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Issue no. 35, 2009
Published: Oct 23, 2009 |
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 EU research programme weighed up and found wanting | | Laser microscope aims to uncover alien life | | Light switch could boost network speeds | | Enter the yoctosecond | | A terabyte on the tip of your finger | | Algae may be secret weapon in climate change war |
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| EU research programme weighed up and found wanting |
The EU's last research programme, worth EUR 17.5bn, failed to meet some
of its main goals, a new report finds. One of the programme's main
objectives of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), which ran from
2002-2006, was to counter the fragmentation of research by creating
large multinational research and technology collaborations in fields
considered to be most relevant to society.
But the report published last week by the European Court of Auditors, a
group that reviews EU finances, concludes that this goal was poorly
achieved. The auditors say that most research partnerships, which
require cumbersome contract negotiations to bring together, disintegrate
as soon as EU funding runs out - and do not secure further funding from
other sources as was hoped. And mainly as a result of the red tape
involved, the participation of small businesses in the networks stayed
5% short of the envisaged 15% target.
The average funding for each of the 167 'Networks of Excellence' and
almost 700 'Integrated Projects' - the two types of large research
collaborations which together accounted for almost half of the overall
FP6 budget - were, respectively, EUR 7m and EUR 9.5m. But the auditors,
who visited 36 project coordinators and held roundtable discussions with
44 organisations that had participated in FP6, say that EU-funding
failed to stimulate much additional research expenditure by private
businesses. As a result, the programme contributed little to the 'Lisbon
target' of raising total research expenditure in the region to 3% of
gross domestic product by 2010. |
| Nature
Oct 15, 2009 |
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| Laser microscope aims to uncover alien life |
Microscopes revolutionised the study of life on Earth. Now a rugged,
easy-to-use instrument is aiming to be equally influential in the search
for alien life in locations such as the oceans beneath the icy surface
of Jupiter's moon Europa.
The hunt for signs of extraterrestrial life usually focuses on detecting
molecules associated with living organisms. Direct observation through
optical imaging would be more conclusive, so researchers at Dalhousie
University in Halifax, Canada, have built a robust microscope that can
be dunked into water to detect any microscopic life forms that may be
swimming or floating there.
Called the digital inline holographic microscope, it consists of a pair
of watertight compartments separated by a chamber into which water can
flow. One compartment contains a blue laser that is focused onto a
pinhole-sized window facing into the water. Opposite the pinhole, in the
second compartment, is a digital camera. As the laser light hits the
pinhole, it generates a spherical light wave that spreads out through
the water. If it hits a microscopic object further diffraction occurs.
The spherical wave and the diffraction pattern created by the
microscopic object interfere to create a pattern that is captured by the
camera.
An algorithm can reconstruct the objects that created the interference
pattern within milliseconds. In this way the camera can produce
real-time images of any object in the water if they are larger than
about 100 nanometres across. |
| New Scientist
Oct 22, 2009 |
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| Light switch could boost network speeds |
A new breed of optical switch could vastly increase internet data
speeds. The high-speed backbone of the internet is based on networks of
glass optical fibres. But this is too fragile and expensive to install
in the small distances between local exchanges and the home - the
so-called last mile, where connections running over copper wires
persist. A cheaper alternative is to use plastic optical fibre (POF),
but this has been unable to transmit data with the kind of speeds that
would make it worth replacing copper. That may soon change.
In recent years, POF with a bandwidth of 1 gigabit per second over 100
metres has been demonstrated. Now Polycom, an EU-funded collaboration
between researchers across Europe, has shown how to squeeze more data
into a POF, bringing it a step closer to the market.
Polycom has produced an all-optical switch within a POF that can turn an
optical signal on and off on in a matter of femtoseconds. Using an array
of these switches it is possible to introduce a technique called time
division multiplexing, in which two or more data streams are divided
into small chunks of short duration before the various segments are
interleaved together and sent down the same fibre. The new switch can be
turned on and off so precisely that it could help separate out the time
chunks belonging to a specific data stream, and recombine them. |
| New Scientist
Oct 21, 2009 |
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| Enter the yoctosecond |
Light pulses emitted by an exotic state of matter known as a quark-gluon
plasma last for just a few yoctoseconds - according to calculations by
physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg
in Germany. One yoctosecond is one trillionth of a trillionth of a
second (10-24 s) and is comparable to the time it takes light to cross
an atomic nucleus. The researchers say that such pulses could be used to
study the ultrafast processes taking place inside nuclei.
Their approach uses the light emitted by a quark-gluon plasma, a soup of
free quarks and gluons, the force carriers that normally bind quarks
together inside protons and neutrons. This state of matter is believed
not to have existed naturally since the universe was just a millionth of
a second old but can be recreated by smashing heavy ions into one
another at extremely high energies inside particle accelerators.
The researchers argue that a quark-gluon plasma naturally generates
extremely brief photon pulses as it cools down. The plasma is initially
very hot but then cools rapidly as it expands to about the size of a
nucleus, at which point it turns back into normal matter. High-energy
photons can only be emitted by the hot plasma itself and not the
resulting normal matter, which means that pulses of such high-energy
photons cannot last for longer than the lifetime of the plasma itself -
which is just a few yoctoseconds. The trick is to simply focus on these
photons, rather than those with a lower energy. |
| PhysicsWorld / Physical Review Letters
Oct 16, 2009 |
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| A terabyte on the tip of your finger |
Engineers at North Carolina State University have created a new
fingernail-sized chip that can hold a terabyte of data - 50 times the
capacity of today's best silicon-based chip technologies.
The team made their breakthrough using the process of selective doping,
in which an impurity is added to a material that changes its properties.
Working at the nano-scale level, the engineers added metal nickel to
magnesium oxide, a ceramic. The resulting material contained clusters of
nickel atoms no bigger than 10 square nanometres. The discovery
represents a 90% size reduction compared to today's techniques and an
advancement that could boost computer storage capacity.
The process also shows promise for boosting vehicles' fuel economy and
reducing heat produced by semiconductors, a potentially important
development for more efficient energy production. |
| InfoWorld
Oct 21, 2009 |
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| Algae may be secret weapon in climate change war |
Driven by fluctuations in oil prices, and seduced by the prospect of
easing climate change, experts are ramping up efforts to squeeze fuel
out of a promising new organism: pond scum. As it turns out, algae is
gaining ground as a potential renewable energy source.
Experts say it is intriguing for its ability to gobble up the greenhouse
gas CO2 while living in places that are not needed for food crops. Algae
likes mosquito-infested swamps, for example, filthy pools, and even
waste water. And while no one has found a way to mass produce cheap fuel
from algae yet, the race is on.
University labs and start-up companies are getting involved. Over the
summer, the first mega-corporation joined in, when ExxonMobil said it
would invest USD 600m into algae research in a partnership with a
California biotechnology company.
If the research pans out, scientists say they will eventually find a
cost-effective way to convert lipids from algae ponds into fuel, then
pump it into cars, trucks and jets. |
| Physorg / AFP
Oct 22, 2009 |
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