Aasemoon'z Cluster

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! =)

There's an interesting video on YouTube from Binary Millenium showing how to make a 3D model out of real objects using Microsoft's Photosynth. It's an interesting idea that, while unofficial, may be a big time saver and a lot of fun for many of you. This will work best if you use a Photosynth that not only has a high rate of 'synthiness' but also lots of points in the point cloud. A point in the point cloud means that a specific feature has been identified in two or more photos, allowing for Photosynth to determine to some degree where in space that point exists. While a good Photosynth might have 100% synthiness, meaning all the pictures are connected, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be lots of points in the point cloud.

Welcome to the first episode of Cloud Cover!  Join Ryan and Steve as they cover the Windows Azure platform, digging into features, discussing the latest news and announcements, and sharing tips and tricks. Follow and interact with us at @cloudcovershow In this episode: Learn about the Service Management API and how to use PowerShell cmdlets to manage your cloud services. Find out how to get started quickly on the Windows Azure platform. Other topics include: SQL Azure updates! Windows Azure Drives (XDrive).  Hear about some cool new Windows Azure storage management tools. Azure Reader architecture.

Three-dimensional microchip designs are making their way to market to help pack more transistors on a chip as traditional scaling slows down. By stacking logic chips on top of one another other or combining logic chips with memory or RF with logic, chipmakers hope to sidestep Moore's Law, increasing the functionality of smartphones and other gadgets not by shrinking a chip's transistors but the distance between them. "There's a big demand for smaller packages in the consumer market, especially for the footprint of a mobile phone, or for improving the memory bandwidth of your GPU," says Pol Marchal, a principal scientist of 3-D integration at European microelectronics R&D center Imec. On 9 February, at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), in San Francisco, Imec engineers presented some key design challenges facing 3-D chips made by stacking layers of silicon circuits using vertical copper interconnects called through-silicon vias (TSVs). These design constraints will have to be dealt with before TSVs can be widely used in advanced microchip architectures, Marchal says.

Space robotics may appear to be a purely scientific endeavor -- brave little rovers exploring planets in search of life -- but it turns out there's a multi-million dollar market in space just waiting for the right kind of robot. This market is satellite servicing. Geostationary communication satellites fire small thrusters to stay in orbit. When they run out of fuel (typically helium or hydrazine), or when a battery or gyroscope fails, these expensive satellites often have to be abandoned, becoming just another piece of space junk, even though their mechanical systems and electronics work fine.

The past week or so there have been two stories about very secure system protocols being able to be successfully hacked by researchers. The first concerned the report by the AP that Christopher Tarnovsky, a former U.S. Army computer-security specialist and who now runs the Flylogic security company, was able to crack open (literally) a Trusted Platform Module or TPM and obtain its cryptographic keys. This hadn't been done before, or at least admitted to publicly.

A little more than a week after long-simmering programmable logic startup Tabula Inc. emerged from stealth mode, Tier Logic Inc. stepped into the light Wednesday (March 10), offering the first details about its technology, which employs a novel processing change to build FPGA and ASIC products on a single die. Like Tabula, Tier Logic's technology depends on a three-dimensional structure. But while Tabula uses rapid reconfiguration to, in the words of that firm's executives, treat time as the third dimension, Tier Logic's approach separates user circuits and configuration circuits into 3-D stacked layers, creating what the company calls the world's first monolithic 3-D FPGA.