SEMATECH, a global consortium of chipmakers, and Dow Electronic Materials announced today that Dow has joined SEMATECH's Resist Materials and Development Center (RMDC) at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany.
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Ultratech Receives Follow-On, Multi-System Order for Laser Spike Annealing Systems From Major Logic Foundry
Ultratech, Inc., a leading supplier of lithography and laser-processing systems used to manufacture semiconductor devices, today announced that it has received a follow-on, multiple-system order for its laser spike anneal (LSA) tools from a major foundry in Asia.
Russian Project Will Produce Digital TV Equipment Using 65nm to 90nm Technology
RUSNANO and Elecard Group of Tomsk, Russia will produce various electronic units using multimedia processors with technical norms of 90 nanometers to 65 nanometers. The project addresses goals set forth by President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev to make digital television available to the entire country within the next five years.
Phantoms Foundation coordinates the Spain Pavilion at nano tech 2010 in Tokyo
The Phantoms Foundation and the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (ICEX), in cooperation with the Embassy of Spain (Economic and Commercial Office) in Tokyo will bring together for the third time a nanoscience and nanotechnology Spain Pavilion at nano tech 2010.
Beilstein-Institut funds joint research project NanoBiC
The effects of high-energy beam on nano components and human cells will be investigated in detail by scientists in Frankfurt and Darmstadt. One goal of the NanoBiC project is to construct - like craftsmen - functional elements on surfaces e.g. transistors, sensors, quantum dots or memory elements according to a building plan. A further aim is to acquire detailed knowledge of the effects of cosmic rays on human cells which is particularly important for manned space missions.
Manhattan Scientifics and Dr. Edward R. Flynn Featured in Article on Novel Early Cancer Detection and Treatment
Flynn's technology is based on magnetic nano particles injected into the body. The particles carry antibodies that bind with cancer cells to pinpoint the exact location of diseases, both for diagnostics and for targeted therapies.
The first comprehensive nanoscience textbook ever assembled
Stuart Lindsay, an ASU Regents' Professor and director of the Biodesign Institute's Center for Single Molecule Biophysics, has released the first comprehensive guide to a tiny world 1 million times smaller than a single grain of sand.
‘Quantum logic clock’ based on aluminum ion is now world’s most precise clock
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world's most precise clock, more than twice as precise as the previous pacesetter based on a mercury atom.
Ursataur Capital Management L.P. and BASF Venture Capital GmbH invest in Quantiam Technologies Inc.
Quantiam develops and commercializes disruptive, world-first new products based on advanced materials, catalysts, coatings and surfaces for extreme-operating environments and energy-related applications.
Culley: Coleman’s Proposal is about Self-Defense
(By Patrick Culley, a Hoosier Libertarian)
The government that governs least, governs best. Take Libertarian City-County Councillor Ed Coleman's proposal to end the ban on firearms in city parks for example. Coleman's timely proposal addresses a glaring problem with our city's current laws. As it stands now, you have the right to defend your life from an armed assailant on the street, in a supermarket, in a department store, a state park, a federal park, just about everywhere except a city park. Are Indy's public parks such utopian safe zones that you don't need to worry about protecting yourself there? What makes a city park safer than a state or federal park where you are allowed the right to defend your life?
Let's be clear: this proposal is not about "gun rights". It's about the most fundamental of human rights; the right to self defense.
Generator Sizing
how can i find the generator sizing for a villa with 200kw connected load.
note that he should work only on 75% of his full capacity.
thank you
DVD Feature Film Review: As It Is in Heaven
An astonishing Swedish drama about a church choir and its creative director who take a meaningful and loving journey together: it is like a sauna of emotions and an incisive exploration of community.
James Cameron Endorses Commercial Spaceflight, New NASA Plan
James Cameron, the writer and director of “Avatar” and “Titanic” who served on the NASA Advisory Council from 2003 to 2005, has published an op-ed in The Washington Post endorsing commercial human spaceflight and President Obama’s new plan for NASA. The op-ed, titled “The right way forward on space exploration,” can be read at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020402439.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
In the op-ed, Cameron states, “By selecting commercial solutions for transportation to the international space station, NASA is empowering American free enterprise to do what it does best: develop technology quickly and efficiently in a competitive environment.”
Cameron concludes the op-ed stating, “I applaud President Obama’s bold decision for NASA to focus on building a space exploration program that can drive innovation and provide inspiration for the world. This is the path that can make our dreams in space a reality.”
Your Health, Predicted by a Map [Health]
If you've ever wondered which disease will be the disease that kills you, I recommend that you take the 9 minutes to watch this TEDMED video.
The opening evening of TEDMED, I was sitting near the front, waiting for presentations to start. I made casual conversation with the man next to me, before realizing that he was actually about to speak.
