Advances in Computers thread

[ScienceRocks]

SanDisk breaks out 128 GB microSDXC card

SanDisk breaks out 128 GB microSDXC card

If your mobile smart device is as much of an entertainment hub or recorder of high resolution photo, video and audio as mine, then you'll likely find your onboard memory and microSD card storage filling up rather quickly. SanDisk has chosen the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, to announce some storage anxiety relief in the shape of the world’s largest capacity microSD card.

The new 128 GB addition to its Ultra microSDXC UHS-I memory card range has been designed for Android smartphones and tablets. It features 16 layers of vertically-stacked memory die, each said to be thinner than a human hair and boasts some rugged credentials, including being water-, temperature-, X-ray-, magnet-, and shockproof.

 

[william the wie]

We are well on our way to Eta drives being standard on desktops as well.

 

[ScienceRocks]

New magnetic material could boost electronics

BBC News - New magnetic material could boost electronics

A highly sensitive magnetic material that could transform computer hard drives and energy storage devices has been discovered.

The metal bilayer needs only a small shift in temperature to dramatically alter its magnetism - a tremendously useful property in electronic engineering.

"No other material known to man can do this. It's a huge effect. And we can engineer it," said Ivan Schuller, of the University of California, San Diego.

He presented his findings at the American Physical Society meeting in Denver.

The material combines thin layers of nickel and vanadium oxide, creating a structure that is surprisingly responsive to heat.

"We can control the magnetism in just a narrow range of temperature - without applying a magnetic field. And in principle we could also control it with voltage or current," said Prof Schuller.

 

[ScienceRocks]

D-Wave chip passes rigorous tests
D-Wave chip passes rigorous tests

With cutting-edge technology, sometimes the first step scientists face is just making sure it actually works as intended.

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering is home to the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC), a super-cooled, magnetically shielded facility specially built to house the first commercially available quantum computing processors – devices so advanced that there are only two in use outside the Canadian lab where they were built: The first one went to USC and Lockheed Martin, and the second to NASA and Google.

Since USC's facility opened in October 2011, a key task for researchers has been to determine whether D-Wave processors operate as hoped – using the special laws of quantum mechanics to offer potentially higher-speed processing, instead of operating in a classical, traditional way.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Wello iPhone case tracks heart rate, temperature, ECG, lung functions, plus blood pressure & oxygen levels

Health monitoring start-up Azoi has announced the availability of a significant product in the form of the Wello, a thin lightweight smartphone case embedded with sensors that measures blood pressure, electrocardiography (ECG), heart rate, blood oxygen, temperature, and lung functions to a high level of accuracy. The US$199 Wello case will be initially available for iPhone 4S, 5 and 5S, but for those who don’t have one of those phones, the case will still work with any IOS or android device which has Bluetooth LE functionality – you just won’t be able to use the case on your phone.

Wello iPhone case tracks heart rate, temperature, ECG, lung functions, plus blood pressure & oxygen levels

 

[ScienceRocks]

Samsung's own smart glasses could put AR keyboard on your fingers

As good as Google Glass's voice recognition is, it's prone to failure, especially in noisy situations. Nothing beats a good keyboard or keypad. A Samsung patent filed in August of last year, but just made public, could solve the problem of typing for smart glasses.

Thanks to science fiction, we've all got this idea that anything that's projected — holograms, screens, or whatever — is futuristic. While infrared-projected keyboards have existed for years, they've been banished to basements for a simple reason: they're terrible.

Samsung's own smart glasses could put AR keyboard on your fingers | DVICE

 

[ScienceRocks]

New research could help make 'roll-up' digital screens a reality for all

2 hours ago

A study, published today in Nature's Scientific Reports identifies a new technology which could see flexible electronics such as roll-up tablet computers, widely available in the near future. So far, this area of electronic design has been hampered by unreliability and complexity of production.

