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08.11
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 July 2011. Items are
excerpted from news releases generated by
universities, government agencies and other
research institutions. Highlighted topics
include:
-
DOE Announces
Nationwide Student-Focused Clean Energy
Business Competitions
-
Microsoft Daytona
Offers Cloud-Based Computing Tools to
Researchers
-
Federal Smart Grid
Panel Approves First Six Standards
-
NIST Proposes New
Privacy Controls for Federal Information
Systems and Organizations
-
An Unexpected Clue to
Thermopower Efficiency
-
Piezoelectric
Nanowires Allow Electrical Signals to be
Produced From Mechanical Actions
-
New Photonic Crystals
Have Both Electronic and Optical Properties
-
New Laser Technology
Could Kill Viruses and Improve DVDs
-
Soft Memory Device
Opens Door to New Biocompatible Electronics
-
Researchers Aim for
'Direct Brain Control' of Prosthetic Arms
-
NSF sponsors $18.5M
Effort to Create Mind-machine Interface
-
Caltech Engineers
Develop 1-way Transmission System for Sound
Waves
-
Federal Appointments
of Note
1. DOE
Announces Nationwide Student-Focused Clean
Energy Business Competitions
On 21 July, U.S. Energy
Secretary Steven Chu announced DOE would fund a
National University Clean Energy Business
Challenge. This nationwide initiative will
create a network of regional student-focused
clean energy business creation competitions
whose winners will compete for a National Grand
Prize at a completion held at the Department of
Energy in Washington, D.C. in early summer 2012.
The funding will support up to six regional
competitions that will inspire, mentor, and
train students from across the country to
develop successful business plans to create a
new generation of American clean energy
companies.
For more information, see:
http://www.energy.gov/news/10436.htm
2. Microsoft
Daytona Offers Cloud-Based Computing Tools to
Researchers
In July, Microsoft announced the
availability of a new tool that will make it
easier for researchers to harness the power of
“cloud computing” to discover insights in huge
quantities of data. Daytona will be freely
available to the research community, and builds
on an existing cloud computing collaboration
between the National Science Foundation and
Microsoft. The new partnership, along with NSF
collaborations with other leading IT companies,
will help researchers access the computing power
and storage capacity they need to tackle the big
questions in their field. That’s important as
research on big issues is generating extremely
large data sets, challenging researchers to find
better tools to help them store, index, search,
visualize and analyze data for new patterns and
connections.
For more information, see:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/07/18/big-data-new-insights
3. Federal
Smart Grid Panel Approves First Six Standards
The Smart Grid Interoperability
Panel (SGIP) approved the first six entries into
its new Catalog of Standards, a technical
document now available as a guide for all
involved with Smart Grid-related technology.
Adopted were internet protocol standards, energy
usage information standards, standards for
vehicle charging stations, use cases for
communication between plug-in vehicles and the
grid, requirements for upgrading smart meters,
and guidelines for assessing standards for
wireless communication devices.
For more information, see:
http://www.nist.gov/smartgrid/sgip-072611.cfm
4. NIST
Proposes New Privacy Controls for Federal
Information Systems and Organizations
With increasing dependency on
information systems and advances in cloud
computing, the smart grid and mobile computing,
maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of
citizens' personally identifiable information is
a growing challenge. A new draft document
released by the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST) addresses that challenge
by adding privacy controls to the catalog of
security controls used to protect federal
information and information systems.
For more information, see:
http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/privacy-071911.cfm
5. An
Unexpected Clue to Thermopower Efficiency
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and their colleagues at the
University of California and Nanjing University
have discovered a new relation among electric
and magnetic fields and differences in
temperature, which can result in swirling
vortices of electrons and holes in semiconductor
devices and emit sideways magnetic fields.
Understanding the unusual new effect may lead to
more efficient thermoelectric devices, which
convert heat into electricity or electricity
into heat.
For more information, see:
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2011/07/28/an-unexpected-clue-to-thermopower-efficiency/
6.
