Aasemoon'z Cluster

On 10 July, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft will fly within a few thousand kilometres of 21 Lutetia, a main belt asteroid that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Lutetia is an unusual object. It is classified as an M-type asteroid, which are thought to be made mainly of nickel and iron. However, Lutetia's spectrum does not seem to show any evidence of metals. In fact, exactly what Lutetia is made of puzzles astronomers. That's partly why it was chosen for the fly by. So come July, astronomers should know the answer to this conundrum. But in the run up, they're indulging in a little fun. The game they've invented is to see how good a prediction they can make about what Rosetta will find. Today, Irina Belskaya at the Observatoire de Paris and a few friends take a stab. They make several detailed predictions about Lutetia based partly on observations dating back to the 1960s but mostly on data taken since 2004, when interest picked up after the asteroid was chosen as a flyby target. So what do they think Rosetta will find?

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.

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.

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

This robot is named Cody, and he’s from the Georgia Tech’s Healthcare Robotics Lab. I don’t know why the robot is called Cody… It kinda seems like it should stand for something. You know, as in, C.O.D.Y. Anybody got anything? No? Okay then.

The other day I was critical of the UK’s nanotechnology strategy document. However, I am a great admirer of the UK scientists and engineers working in the field of nanotechnology, which makes the recent strategy document such a double disappointment. To sort of atone for my criticism, I wanted to highlight a UK-based researcher, Professor Philip Moriarty at the University of Nottingham, who first came to my attention a few years back on the pages of Richard Jones’ blog Soft Machines , when Moriarty had organized a debate on the subject of radical nanotechnology, otherwise known as molecular nanotechnology. I also recently noted his ability to secure funding for his research to test the theories of molecular manufacturing, and wondered if he can do it why aren’t more molecular manufacturing theorists doing it.

Walking, swallowing, respiration and many other key functions in humans and other animals are controlled by Central Pattern Generators (CPGs). In essence, CPGs are small, autonomous neural networks that produce rhythmic outputs, usually found in animal's spinal cords rather than their brains. Their relative simplicity and obvious success in biological systems has led to some success in using CPGs in robotics. However, current systems are restricted to very simple CPGs (e.g., restricted to a single walking gait). A recent breakthrough at the BCCN at the University of Göttingen, Germany has now allowed to achieve 11 basic behavioral patterns (various gaits, orienting, taxis, self-protection) from a single CPG, closing in on the 10–20 different basic behavioral patterns found in a typical cockroach. The trick: Work with a chaotic, rather than a stable periodic CPG regime. For more on CPGs, listen to the latest episode of the Robots podcast on Chaos Control, which interviews Poramate Manoonpong, one of the lead researchers in Göttingen, and Alex Pitti from the University of Tokyo who uses chaos controllers that can synchronize to the dynamics of the body they are controlling.

25 March 2010—Nowadays, a phone that doesn’t know where it is or where it’s going can’t really call itself ”smart.” To orient themselves properly, smartphones require not just GPS capability but also an electronic compass, an accelerometer, and increasingly, digital gyroscopes. The point of a gyroscope is to sense any change in an object’s axis of rotation. Up until now, gyroscopes measured movement around the three axes with three sensors—one for pitch, one for yaw, and another for roll. At most, two of these sensors would be combined on a single die. The best you could do was, say, match up a 3- by 5- by 1-millimeter yaw sensor with a 4- by 5- by 1-mm sensor that would detect pitch and roll. But on 15 February, STMicroelectronics unveiled  a 4- by 4- by 1-mm gyroscope whose single sensing structure tracks all three angular motions. It’s a triumph of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) engineering.

LED luminaires require precise power and heat management because LEDs convert most of the electrical energy they receive into heat rather than light. Without adequate thermal management, this heat can degrade the LED's life span and affect color output. Also, LEDs can fail short because they are silicon devices, so they may require fail-safe backup in the form of overcurrent protection. Resettable PPTC (polymeric-positive-temperature-coefficient) circuit-protection devices have demonstrated their effectiveness in a variety of LED-lighting applications. Like traditional fuses, they limit current after they exceed specified limits. However, unlike fuses, PPTC devices can reset after the fault clears and the power cycles.

