties of using open-source software stand up.
The OGC report assessing pilot studies of open-source software in the UK
public sector comes as the government is striving to save £20bn across
the public sector and modernise the machinery of government. |
| Financial Times
Oct 27, 2004 |
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| First silicon laser pulses with life |
Scientists at the University of California, have created the world's
first laser made from silicon, an important step in the effort to build
computers that process information using light, rather than electricity.
Although much data is now carried by light, the processing is usually
still done after converting the signals into electrical currents. This
conversion slows the whole process down and scientists have been
striving to make devices that can process light directly. Silicon is
preferable because it can be mass-produced using conventional
chip-making techniques. However, it is very poor at controlling light.
Lasers are useful for carrying out optical calculations because all the
packets of light they produce have the same wavelength, and are
precisely marshalled to maximise the amount of energy they deliver in a
tight beam. To make a good laser, you need a material that can take an
energy input and turn it into light energy in a regular rhythm.
Unfortunately, Silicon loses much of this energy as vibrations within
its atomic lattice. The breakthrough, however, makes a virtue of this,
using the vibrations themselves to generate laser light. |
| Nature
Oct 26, 2004 |
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| Brain prosthesis passes live tissue test |
The world's first brain prosthesis has passed the first stages of live
testing. The microchip, designed to model the hippocampus, has been used
successfully to replace a neural circuit in slices of rat brain tissue
kept alive in a dish. It will soon be ready for testing in animals.
The device could ultimately be used to replace damaged brain tissue
which may have been destroyed in an accident, stroke, or illness. It is
the first attempt to replace central brain regions dealing with
cognitive functions such as learning or speech.
To achieve their result, the researchers at the University of Southern
California had to develop a system that would 'read' real neural signals
from healthy tissue, process them just as the lost brain tissue should,
and pass on the resulting signals to the next brain area. They cut out
the central part of the circuit in real rat brain slices and used a grid
of miniature electrodes to feed signals in and out of their microchip.
The signals produced by the intact brain slice and the prosthetic
hippocampus matched in shape, timing and statistics. |
| New Scientist
Oct 25, 2004 |
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| Brain cells in a dish fly fighter plane |
An array of rat brain cells has successfully flown a virtual F-22
fighter jet. The cells could one day become a more sophisticated
replacement for the computers that control uncrewed aerial vehicles or,
in the nearer future, form a test-bed for drugs against brain diseases
such as epilepsy, according to scientists at the University of Florida.
Enzymes were used to extract neurons from the motor cortex of mature rat
embryos and cells were then seeded onto a grid of gold electrodes
patterned on a glass Petri dish. The cells grew microscopic
interconnections, turning them into a 'live computation device'.
An array of 25,000 interconnected neurons were able to convert signals
that indicated whether the simulated plane is experiencing stable
conditions or hurricanes into a measurement of whether the plane is
flying straight or tilted and then correct the flight path by
transmitting signals to the airplane's controls. And the brain in the
dish learned how to do that in an amazingly short period of time -
within 10 to 15 minutes. |
| New Scientist / ABC News
Oct 25, 2004 |
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| Mechanical memories take off |
Physicists at Boston University have made the first high-speed
nanomechanical memory element from single-crystal silicon wafers. The
device consists of a vibrating beam that can be made to switch between
two distinct states.
The researchers used standard techniques to produce their beams, which
are typically 8 microns long, 300nm wide and 200nm thick. They clamped a
beam at both ends and then drove a megahertz frequency current through
it, which causes the beam to vibrate at its resonant frequency. When
driven strongly enough, the beam switches between two different
positions that can be used to represent '0' and '1' respectively.
The device has a resonant frequency of 23.57 megahertz, which means that
information can be read more than 20 millions times per second, compared
with the few hundred kilohertz rates that are possible in conventional
hard drives. Nanomechanical memory elements could therefore overcome the
superparamagnetic limits that apply to magnetic memories. Moreover, they
could be packed together at densities that exceed the present maximum
value of 100 gigabits per square inch. |
| PhysicsWeb
Oct 26, 2004 |
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| Super-tough coating for cellphones and discs |
A tough, transparent polymer coating developed by chemists at TDK in
Japan is set to make scratched phone screens and scuffed discs a thing
of the past.
Two separate layers of fine silica particles prevent scratches, and
fluorine-containing resins in each layer repel ink marks. To deposit the
first layer of the new coating, a mix of silica microparticles 50
micrometres across and a solution of a fluorine-containing resin are
spread on by spin-coating the surface at 8000 rpm. After they have dried
a second layer, made from a mix of another fluorine-containing resin and
a curing agent called acetophenone, is spread on top and cured by
shining ultraviolet light onto it.
The tough silica particles resist abrasion. Meanwhile, the fluorine-rich
resins do not absorb water, so the ink forms droplets that can be wiped
off. On a CD or DVD, any residual droplets are much smaller than the
laser spot used to read the disk, and so cause no data loss. |
| New Scientist
Oct 27, 2004 |
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| US scientists enjoy big bandwidth boost |
The world's biggest fibre optic network entirely dedicated to scientific
research is now in place in the US. The National Lambda Rail (NLR) will
allow scientists to exchange more data at faster speeds than via the
internet.
NLR is entirely owned by the US research community and offers users 10
gigabits per second each. In contrast, Internet2 is a slice of internet
infrastructure currently designated to the US academic community and
provides a total transfer rate of 10 gigabits per second to be shared
between all its users.
Both networks use a technique called Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM) to
send different wavelengths or 'lambdas' of light through an optical
fibre simultaneously, with no interference. Light is routed to its
destination using prisms which extract particular wavelengths. Whereas
Internet2 dedicates just one lambda to the whole US research community,
NLR dedicates 40. |
| New Scientist
Oct 26, 2004 |
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| Simplicity is 'next big thing' in IT - Economist |
The Economist Magazine this week has published an IT survey, which
declares the single message of simplicity as 'the next big thing'. The
Economist talks about how 'most of us' find technology frustrating,
infuriating and sometimes tortuous at times and is trying to assess the
work done by the IT industry to simplify matters.
The survey looks at Apple's iPod and Google, both of which are
successful because 'each rescues consumers from a particular black hole
of complexity'. The iPod does this by living up to its promise - letting
music fans carry their entire CD collection with them, while Google does
this by putting a white page over the hundreds of thousands of potential
web pages, making navigating the web easier.
The survey looks at the ways in which companies such as IBM and
Microsoft are getting better at hiding complexity from users. With the
new focus on simplicity, The Economist concludes that, from now on,
'genius will be measured not in how fancy, big or powerful somebody
makes something or other, but how simple'. |
| Yahoo / Macworld
Oct 28, 2004 |
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| Peeping Tom filter lets phones see through bikinis |
A phone that lets you see through clothes is the stuff of teenage boys'
dreams - and now it is a reality in Japan. A third party developer in
Tokyo, Yamada Denshi, has developed an add-on to Vodafone handsets,
intended to be used as a night filter to allow customers to take
pictures with their phones in the dark.
Unfortunately, the night vision camera has an unexpected side effect -
in the right circumstances, it allows users to see a lot more than they
bargained for. As well as taking snaps in the dark, the Yamada Denshi
infrared filter sees through people's clothes. When attached to a
high-end camera, the filter can see though all manner of garments and is
reportedly particularly effective on dark bikinis.
Camera phone technology has long prompted fears of voyeurism, leading
several gyms to ban picture phones. Voyeurism with camera phones became
such a problem in South Korea that the government legislated the phones
must make a noise when pictures are taken. |
| Silicon.com
Oct 25, 2004 |
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