General science advances thread

[ScienceRocks]

This radical discovery could turn semiconductor manufacture inside out

How to "grow" self-assembling semiconductors, atomic layer by atomic layer

Article | November 30, 2012 - 11:37am

A completely new method of manufacturing the smallest structures in electronics could make their manufacture thousands of times quicker, allowing for cheaper semiconductors.

Instead of starting from a silicon wafer or other substrate, the idea is to grow gallium arsenide semiconductor structures from freely suspended nanoparticles of gold in a flowing gas. Semiconductor nanowires are key building blocks for the next generation of light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and batteries, according to Lund University researchers.

This radical discovery could turn semiconductor manufacture inside out | ZeitNews

 

[ScienceRocks]

Plastic bulb development promises better quality light
By Matt McGrath



BBC News - Plastic bulb development promises better quality light

New light bulb to last 23 years

US researchers say they have developed a new type of lighting that could replace fluorescent bulbs.

The new source is made from layers of plastic and is said to be more efficient while producing a better quality of flicker-free light.

The scientists behind it say they believe the first units will be produced in 2013.


Light not heat

Another step forward has been organic LEDs (OLEDs) which also promise greater efficiency and better light than older, incandescent bulbs. Their big advantage over LEDs is that they can be transformed into many different shapes including the screens for high-definition televisions.

But Prof Carroll believes OLED lights haven't lived up to the hype.

"They don't last very long and they're not very bright," he said. "There's a limit to how much brightness you can get out of them. If you run too much current through them they melt."

The Fipel bulb, he says, overcomes all these problems.

"What we've found is a way of creating light rather than heat. Our devices contain no mercury, they contain no caustic chemicals and they don't break as they are not made of glass."

Prof Carroll says his new bulb is cheap to make and he has a "corporate partner" interested in manufacturing the device. He believes the first production runs will take place in 2013.

He also has great faith in the ability of the new bulbs to last. He says he has one in his lab that has been working for about a decade

 

[ScienceRocks]

Apple files patent for magnetic wireless charging - no contact required

Charges devices up to 1 meter away


http://www.techradar...equired-1117194

Time to unplug?

The next iPhone may have a wireless charging system, if a recently published patent by Apple is any indication.
And while there are other phones with wireless charging capabilities, like the Nokia Lumia 920, what Apple's aiming for is a little different.
The patent covers "various embodiments of a wirelessly powered local computer environment." It uses a near field magnetic resonance (NFMR) to wirelessly charge devices up to 1 meter away. That's right - no contact required.
The patent was filed November 2010, but was published just a few days ago.

I wish we could run something 200 feet away one day. Telsa may of been right. Fuck, Imagine no wires running into your home and everything is running wirelessly.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Nature Materials Study: Boosting Heat Transfer With Nanoglue

Interdisciplinary Study From Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Demonstrates New Method for Significantly Increasing Heat Transfer Rate Across Two Different Materials

A team of interdisciplinary researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a new method for significantly increasing the heat transfer rate across two different materials. Results of the team’s study, published in the journal Nature Materials, could enable new advances in cooling computer chips and lighting-emitting diode (LED) devices, collecting solar power, harvesting waste heat, and other applications.

By sandwiching a layer of ultrathin “nanoglue” between copper and silica, the research team demonstrated a four-fold increase in thermal conductance at the interface between the two materials.

Nature Materials Study: Boosting Heat Transfer With Nanoglue | ZeitNews

 

[ScienceRocks]

Flexible silicon solar-cell fabrics may soon become possible
December 6, 2012 by Katrina Voss

For the first time, a silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities has been developed that has been shown to be scalable to many meters in length. The research opens the door to the possibility of weaving together solar-cell silicon wires to create flexible, curved, or twisted solar fabrics. The findings by an international team of chemists, physicists, and engineers, led by John Badding, a professor of chemistry at Penn State University, will be posted by the journal Advanced Materials in an early online edition on 6 December 2012 and will be published on a future date in the journal's print edition.

Flexible silicon solar-cell fabrics may soon become possible

 

[ScienceRocks]

Driverless vehicles will safely wiz through intersections at the full speed limit, according to researchers from Virginia Tech Transportation Research.

Autonomous vehicles will turn themselves over to an automated intersection controller, with the controller tweaking their trajectory to prevent crashes, explained Ismail Zohdy of Cairo, Egypt, a Ph.D. student in civil engineering at Virginia Tech, and Hesham Rakha, director of the Center for Sustainable Mobility at the transportation institute and professor of civil engineering at the university.

