by D.F. Salisbury Exploration, 20 Aug 2007 Combine a mechanical arm with a miniature rocket motor: the result is a prosthetic device that is the closest thing yet to a bionic arm. A prototype of this radical design has been successfully developed and tested by a team of mechanical engineers at Vanderbilt University as part [...]
by M. Stupca et al. Applied Physics Letters, 6 Aug 2007 Ultrathin films of highly monodispersed luminescent Si nanoparticles are directly integrated on polycrystalline Si solar cells. The authors monitor the open-circuit voltage and the short circuit current. The results demonstrate that films of 1nm blue luminescent or 2.85nm red luminescent Si nanoparticles produce large [...]
by S. Still et al. arXiv.org, 5 Aug 2007 We show how theory building can naturally distinguish between regularity and randomness. Starting from basic modeling principles, using rate distortion theory and computational mechanics we argue for a general information-theoretic objective function that embodies a trade-off between a model’s complexity and its predictive power. The family [...]
by M. Knight CNN.com, 16 Aug 2007 Over the past 20 years technology has been shrinking in size as fast as it has been expanding our communication and entertainment horizons. Today’s latest gadgets are so refined and petite that they clip on to a belt or slip easily into a pocket or a bag. The [...]
by David Nagel Campus Technology, 23 Aug 2007 A new service has been launched to help instructors in both higher education and K-12 institutions detect plagiarized work submitted by students. The service, DOC Cop, is an entirely Web-based tool that provides free and automated assistance in locating “source material” (ahem) used in assignments submitted to [...]
BBC News, 15 Aug 2007 U.S. researchers have developed a prototype device that creates a “breeze” made up of charged particles, or ions, to cool computer chips. The “ionic wind”, the scientists say, will help to manage the heat generated by increasingly powerful, yet ever-shrinking devices. Read more
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The IEEE Wireless Communication & Networking Conference is seeking papers in all areas of wireless communications, networks, services, and applications. The conference, which is being held 31 Mar-3 Apr 2007 in Las Vegas, is the leading conference for wireless communications researchers, industry professionals, and academics interested in the latest development and design of wireless systems [...]
CrossRef Press Release, 1 Aug 2007 CrossRef, the association behind publishing’s preeminent shared digital infrastructure, announced today that it had entered into an agreement with iParadigms to develop a system that allows scholarly and professional publishers to verify the originality of submitted and published works. The service will be called “CrossCheck.” Six leading academic publishers [...]
by I. López et al. SPIE Newsroom, accessed 23 Aug 2007 New vehicles from the automotive industry include a growing number of progressively more sophisticated embedded systems, including a variety of advanced driver assistance systems, such as lane departure warning and adaptive cruise control. For reasons of cost and technology, these innovations draw upon limited [...]