CHIPS# NSF# SRC# Grants Extend Nano Research Effort

Quantum and other unexplored effects need to be harnessed to successfully navigate the pitfalls of atomic scale computing devices, according to industry, academia and government, who are all starting to put their heads together on this problem. The six grant allotted this week are but a few of the pinoneering efforts worldwide to shrink electronic devices down to the atomic scale. Look for quantum computers and ultra-dense memory devices as a result these ongoing efforts within five years. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog

National Science Foundation's concept of renewing nano centers.

Here is what EETimes says about nano: Nanoscale electronics research will be funded through $2 million in grants from Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) and the National Science Foundation. The grants were awarded to six existing NSF Centers at U.S. universities. Twenty-four earlier grants were awarded as part of the five-year old public-private partnership program, SRC (Research Triangle Park, N.C.) said. The overall aim of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative is to spur collaboration among industry, academic and government researchers pursuing nanoscale switching technology to replace traditional silicon transistor within the next decade. The hope is that by building a foundation for transistor alternatives, like quantum mechanics, continued performance enhancements, power reduction and device shrinkage can continue uninterrupted.
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#CHIPS Electronic Nose Sniffs out Medical Conditions

National Science Foundation funding could soon give diabetics an alternative to repeatedly pricking their finger for a blood sample. If successful, this electronic nose could potentially be trained to instantly identify many maladies just by sampling your breath. Look for electronic noses for diabetics within two years and for a wide variety of other diseases over the rest of the decade. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog

Electronic nose sniffs out chemical markers for disease with sensors crafted by electrospinning nanofiber and nanowire structures.

Electronic nose sensors can not only detect disease but can also diagnose its progress, according to Stony Brook University researchers. Nanowire-arrays of ultrasensitive sensors offer improved gas sensitivity, faster response and lower level detection than conventional approaches, promising to eliminate the need for blood tests in favor of breath-based diagnoses, the researchers say.
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#CHIPS IBM Probes Atomic Memories, Photovoltaics, Quantum Computers

Incredible memory chip densities will someday result from encoding bits onto individual atoms, according to IBM Research, which has reinvented a microscopy tool for characterizing single-atom memories, molecular-scale solar cells and future quantum computers. Look for atomic-scale chips made possible by pulsed microscopy within four years. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog

Scanning tunneling microscope topograph of an iron atom (large yellow) on a nitride-covered substrate (blue), which someday may enable single-atom bit cells for memory chips

Semiconductor designers today are attempting to design atomically accurate materials using the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to image individual atoms. Unfortunately, only still images could be made. Now IBM has reinvented STM to work like pulsed lasers, permitting measurements to be made on a sub-nanosecond time scale, resulting in videolike movies of atoms made at rates of billions of frames per second
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#OPTICS Microscopic Antennas for Light Beat Fiber Optics

Optical signals use light not only for telecommunications, but for sensors that can detect even scant amounts of toxins. Most optical signals are routed down fibers like a conduit, but now Rice University researchers are proposing to use microscopic optical antennas to receive light in the same way a cell phone's antenna receives radio waves. Look for super-sensitive detectors built using optical antennas within five years. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog

Artist's rendering of how plasmons in a pair of gold sub-nanometer electrodes concentrate light from a laser. (Image courtesy Natelson Lab/Rice University)

Electromagnetic radiation runs the gamut from long-wavelength radio waves to short-wavelength light waves, but antennas are usually thought of as useful only for radio waves. Since an antenna's size is related to the wavelength it is intended to receive, radio antennas must be a millimeter or longer. Since light's wavelength is measured in nanometers, antennas scaled down to that size should be able to receive the nanometer wavelengths of light.
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#ALGORITHMS "Swarm Intelligence Controls Robotic Planes"

Unmanned areal vehicles (UAVs) communicate with each other and the ground to fly in coordinated swarms for search and rescue operations.

Search and rescue could become easier with swarms of unmanned areal vehicles (UAVs) all under the control of a single operator. Today many drones can perform some mission objectives on their own, but not coordinated formation flying, which is necessary for search and rescue as opposed to surveillance or military applications. By encoding swarm intelligence for the UAVs into a ground-based computer, it may be possible to combine autonomy and control for grid-like search operations. Look for swarms of search and rescue UAVs at natural disaster sites within three years. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog

UAVS run Linux on a lithium-polymer battery powered single-board computer with an off-the-shelf WiFi receiver, a GPS module and a ZigBee transmitter.

