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Scientists grow nanolasers on silicon chips, prove microscopic blinkenlights are the future
What you see above may look like a nanoscale Obelisk of Light, ready to protect the tiny forces of Nod, but that's not it at all. It's a nanolaser, grown directly on a field of silicon by scientists at Berkeley. The idea is to rely on light to transmit data inside of computers, rather than physical connections, but until now finding a way to generate that light on a small enough scale to work inside circuitry without damaging it has been impossible. These indium gallium arsenide nanopillars could solve that, grown on and integrated within silicon without doing harm. Once embedded they emit light at a wavelength of 950nm, as shown in the video below. [Thanks, Paul]
Audi commissions four US universities to research urban mobility issues
We've seen what other companies have in store for our automotive future, and now Audi's given us a glimpse of what we can expect from its car of tomorrow. The company's Silicon Valley research lab has teamed up with four universities here in the US to develop technologies that will give city drivers the full KITT treatment -- vehicles that recognize the driver (and his or her preferences) and can detect and avoid dangers and traffic delays. Called the Audi Urban Intelligence Assist initiative, each participating university has a specific area of urban mobility research ranging from urban crash analysis to aggregating historical and real-time traffic, parking, and pedestrian data in cities. The schools will also study how best to deliver relevant information to drivers and get them from point A to point B as easily and efficiently as possible. Looks like the groundwork is being laid for a German counterpart to GM's EN-V we test drove in Vegas, and we look forward to the fruits of their labor. Ich bin ein Ingolstädter!
World's first room-temperature semiconductor plasmon nanolaser created by Berkeley scientists
We're big proponents of the idea that everything is better with lasers, and a team of researchers at UC Berkeley has created a new type of semiconductor plasmon nanolaser, or spaser, that could eventually find a home in many of your favorite devices. The big breakthrough is that Berkeley's spaser operates at room temperature -- previous spasers could only sustain lasing at temperatures below -250° C -- enabling its use in commercial products. Plasmon lasers work by amplifying surface plasmons, which can be confined to a much smaller area than the light particles amplified by conventional lasers. This allows for extreme miniaturization of optical devices for ultra-high-resolution imaging, high sensitivity biological sensors, and optical circuits 100 times faster than the electronic variety. There's no word on how soon the technology will be commercially available, so you'll have to wait a bit longer for your first laser computer.
UC Berkeley researchers craft ultra-sensitive artificial skin, robots dream of holding eggs
Researchers and engineers have been toiling on synthetic skins for years now, but most of 'em have run into one major problem: the fact that organic materials are poor semiconductors. In other words, older skins have required high levels of power to operate, and those using inorganic materials have traditionally been too fragile for use on prosthetics. Thanks to a team of researchers at UC Berkeley, though, we're looking at a new "pressure-sensitive electronic material from semiconductor nanowires." The new 'e-skin' is supposedly the first material made out of inorganic single crystalline semiconductors, and at least in theory, it could be widely used in at least two applications. First off, robots could use this skin to accurately determine how much force should be applied (or not applied, as the case may be) to hold a given object. Secondly, this skin could give touch back to those with artificial hands and limbs, though that would first require "significant advances in the integration of electronic sensors with the human nervous system. Dollars to donuts this gets tested on the gridiron when UCLA and / or Stanford comes to town.
Laser backpack creates instant 3D maps, Venkman reminds you to not cross the streams (video)
Total protonic reversal? Small price to pay for an instantaneous 3D scan of a building's interior. That's what the backpack pictured above delivers, a project from UC Berkeley students and faculty Matthew Carlberg, Avideh Zakhor, John Kua, and George Chen. The pack contains a suite of laser scanners and positional sensors that enable it to capture images of building interiors as a fleshy assistant roams their halls. Those images can then be automatically pieced back together to create a 3D representation. We're having visions of instant Doom II WADs but the real boon here could be an extension to Google Maps where you could not only get a Street View but also an interior view. You know, really scope out that little Thai joint before you schlep yourself all the way downtown.
UC Berkeley researchers teach PR2 robot to fold towels
We've already seen Willow Garage's PR2 robot learn to roam offices in search of a power outlet, and it looks like some researchers at UC Berkeley have now helped it pull off its most impressive feat yet: folding towels. That may not sound like too hard a task, but it's actually proven to be quite a conundrum for robotic laundry researchers, since robots need to first pick up a towel from a pile and then somehow determine that this previously unseen shape is, in fact, a towel that can be folded. While it's still a long way from being the Roomba of laundry, the JR2 bot is now able to fold at the blistering speed of 25 minutes per towel, and the researchers are hopeful that the same computer vision-based approach can also be applied to a range of other tasks that have previously stumped robots. Head on past the break for the video -- don't worry, it's sped up.