Researchers from the University of Surrey worked together with scientists from Philips to further develop the 'Source-Gated-Transistor' (SGT) - a simple circuit component invented jointly by the teams.

Previously, they found that the component could be applied to many electronic designs of an analog nature, such as display screens. Through this current study, researchers have now shown that SGTs can also be applied to next-generation digital circuits.
quasicrystalline
SGTs control the electric current as it enters a semiconductor, which decreases the odds of circuit malfunction, improves energy efficiency and keeps fabrication costs to a minimum. These properties make SGTs ideal for next-generation electronic devices, and could enable digital technologies to be incorporated into those built using flexible plastics or clothing textiles.

New research could help make 'roll-up' digital screens a reality for all

 

[ScienceRocks]

Microsoft's Illumiroom lives on as 3D browser with immersive 'web rooms'

Microsoft's Illumiroom lives on as 3D browser with immersive 'web rooms' | DVICE

Google isn't the only one working on futuristic ways to experience the web. A year ago, Microsoft revealed the Illumiroom concept, a projection system that uses Kinect to blur the virtual and physical world by extending content on a room's walls. The project never made it out of the prototype stage due to expensive costs, but we now know Microsoft hasn't scrapped it.

In fact, new details have emerged showing how Illumiroom's technology can be used to present web content in new immersive "web rooms." The premise of Microsoft's SurroundWeb 3D browser is still the same: there is a main display (HDTV) and additional information spills off onto its surround walls using projectors with sophisticated room rendering, object detection and natural user interfaces.

 

[Politico]

And still media center does not work.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Viewer interface for TV layers Web content for context

Viewer interface for TV layers Web content for context

(Phys.org) —In past years, the television was less fondly called the idiot box. Today the TV is more fondly being promoted as a potential informationalized box, signified by technology offered by a new device appearing on Kickstarter called InAiR. This is a piece of hardware that is made to serve as a viewer interface for the TV, whether you are watching on a 3DTV or 2DTV, pulling up relevant content from the Web and displaying it inline. The InAiR gadget comes in the form of a smart HDMI adaptor plugged into the TV and set top box. You could be getting a screen display of a space exploration event augmented by a supplementary sidebar from NASA or you could be viewing a global sporting competition supplemented by detailed data from an online site. The makers of InAiR, SeeSpace, are noting that with this device there is no more neck-straining in second screen viewing required, where the viewer looks up and down between laptop and TV screen, to see and learn. SeeSpace is referring to the device as delivering "augmented television." Viewers navigate information feeds with a single viewing experience.

 

[ScienceRocks]

EyeGo adapters let you perform eye exams with a smartphone

EyeGo adapters let you perform eye exams with a smartphone

When it comes to thoroughly assessing the condition of someone's eyes, it's usually necessary to utilize large, expensive contraptions such as those found in an ophthalmologist's office. While that's OK in some situations, physicians in rural areas or developing nations might not have access to such technology. Additionally, emergency room personnel typically need information on-the-spot, ASAP. That's why two scientists from Stanford University have created the EyeGo system, which allows smartphones to do the job.

Developed by assistant professor of ophthalmology Dr. Robert Chang and ophthalmology resident Dr. David Myung, the system consists of two adapters that are simply added to an existing smartphone camera – one of them gets shots of the front surface of the eye, while the other focuses light through the pupil to get pics of the retina, along the back of the eye.

According to the university, EyeGo is designed to "make it easy for anyone with minimal training to take a picture of the eye and share it securely with other health practitioners or store it in the patient’s electronic record."

