Issue no. 12, 2007
Published: Mar 30, 2007 |
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 Denmark tops global technology ranking |
| Portugal opens major solar plant |
| Intel researchers showcase rural Wi-Fi |
| IBM researchers claim 160Gbps data transfer |
| Mobile phones could soon be powered by sugar |
| Struts connected in triangles make materials 'shrink' when heated |
| Light seems to pass through solid metal |
| Nanotechnology reveals hidden fingerprints |
| Invention: Brain decoder |
| Why the Greeks could hear plays from the back row |
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| Denmark tops global technology ranking |
Denmark leads the world in information technology, outranking last
year's top-seated Singapore and seeming leader the US. That was the
conclusion reached by the World Economic Forum in its latest annual
survey of global information technology.
The forum said that in light of its regulatory environment and clear
government leadership as well as actual use of technology, Denmark was
best-equipped in making full use of information technology, followed by
Sweden, while Singapore came in third. Other countries listed in the top
10 are: Finland (4), Switzerland (5), the Netherlands (6), USA (7),
Iceland (8), UK (9) and Norway (10)
Germany ranked in at 16, while electronics-exporting giant Japan came in
at 14. Among the Middle Eastern countries, Israel took the lead at 18th
place, while Chile was the first among Latin American nations at 31. At
the bottom of the list, ranked 122, was Chad. |
| World Economic Forum
Mar 28, 2007 |
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| Portugal opens major solar plant |
Portugal has inaugurated what it says is the world's most powerful solar
power plant. The array of electricity-generating solar panels covers
about 60 hectares in one of Europe's sunniest areas in southern
Portugal. Officials say the plant should produce enough energy to supply
8,000 homes.
The plant is part of Portugal's efforts to cut its reliance on imported
fuel and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that add to global
warming. The plant is also meant to bring development and jobs to the
Alentejo region 200km southeast of Lisbon, a poor area traditionally
dominated by cork and olive production.
The 11-megawatt plant has 52,000 photovoltaic modules, which will
produce 20 gigawatt hours of power each year. Burning fossil fuels to
generate the same amount of energy would result in 30,000 tons of
greenhouse gases being emitted over the course of a year. Prime Minister
Jose Socrates has said he wants 45% of Portugal's power consumption to
come from renewable energy by 2010. |
| BBC News
Mar 28, 2007 |
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| Intel researchers showcase rural Wi-Fi |
Researchers from Intel are cooperating with students from the University
of California at Berkeley to find new ways of bringing the internet to
developing countries. They are working on a number of ways to expand the
internet beyond the industrialised world to the 5.5 billion people on
the planet who are unable to access the web.
It is very expensive to get connectivity to remote and sparsely
populated areas in developing countries using traditional wire-lines. To
solve this problem, the research teams have developed a number of
wireless systems designed to relay signals over wide expanses of land.
One of those projects is the Rural Communications Platform which uses a
system of wireless relay stations with ranges of up to 100km to 'daisy
chain' wireless connections over long distances. To achieve this, the
researchers had to develop an entirely new wireless protocol optimised
for remote locations. |
| VNUnet UK
Mar 26, 2007 |
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| IBM researchers claim 160Gbps data transfer |
IBM scientists are preparing to reveal a prototype optical transceiver
chipset which they claim is capable of boosting data speeds by a factor
of eight. With a potential transfer speed of 160Gbps the transceiver is
fast enough to reduce the download time for a typical high-definition
feature-length film from 30 minutes or more to a single second.
Optical networking offers the potential to dramatically improve data
transfer rates by speeding the flow of data using light pulses instead
of sending electrons over wires. As the amount of data transmitted over
networks continues to grow, researchers have been looking for ways to
make the use of optical signals more practical. The ability to use these
signals could offer previously unheard of amounts of bandwidth and
enhanced signal fidelity compared to current electrical data links.
By shrinking and integrating the components into one package, and
building them with standard low-cost, high-volume chip manufacturing
techniques, IBM claims that it is making optical connectivity viable for
widespread use. To achieve this new level of integration in the chipset,
IBM researchers built an optical transceiver with driver and receiver
integrated circuits in current CMOS technology. The researchers then
coupled the transceiver with other necessary optical components into a
single integrated package only 3.25mm by 5.25mm in size. |
| VNUnet UK
Mar 27, 2007 |
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| Mobile phones could soon be powered by sugar |
Scientists at St Louis University in Missouri have developed a battery
that can run from soft drinks. One of the first uses for the fuel-cell
battery, powered by almost any type of sugar, could be as a portable
mobile phone charger.
The device would contain special cartridges filled with a sugar solution
which could be replaced when they were empty. The researchers believe
their idea could eventually replace lithium in batteries in many
portable electronic applications, including computers.
