"NO-NUKE: Researchers show solid-state Geiger counter costing $10"
Professor Douglas McGregor at Kansas State University discusses his gallium arsenide diodes that are being used to build real-time nuclear-radiation detectors that promise to be as small and cheap as today's non-real-time "dosimeter" badges. The button-size single-chip detectors will give on-the-spot readings of radiation levels, as Geiger counters do, but without the Geiger counters' expense and heft. In the current version, a round gallium arsenide sensor chip outputs a pulse for every 13th radioactive particle it encounters. A model on the drawing board would sense every fifth thermal neutron and cost roughly $10.

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Story in EE Times: http://www.eet.com/at/news/OEG20021125S0055

"QUANTUM: Hackers beware, uncrackable encryption is coming"
Quantum encryption pioneers promise to put the world's first uncrackably secure networks online by early 2003. Based on the quantum properties of photons, quantum encryption guarantees absolutely secure optical communications.Three independent experiments recently have demonstrated such systems. Geneva-based id Quantique SA encoded a secure transmission on a 70-kilometer fiber-optic link in Europe; MajiQ Technologies Inc., here, used a 30-km link; and researchers at Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) demonstrated a 250-Mbit/second quantum encrypted transmission over a short link.

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Story in EE Times: http://www.eet.com/at/news/OEG20021111S0036

"QUANTUM: securing high-speed data streams with quantum encryption"
Northwestern professors Prem Kumar and Horace Yuen demonstrate a quantum encryption system that encodes entire high-speed data streams and could potentially encrypt data sent at Internet backbones speeds. The approach ups-the-ante for secure networks by using quantum codes to encrypt the signal transmitted down the Internet's optical fiber backbone rather than just using quantum logic to secure the encryption key.

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Story in EE Times: http://www.eet.com/at/news/OEG20021107S0031

"QUANTUM: Magiq employs quantum technology for secure encryption"
Alexei Trifonov, vice president of research and development at Magiq Technologies Inc. describes a quantum information processing technique for uncrackable encryption of communication lines, slated for delivery early next year. The fiber-optic link updates its encryption key, encoded as quantum bits (qubits), every second and cannot be eavesdropped on without the receiver knowing.

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Story in EE Times: http://eet.com/at/news/OEG20021105S0019

"MEMS: Radioactive isotopes fuel microscopic battery "
Cornell professor Amit Lal uses radioactive isotopes as fuel for a tiny battery developed that could turn out to be an ideal power source for remote sensors or other small-scale systems. Microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS) technology creates a millimeter-size battery that can run for decades. The research team plans to scale the prototype to even smaller dimensions so that it could become a power source for MEMS sensors.

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Story in EE Times: http://www.eet.com/at/news/OEG20021104S0040