文章资讯
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- 2015-05-19 Researchers create first hidden, real-time, screen-camera communication
- Opening the way for new applications of smart devices, Dartmouth researchers have created the first form of real-time communication that allows screens and cameras to talk to each other without the user knowing it.
Using off-the-shelf smart devices, the new system supports an unobtrusive, flexible and lightweight communication channel between screens (of TVs, laptops, tablets, smartphones and other electronic devices) and cameras. The system, called HiLight, will enable new context-aware applications for smart devices. - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 Researchers test smartphones for crowdsourced earthquake warning
- Smartphones and other personal electronic devices could, in regions where they are in widespread use, function as early warning systems for large earthquakes according to newly reported research. This technology could serve regions of the world that cannot afford higher quality, but more expensive, conventional earthquake early warning systems, or could contribute to those systems.
The study, led by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and published April 10 in the inaugural volume of the new AAAS journal Science Advances, found that the sensors in smartphones and similar devices could be used to build earthquake warning systems. - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 New ways to see light and store information
- Researchers from the University of Cologne, Jilin University and the University of Nottingham have developed a method to significantly prolong the lives of charges in organic electronic devices.
Silicon based chips and transistors have been at the heart of all electronic devices since the 1950s. Driven by economic and environmental factors, and by the need for renewable energy resources, there is currently an enormous scientific and technological interest in transitioning away from silicon based electronics to new organic electronic devices. - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 Facebook, Tesla, Airbnb host world's ambassadors for crash course in Silicon Valley culture
- Some came to replicate Silicon Valley, others to regulate it. Thirty-five foreign ambassadors representing countries as big as China and as small as Kiribati, Barbados and Monaco toured the Bay Area this week in what the U.S. State Department described as the biggest such diplomatic meet-up outside of Washington.
"It's all about finding ways to advance our small nations," said Ambassador Aunese Makoi Simati, of Tuvalu, a country of about 12,000 people living on nine coral atolls in the South Pacific. "It's very hard to invest in Tuvalu. We have to improve our Internet connections first." - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 Chemists' synthesis of silicon oxides opens 'new world in a grain of sand'
- In an effort that reaches back to the 19th-century laboratories of Europe, a discovery by University of Georgia chemistry researchers establishes new research possibilities for silicon chemistry and the semiconductor industry.
The study, published April 20 in the journal Nature Chemistry, gives details on the first time chemists have been able to trap molecular species of silicon oxides. - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 Does Rust Belt manufacturing have a future?
- William Lovejoy, professor of technology and operations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, shared his thoughts about manufacturing's future on Friday with journalists at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference in Chicago. Here are some excerpts.
Q: Hasn't the U.S. economy managed by replacing manufacturing jobs with service and information jobs? - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 Japanese PM seeks tech innovation in Silicon Valley visit
- Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans a swing through Silicon Valley on Thursday, speaking with Stanford University experts about innovation, building relationships with tech firms and investors, and—as head of one of the world's leading car producing nations—popping in on electric carmaker Tesla Motors.
"This Japanese administration has been focusing on changing its economy to a growth-based system built on innovation," said Japanese economic researcher Takeo Hoshi, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "This is probably the best place in the world to look at that." - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 Quantum physics on tap: Nano-sized faucet offers experimental support for longstanding quantum theory
- We all know intuitively that normal liquids flow more quickly as the channel containing them tightens. Think of a river flowing through narrow rapids.
But what if a pipe were so amazingly tiny that only a few atoms of superfluid heliumcould squeeze through its opening at once? According to a longstanding quantum-mechanics model, the superfluid helium would behave differently from a normal liquid: far from speeding up, it would actually slow down. - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 Perseverance key to children's intellectual growth, scholar says
- Passion, dedication and persistence count the most when children are cultivating their intelligence and talents, a Stanford scholar says.
Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychology professor, said that when children are praised for the process they engage in – hard work, strategies, focus, persistence – they become better learners. The Stanford News Service recently interviewed Dweck on this topic: - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 Engineering a better solar cell: Study pinpoints defects in popular perovskites
- One of the fastest-growing areas of solar energy research is with materials called perovskites. These promising light harvesters could revolutionize the solar and electronics industries because they show potential to convert sunlight into electricity more efficiently and less expensively than today's silicon-based semiconductors.
These superefficient crystal structures have taken the scientific community by storm in the past few years because they can be processed very inexpensively and can be used in applications ranging from solar cells to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) found in phones and computer monitors. - See Details
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- 2015-05-18 Prime minister wants Japan to learn from Silicon Valley
- Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave California's governor a hint of what it would be like inside a Japanese-made bullet train Thursday, displaying a train simulator for Gov. Jerry Brown during a meeting in San Francisco.
