The following is a roundup of news and notable developments in electrical engineering and computer or information technology during January 2009. Items are excerpted from news releases generated by research universities and government agencies. Highlighted topics include:

1. Game Play Inspires Mathematical Model with Applications to Robotic Mine Sweepers

2. NIST Research Increases Sensitivity of Magnetic Field Detection

3. Stanford Researchers Create Word’s Smallest Letters

4. LBNL Researchers Develop Supercharged Ion Generator With Benefits for Thin Film Manufacture

5. Research into Conductive Domain Walls Could Enable Future Electronics to Shrink Dramatically

6. New Catalyst Paves Way for Ethanol Powered Fuel Cells

7. Application of Plasmotic Microcavity Opens Door to Nanoscale Lasers

8. Sandia Lab Adopts New Agreements to Facilitate Use of Research Facilities

9. RPI Researchers Demonstrate New Higher Efficiency LED Lighting

10. Nanomagnetic 'Fingerprints' May Enable Next-Generation Information Storage Media

11. New Tool Allows Powerful Data Analyis

12. Scholarships Funded to Create Federal Cybersecurity Corps

13. Firm Developing Plastic Solar Cells for Portable Electronic Devices

14. Research Demonstrates Easy Process for Assembly of Electronic Biological Chips

15. Health-Monitoring Technologies Can Help Keep Seniors Living at Home Longer

16. DARPA Targets Young Academics

17. Educational Practices Discouraging Women From Entering Engineering
    

1. Game Play Inspires Mathematical Model with Applications to Robotic Mine Sweepers

Developed by Duke researchers, a newly developed mathematical model that figures out the best strategy to win the popular board game CLUE© could some day help robot mine sweepers navigate strange surroundings to find hidden explosives.

"Sensors — like the pawn in CLUE© — must take in information about the surroundings to help the robot maneuver around obstacles as it searches for its target," said Chenghui Cai, who with Silvia Ferrari, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, published the results of their latest research online in the journal IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Cai is now a post-doctoral fellow in computer and electrical engineering at Duke.

"The key to success, both for the CLUE© player and the robots, is to not only take in the new information it discovers, but to use this new information to help guide its next move," Cai said. "This learning-adapting process continues until either the player has won the game, or the robot has found the mines."

Ferrari, who directs Duke's Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Controls  [http://fred.mems.duke.edu/], specializes in developing systems that attempt to mimic human thought processes for use in mechanical systems that must have the ability to react quickly in the face of changing circumstances. This includes not only as mine-sweeping applications, but such activities as security surveillance, airborne drone guidance and even criminal profiling.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/du-gpc012709.php

2. NIST Research Increases Sensitivity of Magnetic Field Detection

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered that a carefully built magnetic sandwich that interleaves layers of a magnetic alloy with a few nanometers of silver “spacer” has dramatically enhanced sensitivity — a 400-fold improvement in some cases. This material could lead to greatly improved magnetic sensors for a wide range of applications from weapons detection and non-destructive testing to medical devices and high-performance data storage. This research is reported in the January Journal of Applied Physics.

More more information, see: www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2009_0127.htm#films

3. Stanford Researchers Create Word’s Smallest Letters

How small is the writing? The researchers encoded the letters "S" and "U" (as in Stanford University) within the interference patterns formed by quantum electron waves on the surface of a sliver of copper. The letters in the words are assembled from subatomic sized bits as small as 0.3 nanometers, or roughly one third of a billionth of a meter. The wave patterns even project a tiny hologram of the data, which can be viewed with a powerful microscope.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/su-swi012909.php

4. LBNL Researchers Develop Supercharged Ion Generator With Benefits for Thin Film Manufacture

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a powerful new kind of sputter process for the electronics industry — and for other, more exotic applications, including use in outer space — which deposits high-quality metal films in complex, three-dimensional nanoscale patterns at a rate that by one important measure is orders of magnitude greater than most existing systems.

For more information, see: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/press-releases/2009/01/28/a-supercharged-metal-ion-generator/

5. Research into Conductive Domain Walls Could Enable Future Electronics to Shrink Dramatically

Domain walls that conduct electricity, mere billionths of a meter wide, could be the ultimate nanoscale feature for future electronics. Scientists at Berkeley Lab have not only discovered conducting domain walls, never seen before, but learned how to write, erase, and manipulate them. This research could enable the logic and memory functions of future electronic devices to shrink dramatically — to one or two nanometers (billionths of a meter) instead of the many tens of nanometers that characterize today’s most advanced elements.

For more information, see: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/press-releases/2009/01/28/domain-walls-that-conduct-electricity/

6. New Catalyst Paves Way for Ethanol Powered Fuel Cells

A team of scientists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Delaware and Yeshiva University, has developed a new catalyst that could make ethanol-powered fuel cells feasible. The highly efficient catalyst performs two crucial, and previously unreachable steps needed to oxidize ethanol and produce clean energy in fuel cell reactions. Their results are published online in the 25 Jan. 2009 edition of Nature Materials.

