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Issue no. 12, 2006 Published: Mar 24, 2006
IBM researchers claim nanotube first
EC names innovative IT prize winners
Hard drive's days are numbered
Photon detector is precursor to broadband in space
Remote-controlled implants
Incoherent boost for light surgery
Virus used to make nanoparticles
Laser chips could power petaflop computers
Israelis bring high-tech food to Angola
Online test calculates brain speed

IBM researchers claim nanotube first
IBM has created an integrated circuit with a carbon nanotube, a first that shows the feasibility of one day using the touted tubes for commercial devices, IBM said. Researchers created a ring oscillator out of a nanotube. An oscillator switches between two voltage levels, which represent 'true' and 'false'; they are often used as test vehicles by chip designers. While the oscillator is slower than the equivalent of those made of silicon, the device and subsequent other nanotube circuits will allow IBM and others to more acutely study how nanotubes operate in certain circumstances. IBM made nanotube transistors before, but an integrated circuit is more complicated. Transistors are essentially on-off switches, while an integrated circuit is a collection of transistors that work together to perform a function. The IBM scientists will now use the ring oscillator to test improved carbon nanotube transistors and circuits, and to gauge their performance in complete chip designs.
CNET News Mar 23, 2006	back to top

EC names innovative IT prize winners
Three small businesses - two with a staff of 28 and one with just two employees - have won the first European IST Prize for innovative IT products with market potential. The grand prize winners, who each receive EUR 200,000, are Advestigo, Cavendish Kinetics and Guardia. France's Advestigo won for its AdvestiSearch product, a digital content monitoring system for deterring media pirates; Netherlands-based Cavendish for its Nanomech embedded flash memory technology that can withstand radiation and extreme temperatures; and Denmark's Guardia for its Guardia Control System, a face recognition security system which could be used in cashpoints, airports or business premises. Prizes of EUR 5,000 were also awarded to 17 companies for their ground-breaking technologies. A total of 213 applicants from 28 European countries competed for the 2006 IST Prize, which was organised by the European Commission and the European Council of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering.
Silicon.com Mar 23, 2006	back to top

Hard drive's days are numbered
Samsung Electronics says it has developed a new data storage medium for mobile computers that enables users to process data much faster with minimal consumption of power. The 32-Gigabyte NAND flash-based solid state disk (SSD) can upload and download data quickly and quietly as it uses instantly-accessible, static NAND flash memory instead of the rotating discs found in hard drives. SSD weighs only half as much as a hard drive, reads data three times faster and writes data 1.5 times quicker, according to Samsung. It consumes a mere five per cent of the electricity needed to power a hard disk drive and operates silently as it requires no motor or any other noise-making parts.
The Age / AFP Mar 23, 2006	back to top

Photon detector is precursor to broadband in space
Researchers at MIT have nearly trebled the efficiency of a miniscule detector capable of capturing single photons of light – the technology could one day be used to receive information through a laser stream of data sent from Mars to Earth. The finding could lead to speedier, reliable relays of huge amounts of data across interplanetary distances, setting up a form of broadband communication in space. The team has boosted the photon-capturing abilities of the detector by using an extremely thin nanowire detector. They combined it with an anti-reflection coating to stop light bouncing away and a 'photon trap' that helps channel incoming photons to be absorbed and not lost. The trap – a cavity between a sheet of glass and a gold mirror at a set distance – reflects photons that would normally transmit straight through the detector back onto the coiled nanowire, where they can be absorbed. The special add-ons increased the detector's absorption efficiency from 20% – the previous best for previous single-photon detectors – to 57% at the wavelength used for broadband signal transmission.
New Scientist / Optics Express Mar 21, 2006	back to top

Remote-controlled implants
Remember Fantastic Voyage, the sci-fi movie in which a medical team is miniaturised and injected into the body of a dying man aboard a tiny submarine? No one has yet shrunk a surgeon, but Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has come up with the next best thing – a way to remotely control implanted components from outside the body. Ear and retinal implants help restore hearing or sight by bypassing damaged cells and directly stimulating nerve ends with tiny electrodes. But the tricky part is getting the implant into place and in contact with the nerve endings. Livermore’s device consists of an implant attached to a silicone tube a few millimetres long. The tube has with gold particles on its tip and a current is passed wirelessly through these to create a patterned magnetic field, which can then be used to manoeuvre the implant remotely. The implants could be injected near the target site and moved around the patient’s head using an external electromagnet. When the implant is in position the gold particles should also work as electrodes to feed signals from the wires into the nerves.
New Scientist Mar 21, 2006	back to top

