UNU-MERIT: I&T Weekly

	Search \| Sitemap \| Intranet \| PhD Intranet

Subscribe to I&T Weekly A free e-zine about Innovation & Technology developments

text html Please type the above code:
	RSS feed

Previous Issues I&T Weekly

>> back to archive

Previous issues of I&T Weekly:

2013: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]

2012: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37]

2011: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44]

2010: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42]

2009: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42]

2008: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41]

2007: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]

2006: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44]

2005: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]

2004: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]

2003: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]

2002: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]

2001: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]

Issue no. 2, 2007 Published: Jan 12, 2007
EU plans 'industrial revolution'
Lightning balls created in the lab
Researchers plug in super-thin coax
Setback for safe storage of nuclear waste
How to leak a secret and not get caught
Researchers aim to tame information overload

EU plans 'industrial revolution'
The European Commission has urged its members to sign up to an unprecedented common energy policy, unveiling a plan to diversify the bloc's energy sources. Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said it was time for a 'post-industrial revolution' which would see Europe slash greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020. In addition to the 20% of all EU energy that should come from renewable power by 2020, 10% of vehicle fuel should come from biofuels. The EU wants to make these targets to be binding for the first time. It also wants to make sure all new power stations are carbon neutral in 13 years - they should be built in such a way that carbon can be captured and buried - as well as ensuring there is a big increase in renewable power like wind and wave energy. Without such investment and energy efficiency measures, the EU report predicts that EU energy imports will rise from 50% of consumption to 65% by 2030, requiring increased reliance on potentially unpredictable sources. The package of measures will have to be approved by European governments before it can come into force. EU leaders will debate the commission's proposals at a summit in March.
BBC News Jan 10, 2007	back to top

Lightning balls created in the lab
Ball lightning could soon lose its status as a mystery, now that a team in Brazil has cooked up a simple recipe for making similar eerie orbs of light in the lab, even getting them to bounce around for seconds. One theory suggests that ball lightning is a highly ionised blob of plasma held together by its own magnetic fields, while an exotic explanation claims the cause is mini black holes created in the big bang. A more down-to-earth theory is that ball lightning forms when lightning strikes soil, turning any silica in the soil into pure silicon vapour. As the vapour cools, the silicon condenses into a floating aerosol bound into a ball by charges that gather on its surface, and it glows with the heat of silicon recombining with oxygen. To test this idea, a team from the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil took wafers of silicon just 350 micrometres thick, placed them between two electrodes and zapped them with currents of up to 140 amps. Then over a couple of seconds, they moved the electrodes slightly apart, creating an electrical arc that vaporised the silicon. The arc spat out glowing fragments of silicon but also, sometimes, luminous orbs the size of ping-pong balls that persisted for up to 8 seconds.
New Scientist Jan 10, 2007	back to top

Researchers plug in super-thin coax
Researchers at Boston College in the US have beamed visible light through a cable hundreds of times thinner than a human hair. The discovery defies a key principle asserting that light cannot pass through a hole much smaller than its wavelength. Scientists have managed to force visible light, which has a wavelength of 380nm-750nm, to travel down a cable with a diameter smaller than even the low end of this range. The researchers say their achievement could lead to new developments including inexpensive high-efficiency solar cells and microscopic light-based switching devices for use in optical computing, or even helping some blind people to see. Coaxial cables are typically made up of a core wire surrounded by a layer of insulation, which in turn is surrounded by another metal sheath. This structure encloses energy and lets the cable transmit electromagnetic signals with wavelengths much larger than the diameter of the cable itself. The physicists have developed a 'nanocoax', a carbon nanotube-based coaxial cable with a diameter of about 300nm.
VNUnet UK Jan 09, 2007	back to top

Setback for safe storage of nuclear waste
A new technique developed by Cambridge scientists has laid the groundwork for safer storage of nuclear waste by helping to show which minerals can effectively lock up the waste until most of the radioactivity had decayed away. But scientists wishing to store these radioactive elements separated from spent nuclear fuels in specially designed ceramics may need to think again, after the method revealed one kind of mineral intended to entrap nuclear waste may be susceptible to structural breakdown within 1,400 years. The joint team, from the University of Cambridge and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in the US, has devised a way to use the technique of nuclear magnetic resonance to measure the effectiveness of storing radioactive waste in different crystal forms over millennia. However, the new study reveals the effects of radiation from plutonium incorporated into zircon rapidly degrades the mineral's crystal structure. This could lead to swelling, loss of physical strength and possible cracking of the mineral as soon as 210 years, well before the radioactivity had decayed to safe levels. This falls far short of the ideal immobilization time scale of 241,000 years.
Daily Telegraph Jan 11, 2007	back to top

How to leak a secret and not get caught
Leaking a sensitive government document can mean risking a jail sentence - but not for much longer if an online service called WikiLeaks goes ahead. WikiLeaks is designed to allow anyone to post documents on the web without fear of being traced. The creators of the site are thought to include political activists and open-source software engineers, though they are keeping their identities secret. Their goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers and journalists are not thrown into jail for emailing sensitive documents. According to the group's website www.wikileaks.org, its primary targets include China, Russia, and oppressive regimes in Eurasia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. But people anywhere will be able to use the site to reveal unethical behaviour by governments and corporations. Normally an email or a document posted to a website can be traced back to its source because each data packet carries the IP address of the last server that it passed through. To prevent this, WikiLeaks will exploit an anonymising protocol known as The Onion Router (Tor), which routes data through a network of servers that use cryptography to hide the path that the packets took.
New Scientist Jan 12, 2007	back to top

Researchers aim to tame information overload
US scientists at Dartmouth College have developed a way of making sense of the huge volume of data that is constantly collected from diverse sources including computer network monitors, video surveillance cameras, financial transaction records and databases. The researchers believe that process query systems (PQS) will help to make sense of the fast growing volumes of digital data currently being generated. Applications could include analysing credit reports for identity theft, discovering attacks on computer networks, and measuring activity at national borders, car parks or wildlife refuges. The technique is based on the premise that sensed environments, be they computer networks, email traffic or high-security buildings, all consist of processes with distinct states, dynamics and observables. PQS works to detect and understand the changes or irregularities in these processes.
VNUnet UK / IEEE Computer Jan 11, 2007	back to top