"ENERGY: Ford: hydrogen fuel feasible"

In order for hydrogen-powered automobiles to succeed, the fuel needs to be pumped into tanks as easily as gasoline--and without the threat of Hindenburg-like disasters. Sandia National Laboratories recently suggested an alternative technology for synthesizing carbon-based fuels so that the current U.S. fuel distribution system can be used. Now, Ford Motor Co. has emerged with an autocatalytic reaction scheme involving three hydrides that could someday enable hydrogen to be pumped into tanks as easily as gasoline.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205202982

"CHIPS:HD audio immune to interference"

In the crowded 2.4-GHz wireless band where everything from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth to cordless phones and microwave ovens operates, high-definition audio communications strategies have to be nimble to avoid interference. By combining very small packet sizes with an adaptive frequency allocation algorithm, STS Inc. (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), a fabless chip maker, claims to have nixed interference while maintaining high-definition (HD) audio within a power budget that maintains long battery life for portable devices — albeit with proprietary protocols that are incompatible with other manufacturers' devices.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205100787

"ALGORITHMS: Optical supercontinua finally explained"

Supercontinuum generation in optical fibers (the conversion of ultrashort pulses into broad spectrums of light) has helped to enable optical clocks that are accurate to within a second every million years, for which Roy Glauber, John Hall, and Theodor Hansch received the Nobel Prize in 2005. Since then, many researchers have generated supercontinua in optical fibers for coherence tomography, metrology and biomedical applications, despite the fact that the mechanism behind it has remained obscure. Now researchers at the University of Bath (England) claim to have explained the mechanism enabling supercontinuum generation.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204802888

"OPTICS: Optical supercontinua finally explained"

Supercontinuum generation in optical fibers (the conversion of ultrashort pulses into broad spectrums of light) has helped to enable optical clocks that are accurate to within a second every million years, for which Roy Glauber, John Hall, and Theodor Hansch received the Nobel Prize in 2005. Since then, many researchers have generated supercontinua in optical fibers for coherence tomography, metrology and biomedical applications, despite the fact that the mechanism behind it has remained obscure. Now researchers at the University of Bath (England) claim to have explained the mechanism enabling supercontinuum generation.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204802888

"ALGORITHMS: Dark matter spawns dark stars"

Dark matter and dark energy comprise 96 percent of the universe, or so says the "standard" theory; but where (and what) are dark matter and dark energy? Scientists call them "dark" because their presence has to be deduced from gravitational data about the visible universe, which indicates the presence of 74 percent more energy, and 22 percent more matter, than we see through our telescopes. Just this year, however, newly proposed theories have offered new explanations of dark energy and dark matter. Dark energy, for instance, was recently explained as the quantum "pressure" of empty space and dark matter as located in a halo around the galaxies. Now, researchers at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City) have an explanation for how dark matter, powered by weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), enabled the creation of vast dark stars.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204702590

"MATERIALS: IBM unveils smallest silicon modulator"

Optical interconnections on silicon herald a future in which photons will replace electrons to shuttle high-speed data streams between multiple microprocessor cores. A key component is an electro-optical modulator that permits one core's electrical output to modulate a silicon laser beam into a coded stream of pulses that can be routed to the input of any other core. IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center (Yorktown, N. Y.) said Thursday (Dec. 6) it has succeeded in shrinking a 10 Gbit/sec Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator down to 100 microns, at power levels comparable to today's discrete optical devices.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204701734

"ALGORITHMS: Smartpen aids blind engineering students"

Innovation plus invention have been combined to enable blind students to attend college engineering classes on a equal basis. A "smart" pen with an embedded microprocessor lets students feel notes written on sheets that raise up when stroked while students listen to annotated audio.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204701270

"MATERIALS: Gate leakage, down and out?"

A high-k dielectric process for CMOS transistors promises to turn the International Semiconductor Roadmap into a freeway by eliminating the gate-leakage problem at advanced nodes down to 10 nanometers. Overheating due to excessive gate leakage is the number one hurdle to reaching advanced semiconductor nodes below 45 nanometer. Now, a process with 1 million times less gate leakage could enable rapid migration to advanced nodes, according to Clemson University researchers.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204700285

"ENERGY: Energy harvesting matures"

At least two energy harvesting companies are reporting sharp increases in sales to customers who are finding all types of ordinary uses for power harvesting devices in advance of widespread deployment of wireless sensor networks.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204600613