Here is what EETimes says about swarm intelligence: A new strategy for coordinated flight of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) devised by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology uses coordinated communications to allow a single operator to control an entire swarm of ultra-cheap robotic planes, rather than depending on expensive radar or lasers to locate and coordinate the flight of swarms or UAVs. Created in the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Swarming Micro Air Vehicle Network (SmavNet) project uses small (32-inch wingspan), lightweight (under 1 pound) UAVs with an electric motor and two control surfaces (ailerons and elevators) running on a single lithium-polymer battery with a flight-time of 30 minutes. The UAVs use GPS for location and WiFi for communications plus only three inexpensive sensors—a single MEMS gyroscope and two pressure sensors.
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#NANOTECH Nanosprings Could Enable Handheld Medical Scanners

Dr. McCoy's medical scanner on the Star Trek franchise seems almost quaint when you recall it--until you realize we still have no handheld medical scanners today! The next big thing that could finally realize the dream are nanospring biomolecule carriers. Look for handheld medical diagnostic devices to finally arrive within the next three years. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog

Silicon dioxide nanosprings resemble old-style curled-up phone cords, but can carry biomolecules that enable handheld mobile battery-powered medical diagnostic devices that give instant results on a variety of medical conditions.

Here is what Smarter Technology says about nanosprings: Nanosprings aim to enable handheld medical devices that give instant diagnostics, yet are cheap enough to be deployed everywhere—from the rural outback to your doctor's waiting room. Oregon State University researchers recently demonstrated nanosprings holding biomolecules that could be used in bio-sensors for the production of pharmaceuticals and for the micro reactions used in mobile handheld medical "labs on-a-chip."
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#OPTICS "NIST Crafts 'Schrodinger's Cat' from Light"

NIST research associate Thomas Gerrits at the laser table used to create "quantum cats" made of light.

 Schrodinger's Cat is a thought experiment in which the feline was balanced in a paradoxical quantum state—a superposition of being both dead and alive. Now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) claims to have created a cat made from photons that realizes Schrodinger's long predicted paradox. Look for novel quantum states to play a role in the emerging field of quantum computing over the rest of the decade. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog

These colorized plots of electric field values indicate how closely the NIST "quantum cats" (left) compare with theoretical predictions for a cat state (right). The purple spots and alternating blue contrast regions in the center of the images indicate the light is in the appropriate quantum state.

Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger constructed his "cat" experiment as a "reductio ad absurdum" argument against one interpretation of quantum mechanics. Einstein had recently described quantum entanglement in an article suggesting that superposition of opposite states in atomic quanta could also become macroscopic. To illustrate the absurdity of that notion, Schrodinger constructed the situation where a cat could be both alive and dead simultaneously.
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I Won "Kyoto Prize Journalism Fellowship"!

I am honored to have been named a winner of the Kyoto Prize Journalism Fellowship, along with the second winner, Time Magazine senior reporter Alice Park. The Kyoto Prize fancies itself the "younger" Nobel Prize, but has no award in journalism. Instead the "Kyoto Prize Journalism Fellowship" includes a trip to Japan, one-on-one interviews with the prize winners and a commemorative banquet "in the presence of Her Imperial Highness." Look for my stories on the Kyoto Prize winners filed from Japan next month. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog

The Kyoto Prize is one of the world’s most prestigious awards given to those who have made outstanding lifetime achievements in technology, science, or the arts.

Here is what EETimes says about the Kyoto Prize Journalism Fellowship: R. Colin Johnson, veteran technology correspondent for EE Times, has been named a winner of the 2010 Kyoto Prize Journalism Fellowship. Johnson, who is based in Portland, Ore., was one of two winners of the annual fellowship, which was awarded this week in conjunction with the 26th annual Kyoto Prize, Japan’s version of the Nobel Prize. The journalism fellowship is administered by Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. Fellowship winners travel to Japan for one week to attend the Kyoto Prize awards ceremony and interview the prize winners. This year’s recipients include Laszlo Lovasz, the Hungarian-born mathematician who has specialized in a discipline called discrete mathematics. Lovasz “has provided a link among numerous branches of mathematics through his advanced research on discrete structures and algorithms,” the Kyoto Prize committee said...
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