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11.09

Tech News Digest
Compiled By IEEE-USA Staff

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

1. 3.4 Billion Investment Announced to Spur Transition to SmartGrid

2. Microbots Sought for IEEE-NIST Challenge

3. DARPA Celebrates Internet’s 40th Anniversary With Network Challenge

4. Electrical Engineers Go Head to Head with Genius on Music Playlists

5. Researchers Create All-Electric Spintronics

6. Pinning Down Superconductivity To a Single Layer

7. More Energy Efficient Server Architecture for Data-Intensive Applications

8. Quantum Computer Chips Edge Closer to Reality

9. World’s Fastest Supercomputer Completes Shake-Down

10. New Material Could Boost Data Storage Efficiency

11. Radio Waves 'See' Through Walls

12. Installed Cost of Solar Photovoltaic Systems in the US Fell in 2008

13. Major Advance Announced in Organic Solar Cells

14. Household Robots Pose Privacy Risk

15. Hyper-SAGE Technology Boosts Remote MRI Sensitivity

16. New Research Funded

1.)  3.4 Billion Investment Announced to Spur Transition to SmartGrid
Speaking at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center on 27 Oct., President Barack Obama announced $3.4 billion in federal grants to over one hundred private companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners for deployment of smart meters and other systems as part of building a smarter, stronger, more efficient and reliable electric system. The $3.4 billion in grant awards are part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion.  more

2.)  Microbots Sought for IEEE-NIST Challenge
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with IEEE, is inviting university and collegiate student teams currently engaged in microrobotic, microelectronic or MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) research to participate in the 2010 NIST Mobile Microrobotics Challenge. The competition will be held as part of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May 2010 in Anchorage, Alaska.   more

3.)  DARPA Celebrates Internet’s 40th Anniversary With Network Challenge
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced a DARPA Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet. The competition requires participants to discover the exact position of 10 large, red weather balloons that DARPA will place in undisclosed locations across the continental United States. The first person to identify the location of all the balloons will win a $40,000 cash prize. The balloons will be positioned on 5 December 2009.  more

4.)  Electrical Engineers Go Head to Head with Genius on Music Playlists
Electrical engineers recently pitted Genius — the music recommendation system in Apple's iTunes — against two experimental music recommender systems. Genius appears to capture acoustic similarities among songs within the same playlist, the researchers found. The University of California, San Diego, electrical engineers also discovered that the music recommender they built from scratch can generate song playlists that human subjects thought were as good as those that Genius generates.   more

5.)  Researchers Create All-Electric Spintronics
Scientists have always attempted to develop spin transistors by incorporating local ferromagnets into device architectures. A far better and practical way to manipulate the orientation of an electron's spin would be by using purely electrical means. A team of researchers led by the University of Cincinnati's Philippe Debray and Marc Cahay is the first to find an innovative and novel way to control an electron's spin orientation using purely electrical means.  more

6.)  Pinning Down Superconductivity To a Single Layer
Using precision techniques for making superconducting thin films layer-by-layer, physicists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified a single layer responsible for one such material's ability to become superconducting, i.e., carry electrical current with no energy loss. The technique could be used to engineer ultrathin films with "tunable" superconductivity for higher-efficiency electronic devices.  more

7.)  More Energy Efficient Server Architecture for Data-Intensive Applications
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Labs Pittsburgh have combined low-power, embedded processors typically used in netbooks with flash memory to create a server architecture that is fast, but far more energy efficient for data-intensive applications than the systems now used by major Internet services.   more

8.)  Quantum Computer Chips Edge Closer to Reality
Ohio State professor Paul Berger and his colleagues have discovered a way to make quantum devices using technology common to the chip-making industry today. The team fabricated a device called a tunneling diode using the most common chip-making technique, called chemical vapor deposition. This work might one day enable faster, low-power computer chips. It could also lead to high-resolution cameras for security and public safety, and cameras that provide clear vision through bad weather.   more

9.)  World’s Fastest Supercomputer Completes Shake-Down
The world's fastest supercomputer, Roadrunner, at Los Alamos National Laboratory has completed its initial "shakedown" phase doing accelerated petascale computer modeling and simulations of a variety of unclassified, fundamental science projects.   more

10.)  New Material Could Boost Data Storage Efficiency
North Carolina State University engineers have created a new material that would allow a fingernail-size computer chip to store the equivalent of 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text, far exceeding the storage capacities of today's computer memory systems.   more

11.)  Radio Waves 'See' Through Walls
University of Utah engineers have demonstrated that a wireless network of radio transmitters can track people moving behind solid walls. The system could help police, firefighters and others nab intruders, and rescue hostages, fire victims and elderly people who fall in their homes. It also might help retail marketing and border control.  more

12.)  Installed Cost of Solar Photovoltaic Systems in the US Fell in 2008
Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) released a new study on the installed costs of solar photovoltaic power systems in the US, showing that the average cost of these systems declined by more than 30 percent from 1998 to 2008. Within the last year of this period, costs fell by more than 4 percent.  more

13.)  Major Advance Announced in Organic Solar Cells
A team of postgraduate researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Center for Polymers and Organic Solids (CPOS) today announced a major advance in the synthesis of organic polymers for plastic solar cells. Reaction tiems were reduced by 99 percent, from 48 hours to 30 minutes and the average molecular weight of the polymers was increased by a factor of 3, which effectively cuts production time for the organic polymers by nearly 50 percent.  more

14.)  Household Robots Pose Privacy Risk
Robots equipped with wireless and sensing capabilities are available for use in the home. But the safety and privacy risks of these devices are not yet adequately addressed, according to a University of Washington study. more

15.)  Hyper-SAGE Technology Boosts Remote MRI Sensitivity
A new technique in Magnetic Resonance Imaging dubbed "Hyper-SAGE" has the potential to detect ultra low concentrations of clincal targets, such as lung and other cancers. more

16.)  New Research Funded

• Energy Efficiency: A Stanford University research team has been awarded $6.27 million to develop an interactive software system that encourages people to be more energy efficient at home.  more

• Transformative Energy Technology: On 26 Oct., the Department of Energy today announced $151 million in funding for 37 ambitious research projects spanning the energy sector, including potentially transformative innovations in energy storage, biofuels, carbon capture, renewable power, building efficiency, vehicles and other energy technology areas. more

• Cyber-Physical Systems: Carnegie Mellon University's Rohit Negi has received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop monitoring tools for predicting problems with the power grid and other critical infrastructures.  more

• Computer Science Education: Georgia Tech received a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to extend Georgia Computes!, a statewide program aimed at expanding the pipeline of computer science students and teachers at all education levels in Georgia. more

• Cloud Computing: Using American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding, scientists at the Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories will examine cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient computing paradigm to accelerate discoveries in biology, climate change and physics. more

• High Performance Computing: On 21 Oct., the Georgia Institute of Technology announced its receipt of a five-year, $12 million NSF award to lead a partnership of academic, industry and government experts in the development and deployment of an innovative and experimental high-performance computing system. more

• Brain Microsensors: Funded with a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, Pedram Mohseni, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Case Western University, is working on building smaller, more capable microelectronics aimed at making real-time monitoring of high-speed brain functions a reality. more

• Material Dynamics: NSF has awarded a five-year $3 million grant to the City College of New York and the University of Chicago's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center to develop methodology for description of “material dynamics" as an emerging branch of materials science. more

• Deep Underground Laboratory: UC Berkeley has received $29 million from NSF for preliminary design of the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, located in an abandoned South Dakota mine, setting the stage for later construction funds that would create the world’s deepest underground space for experiments in physics, geology and biology.  more

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