The Japanese leader also took time to check out tech innovations and lend support to expanded commercial ties on the first day of his three-day visit to California. - See Details
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- 2015-05-16 Quantization of 'surface Dirac states' could lead to exotic applications
- Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan have uncovered the first evidence of an unusual quantum phenomenon—the integer quantum Hall effect—in a new type of film, called a 3D topological insulator. In doing this, they demonstrated that "surface Dirac states"—a particular form of massless electrons—are quantized in these materials, meaning that they only take on certain discrete values. These discoveries could help move science forward toward the goal of dissipationless electronics—electronic devices that can operate without producing the vast amounts of heat generated by current silicon-based semiconductors.
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- 2015-05-16 Fujitsu develops thin cooling device for compact electronics
- Fujitsu Laboratories today announced the development of the world's first thin cooling device designed for small, thin electronic devices. Smartphones, tablets, and other similar mobile devices are increasingly multifunctional and fast. These spec improvements, however, have increased heat generated from internal components, and the overheating of localized parts in devices has become problematic. Fujitsu has developed a thin loop heat pipe, less than one millimeter thick, to solve this problem.
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- 2015-05-16 Method for creating high-quality two-dimensional materials could enable industrial-scale production
Two-dimensional materials have a whole host of exotic properties because they are just one atom thick. A*STAR researchers have now developed a method for creating large areas of atom-thin material for use in electronic devices.
Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms arranged into a honeycomb-like pattern, is the most famous example of atwo-dimensional material. It is stronger than steel, has excellent electrical properties, and could be used to make two-dimensional devices that are much smaller than those currently made from bulk or thin-film silicon.- See Details
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- 2015-05-16 Ten more years of real money
We will still be using "real" money for at least the next 5 to 10 years, but financial transactions carried out using mobile electronic devices, such as smart phones and tablet computers, will increasingly become the norm during that time period, according to research published in the International Journal of Electronic Business.
Key Pousttchi and Josef Felten of the University of Augsburg and Jürgen Moormann of Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Germany, explain how social media and mobile devices are being utilised increasingly by banks while the power of the individual customer is being augmented by the same technologies.- See Details
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- 2015-05-16 Ultra-sensitive sensor detects individual electrons
A Spanish-led team of European researchers at the University of Cambridge has created an electronic device so accurate that it can detect the charge of a single electron in less than one microsecond. It has been dubbed the 'gate sensor' and could be applied in quantum computers of the future to read information stored in the charge or spin of a single electron.
In the same Cambridge laboratory in the United Kingdom where the British physicist J.J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897, European scientists have just developed a new ultra-sensitive electrical-charge sensor capable of detecting the movement of individual electrons.- See Details
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- 2015-05-16 Team develops faster, higher quality 3-D camera
When Microsoft released the Kinect for Xbox in November 2010, it transformed the video game industry. The most inexpensive 3-D camera to date, the Kinect bypassed the need for joysticks and controllers by sensing the user's gestures, leading to a feeling of total immersion into the game. Microsoft sold 8 million Kinect units within 60 days, making it the fastest-selling electronic device ever.
"But then something interesting happened," said Oliver Cossairt, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. "Microsoft made the software available for the 3-D capture part of the device.- See Details
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- 2015-05-16 Graphene-based technique creates the smallest gaps in nanostructures
A new procedure will enable researchers to fabricate smaller, faster, and more powerful nanoscale devices ─ and do so with molecular control and precision. Using a single layer of carbon atoms, or graphene, nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego have invented a new way of fabricating nanostructures that contain well-defined, atomic-sized gaps. The results from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering were published in the January issue of the journal Nano Letters.
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- 2015-05-16 Bendable glass devices
A special class of glass materials known as chalcogenide glasses holds promise for speeding integration of photonic and electronic devices with functions as diverse as data transfer and chemical sensing. Juejun "JJ" Hu, the Merton C. Flemings Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, is finding new ways to deploy these glasses with surprising flexibility.
Like regular glass, chalcogenide glasses are brittle, but Hu and colleagues developed a way to embed very thin glass photonic devices such as flexible microdisk resonators and waveguides in alternating layers of soft and stiff polymers.- See Details
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- 2015-05-16 Graphene holds key to unlocking creation of wearable electronic devices
Ground-breaking research has successfully created the world's first truly electronic textile, using the wonder material Graphene.
