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Issue no. 4, 2007 Published: Feb 02, 2007
Blame for warming pinned on man
Chips push through nano-barrier
Adobe submits PDF as open standard
Microsoft releases ODF document converter
'Superlens' has its reach extended
Scientists unfold origami ultra-slim camera lens
Tiny engine boosts nanotech hopes
How about a bot for a boss?

Blame for warming pinned on man
Climatic changes seen around the world are 'very likely' to have a human cause, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded. The scientific body, in a report released in Paris today, forecasts temperatures will probably rise by between 1.8-4C by 2100. The report is intended to be the definitive summary of climate change science. The agency has said it would use stronger language to assess humanity's influence on climatic change than it had previously done. In 2001, it said that it was 'likely' that human activities lay behind the trends observed at various parts of the planet; 'likely' in IPCC terminology means between 66% and 90% probability. Now, the panel concludes, it is at least 90% certain that human emissions of greenhouse gases rather than natural variations are warming the planet's surface. The IPCC's full climate science report will be released later in the year, as will other chapters looking at the probable impacts of climate change, options for adapting to those impacts, and possible routes to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
BBC News Feb 02, 2007	back to top

Chips push through nano-barrier
The next milestone in the relentless pursuit of smaller, higher performance microchips has been unveiled. Chip-maker Intel has announced that it will start producing processors using transistors with features just 45 nanometres wide. Shrinking the technology that underpins the basic building blocks of chips will make them faster and more efficient. IBM has also signalled its intention to start production of microchips using the technology. IBM, which developed the technology with partners Toshiba, Sony and AMD, intends to incorporate the transistors into its chips in 2008. Intel said it would start commercial fabrication of processors at three factories later this year. The new Intel processors, codenamed Penryn, will pack more than four hundred million transistors into a chip half the size of a postage stamp. Like current processors, they will come in dual-core and quad-core versions, meaning they will have two or four separate processors on each chip. The company has not said how fast the new devices will run.
BBC News Jan 27, 2007	back to top

Adobe submits PDF as open standard
Adobe is preparing to submit its Portable Document Format (PDF) to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The process will ensure that third-party applications can support PDF documents in the future. Governments and enterprises increasingly demand such levels of openness from document formats to allow them to access archived materials. With a closed standard, they would have to rely on Adobe to keep developing and supporting applications that can read and edit older documents. Adobe has worked with the ISO since 1995 to create several subsets of the PDF as open standards, including PDF for Archive and PDF for Exchange. Other subsets such as PDF for Engineering and PDF for Universal Access are currently under review.
VNUnet UK Jan 30, 2007	back to top

Microsoft releases ODF document converter
A Microsoft-sponsored open-source project has released a translator today that converts file formats between MS Office and rival standard OpenDocument, or ODF. Microsoft started the project at SourceForge last year, relying on three partners to develop the code that lets a user open and save word processor documents in two different formats. The Microsoft format is called Office Open XML (OOXML), which is the default document format in the company's recently released Office 2007 suite. The other is ODF, which is backed by Microsoft competitors IBM, Sun Microsystems and Novell. The plug-in works with Microsoft's Word application, including the latest Office 2007 version as well the Office 2003 and Office XP editions, Microsoft said. Once installed, a person can open and save documents in the ODF format from Word. People can download the software, available under the open-source BSD license, for free from http://sourceforge.net.
ZDNet Feb 01, 2007	back to top

'Superlens' has its reach extended
A lens capable to resolving objects too small for of conventional optics has been dramatically improved by US researchers. It can now transmit ultra high-resolution images over much longer distances. Previously, the sensor used to capture an image had to be placed within nanometres of the lens. The researchers involved say it has potential for imaging manmade or biological structures so-far seen only using electron microscopes. The team from Berkeley University say the advance should make it easier to build so-called 'superlenses', which can image nanostructures never before resolved using visible light. The team improved their silver-film superlens by adding 35-nanometre-wide corrugations to its surface. These diffract light waves from an object's near-field, turning them into normal light waves. Their superlens was able to distinguish two wires positioned just 70 nm apart - a resolution nearly three times better than that of conventional optics. The team are currently using it to examine more complex nanoscale objects.
New Scientist Feb 01, 2007	back to top

Scientists unfold origami ultra-slim camera lens
Engineers have built an ultra-powerful yet ultra-thin digital camera by folding the telephoto lens in a way reminiscent of origami paper folding. The team at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) said that the technology could yield lightweight, ultra-thin, high-resolution cameras for a variety of uses including unmanned surveillance aircraft, mobile phones and infrared night vision. To reduce camera thickness but retain good light collection and high-resolution capabilities, the team replaced the traditional lens with a 'folded' optical system based on an extension of conventional astronomical telescopes that use mirrors. Instead of bending and focusing light as it passes through a series of separate mirrors and lenses, the new system bends and focuses light while it is reflected back and forth inside a single 5mm optical crystal. The light is focused as if it were moving.
VNUnet UK Jan 31, 2007	back to top

Tiny engine boosts nanotech hopes
Prototypes of microscopic engines that could power molecular machines have been brewed up by scientists at the University of Edinburgh. They have created a tiny engine powered by light that can be made to sort molecules. The device may one day find a role in nano-scale machines. It emerged from research into similar tiny machines in nature that power well known processes such as photosynthesis. The team have designed and built a molecule, known as a rotaxane, that can move and sort particles. It took three years of painstaking work to find a molecular form that could do this job. Conceptually the Rotaxane can be thought of as a barbell with a carefully positioned lump on the bar that can be made to act as a one-way 'gate' when light is shone on it. Because the rotaxane can be made to do useful work in a predictable fashion, i.e. sort particles, it could become a key component for anyone designing nano-scale devices.
BBC News / Nature Feb 01, 2007	back to top

How about a bot for a boss?
Robots have historically been accused of taking jobs away from humans, so a software bot that hands out tasks for people to carry out may make a refreshing change. Suggestbot, developed by researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, could help online communities such as Wikipedia and Slashdot distribute editing tasks. Such organisations rely on members to add and edit content but, as work piles up, it can be hard even for dedicated users to pick out appropriate tasks. Suggestbot links tasks with people's interests. It can comb through thousands of Wikipedia articles with a 'needs work' tag and compare them to the list of previously edited articles on a user's profile, looking for similar articles. To test if this could increase productivity, the team studied the work of 91 Wikipedia editors, who had collectively requested 3094 tasks. Two weeks after the tasks were handed out, just 1 per cent of randomly chosen articles had been edited, compared to 3.4 to 4.3 per cent of the articles selected by the intelligent task recommenders.
New Scientist Jan 31, 2007	back to top