Aasemoon'z Cluster

Nothing is ever simple in IT, and nanotechnology is no different. For a start, the term nanotechnology can mean different things to different people. For purists, it refers to a microscopic structure equal to or less than one nanometre (nm) in size – about a billionth of a metre. But many vendors and regulators (see How EC rules affect nanotechnology, page 2) believe the term nanotechnology can be applied to any structure between 1nm and 100nm in size, which means various nanoscale silicon components and microchips already inhabit many of the computers and other electrical and electronic devices we use today.

The goal of the MultiPlat project is to develop biomimetic proton conductive membranes with nanometer thickness (nanomembranes) through convergence of the number of fields. The primary application of this multipurpose nanotechnological platform is the next generation of fuel cells where it will replace the prevailing evolutionary modifications of the state of the art solutions.

As Paolo Robuffo Giordano and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tübingen, Germany, would have it, scientific research means riding the business end of a giant industrial robot arm while playing video games. But hey -- they produced some serious research on it, which was presented at ICRA 2010.  The CyberMotion Simulator is basically a full motion simulator adapted to a racing car game. Players (or subjects, the researchers prefer to call them) sit in a cabin on a robot arm some 2 meters off the ground and drive a Ferrari F2007 car around a projected track with force-feedback steering wheel and pedals. The aim is to make the experience as realistic as possible without having to buy a real F2007, and to test the simulator with an environment that requires sudden, massive acceleration.

This article discusses the requirements, constraints and challenges in creating high-quality musical instruments using electronic components (both analog and digital) available today.

A new network design that avoids the need to convert optical signals into electrical ones could boost capacity while reducing power consumption.

A variety of audio compression technologies are being used today, each having a distinct advantage over the other in terms of compression ratio, coding delay, coding complexity or legacy system compatibility. This makes subset of audio codecs suited for particular systems and makes working with multiple audio compression technologies indispensable. In designing time-critical systems like conferencing, broadcast transcoding systems or be it in designing any audio and video play-out system, the knowledge of the delay encountered while audio encoding or decoding becomes critical.

Part 5 of an excerpt from the book "Acoustics and Psychoacoustics," fourth edition, begins with a brief look at noise-reducing headphones and "mosquito" units and ringtones, and then delves into the ins and outs of audio coding systems.

Plato was the Einstein of Greece's Golden Age and his work founded Western culture and science. Dr Jay Kennedy's findings are set to revolutionise the history of the origins of Western thought.

Cellphone carriers are racing this year to implement 4G wireless networks so that future smartphones will have access to a fire hose of data. But the towers and infrastructure the carriers are putting in place may ultimately facilitate as many connections with appliances and electric meters as they do downloads of movies and music. The electricity grid, in other words, may be jumping from no G to 4G—and rather soon, according to analysts.

Now that Harry's the prime suspect in the killings he was charged to solve even his best friend doesn't trust him. And it could cost Lt. Murphy her life! Can Harry reach her in time?The Dresden Files: Storm Front rolls on with its hallmark mix of mystery and adventure that made Jim Butcher's novels a smash hit!

The "kid-size" humanoid league at the RoboCup features standardized humanoid robots that teams write software for. The reigning 2009 champs, from Technische Universitat Darmstadt, worked on making shots and passes quicker in this year's matches. Watch the video highlights and see if their strategy paid off.

Pico Computing has developed a signal processing library which is made up of a set of FPGA firmware components and related tools that speed the development and deployment of advanced video and network analytics for security, defense and aerospace applications.The library, which includes flexible components for signal analysis, feature detection, scale-space generation, correlation and filtering, has been validated and optimized for Pico Computing platforms based on the latest-generation Xilinx Virtex-5 and Virtex-6 FPGA devices.

High Level Synthesis Architectural Optimization Basics In part 1 of this article we introduced basic filter bank theory and used the Synplify DSP High Level Synthesis (HLS) tool to implement an example filter bank into three alternative architectures. In part 2 we dive deeper into these three architectures to better understand how these filters work. We will also examine the HLS optimizations we applied and the resulting benefits. Example Filter Bank Review Before we proceed, let's quickly review our filter bank example. Our example, shown in Figure 1, is a size 16 DFT filter bank. The color scheme shows the sample rate change where a 16 MHz input sample rate (red) has been chosen and the output sample rate is downsampled by 16 (green).

One solution to getting robots to perform complex and/or variable tasks is to teleoperate them. Arguably this removes a significant portion of having a robot in the first place, but there will inevitably be tasks that even the most complex and well programmed robot just won’t be prepared for. If you’ve been reading BotJunkie for the past three years, you may remember Monty, a telepresence humanoid from Anybots. Monty was a bit difficult to control, and at the very least required some training.

That age-old question, "where did life on Earth start?" now has a new answer. If the life between the mica sheets hypothesis is correct, life would have originated between sheets of mica that were layered like the pages in a book.

Remember A-pod, the realistic ant-like hexapod from last year?  Well its creator Kare Halvorsen has uploaded a brand new video showcasing its improved capabilities, and it’s a stunner.  His last video, posted around this time last year, went viral due to the robot’s realistic movements. This year, he ups the ante by showing it walking around and manipulating objects. Some of his past robot projects can be seen in brief snippets, and they’re not too shabby either.  Imagine a horde of these guys with sophisticated A.I.!

FPGA devices create compelling business drivers generating a tidal wave of FPGA adoption for the implementation of system PCB designs. Obviously, the time to market advantages and capacity/performance characteristics of FPGA devices have delivered on the promise for a viable alternative to more capital resource intensive custom IC/ASIC solutions as well as a successful consolidation vehicle for standard "off the shelf" components in system design creation.

In traditional short-haul microwave transmission (that is, line-of-sight microwave transmissions operating in the 18 GHz and 23 GHz radio bands),RF design engineers typically are concerned with signal aspects such as fade margins, signal reflections, multipath signals, and so forth. Like an accountant seeking to balance a financial spreadsheet, an RF design engineer normally creates an RF budget table, expressed in decibels (dB), in order to establish a wireless design. Aspects like transmit power and antenna gain are registered in the assets (or plus) column, and free space attenuation, antenna alignment, and atmospheric losses are noted in the liabilities (or minus) column. The goal is to achieve a positive net signal strength adequate to support the wireless path(s) called for in the design.

Their new research is published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and will soon be published in the print edition of the journal. The findings may enable new applications for semiconductors --materials that are the foundation of today's information technology. In particular, they may help identify alternative materials to use for building a potential quantum computer.

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a new design employing carbon nanotubes and small copper spheres that wicks water passively towards hot electronics that could meet the challenges brought on by increasing frequency speeds in chips. The problem of overheating electronics is well-documented and in the past the issue has been addressed with bigger and bigger fans. But with chip features shrinking below 50 nanometers the fan solution is just not cutting it. The Purdue researchers, led by Suresh V. Garimella, came up with a design that uses water as the coolant liquid and transfers the water to an ultrathin thermal ground plane. The design naturally pushes the water through obviating the need for a pump and through the use of microfluidic design is able to boil the water fully, which allows the wicking away of more heat.