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Queen’s Human Media Lab Makes Board Games Electronic

sparky3887 — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:00:11 +0000

Researchers at Queen’s University are calling their new technology the future of board games. The technology, which looks like a set of white, cardboard hexagrams from the game board of Settlers of Catan, enables people to play electronic games in a traditional setting around a table, while enhancing game controls. Queen’s Human Media Lab (HML) professor Roel Vertegaal worked with graduate student Mike Rooke to develop the technology, which makes use of an overhead camera and a projector that allows designers to turn each piece of cardboard into a minicomputer capable of displaying video images. Vertegaal says such board games will become practical with the emergence of thin-film organic light-emitting diode screens. Meanwhile, Vertegaal also is working with HML student Eric Akaoka on research into DisplayObjects, which would allow any object to become a computer. “In the near future, a computer will have any shape or form, and iPhone-like computer displays will start appearing on any product,” he says. “These organic user interfaces will be embedded in real-world interactions.”

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Scientists Create First Electronic Quantum Processor

sparky3887 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:04:51 +0000

Yale University researchers have led a research effort to develop the first rudimentary solid-state quantum processor, a major step toward the creation of a quantum computer. The researchers used a two-qubit superconducting chip to successfully run simple algorithms, including a search, marking the first demonstration of quantum information processing with a solid-state device. “Our processor can perform only a few very simple quantum tasks, which have been demonstrated before with single nuclei, atoms, and photons,” says Yale professor Robert Schoelkopf. “But this is the first time they’ve been possible in an all-electronic device that looks and feels much more like a regular microprocessor.” Yale postdoctoral associate Leonardo DiCarlo, the lead author of a paper on the discovery, says the key that made the two-qubit processor possible was getting the qubits to rapidly switch between the on and off states so they exchanged information quickly but only when the researchers wanted them to do so. This has not been possible using solid-state qubits because scientists could not get the qubits to maintain a specific quantum state long enough. The first qubits created about a decade ago were able to maintain specific quantum states for about a nanosecond, but the new qubits can maintain theirs for a microsecond, a thousand times longer. The researchers are now working to increase the amount of time the qubits maintain their quantum states so they can run more complicated algorithms. Schoelkopf says processing power increases exponentially with each qubit added, so the potential for advanced quantum computing is huge. However, he says it will still be a while before quantum computers can be used to solve complex problems.

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Nominations Open for the 10th Annual Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Automation Achievement Award

sparky3887 — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:40:21 +0000

Nominations are now being accepted for the 10th Annual Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Automation Achievement Award, which is named after the former organizer of the Design Automation Conference (DAC). Nominations will be accepted until April 21, and the award will be presented on July 27 at the 46th DAC, which takes place July 26-31 in San Francisco. Individuals can be nominated by their colleagues, peers, and managers in recognition of notable contributions in their work that helped advance women in the electronic design automation industry. Both men and women in industry or academia and with technical or non-technical backgrounds are eligible for nomination. Previous winners include Louise Trevillyan from IBM Research Center, Jan Willis from Cadence Design Systems, Ellen Yoffa from IBM Research, Kathryn Kranen from Jasper Design Automation, and Mary Jane Irwin from Penn State University. The 46th DAC, sponsored in part by ACM’s Special Interest Group on Design Automation, will attract system designers and architects, logic and circuit designers, validation engineers, senior managers and executives, and researchers and academics from leading universities.

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New Virus-Built Battery Could Power Cars, Electronic Devices

sparky3887 — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:03:58 +0000

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers led by professor Angela Belcher have developed batteries by genetically engineering viruses to build the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery. The batteries have the same energy capacity and power performance as the state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries under consideration for use in plug-in hybrid cars, and could be used to power a variety of electronic devices, according to Belcher. The batteries could be manufactured inexpensively and in an environmentally friendly manner. The synthesis of the virus takes place at below room temperature, does not require any harmful organic solvents, and the materials used in the battery are non-toxic. In normal lithium-ion batteries, lithium ions flow between a negatively charged anode, normally graphite, and a positive cathode, normally cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate. Previous research by Belcher resulted in viruses capable of building an anode by coating themselves with cobalt oxide and gold, and self-assembling to form a nanowire. The most recent work focused on creating a highly powerful cathode to work with the anode. Building cathodes is more difficult because they must be very conductive to be a fast electrode, but most cathode candidate materials are highly insulating. To solve this problem, MIT researchers genetically engineered viruses that coat themselves with iron phosphate and connect to carbon nanotubes to create a network of highly conductive material. By recognizing the binding to certain materials, specifically carbon nanotubes, the iron phosphate nanowires can be electrically “wired” to conducting carbon nanotube networks. The viruses used are a common bacteriophage, which infect bacteria but are harmless to humans.

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