The proposed system considers the vehicles’ location, speed, and acceleration plus the surrounding environment, such as weather and intersection characteristics. An intersection controller would allow vehicles to keep moving, reduces the delay for each vehicle compared to traditional intersection control.

http://www.kurzweila...h-intersections

 

[ScienceRocks]

Toyota and Microsoft working on driver gesture recognition (no, not those gestures)
By Bill Howard on December 10, 2012 at 9:13 am
2 Comments


Toyota and Microsoft working on driver gesture recognition (no, not those gestures) | ExtremeTech

Raise your hand, palm up, and the radio volume in your car goes up. Toyota sees gesture recognition as one way to reduce the complexity of cars. Not for steering and braking, but to deal with the secondary controls such as infotainment, navigation, or your cellphone. So says Jim Lentz, head of Toyota in the US. The goal is to reduce driver distraction.

Toyota’s Board of Awesomeness (seriously) research team is working with Microsoft, a company that has spent years trying to reduce crashes. Their research vehicle is an electric skateboard with a Windows 8 tablet and Kinect motion sensing software (pictured below). In this case, raising or lowering the rider’s hand changes the speed. So, probably, does falling off.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Student designs of 'intelligent' tires for tomorrow win kudos at a prestigious international trade show

December 11, 2012 by M. Reilly (Phys.org)—Intelligent tires may be just around the corner – especially if designs by students in the University of Cincinnati's nationally number-one ranked industrial design program are realized.

Read more at: Student designs of 'intelligent' tires for tomorrow win kudos at a prestigious international trade show

Some cool designs...

 

[ScienceRocks]

New material for stretchy electronics

New material for stretchy electronics › News in Science (ABC Science)

Scientists in Switzerland have come up with a material mimicking the way tendons connect to bones, which could speed the development of stretchy, wearable electronic devices.

The stretchable electronics industry is in its infancy, but devices that are able to flex without breaking could revolutionise devices from smartphones and solar cells to medical implants.

 

[Mr. H.]

Student designs of 'intelligent' tires for tomorrow win kudos at a prestigious international trade show

December 11, 2012 by M. Reilly (Phys.org)—Intelligent tires may be just around the corner – especially if designs by students in the University of Cincinnati's nationally number-one ranked industrial design program are realized.

Read more at: Student designs of 'intelligent' tires for tomorrow win kudos at a prestigious international trade show

Some cool designs...

Alas, they are still just... round.

Boring!

 

[rdean]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-54gBLwK3s]The Shanghai Maglev Train - 250mph - from WINDING ROAD - YouTube[/ame]

Invented in this country.

Glencoe Online External Link

 

[rdean]

http://go.hrw.com/resources/go_sc/bpe/HQ8PE330.PDF

 

[rdean]

Notice how scientific advances and education seem to go together?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Company claims creation of Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak

A Canadian company called Hyperstealth says that it's developed a wearable cloak that uses "Quantum Stealth" technology to provides complete invisibility across the visible, infrared, and ultraviolet spectrum by bending light around objects. We're pretty sure that this is mostly or entirely not true, so stick with us while we explain why we're so skeptical.

The first thing to mention is that the pictures seen here of the cloak in operation are all just simulations, Photoshopped by Hyperstealth on the grounds that "for security issues we can not show the actual technology." We'll get in to that later, but Hyperstealth says that these images are an accurate simulation, although the cloak itself does apparently work a bit better than the pictures show.

Here's the claim, from inventor and Hyperstealth CEO Guy Cramer, as described in an interview in The Atlantic from 2011 with an appropriately skeptical journalist:


Late last year, Cramer told me about a project he'd been working on for two years that sounded like it relied on refraction. He called it "quantum stealth," and it seemed like science fiction. "It works by bending light around an object," he explained at the time. "So far, we've been able to make an object about the size of an orange completely disappear." When he said this, I nodded and nearly choked on my skepticism. If Cramer spoke the truth, he'd have surpassed the preeminent experts in the study of light refraction

Company claims creation of Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak | DVICE

 

[ScienceRocks]

Notice how scientific advances and education seem to go together?

You're right on this rdean.

 

[ScienceRocks]

More information on the cloaking device.