 

[ScienceRocks]

World's first Passive House-certified pet door unveiled at Ecobuild 2014

World's first Passive House-certified pet door unveiled at Ecobuild 2014

Of the many new gadgets to help you go green that were on offer at London's Ecobuild 2014 last week, one of the standout innovations was from Petwalk. The company's new, highly-insulated, automated pet door lets pets move in and out of the house at will, without squeezing through small openings or knocking on a plastic flap. It opens and closes electronically without being pushed open by a dog or cat, or by anyone else. Once closed, the doors form a draught-free seal that conforms to Passive House standards for thermal exclusion. Petwalk also offers a range of sophisticated extras.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Sony and Panasonic announce successor to Blu-ray

During the last generation of video gaming, Sony added Blu-ray technology to its PlayStation 3. This resulted in games with more realistic graphics, unlike anything we’d seen before. Now, Sony, along with Panasonic, are hoping to make that experience even better, by announcing the successor to Blu-ray, called Archival Disc. Each Archival Disc will hold up to 1TB of data.

Now that most consumers are storing more of their data in the cloud, optical discs are becoming obsolete. We have our music on our phones. We keep our important documents in the cloud. And flash drives are an inexpensive and hassle-free way to carry other data. Although some video games have even moved to the cloud, their large file sizes make them more difficult to store and play that way, and that’s where Archival Disc will come in handy.

Archival Disc allows video games to have even more detail and more lifelike graphics. The extra storage would allow game developers to get as realistic as they want to, without needing to sacrifice details due to file sizes. Gamers benefit and everyone wins: we get games that look better than ever. These discs could also be used for game streaming services (like Sony’s upcoming Playstation Now). These new discs would make storing game data inexpensive and easy.

Sony and Panasonic announce successor to Blu-ray | DVICE

 

[ScienceRocks]

NVIDIA launches all new GeForce 800M notebook graphics

NVIDIA launches all new GeForce 800M notebook graphics

NVIDIA has announced an update to its entire range of laptop graphics solutions. Known as the GeForce 800M line, the new GPUs provide a significant performance boost over the 700M series cards, and offer a range of new, built-in functionality.

Though the company has yet to provide specifics, the new GPUs offer between 30 and 60 percent more performance than their 700M counterparts, making them a significant upgrade over their predecessors.

In addition to the increased performance, the line also provides some new features. The first of these is a battery saving technique known as Battery Boost, that throttles the system’s hardware to achieve a user defined frame rate target. The company claims that by not constantly running the machine’s CPU, GPU and memory at full tilt while gaming, the new feature can provide “up to double the gaming battery life, automatically.”

 

[ScienceRocks]

Flexible carbon nanotube circuits made more reliable, power efficient

12 minutes ago

Engineers would love to create flexible electronic devices, such as e-readers that could be folded to fit into a pocket. One approach they are trying involves designing circuits based on electronic fibers, known as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), instead of rigid silicon chips.

But reliability is essential. Most silicon chips are based on a type of circuit design that allows them to function flawlessly even when the device experiences power fluctuations. However, it is much more challenging to do so with CNT circuits.

Now a team at Stanford has developed a process to create flexible chips that can tolerate power fluctuations in much the same way as silicon circuitry.

"This is the first time anyone has designed a flexible CNT circuits that have both high immunity to electrical noise and low power consumption, " said Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford with a courtesy appointment in Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering.

http://phys.org/news/2014-03-stanford-flexible-carbon-nanotube-circuits.html

 

[ScienceRocks]

Entangling the atoms in an optical lattice for quantum computation
7 hours ago

Entangling the atoms in an optical lattice for quantum computation

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone has proposed a method for generating a large-scale entangled quantum state of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice with high fidelity and short operation time, which becomes a resource for quantum computers. This result solves important problems toward the realization of a quantum computer, such as scalability of quantum bits and error reduction. This result paves the way for realizing a million-bit-scale quantum computing.

The research will be published online in Physical Review Letters on March 17, 2014, and was supported in part by Japan Science and Technology Agency, CREST.

