Anyone can bake a cake, but while some chefs bake dry, uninspired bricks of dough, there are other chefs who make cakes we would die for. The ingredients may be the same, but the outcomes are so very different. This is also the case between average electronic products and world-class, market-changing products. One of the most recent technical sensations is the capacitive touch screen. But what makes some touch screen-based products amazing, while others get such poor reviews?

Just as photographic film was mostly replaced by silicon image chips, now quantum film threats to replace the conventional CMOS image sensors in digital cameras. Made from materials similar to conventional film—a polymer with embedded particles—instead of silver grains like photographic film the embedded particles are quantum dots. Quantum films can image scenes with more pixel resolution, according to their inventors, InVisage Inc., offering four-times better sensitivity for ultra-high resolution sensors that are cheaper to manufacture.

Willow Garage is organizing a workshop at the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2010 in San Francisco to discuss the intersection of computer vision with human-robot interaction. Willow Garage is the hardware and open source software organization behind the Robot Operating System (ROS) and the PR robot development platform. Here’s a recent video from Willow Garage of work done at the University of Illinois on how robots can be taught to perceive images:

At first glance, D-Wave Systems looks like any other well-appointed office, with an open reception area and conventional cubicles. But one glance at the wall beside the receptionist and you know the average IQ here is intimidatingly high — it’s literally covered in plaques from the U.S. patent office featuring 19th century lettering and incongruously describing patents for superconducting qubit-based microchips.

The question of the relative roles of nanotechnology and AI in forging the shape of the future has been argued in techno-futurist circles for decades. Eric Drexler mentioned AI as a potentially disruptive technology in his seminal 1986 book Engines of Creation, and it was discussed at the very first Foresight conference 20 years ago

Andrew Phillips holds the title of Scientist with Microsoft Research Cambridge, and he's working on a method of programming that compiles into DNA. Part of this involves a visual programming language called Stochastic Pi Machine, or SPiM. This system models biological processes to help give researchers feedback on how organisms will react to modifications. The hope is that this can be used to help scientists program for large biological systems using modular components compiled to DNA. Yes, I’m in way over my head here, but I do my best to ask Andrew about the role this will play in medical treatment going forward, what it means to DNA computing, and the ability of back-engineering the genetic code we don’t use now

Dynamite Entertainment is set to launch its new series of Stargate comic books in 2010, starting with Vala Mal Doran #1.  The limited series is set in the SG-1 universe and features the sexy thief played on television by Claudia Black. Series writer Brandon Jerwa talks about the story in a new interview with Comic Book Resources. Jerwa, known for his work on G.I. Joe, Highlander and Battlestar Galactica, revealed that the story will feature a “heist” for which Vala assembles an Ocean’s 11-style group of cohorts. “Vala’s working with a crew of science fiction ne’er-do-wells that are all new to the franchise,” Jerwa told the site. “I’m going to keep the hard details under wraps for now, but let me give you some glimpses into my madness: Vala’s crew has a weirdo alien pilot, an officious robot, a tiger warrior, a midget assassin and a hot chick with a space monkey.” Look for the SG-1 team to be involved too, of course — including Jack O’Neill.

A product can be of low quality for several reasons, such as it was shoddily manufactured, its components were improperly designed, its architecture was poorly conceived, and the product's requirements were poorly understood. Quality must be designed in. You can't test out enough bugs to deliver a high-quality product. The quality assurance (QA) process is vital for the delivery of a satisfactory system. In this last part in this series, we will concentrate on portions of the methodology particularly aimed at improving the quality of the resulting system. The software testing techniques described earlier in this series constitute one component of quality assurance, but the pursuit of quality extends throughout the design flow. For example, settling on the proper requirements and specification cannot be overlooked as an important determinant of quality. If the system is too difficult to design, it will probably be difficult to keep it working properly.

The Khronos™ Group today announced the release of the OpenGL® 4.0 specification; a significant update to the most widely adopted 2D and 3D graphics API (application programming interface) that is deployed on all major desktop operating systems.  OpenGL 4.0 brings the very latest in cross-platform graphics acceleration and functionality to personal computers and workstations and the OpenGL standard serves as the basis for OpenGL® ES, the graphics standard on virtually every shipping smart phone.   The OpenGL 4.0 specification has been defined by the OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board) working group at Khronos, and includes the GLSL 4.00 update to the OpenGL Shading language in order to enable developers to access the latest generation of GPU acceleration with significantly enhanced graphics quality, acceleration performance and programming flexibility.  This new release continues the rapid evolution of the royalty-free OpenGL standard to enable graphics developers to portably access cutting-edge GPU functionality across diverse operating systems and platforms. The full specification is available for immediate download at http://www.opengl.org/registry .

In a recent video, Willow Garage researcher Eitan Marder-Eppstein describes the open-source navigation stack they've released as version 1.0. The code, available at http://ros.org/wiki/navigation, was designed to be flexible and cross-platform, he says, and could be used in anything from a small iRobot Create-based bot to a large multi-sensor robot like Willow's own PR2 (which Spectrum has covered in detail here and here).