For more information, see: www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=898&template=Today

7. Application of Plasmotic Microcavity Opens Door to Nanoscale Lasers

What could prove to be a significant breakthrough in the ultra-miniaturization of lasers has been achieved with the creation of a plasmonic microcavity based on the phenomenon of whispering galleries. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the California Institute of Technology have developed a “whispering gallery microcavity” based on plasmons - electromagnetic waves that race across the surfaces of metals. Such a plasmon wave has very small wavelength compared with the light, enabling the scaling down optical devices beyond diffraction limit of the light.

For more information, see: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/press-releases/2009/01/22/plasmonic-whispering-gallery-microcavity-paves-the-way-to-future-nanolasers/

8. Sandia Lab Adopts New Agreements to Facilitate Use of Research Facilities

Sandia National Laboratories is adopting two new Department of Energy (DOE) model agreements that will simplify the way universities and industry use the Labs facilities.

DOE recently finalized the agreement forms — one designed for proprietary research and the other for nonproprietary research — and is encouraging all of its laboratories across the country to begin using them.

The proprietary form allows industry to use and pay full cost recovery for the research and work done at the user facilities for their proprietary work. For the other type of agreement — nonproprietary — DOE funds the Sandia researchers and the user funds their researchers. The results are shared openly.

According to DOE's Under Secretary for Science Raymond Orbach, "this new approach will allow both university and industrial researchers greater access to our specialized, world-class facilities across the laboratory system and to work more closely with our scientists on real-world problems and potential solutions."

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/dnl-san011409.php

9. RPI Researchers Demonstrate New Higher Efficiency LED Lighting

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed and demonstrated a new type of light emitting diode (LED) with significantly improved lighting performance and energy efficiency. The new polarization-matched LED, developed in collaboration with Samsung Electro-Mechanics, exhibits an 18 percent increase in light output and a 22 percent increase in wall-plug efficiency.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/rpi-sln011309.php

10. Nanomagnetic 'Fingerprints' May Enable Next-Generation Information Storage Media

A technique of capturing the magnetic "fingerprints" of magnetic nanostructures — even when they are buried within the boards and junctions of an electronic device — has been developed by a team of researchers at University of California, Davis. The technique should serve as a valuable tool in the development of next-generation storage and recording media by contributing to the understanding of how to encode information with nanomagnetic arrays.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoc--con012809.php

11. New Tool Allows Powerful Data Analyis

A powerful computing tool that allows scientists to extract features and patterns from enormously large and complex sets of raw data has been developed by scientists at University of California, Davis, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The algorithm is compact enough to run on computers with as little as two gigabytes of memory. This NSF-funded research is highlighted in the Nov-Dec issue of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoc--nte010709.php

12. Scholarships Funded to Create Federal Cybersecurity Corps

Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey has been awarded $850,672 in scholarship money from the National Science Foundation to fund students interested in cybersecurity and committed to working for the federal government.

For more information: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/siot-srn013009.php

13. Firm Developing Plastic Solar Cells for Portable Electronic Devices

Solarmer Energy Inc. is developing plastic solar cells for portable electronic devices that will incorporate technology invented at the University of Chicago by NSF-funded researchers. The company is on track to complete a commercial-grade prototype later this year.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoc-sei012109.php

14. Research Demonstrates Easy Process for Assembly of Electronic Biological Chips

A handheld, ultra-portable device that can recognize and immediately report on a wide variety of environmental or medical compounds may eventually be possible, using a method that incorporates a mixture of biologically tagged nanowires onto integrated circuit chips, according to Penn State researchers.

Using nanowires manipulated by electronic fields, researchers believe they can make a variety of devices including resonators or field effect transistors that can be used to detect nucleic acid targets. "This approach can be used to simultaneously detect different pathogens or diseases based on their nucleic acid signatures," says Christine D. Keating, associate professor of chemistry at Penn State University.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/ps-eao011209.php

15. Health-Monitoring Technologies Can Help Keep Seniors Living at Home Longer

University of Missouri researchers are using sensors, computers and communication systems, along with supportive health care services to monitor the health of older adults who are living at home. According to the researchers, motion sensor networks installed in seniors' homes can detect changes in behavior and physical activity, including walking and sleeping patterns. Early identification of these changes can prompt health care interventions that can delay or prevent serious health events.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/nsf/fundednews.php?start=50

16. DARPA Targets Young Academics

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has released a research announcement on its Young Faculty Award (YFA) program, aimed at identifying and engaging junior faculty in academia and exposing them to Department of Defense needs and DARPA’s program development process.

The YFA program will provide high-impact funding to these faculty early in their careers in order to develop their research ideas in the context of Defense needs. DARPA’s long-term goal for this program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in key disciplines who will focus a significant portion of their career on Department of Defense and National Security issues.

For more information, see: www.darpa.mil/Docs/YFA_RA09.pdf

17. Educational Practices Discouraging Women From Entering Engineering

As the need for engineering professionals grows, educators and industry leaders are increasingly concerned with how to attract women to a traditional male career. A new University of Missouri study found the impact of the engineering curriculum and obstacles, including self-efficacy and feelings of inclusion, can impede women's success in the predominantly male discipline of engineering.

For more information, see: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/uom-epi123008.php

 

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