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Issue no. 5, 2005 Published: Feb 18, 2005
Intel claims silicon laser breakthrough
EU software patent law faces axe
The call on cellphones
Japanese giants back holographic storage
Cheaper chip for powerful mobiles
Night-vision camera turns night into day
'Quantum well' transistor promises lean computing
Scorpion robot could conquer worlds
Bacteria batteries for mobile phones

Intel claims silicon laser breakthrough
Researchers from Intel have created the first continuous laser beam using silicon components, a development the chip maker called a major scientific breakthrough that could herald significant advances in communications and medicine. The researchers found a way to overcome the primary hurdle to using silicon as a medium for laser light, an effect in which electrons freed by the energy of passing photons absorb the light as it passes through. They overcame this so-called 'two-photon absorption' by using a technique from the world of semiconductors: it created positive and negative regions around the path of the laser light, which 'vacuum' away electrons and provide a clear road for the laser. A continuous laser beam generated through silicon, which is transparent to infrared light, could overcome cost and size limitations in current lasers used in surgery and communications, which are made with more exotic and expensive materials, Intel said.
CNN / Reuters Feb 16, 2005	back to top

EU software patent law faces axe
The European Parliament has thrown out a bill that would have allowed software to be patented. Politicians unanimously rejected the bill and now it must go through another round of consultation if it is to have a chance of becoming law. During consultation the software patents bill could be substantially re-drafted or even scrapped. The bill was backed by hi-tech firms that said they needed the protections it offered to make research worthwhile. But opponents of the bill said that it could stifle innovation, be abused by firms keen to protect existing monopolies and could hamper the growth of the open source movement. The proposed law had a troubled passage through the European parliament. Its progress was delayed twice when Polish MEPs rejected plans to adopt it. Also earlier this month the influential European Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) said the law should be re-drafted after it failed to win the support of MEPs. The latest rejection means that now the bill on computer inventions must go back to the EU for re-consideration.
BBC News Feb 17, 2005	back to top

The call on cellphones
A global standards-setting organisation said Wednesday that it had brokered an accord to help authorities assess the potential health risks facing cellphone users. The International Electrotechnical Commission, whose standards are used in 100 countries, said its new guidelines would make it easier for phone manufacturers and officials to compare research done in different countries on cellphone radiation. The new IEC guidelines include for the first time a standard on how manufacturers measure the amount of radiation their cellphones emit. Previously the absence of consistent standards meant consumers had no way of knowing if the phones they bought operated within safe limits, the IEC said. However, the new standard does not put a limit on the amount of radiation phones can emit. The IEC works closely with the Geneva-based International Standards Organisation, which has guidelines on around 20,000 standards, harmonising everything from air quality control through anti-corrosion devices for underwater oil pipelines to the sweat resistance of a shirt.
GlobeTechnology / AP Feb 16, 2005	back to top

Japanese giants back holographic storage
Six companies have collaborated to accelerate the development of Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) technology that offers 200 times the capacity of a single layer DVD. The firms behind the HVD Alliance include CMC Magnetics, Fuji Photo film, Nippon Paint, Optware, Pulstec Industrial and Toagosei. Holographic recording technology records data on discs in the form of laser interference fringes, enabling existing discs the same size as today's DVDs to store more than one terabyte of data, with a transfer rate of over 1Gbps (40 times the speed of DVD). This approach is rapidly gaining attention as a high-capacity, high-speed data storage technology for the broadband age. The HVD Alliance, which will launch officially this spring, has formed a technical committee to discuss the standardisation of HVD. It will hold its first meeting in Tokyo on 3-4 March.
VNUNet UK Feb 07, 2005	back to top

Cheaper chip for powerful mobiles
A mobile phone chip which combines a modem and a computer processor on one bit of silicon instead of two could make phones cheaper and more powerful. The specially-designed chip, developed by Texas Instruments, could drive down the cost of making mobiles capable of 3D gaming and 30-frame-a-second video. Currently, rich multimedia features tend to be on more expensive handsets. The technology, OMAP-Vox, is being tested by firms in Europe and Asia and could appear by the end of the year. Texas Instruments, which makes computer chips for more than half the world's mobile phones, said it was keen to make multimedia functions like video and gaming more affordable. The chip also uses much less power than conventional chips, said Texas Instruments, which means less strain on mobile battery life.
BBC News Feb 15, 2005	back to top

Night-vision camera turns night into day
A revolutionary night-vision system developed for the Dutch military makes night-time video images look as clear and colourful as those shot in broad daylight. The system, developed by TNO research lab the Netherlands, works by sampling the colours in daytime scenes of the same kind as are being viewed, and mapping them onto the night-vision images. The effect is dramatic, making obstacles and terrain much easier to cope with at night. The system selects random pixels from the daytime image to obtain a sample of the range of colours in a typical environment. So a pastoral scene would have browns from the trees, greens from the grass, vegetation and tree canopies, and blues for the sky. The system's inventors hope it will improve soldiers' reaction times and reduce the fatigue that develops from scrutinising night images. Preliminary tests on 12 subjects have shown the colour-enhanced images radically improve people's ability to recognise objects.
New Scientist Feb 10, 2005	back to top

'Quantum well' transistor promises lean computing
A transistor that uses one-tenth of the energy of existing components could lead to more powerful, less power-hungry computers within the next decade. Researchers at Intel and UK research firm Qinetiq developed the transistor using a novel semiconducting material - indium antimonide. Transistors act as switches or amplifiers in electronic circuits to process information. Indium antimonide allows electrons to speed through faster than conventional silicon-based transistors due to its highly active and greater number of 'charge-carriers' - which help relay the electrons quickly. But these charge-carriers also make these transistors more difficult to control than silicon ones, except at extremely low temperatures - around 77 Kelvin (-196°C). To overcome this temperature limitation, the researchers sandwiched pure indium antimonide between layers of the same material mixed with aluminium. The isolated pure material acts as a 'quantum well', confining electrons which travel at high speed but which can also be controlled at very low voltage.
New Scientist Feb 10, 2005	back to top

Scorpion robot could conquer worlds
Planetary rovers may soon have an eight-legged mechanised side-kick to help them explore distant planets. The Scorpion robot is able to descend steep cliffs, climb rough terrain, and squeeze into crannies that are inaccessible to larger, wheeled vehicles. The dog-sized prototype is the brainchild of Frank Kirchner, a robotics specialist at the University of Bremen in Germany. It is currently being evaluated at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Some of the most interesting places on Mars are on the faces of cliffs or in areas that are too small or rocky for a car-sized rover to reach. A Scorpion, however, could go into these areas, look at the geology and pick up samples. Researchers could also use the robot on Earth, to investigate mines or search for earthquake survivors trapped in rubble.
Nature Feb 10, 2005	back to top

Bacteria batteries for mobile phones
Mobile telephones and other portable electronic devices could one day be powered with the help of bacteria, thanks to an advance in energy technology. Fuel cells offer an efficient and environmentally friendly way to make electricity by combining oxygen and hydrogen, but are expensive because they rely on a platinum catalyst. Now a team at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, has built the active part of a bacterial enzyme that works like a miniature hydrogen fuel cell. The research could help scientists to replace the expensive platinum catalysts that break up molecules of hydrogen gas, releasing electrons that generate an electrical current.
Daily Telegraph / Nature Feb 10, 2005	back to top