UC Berkeley researchers tout world's smallest semiconductor laser
Scientists at the Norfolk State University may laid claim to a "world's smallest laser" title just a few short weeks ago with the aid of some newfangled "spasers," but it looks like the folks at UC Berkeley at hot on their heels with some tiny lasers of their own, and they've now announced what they claim to be the worlds smallest semiconductor laser. Unlike Norfolk State's solution, the Berkeley researchers apparently relied primarily on standard semiconductor materials and fabrication technologies commonly used today, but devised a new means to squeeze the visible light into a 5 nanometer gap (about the size of a single protein molecule), while also using some newly-engineered "hybrid surface plasmons" to keep the light from dissipating as it moves along. That, the researchers say, represents nothing short of a "new milestone in laser physics," and could pave the way for everything from new nanolasers that can probe, manipulate and characterize DNA molecules to new breakthroughs in computing that could see light replacing electronic circuitry "with a corresponding leap in speed and processing power." [Via DailyTech]
CellScope, the cellphone microscope, gets UV upgrade to spot tiny glowing things
It was over a year ago that UC Berkeley introduced the world to CellScope, the 60x microscope for cellphones made from cheap, off the shelf components (like a re-purposed belt clip). Now, even though we're disappointingly still not seeing this thing in stores, there's an upgraded version able to take pictures of even smaller nasties. Using a filter the scope can now spot microscopic critters tagged with dye that glows under fluorescent light -- things like Mycobacterium tuberculosis (that's the cause of TB if you, like us, lack a med degree). A software app is able to then count the number of cells within a given sample and tell you whether to worry about that annoying cough. There's still no word on whether this product will ever actually start scoping out such things in the wild, but we certainly hope it will -- if only so that we can keep our vast collection of cellphone accessories complete. Video after the break.[Via Crave]
Researchers create nanotube memory that can store data for a billion years
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have developed an ultra-dense memory chip that is capable of storing data for up to a billion years (besting silicon chips by roughly... a billion years). Consisting of a crystalline iron nanoparticle shuttle encased within a multiwalled carbon nanotube, the device can be written to and read from using conventional voltages already available in digital electronics today. The research was led by Alex Zettl, who notes that current digital storage methods are capable of storing mass amounts of data, but last just decades, while, say, some books have managed to last nearly a thousand years, though the amount of data they contain is quite small. The new method, called shuttle memory, is based on the iron nanoparticle which can move back and forth within the hollow nanotu. Zettl believes that, while shuttle memory is years away from practical application, it could have a lot of archival applications in the future. There's a video after the break, hit the read link for more tiny details.[Via The Register]
Quest for invisibility cloaks revisited by two research groups
After a brief period of no news, it's time to revisit the world of invisible cloaks. Inspired by the ideas of theoretical physicist John Pendry at Imperial College, London, two separate groups of researchers from Cornell University and UC Berkeley claim to have prototyped their own cloaking devices. Both work essentially the same way: the object is hidden by mirrors that look entirely flat thanks to tiny silicon nanopillars that steer reflected light in such a way to create the illusion. It gets a bit technical, sure, but hopefully from at least one of these projects we'll get a video presentation that's sure to make us downright giddy.
Cyborg beetles commandeered for test flight, laser beams not (yet) included
Remember that DARPA initiative from a few years back to create cyborg insects? With funding from the agency, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have managed to control a rhinoceros beetle via radio signals, demonstrated in a flight test shown on video at this week's IEEE MEMS 2009 conference. A module placed on the arthropod uses six electrodes affixed to the brain and muscles to commandeer its free will. The device weighs 1.3g -- much less than the 3g payload these guys can handle, and with enough wiggle room to attach sensors for surveillance. Ultimately, scientists say they want to use the beetle's own sensors -- namely, its eyes -- to capture intel and its own body energy to power the apparatus. Keep an eye on this one, we expect it to play a major role in the impending robots vs. humans war.[Thanks, Mimosa]
Mobile Millennium project promises to track traffic with cellphones
UC Berkeley has been working on using cellphones to track traffic for some time now, first under the the decidedly less expansive Mobile Century project, and now under its new Mobile Millennium project, which has the backing of Nokia, NAVTEQ, and others. It actually first kicked off earlier this year, but it looks like it's now about to take another big step forward, with the researchers set to open things up to the general public -- or the general public in Northern California, at least. The idea here is to collect data from folks with GPS-equipped cellphones and combine it with existing traffic data, and then in turn make that information accessible via cellphone to let you plan out the speediest route. According to the researchers, the software will work on both Nokia and non-Nokia phones, but it seems that they've only tested it on the E71 and N95 so far (you can also view real-time traffic data on your computer). More details will apparently be announced when this new stage of the project officially gets underway on November 10th, but those interested in taking part can already register by hitting up the read link below.[Thanks, Eric M]Update: In case you're wondering about the potential privacy concerns here, UC Berkeley has said that it has built privacy safeguards into the system from the beginning to ensure that no data can be tied to a particular phone, and it also notes that users can control the service themselves and, of course, shut it off anytime they don't want traffic data to be transmitted.