It’s 2020, and it’s sunny outside. In fact, it’s so bright in your kitchen that you have to squint to see your grapefruit. You flip on your e-reader and the most recent e-issue of IEEE Spectrum pops up on-screen, the colors and text sharp and brilliant in the sunlight. There’s e-mail to answer, but you want to make the early commuter bus, so you roll up your e-reader and stuff it in your jacket pocket.

Every few years, we're wowed by news of some jaw-dropping sum paid for a previously unknown painting or drawing by a famous artist. But how can a buyer truly be sure that a piece is a legitimate creation of, say, Leonardo or Gauguin? Mathematicians at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., may have the answer. They recently presented a computer-based statistical analysis technique which they say will help art historians and conservators discover even the most skilled forgery. Their method, called sparse coding, learns what characterizes the artist's style at a level of detail that is practically imperceptible to the eye of even the most experienced appraiser. It works by examining small patches of a picture and breaking them down to a set of essential elements.

) Die gezielte Manipulation von Strukturen im Nanometerbereich ist eine Grundlage der modernen Biotechnologie. Zu den vielseitigsten Bausteinen im Bereich von Millionstel Millimetern gehört die DNA, der Träger der Erbinformation. Im Organismus kommt das Molekül in linearen und zirkulären Formen vor, aus denen dann technologisch höhere Strukturen erzeugt werden können. Deren spezifische Form ist die Folge eines Wechselspiels mehrerer physikalischer Kräfte. LMU-Forscher um den Biophysiker Professor Erwin Frey konnten in Zusammenarbeit mit Schweizer Wissenschaftlern nun klären, welches Gewicht diese Kräfte jeweils haben und welche effektive Form der Bausteine daraus resultiert ("Excluded Volume Effects on Semiflexible Ring Polymers").

Die gezielte Manipulation von Strukturen im Nanometerbereich ist eine Grundlage der modernen Biotechnologie. Zu den vielseitigsten Bausteinen im Bereich von Millionstel Millimetern gehört die DNA, der Träger der Erbinformation. Im Organismus kommt das Molekül in linearen und zirkulären Formen vor, aus denen dann technologisch höhere Strukturen erzeugt werden können. Deren spezifische Form ist die Folge eines Wechselspiels mehrerer physikalischer Kräfte. LMU-Forscher um den Biophysiker Professor Erwin Frey konnten in Zusammenarbeit mit Schweizer Wissenschaftlern nun klären, welches Gewicht diese Kräfte jeweils haben und welche effektive Form der Bausteine daraus resultiert ("Excluded Volume Effects on Semiflexible Ring Polymers").

(Nanowerk News) Scientists at the University of Glasgow have devised a molecular 'LEGO toolkit' which can be used to assemble a vast number of new and functional chemical compounds. Using molecules as building blocks they have been able to construct a molecular scaffold based on tiny (nano-scale) storage cubes. This new ‘designer route’ opens the door to many new compounds that, potentially, are able to act as the ion sensors, storage devices, and catalysts of the future. Researchers within the Department of Chemistry created hollow cube-based frameworks from polyoxometalates (POMs) – complex compounds made from metal and oxygen atoms – which stick together like LEGO bricks meaning a whole range of well-defined architectures can be developed with great ease ("Face-directed self-assembly of an electronically active Archimedean polyoxometalate architecture").

In 2008 a team of physicists from Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois, and other institutions stumbled upon an odd phenomenon. They called it superinsulation, because in many ways it was the opposite of superconductivity. Now they’ve worked out the theory behind it, potentially opening the doors to better batteries, supersensitive sensors, and strange new circuits. Superconductors lose all resistance once they fall below a certain temperature. In superinsulators, on the other hand, the resistance to the flow of electricity becomes infinite at very low temperatures, preventing any flow of electric current.

Experimental microbial fuel cells could turn bacteria into batteries that generate electricity from biomass. The key to this technology is the ability of bacteria to transfer electrons to their surroundings—for example, to the anode of a microbial fuel cell. But if the organisms have to be in direct contact with the anode, such devices would have to have extremely large surface areas. Researchers from Aarhus University, in Denmark, report today in the journal Nature that bacteria appear to conduct electricity while separated by several millimeters, at least a thousand times as far apart than previously demonstrated. The naturally occurring electric currents, if confirmed, would allow bacteria spaced at least 12 millimeters apart to communicate electrically. The discovery might lead to new paths to treating infection and a better understanding of microbial ecosystems.

The race to create tiny wireless sensors that could monitor anything from pressure in the eyes and brain to the stability of bridges appears to be heating up. Earlier this month, IEEE Spectrum reported on two approaches to creating an almost-indefinitely-running sensor using piezoelectric systems to convert tiny vibrations into power. Now, another team from the University of Michigan has created an alternative approach that uses solar power to keep the sensor running autonomously for many years.

For the past 20 years, a debate over the longevity and legitimacy of the 8-bit microcontroller (MCU) periodically erupts. The debate is usually sparked by the introduction of a higher-end processor or architecture and is almost always accompanied by overstated claims of a market moving away from 8-bit MCUs or transitioning to higher-end devices. It wasn't too long ago that the 16-bit market was doomed to disappear, due to pressures from 8-bit on the low end and 32-bit at the high end.

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Something about the mood of this track really works for me. There's a certain feeling of "lost and random" about it... love it! =)