The biodegradable battery contains enzymes that convert fuel - in this
case, from sugar - into electricity, leaving behind water as a main
by-product. The team have used glucose, flat fizzy drinks, sweetened
drink mixes and tree sap, but the best fuel source they have found so
far is simple table sugar dissolved in water. The battery could be ready
for consumers in three to five years, while the US military is
interested in using it to charge equipment on battlefields. |
| Scotsman
Mar 27, 2007 |
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| Struts connected in triangles make materials 'shrink' when heated |
Structures that respond to rising temperature by moving in a carefully
controlled manner are being developed by scientists at the University of
Malta in Msida.
The material contains a frameworks of struts, which each respond
differently to heat. The scientists developed computer models to predict
how the struts' arrangement would alter the overall shape when the
temperature rises - in certain configurations it actually shrinks in one
direction. The same effect should work at any scale, the researchers
say, and could be used to control the impact of thermal expansion in
anything from bridges to fuel cells.
Materials expand when heated since energy makes their atoms move around
more, thus lengthening the bonds between them. Now the team have shown
that the way this affects the shape of a structure can be controlled.
They constructed triangular arrangements of struts, made from materials
that change volume differently in response to temperate, connected by
rotating joints. When heated, the struts respond differently, making the
overall structure shrink in one direction. |
| New Scientist / Proceedings of the Royal Society
Mar 29, 2007 |
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| Light seems to pass through solid metal |
Researchers at the University of Utah directing a special type of light
at metal poked with holes in irregular patterns recently discovered that
all the light behaved like a liquid and fell across the metal to find
its way through the escape holes.
Imagine shining a flashlight at your kitchen colander. While some of the
light from the flashlight will travel through its holes, the solid part
of the colander will keep much of the light from shining through. In
contrast, the researchers' experiments demonstrated that terahertz
radiation - a low-frequency light on the electromagnetic spectrum
located between microwaves and mid-infrared regions - travelled around a
thin sheet of metal, through patterned holes, and all of it came out the
other side. Experts sometimes refer to this radiation as T-rays.
The researchers have high hopes for applications of terahertz radiation
in wireless communication and homeland security operations. Today, much
of the low-frequency electromagnetic spectrum is crowded with
communication and broadcasting signals. Terahertz is unchartered,
promising territory to open up more space for transmitting data at high
speeds. Also, since many everyday materials, such as clothing, plastics
and wood look transparent under terahertz imaging, the technology could
be used to spot concealed bombs and other explosive devices. |
| MSNBC / Nature
Mar 28, 2007 |
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| Nanotechnology reveals hidden fingerprints |
The standard way of revealing hidden fingerprints on wet, porous
surfaces, such as paper and cardboard, involves coating the surfaces
with an aqueous suspension of gold nanoparticles and citrate ions.
Under acidic conditions, the gold particles adhere to the positively
charged particles from fatty residues in the fingerprint. The print is
then developed using silver physical developer (Ag-PD), which reacts
chemically to create a black silver precipitate along the fingermark
ridges. This process is based on an electroless deposition reaction, in
which Fe2+ ions reduce the Ag+ ions to metallic silver - a reaction that
is catalysed by the fatty components of fingermark material. However,
the developing solution used in this technique is unstable and results
are difficult to reproduce.
Now, researchers at the Hebrew University in Israel have developed a
more stable solution by dissolving the gold nanoparticles in petroleum
ether, capped with different hydrocarbon chains, known as thiols. The
gold nanoparticles adhere to the fingermark residue and then catalyse
the precipitation of metallic silver from the Ag-PD solution. The prints
produced are very high quality and can be developed after just three
minutes. |
| Nantechweb / Chemical Communications
Mar 22, 2007 |
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| Invention: Brain decoder |
One of the great challenges for neuroscientists is to understand the
code the brain uses to send information along neurons. Researchers at
Brown University on Rhode Island have now come up with a device that may
help to tackle the mystery.
The machine works by measuring the signals produced by primary motor
cortex - the part of the brain responsible for hand-eye co-ordination. A
computer then attempts to reproduce this signal, which is used to
stimulate the movement in a primate limb.
By minimising the difference between the original signal and the
artificial one and by comparing the difference in the effects these two
signals have on limb movement, the researchers hope to decrypt the
neuronal code used by the brain to control muscle movement. The
researchers say same signal-processing techniques could eventually be
used to control artificial limbs, wheelchairs and even speech
synthesisers. |
| New Scientist
Mar 26, 2007 |
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| Why the Greeks could hear plays from the back row |
The wonderful acoustics for which the ancient Greek theatre of Epidaurus
is renowned may come from exploiting complex acoustic physics, new
research shows.
The theatre, discovered on the Peloponnese peninsula in 1881 has the
classic semicircular shape of a Greek amphitheatre, with 34 rows of
stone seats, to which the Romans added a further 21. Its acoustics are
extraordinary: a performer standing on the open-air stage can be heard
in the back rows almost 60 metres away. Architects and archaeologists
have long speculated about what makes the sound transmit so well.
Now researchers of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta say
that the key is the arrangement of the stepped rows of seats. They
calculate that this structure is perfectly shaped to act as an acoustic
filter, suppressing low-frequency sound - the major component of
background noise - while passing on the high frequencies of performers'
voices. |
| Nature
Mar 23, 2007 |
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