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Archive for the ‘electronics’ category: Page 85

Mar 11, 2016

Amputee feels texture with a ‘bionic’ fingertip

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, electronics, transhumanism

An amputee feels texture in real time: Signals from sensors in an artificial fingertip are converted to neural-like spikes and delivered to nerves in the upper arm. (credit: Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne)

Amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen is the first person in the world to recognize texture (smoothness vs. roughness) using an artificial “bionic” fingertip surgically connected to nerves in his upper arm. The experimental system was developed by EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) and SSSA (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna).

“The stimulation felt almost like what I would feel with my hand,” says Sørensen. “I felt the texture sensations at the tip of the index finger of my phantom hand.”

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Mar 9, 2016

Apple Says the NSA Should Hack San Bernardino Terrorist’s iPhone

Posted by in categories: business, cybercrime/malcode, electronics, encryption, government, law, mobile phones, privacy

Let’s just hypothesize a little on this topic: let’s say Apple goes ahead and gives in to the US Government and enables government to access the phone’s info. Does Apple have any protection in the future from lawsuits from it’s customers in situations where their own customers information is hacked by criminals and published to the world or used for illegal activities? Because I do see in the future more lawsuits coming at the tech companies for not ensuring their platforms and devices are un-hackable. So, if the government has its way; what protections does tech have now with any future lawsuits by consumers and other businesses?


His comments come during the ongoing legal battle over an iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the individuals responsible for the San Bernardino, Calif. mass shooting December 2. “I don’t think requiring backdoors with encryption is either going to be an effective way to increase security or is really the right thing to do for just the direction that the world is going to”.

This is because First Amendment treats computer code as speech and according to Apple, meeting the demands of the government would be equivalent to “compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination”.

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Mar 6, 2016

The gap between SSD and hard disk prices is shrinking rapidly

Posted by in categories: computing, electronics

The price of SSDs is continuing to drop, and they’re becoming an ever-more tempting proposition compared to traditional spinning disks, according to a new report.

DRAMeXchange, which is a division of analyst firm TrendForce, produces a quarterly report detailing the prices PC vendors pay for SSDs, and it showed that both MLC-based and TLC-based SSDs dropped considerably in price.

MLC-based drives dropped by around 10 to 12%, and TLC-based SSD prices sank by 7 to 12% in the first quarter of 2016.

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Mar 5, 2016

The darkest material on Earth has become even darker

Posted by in categories: electronics, materials, transportation

New material improving stealth mode vehicles and planes.


When Surrey NanoSystems introduced the original Vantablack, the company said the carbon nanotube material is capable of absorbing 99.96 percent of light that touches it. It’s so dark, it can fool your eyes into seeing a smooth surface even when the nanotubes were actually grown on crumpled foil (seriously — watch the video below the fold). Well, the new version of Vantablack is darker than that. In fact, Surrey can’t even give us the percentage of light that gets absorbed, because its spectrometers can’t measure it.

In this video below (and the GIF above), you can see the material engulf the laser pointer in darkness when it moves across:

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Mar 1, 2016

Tiny Radar Camera Microchip Packs A Big Punch

Posted by in categories: computing, electronics, satellites

This tiny microchip effectively allows for palm-sized radar cameras.


In the future, radar cameras for use in satellites could be made a hundred times smaller with this millimeter-long chip, without compromising on image quality.

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Feb 29, 2016

Physicists promise a copper revolution in nanophotonics

Posted by in categories: computing, electronics, nanotechnology, physics

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) have for the first time experimentally demonstrated that copper nanophotonic components can operate successfully in photonic devices – it was previously believed that only gold and silver components could do so. Copper components are not only just as good as components based on noble metals; they can also be easily implemented in integrated circuits using industry-standard fabrication processes. “This is a kind of revolution – using copper will solve one of the main problems in nanophotonics,” say the authors of the paper. The results have been published in the scientific journal Nano Letters.

The discovery, which is revolutionary for photonics and the computers of the future, was made by researchers from the Laboratory of Nanooptics and Plasmonics at MIPT’s Centre of Nanoscale Optoelectronics. They have succeeded, for the first time, in producing copper nanophotonic components, whose characteristics are just as good as those of gold components. It is interesting to note that the scientists fabricated the copper components using the process compatible with the industry-standard manufacturing technologies that are used today to produce modern . This means that in the very near future copper nanophotonic components will form a basis for the development of energy-efficient light sources, ultra-sensitive sensors, as well as high-performance optoelectronic processors with several thousand cores.

The discovery was made under what is known as nanophotonics – a branch of research which aims, among other things, to replace existing components in data processing devices with more modern components by using photons instead of electrons. However, while transistors can be scaled down in size to a few nanometres, the diffraction of light limits the minimum dimensions of photonic components to the size of about the light wavelength (~1 micrometre). Despite the fundamental nature of this so-called , one can overcome it by using metal-dielectric structures to create truly nanoscale photonic components. Firstly, most metals show a negative permittivity at optical frequencies, and light cannot propagate through them, penetrating to a depth of only 25 nanometres. Secondly, light may be converted into surface plasmon polaritons, surface waves propagating along the surface of a metal. This makes it possible to switch from conventional 3D photonics to 2D surface plasmon photonics, which is known as plasmonics. This offers the possibility of controlling light at a scale of around 100 nanometres, i.e., far beyond the diffraction limit.

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Feb 29, 2016

Quantum dot solids: a new era in electronics?

Posted by in categories: electronics, energy, quantum physics

Connecting the dots: Playing ‘LEGO’ at the atomic scale to build atomically coherent quantum dot solids (credit: Kevin Whitham, Cornell University)

Just as the single-crystal silicon wafer forever changed the nature of communication 60 years ago, Cornell researchers hope their work with quantum dot solids — crystals made out of crystals — can help usher in a new era in electronics.

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Feb 27, 2016

Are Quantum Dots the Silicon Wafers of the Future?

Posted by in categories: electronics, quantum physics

I cannot wait until Q-Dot technology is commercially available to industries. When we start releasing Q-Dots to the commercial sector we’re going to see some real magic happen and possibly even able to improve many things that are refined, or created today. https://lnkd.in/bF4xm73


Silicon wafers have long been the go-to for all things electronic. First appearing in the ‘50s, they quickly made it as THE connectors, basically singlehandedly kickstarting the silicon revolution. A team of researchers from the Cornell University have discovered something they consider to be the next big step in quantum electronics. They are quite certain of the answer to the question “Are Quantum Dots the Silicon Wafers of the Future?”.

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Feb 27, 2016

This filmmaker put a tiny camera in his prosthetic eye. He calls it the Eyeborg

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, electronics

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Feb 26, 2016

ATR 72 prototype tests all-electrical energy management system

Posted by in categories: electronics, energy, materials, transportation

European turboprop aircraft manufacturer ATR said a prototype ATR 72 conducted a demonstration flight to test an all-electrical energy management system that aims to optimize electrical power distribution.

The flight is the second the ATR 72 demonstration aircraft has flown as part of the European Union’s “Clean Sky Joint Undertaking” program. The first test flight by the ATR 72 prototype, conducted in July 2015, trialed “new and more effective composite insulation materials and new vibro-acoustic sensors integrated into a large panel of the ATR aircraft fuselage,” ATR said in a statement.

The manufacturer said the two demonstration flights “also tested new generation optical fibers for improved identification of micro-cracks and easier maintenance.”

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