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. 30, 2010 Published: Oct 01, 2010
Relativity with a human touch
European Union gets tough on broadband for all
Hawaii's great hydrogen fuel experiment
Tsunamis leave ionosphere all shook up
Levitating graphene is fastest-spinning object ever
Random numbers created out of nothing
'Space hotel' plan unveiled in Russia

Relativity with a human touch
In the famous twin paradox, a sibling who journeys in a fast-moving spacecraft will return home younger than the sibling who remained on Earth. While this apparent slowing of time occurs whenever a body is set in motion, it had been much too small to be detected for movement on a human scale. But now physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US have used two of the world's most accurate optical clocks, each based on just one aluminium ion, to see relativistic effects at speeds and distances on a human scale. The used two clocks that remain accurate to within one second in 3.7bn years to do their experiments. To observe the time dilation at the heart of the twin paradox, the team set one of the aluminium ions into a slow oscillatory motion by adjusting the electric fields used to trap it. The ion in the other clock remained more or less stationary and when the team compared the frequency of the clocks it found that time on the moving ion slowed by a factor of about 10-16 when its average speed was about 10 m/s (35 km/h). The team repeated its measurements at different speeds between 0 and 40 m/s and found that the time dilation occurred exactly as predicted by special relativity. The team then did a second experiment to try to see a consequence of Einstein's general theory of relativity called 'gravitational time dilation'. This occurs when one clock is elevated with respect to another and is therefore at a different value of Earth's gravitational potential energy. This effect was measured by first running the clocks at a vertical difference of 17 cm and then jacking one of the clocks up by 33 cm and running them again. This revealed a shift of about 4 × 10-17 in the frequencies of the clocks - in agreement with general relativity. In human terms, this time difference adds up to about 90 billionths of a second over an 80-year life span.
PhysicsWorld / Science Sep 24, 2010	back to top

European Union gets tough on broadband for all
The EU has announced a series of proposals aimed at encouraging the development of next-generation internet access as part of the Digital Agenda for Europe. The EU wants all citizens to have access to basic broadband by 2013, and ultra-fast broadband by 2020, and has put forward a number of proposals to make this happen. Telecoms operators and national regulatory authorities (NRAs) have been urged to work together to ensure that rollouts reach areas where market forces alone will not entice investment. The EU has also produced a policy document setting out a series of national government goals to help drive broadband deployment. The EU also insisted that regional and local authorities should reduce the town planning and regulatory costs of infrastructure deployments. The document revealed that the European Investment Bank has agreed to provide more funds for a greater range of broadband projects. Furthermore, the EU called for the wider deployment of wireless broadband to take advantage of technologies that will offer speeds well over the 30Mbit/s goal. This includes the Radio Spectrum Policy Programme, which sets out policy orientations and objectives for the planning and harmonisation of spectrum. Neelie Kroes, Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, said that the updates are vital to the development of the internet across the EU. 'These measures will help to ensure that Europeans get the first-class internet they expect and deserve, so that they can access the content and services they want,' she said.
VNUnet UK Sep 21, 2010	back to top

Hawaii's great hydrogen fuel experiment
The Hawaiian island of Oahu is far ahead of the rest of the US when it comes to ushering in a new era for climate-friendly transportation and energy infrastructure. The state's gas company recently teamed up with General Motors to set up an island-wide hydrogen fuel system by 2015, complete with fuel cell-powered cars and numerous fuelling stations. Hydrogen fuel is one of the more attractive energy alternatives to oil: it is abundant and it produces only water as waste. However, it requires infrastructure and large investments. Hawaii, however, provides an ideal location to test out the technology at a low cost. The island already has a steady supply of hydrogen which is produced as a byproduct of the state's natural gas production industry and is already pumping through the state utility pipeline. Reportedly Hawaii's Gas Corporation currently makes the hydrogen equivalent of 7,000 gasoline gallons per day which could power 15,000 fuel-cell vehicles. Doubling that production would require only minimal effort. The ready supply of hydrogen drops the production cost of each hydrogen fuel pumps from several million dollars down to $300,000-500,000. The goal is set up several fuelling stations along a densely populated stretch of roads encompassing Honolulu. These stations extract hydrogen from the utility pipeline and then separate out hydrogen protons and electrons. In isolation the electrons create electricity.
Discovery Channel / LA Times Sep 24, 2010	back to top