Researchers find ways to squeeze light into spaces never thought possible
It looks like a team of UC Berkeley researchers led by mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang (pictured) have found a way to squeeze light into tighter spaces than ever though possible, which they say could lead to breakthroughs in the fields of optical communications, miniature lasers, and optical computers. The key to this new technique, it seems, is the use of a "hybrid" optical fiber consisting of a very thin semiconductor wire placed close to a smooth sheet of silver, which effectively acts as a capacitor that traps the light waves in the gap between the wire and the metal sheet and lets it slip though spaces as tiny as 10 nanometers (or more than 100 times thinner than current optical fibers). That's apparently as opposed to previous attempts that relied on surface plasmonics, in which light binds to electrons and allows it to travel along the surface of metal, which only proved effective over short distances. While all of this is still in the theoretical stage, the researchers seem to think they're on to something big, with research associate Rupert Olten saying that this new development "means we can potentially do some things we have never done before.
Researchers tout 20 million processor-strong supercomputer to study climate change
It looks like a group of researchers at UC Berkeley have come up with a rather unique way of solving the problem of getting supercomputers past the processing power / energy consumption barrier, with them now touting the possibility of using millions of low-power embedded microprocessors instead of conventional server processors. That tantalizing prospect has apparently already lead to a deal with Tensilica Inc, which will provide the Berkeley researchers with some of its Xtensa LX extensible processor cores to use as the "basic building blocks in a massively parallel system design." Ultimately, the researchers say they could one day build a massive supercomputer consisting of 20 million embedded microprocessors at a cost of $75 million, which they say would have a power consumption of less than 4 megawatts and a peak performance of 200 petaflops. That, they say, would be enough for it to create climate models at 1-kilometer scale or, as the researchers put it, more than 1,000 times more powerful than anything available today.[Via TG Daily]
Berkeley researchers develop world's smallest radio
Move over, UC Irvine: your colleagues across the state at UC Berkeley have just one-upped your nano-scale radio by not only using nanotechnology for the demodulator, but actually "stuffing" all the components into a single carbon nanotube. By utilizing mechanical -- rather than electrical -- vibrations of a nanotube protruding from an electrode, the team from Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory were able to mimic the tuner, antenna, amplifier, and demodulator which compose traditional radios. Their prototype nano-radio, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, has already been used to broadcast and receive such classic tunes as Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys and Eric Clapton's Layla; a video of this latter transmission, whose poor quality will make you long for the relative clarity of AM radio, is available after the break...[Via San Francisco Chronicle, image and video courtesy of Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley]
$10 cellphone may be coming in two years
With Motorola not making a heckuva lot of profit these days, can it and the other handset makers really get a $10 handset to market? Some at UC Berkeley's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) say that it may be possible to get a $10 cellphone -- likely targeted at emerging markets -- on the streets. Still, can it be done from a cost and logistics perspective? CITRIS in California (no pun intended) believes such a handset could be on the global market within a few years if any Taiwanese contract manufacturers care to sign up to the vision. With Taiwan's Quanta being the top maker of the $100 OLPC laptop computer system that is shipping, perhaps a $10 cellphone can, in fact, be done. After all, the MOTOFONE ain't that far away.
UC Berkeley on iTunes
Apple unleashed iTunes U to an unsuspecting world a few months ago with some success. You can now add UC Berkeley to the list of institutions that are using iTunes to deliver course podcasts to their students (and anyone else that visits itunes.berkeley.edu).Thanks, Ben.
UC Berkeley's disease-detecting E-Nose
The last time we checked in on electronic nose technology, hospitals were using the still-boutique devices for very specialized institutional work such as monitoring nasty bacteria outbreaks. Recent breakthroughs by a company called Nanomix, however, could make E-Noses a standard tool in every patient examination room, with UC Berkeley researchers using the company's tech to design cheap devices that can "sniff out" disease-laden molecules in samples a person's breath. Nanomix's "Sensation" detection platform uses multiple, configurable carbon nanotube-based sensors to instantly provide a reading from a puff or air, although the exact diseases that the battery-powered devices will be programmed to detect have not been announced. We do know that the first application of this tech will probably be for carbon dioxide detection, allowing emergency personnel to immediately determine the efficacy of breathing tubes used to stabilize patients on board an ambulance.
