"ALGORITHMS: New video service will offer science papers, demos"

A new video service called SciVee offers authors of peer-reviewed papers the opportunity to hawk their discoveries with video demonstrations. Unlike YouTube, SciVee will also present article text alongside a video clip window, giving viewers the option to review papers. Below the text and video are drop-down windows for figures, references and keywords as well as a cumulative rating, voted on by viewers, and a blog-style comment area.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201803521

"MATERIALS: IBM demos single-atom memory, molecular switch"

Even the highest density hard-disk drives use approximately 1 million magnetic atoms to store a single bit of information. IBM's Almaden Research Center (San Jose, Calif.) has demonstrated the ability to store a bit on a single atom, portending hard drives with ultra-high storage capacity. Simultaneously, IBM's Zurich Research Lab has demonstrated a molecular switch that could replace current silicon-based chip technology with processors so small that a supercomputer could fit on a chip the size of a speck of dust. IBM's claims its atomic-scale demonstration promises to pack up to 1,000 times as much information on a hard disk than current technologies. Such hard disks could store 30,000 full-length movies on a device the size of an iPod.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201803169

"ALGORITHMS: Software confirms human-to-human spread of avian flu"

The avian flu has not yet become pandemic, but the first requirement for its spreading--human-to-human infections--has been confirmed by software designed by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Seattle). The avian flu, known officially as H5N1, must mutate before it can be passed among humans and thus be capable of spreading worldwide via airplane travelers. New software, called TranStat--the first program capable of real-time analysis of such infectious-disease outbreaks--has concluded that the dreaded human-to-human mutation occurred in 2006 in Indonesia.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201802981

"ENERGY: Ball lightning's frightening . . . but finally explained"

Ball lightning has puzzled scientists for centuries. These orbs of electrical charge bounce like balls, squeeze under doors then reform into orbs, and sometimes even float in mid-air. Now, a Ukrainian scientist claims to have solved the mystery of ball lightning—it is, he said, an aerosol of nanoscale batteries short-circuited by surface discharge to spontaneously generate mega-amperes of current.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201802939

"ENERGY: Rochester, N.Y., bids to be first green U.S. city"

The United States' first Hydrogen Village—designed to demonstrate the feasibility of switching from fossil fuels to cleaner-burning hydrogen—has broken ground in the Rochester, N.Y. metropolitan area under the auspices of the U.S. Green Building Council. The council recently certified Rochester's road map to become the leader in community-supported green technologies, green buildings and all the infrastructure necessary to become the first green U.S. city. The charter includes plans to establish an exemplary Hydrogen Village consisting of hydrogen production, distribution and refueling centers in downtown Rochester.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201802687

"ALGORITHMS: NASA confirms Einstein"

NASA astronomers have found a new way to perform fundamental physics research on ultra-dense objects like black holes, yielding the latest confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity. NASA experimentally confirmed Einstein's predictions about space-time distortions by observing the spectral line from hot iron atoms whirling in a disk around a neutron star at 40 percent the speed of light. The spectra shifted to longer wavelengths and broadened asymmetrically by virtue of the Doppler effect in combination with the "beaming" effect predicted by Einstein's special theory of relativity.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201802629

"MATERIALS: Metal oxide nanotubes: lower-cost alternative to carbon?"

Nanotubes historically have been synonymous with organic carbon nanotubes, but no more. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta) have defined a new class of inorganic nanotube materials that are analogous to volcanically formed minerals found in Japan and New Zealand. By combining aluminum oxide with silicon and germanium the researchers are creating single-walled nanotubes that are less expensive to fabricate than carbon nanotubes, and which offer properties that are easier to control.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201802429

"CHIPS: IBM's Cell BE-based cluster to aid U. of Maryland research"

IBM Corp. said it will endow the University of Maryland's Baltimore County campus with the components for one of the most powerful cluster supercomputers in the world. Next month, IBM will deliver 24 Cell Broadband Engines (BE) for the UMBC Multicore Computing Center. Based on the same Cell processor that powers Sony's Playstation 3, the system will include a dozen IBM BladeCenter QS20s, each with dual 3.2-GHz Cell Broadband Engines. The 24 processors will be connected by Gigabit Ethernet and 20-Gbit/second Infiniband links. IBM said it will also provide software, support engineers, and endowments to selected graduate students working on parallel processing algorithms.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201802222