Today's FPGAs are doubling in capacity every 2 years and have already surpassed the 5 million equivalent ASIC gate mark. With designs of this magnitude, the need for fast flows has never been greater. At the same time, designers are seeking rapid feedback on their ASIC or FPGA designs by implementing quick prototypes or initial designs on FPGA-based boards. These prototypes or designs allow designers to start development, verification and debug of the design—in the context of system software and hardware—and also to fine tune algorithms in the design architecture. Quick and intuitive debug iterations to incorporate fixes are of great value. The ability to perform design updates that don't completely uproot all parts of the design that have already been verified is also a bonus! Whether the goal is aggressive performance or to get a working initial design or prototype on the board as quickly as possible, this paper provides information on traditional and new techniques that accelerate design and debug iterations.

If the Fringe Graphic Novel isn’t enough to satisfy your appetite for the Fringe extended universe, you might be interested in a new six-issue comic miniseries from Wildstorm Comics, titled Tales From The Fringe. The series is said to take place within the Fringe universe, meaning it will explore stories that we might not necessarily see on the show itself, but will add extra context to the Fringe mythology. As with the original comic series, it looks like each issue will contain a main story focusing on our main characters, and a looser second story. The first issue lands June 23rd, 2010, for $3.99. Head past the jump to read the official description from Wildstorm Comics.

Related to the strong demands for virtualization technology, network I/O virtualization has recently become a hot topic and is one of the key topics being discussed at the upcoming Multicore Expo @ ESC. In fact, analyst firm IDC, in a recent white paper titled "Optimizing I/O Virtualization: Preparing the Data Center for Next-Generation Applications", stated that "If I/O is not sufficient, then it could limit all the gains brought about by the virtualization process."

Hiroshi Ishiguro, a roboticist at Osaka University, in Japan, has, as you might expect, built many robots. But his latest aren’t run-of-the-mill automatons. Ishiguro’s recent creations look like normal people. One is an android version of a middle-aged family man—himself.

March has seen two significant announcements from FPGA start-ups with innovative architectures: Tabula, with their time-domain-multiplexed architecture, and TierLogic, implementing their routing switches in a layer of thin-film transistors. Both approaches promise to significantly reduce the die size and cost of high-end FPGAs. But before these announcements broke, a relatively unnoticed paper at February's International Symposium on FPGAs described what may be the most radical technology of them all: FPGAs using electromechanical relays. No, this is not an early April Fool's joke, nor is it one of those "let's see if anyone will publish this one" academic exercises. The paper presented work by professors and students at the Stanford University departments of electrical engineering and computer science, and researchers at Altera Corp. The work was supported in part by DARPA funding.

The wait is almost over!  Exactly four months after “Justice” left us hanging, Stargate Universe fans are eagerly anticipating the show’s return to Syfy Channel in the U.S. this Friday at 9 p.m. (8 Central).  But many want to know:  Why was the mid-season break so long? We asked Stargate fans via Twitter what their ideal length would be for the mid-season break, and got a variety of responses.  But we also heard straight from Syfy’s Craig Engler, Senior V.P. of Syfy Digital, who said, “No mid-season break could mean [32] weeks or more between full seasons.  Basically, every schedule choice has a trade-off. … We split seasons so there are not huge gaps between full seasons.”

In the new study, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Hla's team examined synthesized molecules of a type of organic salt, (BETS)2-GaCl4, placed on a surface of silver. Using scanning tunneling spectroscopy, the scientists observed superconductivity in molecular chains of various lengths. For chains below 50 nanometers in length, superconductivity decreased as the chains became shorter. However, the researchers were still able to observe the phenomenon in chains as small as four pairs of molecules, or 3.5 nanometers in length.

The FPGAs referenced in these articles have complex dedicated I/O circuitries that are primarily designed to support external memory interfaces. The ALTMEMPHY megafunction is designed to support the most common memory standards, such as the DDR and DDR 2 SDRAM and QDR II+/QDR II SRAM (in a burst length of 4) interfaces. The ALTMEMPHY megafunction should be used whenever possible as it is beneficial to use the IP and timing closure methodologies used with these FPGAs, which enables users not to have to create this function manually as compared with using the ALTDLL and ALTDQ_DQS solution. However, the ALTMEMPHY megafunction does not support other external memory standards such as Mobile DDR, QDR II+/QDR II SRAM (in burst length of 2) or customized DDR and DDR 2 SDRAM external memory standards. For these scenarios, use the ALTDLL and ALTDQ_DQS megafunctions to access the FPGA architecture and build a custom external memory interface.