Actually, "speak" sounds like a bit of an overstatement. This guy, Bill Davenhall, was pitching me on the importance of maps. Maps! Boring old maps! What did maps have to do with the future of medicine?
So he explained a few cool things that maps could do. For instance, when combined with satellite imagery, they could track plants most common in areas of malaria outbreaks, warning residents before hindsight was 20/20.
Within about 2 minutes of chit chat, he'd sold me. Then, he got up on stage and showed this presentation, and I was floored by his thesis (what we should be able to do with data that we already possess). [TEDMED]
Curbing the Spread of Pseudoscience
When I say gain, I mean the many seemingly growing followers of ideas that are based on fledgling knowledge, unfounded speculation or some weird definition of words such as Energy, Quantum, vacuum, magnetism etc. Or as one here wrote "banality coached as science". Don't even get me started with the
Hubble catches Pluto red-faced | Bad Astronomy
Pity poor Pluto. The debate over its planethood has caused much consternation over the years. Part of the problem is that it’s so dinky and so far away! If it were closer, or bigger, we almost certainly wouldn’t be having this debate.
But whether or not you think Pluto should be part of the gang or not, one thing is certain: it’s a world unto itself. And to bring this point literally home, the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the changing face of this tiny iceball:
These images, just released today (but taken in 2002), represent the most detailed surface map of Pluto ever taken. Even in Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys Pluto is only a few pixels across, but it’s possible using sophisticated image processing techniques to tease out the detail seen.
Here’s a nifty animation of Pluto rotating using these maps:
Very cool. But these maps are more than just eye candy. They show significant changes on Pluto’s surface since the last maps were made using Hubble 16 years ago. Pluto’s north pole is brighter and the south pole darker, implying that material has migrated from one pole to the other, or at least that the poles are changing in different ways. Pluto orbits the Sun "on its side", dramatically more tilted than Earth’s mere 23.5°. Right now, the north pole of the world is facing the Sun, meaning it’s summer on Pluto’s northern hemisphere (as it’ll remain for a long time, given Pluto’s 248 Earth-year long year).
Not only that, these images show that Pluto has reddened quite a bit in the past few years. This is one reason it took so long to release the images; Marc Buie, the astronomer who took them, saw some things in the data that were difficult to understand, and wanted to make sure they were correct. These images are composites of pictures taken using a blue and a green filter. During the time these observations were made, in 2000 – 2002, Pluto got much darker in blue, which was unexpected. Pluto’s moon, Charon, did not get any bluer, indicating that the cause was something intrinsic to Pluto and not that something weird happened with Hubble.
So why is Pluto redder now? That’s not clear. In general, ultraviolet light from the Sun interacts with the chemicals on Pluto, creating reddish organic molecules; this is seen on lots of distant, icy objects in the Kuiper Belt (the region past Neptune where Pluto orbits). Incredibly, even at the numbing distance of over 4 billion kilometers (3 billion miles) from the Sun, Pluto is still strongly affected by it. But this is happening while overall the northern hemisphere got brighter and the southern darker. You’d expect Pluto to get darker if it gets redder, so clearly there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
These maps will prove crucial in planning the imaging run of the New Horizons probe, which will scream past Pluto in 2015. Having even a crude map in advance of the encounter will help scientists plan their limited time more carefully.
Plus, these Hubble images may very well be the best view we’ll get until New Horizons gets to Pluto, for that matter. And whether you think Pluto is the littlest planet or one of the biggest of the Kuiper Belt Objects, it’s a fascinating place worthy of a lot more study. And in just a little more than five years we’ll see fantastic images of it, too. I can’t wait!
Video courtesy Emily Lakdawalla (and my thanks to her for a helpful conversation). Image and video credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Buie (SwRI)
Lumaloop Camera Strap Review: Sling Shooting [Cameras]
The strap that comes in the box with your camera sucks. It's thin, so it digs into shoulder if you're lugging heavy gear, and fails to be super versatile. The Lumaloop's a sling-style camera strap that's designed to be better.
Price
$60
Sling Shooting
There are three major differences between Lumaloop and your standard strap: The way it attaches to your camera, the way you wear it, and how you draw your camera to fire. It's not the first sting-style strap* but it has a few unique bits.
A standard strap typically attaches to your camera at two points mounted on either side of the top of your camera, so you can hang it around your neck or your shoulder. Lumaloop gives you the option to plug in to either of those two points, or to the bottom of the camera via the threaded mount you'd use for like a tripod. The camera connects to the strap via breakaway lanyard attachment, so you can easily detach it in a pinch, which is one of its unique characteristics. It's sturdy though: My main camera for testing was a Nikon D3s, and a handful of lenses—notably this monster, the 70-200mm F2.8 VRII—so I stuck with the threaded bottom mount for weight reasons.