Quantum Stealth material designed to make target invisible

"This is mock-up of our 'Quantum Stealth' (Light Bending) material with my assistant behind it. No cameras and no projectors are used. These photos are to show the Media the concept, for security issues we can not show the actual technology. With the real material you would only see about 5% of the shadow on her and the ground as we've determined a 95% reduction of shadow in testing." Many comment-makers to sites reporting on the material said they had a difficult time accepting the claims of invisibility. As one comment responder said, "I'll believe it when I don't see it." Sebastian Anthony

Cramer nonetheless has made presentations of Quantum Stealth to military personnel and according to his report on his site: "Two separate command groups within the U.S. Military and two separate Canadian Military groups as well as Federal Emergency Response Team (Counter Terrorism) have seen the actual material so they could verify that I was not just manipulating video or photo results," Cramer said.

"Groups now know that it works and does so without cameras, batteries, lights or mirrors... It is lightweight and quite inexpensive. Both the U.S. and Canadian military have confirmed that it also works against military infra-red scopes and thermal optics," he said. Cramer has announced the Quantum Stealth material as "light-bending material," which is "non-powered adaptive camouflage that portrays what is behind the user in-front of the user bending the light around the target."

Read more at: Quantum Stealth material designed to make target invisible

If I got a hold of this I'd rob a bank!

 

[ScienceRocks]

DARPA begins work on 100Gbps wireless tech with 120-mile range
By Sebastian Anthony on December 17, 2012 at 8:05 am

DARPA has begun development of a wireless communications link that is capable of 100 gigabits per second over a range of 200 kilometers (124mi). Officially dubbed “100 Gb/s RF Backbone” (or 100G for short), the program will provide the US military with networks that are around 50 times faster than its current wireless links.

DARPA clearly states that the 100G program is for US military use — but it’s hard to ignore the repercussions it might have on commercial networks, too. I’m surprised that it has fallen to DARPA to develop an ultra-high-speed point-to-point wireless technology. 100Gbps wireless backhaul links between cell towers, rather than costly and cumbersome fiber links, would make it much easier and cheaper to roll out additional mobile coverage. Likewise, 100Gbps wireless links might be the ideal way to provide backhaul links to rural communities that are still stuck with dial-up internet access, or additional backbone bandwidth during peak periods. One day, you might even have a 100Gbps wireless link from your home to your ISP.

DARPA begins work on 100Gbps wireless tech with 120-mile range | ExtremeTech


I got a idea for once this jumps from military to civilen. How about every state installs 2-3 of these and charges a small tax? Free internet for all!

 

[ScienceRocks]

Reducing electrons' effective mass to nearly zero


http://www.rdmag.com/news/2012/12/reducing-electrons-effective-mass-nearly-zero

The field of metamaterials involves augmenting materials with specially designed patterns, enabling those materials to manipulate electromagnetic waves and fields in previously impossible ways. Now, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have come up with a theory for moving this phenomenon onto the quantum scale, laying out blueprints for materials where electrons have nearly zero effective mass.

Such materials could make for faster circuits with novel properties.

The work was conducted by Nader Engheta, the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Mario G. Silveirinha, who was a visiting scholar at the Engineering School when their collaboration began. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal.

“Imagine you have a ball inside a fluid,” Engheta says. “You can calculate how fast the ball falls as a combination of the force of gravity and the reaction of the fluid, or you can say that the ball has an effectively different mass in the fluid than it does normally. The effective mass can even be negative, which we see in the case of a bubble. The bubble looks like it has negative mass, because it’s moving against gravity, but it is really the fluid moving down around it.”

 

[ScienceRocks]

Liquid Metal Creates Wires That Stretch 8x Original Length

Researchers from North Carolina State University have created conductive wires that can be stretched up to eight times their original length while still functioning. The wires can be used for everything from headphones to phone chargers, and hold potential for use in electronic textiles.

To make the wires, researchers start with a thin tube made of an extremely elastic polymer and then fill the tube with a liquid metal alloy of gallium and indium, which is an efficient conductor of electricity. “Previous efforts to create stretchable wires focus on embedding metals or other electrical conductors in elastic polymers, but that creates a trade-off,” says Dr. Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research.

Read more at Liquid Metal Creates Wires That Stretch 8x Original Length | ScienceBlog.com

 

[ScienceRocks]

Synthetic and biological nanoparticles combined to produce new metamaterials

Scientists from Aalto University, Finland, have succeeded in organising virus particles, protein cages and nanoparticles into crystalline materials. These nanomaterials studied by the Finnish research group are important for applications in sensing, optics, electronics and drug delivery.

"Virus particles – the old foes of mankind – can do much more than infect living organisms. Evolution has rendered them with the capability of highly controlled self-assembly properties. Ultimately, by utilising their building blocks we can bring multiple functions to hybrid materials that consist of both living and synthetic matter," Kostiainen trusts.

Synthetic and biological nanoparticles combined to produce new metamaterials