The biggest challenges for realizing a quantum computer (Fig. 1 ) are obtaining a scalability of quantum bits and decreasing the errors. An optical lattice is a good candidate for solving these problems. In an optical lattice (Fig. 2 ), a single atom can be periodically confined in each site of the lattice with a distance of about light wavelength (< 1 &#956;m). Compared to other physical systems, an optical lattice promises to store many atoms in a very small volume and in a highly ordered manner, where atoms can serve as uniform and ideal quantum bits. An optical lattice clock (Fig. 3 ) is a promising application of this technology and has already been experimentally demonstrated. A special large-scale entangled quantum state (Fig. 4 ) among huge number of atoms can realize measurement-based quantum computation through individual atom measurements, which are more simple operations compared to quantum gates (Fig. 5 ). An optical lattice can compactly array many atoms, but no method has been established that can generate a large-scale entangled quantum state with high fidelity and short operation time, which are necessary for the realization of a quantum computer.

 

[Uncensored2008]

NVIDIA launches all new GeForce 800M notebook graphics

NVIDIA launches all new GeForce 800M notebook graphics

NVIDIA has announced an update to its entire range of laptop graphics solutions. Known as the GeForce 800M line, the new GPUs provide a significant performance boost over the 700M series cards, and offer a range of new, built-in functionality.

Though the company has yet to provide specifics, the new GPUs offer between 30 and 60 percent more performance than their 700M counterparts, making them a significant upgrade over their predecessors.

In addition to the increased performance, the line also provides some new features. The first of these is a battery saving technique known as Battery Boost, that throttles the system’s hardware to achieve a user defined frame rate target. The company claims that by not constantly running the machine’s CPU, GPU and memory at full tilt while gaming, the new feature can provide “up to double the gaming battery life, automatically.”

Are they FINALLY going to catch up to AMD in the mobility space?

We will see! Power consumption is always the issue with an Nvidia card, leaving them to put low performers in notebooks in an attempt to save power.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Experiment opens the door to multi-party quantum communication

4 hours ago

In the world of quantum science, Alice and Bob have been talking to one another for years. Charlie joined the conversation a few years ago, but now with spacelike separation, scientists have measured that their communication occurs faster than the speed of light.

For the first time, physicists at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo have demonstrated the distribution of three entangled photons at three different locations (Alice, Bob and Charlie) several hundreds of metres apart, proving quantum nonlocality for more than two entangled photons.

The findings of the experiment, Experimental Three-Particle Quantum Nonlocality under Strict Locality Conditions, are published in Nature Photonics today.

Once described by Einstein as "spooky action at a distance", this three-photon entanglement leads to interesting possibilities for multi-party quantum communication.

Experiment opens the door to multi-party quantum communication

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Experiment opens the door to multi-party quantum communication

4 hours ago

In the world of quantum science, Alice and Bob have been talking to one another for years. Charlie joined the conversation a few years ago, but now with spacelike separation, scientists have measured that their communication occurs faster than the speed of light.

For the first time, physicists at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo have demonstrated the distribution of three entangled photons at three different locations (Alice, Bob and Charlie) several hundreds of metres apart, proving quantum nonlocality for more than two entangled photons.

The findings of the experiment, Experimental Three-Particle Quantum Nonlocality under Strict Locality Conditions, are published in Nature Photonics today.

Once described by Einstein as "spooky action at a distance", this three-photon entanglement leads to interesting possibilities for multi-party quantum communication.

Experiment opens the door to multi-party quantum communication

Unfortunately no. Quantum entanglement doesn't allow for transmission of information as with communications. Whatever's going on functions as though the information's travelling faster than light, but sending real information would still be limited to c. According to our current understanding anyway.

Thinking of Star Trek's 'subspace communication' system though, if warp drive is ever demonstrated, I'd assume the first example would involve faster than light communication since presumedly compressing local timespace would be easier if only enough to enable a transmission of information through as opposed to big space vehicle.

Or perhaps the hypothetical tachyons which we think exceed c are somehow warping space naturally to make it seem like they're travelling faster than light, when in fact they're just warping their local spacetime?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Forget wearable tech, embeddable implants are already here