While you can technically wear any camera strap sling-style—across your chest—if it's long enough, that's specifically how LumaLoop was designed to be worn, complete with a fat shoulder pad. The weight's more evenly distributed, and it felt much better that way after hours of continuous shooting at the iPad keynote. Also, it made it easier to set the camera down to rest between shots at the keynote (holding up 8 pounds of camera gets tiring eventually), since I knew the camera was securely attached to me.
Update: By popular—or rather, Jason's—demand, here's a video showing it in action, so you can get a better sense of it: 
The basic design of the strap is—surprise—a loop. Threaded on that is a sliding clip, where your camera's landyard attachment plugs in. So, when you're not at the ready, your camera hangs down to the side, almost like a pistol in a holster, minus the holster. When you're ready to shoot, as you draw the camera up to eye level, the clip effortlessly slides along the strap up to where you're pulling it. Which I think is faster than if you've got it just hanging from your shoulder, since it's one smooth motion from rest to shooting.
The negatives? If you're using the bottom mount, there's no good way to use vertical grip controls, like on the D3s. You also have to position the strap just right when you slip it on, making sure the camera's sliding clip has room to move on the strap, otherwise it's not gonna go very far when you try to pull it up from your waist to shoot. Also, it's expensive, frankly, at $60—especially when you see this tutorial to make your own for $15.
Still, it's a better strap than anything that comes in a camera box, and it was really fantastic to use in the field. If you don't wanna buy one, you should at least consider making one.
The most comfortable way to lug a giant camera with giant lenses
Fast shooting
Flexible attachments
Makes vertical controls tough to get to when bottom-mounted
Pricey
[Lumaloop]
*BTW, I invited Black Rapid, who makes the similar R-Strap to send me a unit to review and compare to Lumaloop, but they declined.
A Hint at Apple’s Mobile Advertising Plans (Location, Location, Location) [IPhone]
A small, but interesting note: Apple's published an "App Store Tip" for developers that it'll reject apps which "use location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location." It's not to protect you.
Instead, what Mac and iPhone developer Craig Hockenberry almost certainly correctly surmises, "Looks like Apple is going to keep location-based advertising to themselves."
Let's step back for a second. Apple, as you might know, spent $275 million on the mobile ad company Quattro, after previously trying to acquire AdMob (before it was snatched by Google). The CEO of Quattro is now VP of Mobile Advertising at Apple. Apple has now openly declared itself a mobile devices company. And according to BusinessWeek, Apple's working on "ways to overhaul mobile advertising in the same way they had revolutionized music players and phones." Apple is serious about mobile advertising. That's point one.
Point two is that the vast majority of downloaded apps for the iPhone are free. The way to make money off of them is through ads—AdMob's done a decent job of getting ads into iPhone apps (which, it was speculated, is why Apple wanted to keep it away from Google). Right now, those ads are mostly, but not exclusively, banners and splash ads. A related point is that there's no Flash on the iPhone, so there's no way to do the kind dynamic ads that Flash allows.
The obvious presumption is that Apple wants to control the entire experience of using the iPhone (and iPad), all the way down to the ads you see, and wants to make the mobile ad experience better, not just for users, but for advertisers. (And of course, take a slice of the ad revenue.) So it's not too much of a stretch to see Apple's ad platform in the future being the best way to deliver ads in apps, which might offer perks like, say, location-based targeted advertising, or more dynamic ads than you can do now on an iPhone. It's also not crazy to think Apple's way is going to be the only way to get some of those features, like location-based ads. (The pro-Apple argument being they can ensure the ads are fully integrated and don't disrupt the experience of using the phone, blah blah.)
Obviously, the iPad's another huge advertising opportunity on top of the iPhone, so it makes even more sense to play in mobile ads. It might not shake down that way (the key word in the warning not to use Core Location for ads is primarily, so maybe there's leeway), with Apple asserting such a tight grip on ads on its platforms, but it wouldn't be shocking either, if Apple suddenly gives itself an overwhelming advantage in the field. [Apple via Dylan Beadle via Craig Hockenberry]
May I Have the Linos USB Vinyl Record Player to Go, Please? [Concept]
This prettyful simple bar is not a spare part from a Wipeout racer, but the Linos Portable USB vinyl record player. How does it work? Quite simply, it seems.
The bar has two parts. Take out the bottom base, place the long play album or single on top, and then sandwich it with the overarching top. To start playing, move the player arm into position.
If it weren't just a cool concept, I would definitely get one. [Pyott Design via TrendLand]
Let’s Help Comcast Transition to Xfinity [PhotoshopContest]
Have you guys heard?! Comcast's brand is so irreparably tainted by their horrible service, they're changing it to Xfinity! Yes, Xfinity. Hilarious! Let's help them transition by making some ads for them.
Send your best entries to me at contests@gizmodo.com with Xfinity Ads in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs under 800k in size, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Send your work to me by next Tuesday morning, and I'll pick three top winners and show off the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!