Piezoelectric Nanowires Allow Electrical Signals
to be Produced From Mechanical Actions
Taking advantage of the unique
properties of zinc oxide nanowires, researchers
have demonstrated a new type of piezoelectric
resistive switching device in which the
write-read access of memory cells is controlled
by electromechanical modulation. Operating on
flexible substrates, arrays of these devices
could provide a new way to interface the
mechanical actions of the biological world to
conventional electronic circuitry.
For more information, see:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/giot-pna072511.php
7. New
Photonic Crystals Have Both Electronic and
Optical Properties
In an advance that could open
new avenues for solar cells, lasers,
metamaterials and more, researchers at the
University of Illinois have demonstrated the
first optoelectronically active 3-D photonic
crystal. Photonic crystals are materials that
can control or manipulate light in unexpected
ways thanks to their unique physical structures.
Photonic crystals can induce unusual phenomena
and affect photon behavior in ways that
traditional optical materials and devices can't.
They are popular materials of study for
applications in lasers, solar energy, LEDs,
metamaterials and more. However, previous
attempts at making 3-D photonic crystals have
resulted in devices that are only optically
active that is, they can direct light but not
electronically active, so they can't turn
electricity to light or vice versa. The
Illinois team's photonic crystal has both
properties.
For more information, see:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/uoia-npc072111.php
8. New Laser
Technology Could Kill Viruses and Improve DVDs
A team led by a professor at the
University of California, Riverside Bourns
College of Engineering has made a discovery in
semiconductor nanowire laser technology that
could potentially do everything from kill
viruses to increase storage capacity of DVDs.
The current generation of ultraviolet lasers is
based on a material called gallium nitride, but
Jianlin Liu, a professor of electrical
engineering, and his colleagues have made a
breakthrough in zinc oxide nanowire waveguide
lasers, which can offer smaller sizes, lower
costs, higher powers and shorter wavelengths.
For more information, see:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/uoc--nlt070511.php
9. Soft
Memory Device Opens Door to New Biocompatible
Electronics
Researchers from North Carolina
State University have developed a memory device
that is soft and functions well in wet
environments — opening the door to a new
generation of biocompatible electronic devices.
The devices are made using a liquid alloy of
gallium and indium metals set into water-based
gels, similar to gels used in biological
research. The device's ability to function in
wet environments, and the biocompatibility of
the gels, mean that this technology holds
promise for interfacing electronics with
biological systems — such as cells, enzymes or
tissue.
For more information, see:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/ncsu-smd071411.php
10.
Researchers Aim for 'Direct Brain Control' of
Prosthetic Arms
Engineering researchers at Rice
University, the University of Michigan, Drexel
University and the University of Maryland have
begun designing a prosthetic arm that amputees
can control directly with their brains and that
will allow them to feel what they touch. While
it may sound like science fiction, the
researchers say much of the technology has
already been proven in small-scale
demonstrations.
For more information, see:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/ru-raf072711.php
11. NSF
Sponsors $18.5M Effort to Create Mind-Machine
Interface
The National Science Foundation
recently announced an $18.5 million grant to
establish an Engineering Research Center for
Sensorimotor Neural Engineering based at the
University of Washington. "The center will work
on robotic devices that interact with, assist
and understand the nervous system," said
director Yoky Matsuoka, a UW associate professor
of computer science and engineering. "It will
combine advances in robotics, neuroscience,
electromechanical devices and computer science
to restore or augment the body's ability for
sensation and movement."
For more information, see:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/uow-ns071311.php
12. Caltech
Engineers Develop 1-way Transmission System for
Sound Waves
While many hotel rooms,
recording studios, and even some homes are built
with materials to help absorb or reflect sound,
mechanisms to truly control the direction of
sound waves are still in their infancy. However,
researchers at the California Institute of
Technology have now created the first tunable
acoustic diode — a device that allows acoustic
information to travel only in one direction, at
controllable frequencies.
For more information, see:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/ciot-ced072611.php
13. Federal
Appointments of Note
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