Incoherent boost for light surgery
A group of Israeli researchers have shown how to carry out surgery using a non-coherent light source. The device could provide a cheaper and safer alternative to conventional and expensive laser surgery. In 2002, researchers at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev developed an alternative to laser surgery that focused ordinary sunlight into a narrow optical fibre using a parabolic mirror. The team has now achieved similar results using light from commercially available short-arc discharge lamps. The set-up uses two mirrors to concentrate the light and a third to 'recycle' light emissions. This is because half the light emissions go into the hemisphere away from the concentrator. The hemispherical recycling mirror captures 50% of otherwise lost lamp emission and focuses it so that light throughput can be enhanced for an optical fibre of the same diameter. The device's output contains visible wavelengths, which can penetrate more deeply into tissue than the infrared or ultraviolet radiation from lasers. Moreover, the system can destroy as much tissue per unit of energy as a laser, but is at least ten times cheaper. The device is also safer than conventional laser systems because the light can be seen, in contrast to lasers that operate outside visible wavelengths.
PhysicsWeb / Applied Physics Letters Mar 22, 2006	back to top

Virus used to make nanoparticles
UK scientists from the John Innes Centre in Norwich have used a plant virus to create nanotechnology building blocks. The virus was employed as a 'scaffold' on to which other chemicals were attached. By linking iron-containing compounds to the virus's surface, the team was able to create electronically active nanoparticles. The work could one day be used to make tiny electrical devices. The work is yet another example of how scientists are now trying to engineer objects on the scale of atoms and molecules. At the nanoscale, materials can be 'tuned' to display unusual properties that could be exploited to build faster, lighter, stronger and more efficient devices and systems. After isolating a virus particle from the peas, the researchers then bound ferrocene compounds to amino acids on its surface. The team managed to attach approximately 240 of the organometallic compounds, each containing an electronically active iron atom. The addition of these compounds meant the nanoparticle became like a molecular capacitor - a device that could store electronic charge.
BBC News Mar 19, 2006	back to top

Laser chips could power petaflop computers
Laser communications chips capable of pumping data through the veins of gargantuan 'petaflop' supercomputers have been demonstrated by NEC in Japan. The chips can transfer information through optical fibres at a blistering 25 gigabits per second. This is a record for such components, according to NEC, and is many times faster that the purely electronic interconnects used in today's supercomputers. NEC used a type of semiconducting laser diode called a Vertical-Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) which generates laser pulses in response to an electrical current. Researchers at the company created more efficient VCSEL devices by making the diodes from a blend of gallium arsenide and indium gallium arsenide - they used indium instead of the more conventional aluminium. This made it possible to transfer laser pulses more rapidly through optical fibre. The new chips could be used to make supercomputers of unprecedented power by routing data more efficiently between thousands of individual processors. The chips could prove crucial to the development of the first petaflop class supercomputer - a machine capable of carrying out a thousand trillion mathematical calculations every second.
New Scientist Mar 21, 2006	back to top

Israelis bring high-tech food to Angola
An Israeli company is using the latest water-saving technology to grow fruit and vegetables in Angola, which imports much of its food after 27 years of civil war, during which the agricultural sector was devastated. Terra Verde, a 45-hectare farm outside the capital Luanda, was set up at the end of the war in 2002 and has been harvesting tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, mangoes, melons and grapes for three years. In fact, the farm produces 35 tonnes of vegetables every week of the year, selling most of this food to supermarkets and restaurants in Luanda. Terra Verde is a joint Angolan-Israeli business, but the agricultural expertise comes from Europe and Israel. The company has built its own pumping station 6km away on the banks of the River Bengo to ensure that its drip-irrigation system, where plants are fed water and fertilizer drip by drip through ground level pipes, would never run dry. A computer programme calculates the exact amounts of water needed, depending on temperature and humidity. Some 200 jobs have already been created and the company is expanding. Another farm has been set up in Kwanza Sul province, which is 10 times bigger than Terra Verde at 450 hectares.
BBC News Mar 21, 2006	back to top

Online test calculates brain speed
As some researchers examine brain functions with advanced imaging technology, other scientists are measuring brain speed with the click of a mouse. San Francisco-based Posit Science (www.positscience.com) unveiled a program in recent weeks that tests how fast a person's brain can process information, based on his or her hearing speed. The 10-minute online test, at the company's website, measures how fast and accurately the test-taker can detect different sounds, by having the test-taker click on arrows. Once finished, the test-taker will receive a measurement of his or her brain speed, down to the millisecond. Focus on brain research has been heightened in recent years with advances in technology that make it possible to determine everything from brain speed to emotional responses to Super Bowl ads. Posit Science is concentrating on developing software that promote cognitive fitness and reverse the effects of aging.
CNET News Mar 23, 2006	back to top