An international team of scientists, including Professor Monica Craciun from the University of Exeter, have pioneered a new technique to embed transparent, flexible graphene electrodes into fibres commonly associated with the textileindustry.- See Details
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- 2015-05-16 Smartphones among top gadgets for Americans: survey
- Smartphones are now used in 72 percent of US homes and have become the third most owned electronics item for Americans, a survey showed Monday.
The annual survey by the Consumer Electronics Association found that smartphones trail only televisions, which are in 97 percent of US households, and DVD players, in 78 percent. - See Details
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- 2015-05-15 Patented process builds better semiconductors, improves electronic devices
- Through a surprise research discovery, a Kansas State University chemical engineer has found the icing on the cake for electronic devices.
Jim Edgar, university distinguished professor of chemical engineering, has received a patent for his invention "Off-axis silicon carbide substrates," which is a process for building better semiconductors.
The research may help improve electronic devices and could benefit the power electronics industry and manufacturers of semiconductor devices. - See Details
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- 2015-05-15 World's smallest transponder coils for automotive electronics
- TDK Corporation presents new EPCOS SMT transponder coils with extremely compact dimensions: Measuring just 4.5 mm x 3.2 mm x 3.2 mm, the TC1812 has an inductance of 2.38 mH and is designed for operation in the Z-axis. The TC1210 coil is available with an inductance value of 1.08 mH or 1.34 mH, depending on type, and is suitable for operation in either the X- or Y-axis. Furthermore, both TC1210 versions are currently the smallest transponder coils in the world as they measure just 3.2 mm x 2.5 mm x 2.2 mm.
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- 2015-05-15 Yet more opportunities for organic semiconductors
- From 'Radio frequency identification' (RFID) tags to OLED displays and photovoltaic cells, organic semiconductors' high potential is widely recognised. A Marie Curie project has set out to bring potential innovation to the next level by using nucleation agent additives to better control the physical properties of these systems.
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- 2015-05-15 Research reduces microprocessor serial link power consumption, improves data center energy efficiency
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers are working to reduce the serial link power consumption, thereby helping data centers and mobile platform operate more energy efficiently.
The University of Illinois research—sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) through the Texas Analog Center of Excellence (TxACE)—was presented last month at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). - See Details
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- 2015-05-15 Demonstration of enhanced performance and long-term reliability of tunnel transistors operating under ultra-low voltage
- Researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have demonstrated the enhanced performance and high reliability of tunnel transistors (tunnel FETs), which are considered promising technology for future energy-efficient devices.
The researchers developed a process for fabricating both positive and negative-types tunnel FETs, which are indispensable to the CMOS circuit necessary to drive large-scale sensor network circuits, on a cost-advantageous silicon platform, achieved a subthreshold swing value below the physical limits of metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), and greatly enhanced the current drivavility. - See Details
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- 2015-05-15 Fast, efficient switching – thanks to HiPoSwitch
- Electrical power comes out of wall sockets, of course. But hardly any electronic device can take normal line voltage. Computers, smartphones, LEDs, and chargers, for instance, cannot use electrical energy in that form – the line voltage must be converted from AC to DC. The reverse conversion (DC to AC) is also commonly used, such as in solar panel inverters. Power converters use power transistor switches as key components to accomplish this.
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- 2015-05-15 ARM set to improve battery life for Internet of Things devices
- Wearables and IoT gadgets, featuring smart functions in much smaller form factors, pose battery challenges and headaches by their small size. ARM has made moves that might change the story of battery life of many wearables and other small devices, with its recent acquisition of two companies. Reports on Friday about ARM focused on its having acquired two low-power wireless communications companies.
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- 2015-05-15 Silicon Valley marks 50 years of Moore's Law
- Computers were the size of refrigerators when an engineer named Gordon Moore laid the foundations of Silicon Valley with a vision that became known as "Moore's Law."
Moore, then the 36-year-old head of research at Fairchild Semiconductor, predicted in a trade magazine article published 50 years ago Sunday that computer chips would double in complexity every year, at little or no added cost, for the next 10 years. In 1975, based on industry developments, he updated the prediction to doubling every two years. - See Details
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- 2015-05-15 Research advances security and trust in reconfigurable devices
- A research team at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is studying a range of security challenges involving programmable logic devices – in particular, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).
FPGAs are integrated circuits whose hardware can be reconfigured – even partially during run-time – enabling users to create their own customized, evolving microelectronic designs. They combine hardware performance and software flexibility so well that they're increasingly used in aerospace, defense, consumer devices, high-performance computing, vehicles, medical devices, and other applications. - See Details