Tsunamis leave ionosphere all shook up
The signals of GPS satellites could be used to monitor tsunamis as they sweep across the ocean. In the most detailed study to date of the effect, scientists have shown that even though open ocean tsunami waves are only a few centimetres high, they are powerful enough to create atmospheric vibrations extending all the way to the ionosphere, 300 kilometres up in the atmosphere. The finding, the researchers hope, could hugely improve tsunami early-warning systems. A team of French geophysicists was able to use these ionospheric effects to trace the progress of three recent tsunamis. The researchers showed that the strength of the ionospheric effects increased with the height of the wave. During a tsunami, hundreds of square kilometres of ocean rise and fall, nearly in unison. This produces a rhythmic movement in the atmosphere, generating a vertically propagating wave known as an internal gravity wave. The thinning air causes the wave to spread out vertically and the air movements become larger. The collision of this wave with the ionosphere - an upper layer of the atmosphere in which incoming solar radiation has ionized atmospheric gases - compresses it by as much as 10%. That produces a corresponding change in the density of the ionosphere's free electrons. This change is enough to affect the signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites - making it appear on GPS receivers as if surface locations are fluctuating by a few centimetres, in rhythm with the passage of tsunami-induced waves through the upper atmosphere. By looking at data from GPS stations in Hawaii, the scientists were able to filter out other, localised, fluctuations in the ionosphere. And by looking at signals from GPS satellites in different locations, they were able to map the progress of the ionospheric electron 'wave' as it raced across the sky, about 10 minutes behind the tsunami.
Nature News / Geophysical Research Letters Sep 14, 2010	back to top

Levitating graphene is fastest-spinning object ever
A flake of exotic carbon a few atoms thick has claimed a record: the speck has been spun faster than any other object, at a clip of 60 million rotations per minute. Graphite is made of stacks of carbon sheets. Separate these, and the result is graphene, which shows a suite of novel properties, including incredible strength. Bruce Kane at the University of Maryland sprayed charged graphene flakes a micrometre wide into a vacuum chamber. Once there, oscillating electric fields trapped the flakes in mid-air. Kane then set them spinning using a light beam that is circularly polarised, meaning it passes its momentum to objects in its path. As a result, the flakes started spinning at 60 million rotations per minute, faster than any other macroscopic object. Previously, micrometre-sized crystals have been spun at up to 30,000 rpm using a different technology called an optical trap. It is thanks to graphene's amazing strength that the flakes are not pulled apart by the much higher spinning rate, Kane says. He adds that the graphene flakes are only spinning at a thousandth of their theoretical maximum rate, given graphene's estimated strength. By tweaking the experimental set-up, a graphene flake could potentially be spun even faster. Kane suggests that spinning could be a way to probe the properties of graphene, or manipulate it in new ways.
New Scientist / Physical Review B Sep 30, 2010	back to top

Random numbers created out of nothing
Algorithms can generate numbers that pass statistical tests for randomness, but they are useless for secure cryptography if the algorithm falls into the wrong hands. Other methods using entangled ions to generate random numbers are more reliable, but tend to be slower and more expensive. Now researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany have built a prototype that draws on a vacuum's random quantum fluctuations. These impart random noise to laser beams in the device, which converts it into numbers. The team sent a laser into a beam splitter, sheltered from external light sources. Without influence from the vacuum, the two emerging beams would have been identical. However, the lowest energy state of the electromagnetic field carries just enough energy to interact with the laser as it passes through the beam splitter. The exiting beams were captured in two detectors which turned the light into electronic signals, and the signals were subtracted from one another, leaving only the noise from the vacuum and electronics. The team used a mathematical function to tease out the truly random signal of the vacuum. Because they could calculate the total disorder in the system and the portion which comes from the vacuum, they were able to reduce the set of numbers so that the electronic contribution was eliminated and only a fully random string remained. Though reduced, the stream of bits comes at speedy 6.5m per second. This is already in line with the speed of commercially available quantum random number generators, say the researchers, but they hope to achieve rates more than 30 times higher.
New Scientist / Nature Photonics Sep 30, 2010	back to top

'Space hotel' plan unveiled in Russia
A Russian company has unveiled an ambitious plan to launch a 'cosmic hotel' for wealthy space tourists. Orbital Technologies says its 'comfortable' four-room guest house could be in orbit by 2016. Guests would be ferried to the hotel on a Soyuz shuttle of the type used to transport cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Up until now space tourists have squeezed into the cramped ISS, alongside astronauts and their experiments. The new hotel would offer greater comforts, according to Orbital Technologies. The hotel would follow the same orbit as the ISS. The first module would have four cabins, designed for up to seven passengers, who would be packed into a space of 20 cubic metres. It is not clear how the 'cosmic hotel' would be built, but the company's website names Energia, Russia's state-controlled spacecraft manufacturer, as the project's general contractor. Energia builds the Soyuz capsules and Progress cargo ships which deliver crew and supplies to the ISS. The project has Russian and US investors, the company says.
BBC News Sep 30, 2010	back to top