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Braille Aircraft Lavatory Makes Travel Easier for the Visually Impaired

The School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has recently designed a new aircraft lavatory especially for the visually impaired by providing an organized system for reading Braille and other tactile information. This unconventional design is called...

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Aircraft-Based Humidity Sensor Helps Improve Weather and Climate Models

A humidity sensor developed by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the SEALDH laser hygrometer, has proven its worth when used aboard an aircraft; it fulfills all pre-conditions to be used as a transfer standard for conventional humidity-measuring instruments....

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Humanoid Robot Assists Children with Autism

An interdisciplinary team of mechanical engineers and autism experts at Vanderbilt University have developed robotic systems that will enhance the basic social learning skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

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'Metasurfaces' Enable Advanced Solar Cells, Chemical Sensors

New optical technologies using "metasurfaces" are nearing commercialization, with potential applications including advanced solar cells, computers, telecommunications, sensors, and microscopes.

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Pixels Help Guide the Way for the Visually Impaired

Images transformed into pixels and projected onto a headset can help the visually impaired in everyday tasks, such as navigation, route planning and finding objects, according to a study led by researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

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Engineers Build Self-Healing Electronic Chips

A team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology has developed self-healing integrated chips. The technology will allow chips in a smartphone or computer, for example, to repair and defend themselves on the fly, recovering in microseconds from problems ranging from less-than-ideal...

Question of the Week
Does RSS Still Matter?

Reactions ranged from outrage to apathy when Google announced that it would be shutting down its Google Reader RSS client. The search giant said that the move was due to a decline in usage. Some fans of the 'Reader' and RSS cite its centralized features and its way of organizing a user's content. Others say...

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Organic Sensors Increase Light Sensitivity of Cameras

Researchers from Technische Universität München (TUM) have developed a new generation of image sensors that is more sensitive to light than the conventional silicon versions, with the added bonus of being simple and cheap to produce. They consist of electrically conductive plastics, which...

News: Photonics/Optics
NASA Scientists Build First-Ever Wide-Field X-ray Imager

Three NASA scientists teamed up to develop and demonstrate NASA's first wide field-of-view soft X-ray camera for studying "charge exchange," a poorly understood phenomenon that occurs when the solar wind collides with Earth's exosphere and neutral gas in interplanetary space.

INSIDER: Electronics & Computers

Stretched-out clothing might not be a great practice for laundry day, but in the case of microprocessor manufacture, stretching out the atomic structure of the silicon...

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INSIDER: Electronics & Computers

A new type of nanoscale engine has been proposed that would use quantum dots to generate electricity from waste heat, potentially making microcircuits more efficient.

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INSIDER Product: Electronics & Computers

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (Dallas, TX) has introduced the industry’s first complete high-speed data converter system evaluation kit (HSDC-SEK), which reduces system evaluation costs...

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INSIDER Product: Electronics & Computers

Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation (San Diego, CA), a fabless provider of high-performance radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs), announced that it has expanded its DuNE™ Digitally Tunable Capacitor...

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INSIDER Product: Electronics & Computers

ACCES I/O Products, Inc. has released a new family of PCI-104 serial communication boards—the 104I-COM-8SM Series. These PCI-104 boards feature a selection of 8, 4, or 2-ports of field...

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INSIDER Product: Electronics & Computers

Pixus Technologies (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) offers Eurocard subracks for 3U and 6U boards in multiple configurations. The subrack enclosures can house backplanes or special modules for industrial, mil/aero,...

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NASA Integrates First Laser Communication System

A new NASA-developed, laser-based space communication system will enable higher rates of satellite communications similar in capability to high-speed fiber optic networks on Earth.

The space terminal for the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD), NASA's first high-data-rate laser...

News
Cricket Hair Inspires Motion Detection 'Cameras'

Crickets use sensitive hairs on their cerci (projections on the abdomen) to detect predators. For these insects, air currents carry information about the location of nearby predators and the direction in which they are moving.

News: Robotics, Automation & Control
'Cheetah' Robot Hits High Speeds, Wastes Little Heat

A 70-pound “cheetah” robot designed by MIT researchers may soon outpace its animal counterparts in running efficiency: In treadmill tests, the researchers have found that the robot — about the size and weight of an actual cheetah — wastes very little energy as it trots continuously...

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Improved Software Helps Scientists Analyze Biological Sequences

When biologists study proteins, DNA, or other biological molecules that are represented in the computer as sequences, they rely on known information but also must predict missing data. Given that reality, major challenges exist to having accurate results.

At the University of...

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New Modeling Approach Transforms Imaging Technologies

Purdue University researchers are improving the performance of technologies ranging from medical CT scanners to digital cameras using a system of models to extract specific information from huge collections of data and then reconstructing images like a jigsaw puzzle. The new approach is...

News: Software
Researchers Develop New Simulation Capability to Model Plasma

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have developed a new simulation capability to model a classic plasma configuration. They have demonstrated for the first time a fully kinetic model of the dense plasma focus (DPF) Z-pinch device, including the electrodes, in a...

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Scientists Develop Novel Single-Photon Detector System

A single photon may not seem like much of a catch. But detecting photons one- by-one with near-perfect reliability is formidably difficult. It is also an extremely important research goal, not only in fiber-based telecommunications, but in numerous other fields from quantum information...

News
New Surface Coating Cuts Through the Fog

A team of MIT researchers has developed a coating that outperforms others not only in preventing foggy buildups, but also in maintaining good optical properties without distortion. Preventing glass from fogging or frosting up is a longstanding challenge with myriad applications, including eyeglasses,...

Question of the Week
Will Privacy Concerns Keep You from Using Google Glass?

As many users anticipate the arrival of Google Glass, augmented reality technology shaped like a pair of glasses, some technologists are questioning the privacy issues associated with the use of these wearable computers. Many express concern about users' ability to secretly capture audio...

INSIDER Product: Photonics/Optics

CRAIC Technologies (San Dimas, CA) has added Raman Spectral Surface Mapping™ (S2M™) capabilities to its Apollo™ Raman microspectrometer line. S2M gives CRAIC Raman microspectrometer users the ability to...

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INSIDER Product: Photonics/Optics

Ophir Photonics Group (North Logan, UT) recently introduced a new low cost laser power/energy meter called StarLite that provides both digital and analog screen displays. A compact, handheld unit, StarLite displays a...

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INSIDER Product: Photonics/Optics

Ocean Optics (Dunedin, FL) has expanded its Elite Series of high-performance modular spectrometers with the introduction of the Ventana line of high throughput spectrometers. Ventana spectrometers combine an...

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INSIDER Product: Photonics/Optics

AFL (Lowell, MA and Spartanburg, SC) has introduced the family of NOYES FOCIS PRO automatic fiber inspection solutions. The FOCIS PRO System consists of the DFD1 Touchscreen Tablet, the DFS1 Digital...

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News
Holographic Technique Could Lead to Bionic Vision

Computer-generated holography, they say, could be used in conjunction with a technique called optogenetics, which uses gene therapy to deliver light- sensitive proteins to damaged retinal nerve cells. In conditions such as Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) - a condition affecting about one in 4000 people...

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