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Television screens and computer displays capable of producing a wider range of visible colours could someday be built incorporating tiny sections of electrically-activated polymer. This polymer contracts and relaxes, like a muscle, in response to a current.
Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have made prototype display pixels that change colour as an underlying polymer is activated. This lets different wavelengths of light escape from the screen and means the display can generate the full spectrum of colours within white light.
Existing screens cannot produce every colour that is visible to the human eye. This is because their pixels make different colours by varying the brightness of red, green and blue elements. This can only produce a limited range.
True blue "Some blues, for example, are beyond usual screens," researcher Manuel Aschwanden told New Scientist. "If you compare pictures of the sky or sea with the actual scene you can see the colours are not the same as reality." Similarly, many shades of green are also beyond electronic displays, he says.
Aschwanden is part of a group led by Andreas Stemmer who built arrays of 10 pixels, each 80 micrometres across. The pixels consist of a piece of polymer covered with ridges tipped with gold. When white light is shone at the polymer from one side it reflects out of the screen and is also split into different wavelengths by this "diffraction grating".
However, a slit above the polymer ensures that only one wavelength of light escapes, giving the pixel its colour. The pieces of polymer also contract in response to voltage, like simple muscles. As they do so, the fan of light-waves is moved, changing the colour that is fed through the slits above and out of the screen. Cutting the current causes the muscle to return to its original state.
Full spectrum"We are working on pixels that mix the output of three tuneable gratings to produce the full range of colour humans can see," explains Aschwanden. This would be necessary because some colours, like browns, are not part of the spectrum that makes up white light.
The researchers also hope to reduce the voltage needed to operate the displays. "At first it was necessary to apply several thousand volts to tune the grating as required," Aschwanden says. "We've recently got it down to around 300 volts, which is low enough for commercial applications."

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn9795

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Superconductors carry electricity without resistance and could be the key to many technical marvels, from the fastest computer processors ever seen to fleets of eco-friendly ships propelled by electricity.
These breakthroughs will never make it into everyday use, however, as long as so-called "high-temperature" superconductors fail to work above about 138 kelvin (-135 °C), which makes them useless without expensive and bulky refrigeration. When it comes to increasing this critical temperature researchers have a big problem: they know very little about how high-temperature superconductors actually work.
That doesn't matter, according to Pickett, who specialises in superconductors at the University of California, Davis. Paradoxically, he believes the answer to higher critical temperatures lies much closer to absolute zero. By looking at how his brown powder, magnesium diboride, loses its resistance at 40 K, he has sketched out a material that superconducts well above room temperature. That means the conventional low-temperature superconductors could one day far outstrip high-temperature superconductors, which look set to rely on liquid nitrogen for a long time to come.
Superconductivity was first observed back in 1911 by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes, who showed that mercury loses its resistance when cooled to only a few degrees shy of absolute zero. He quickly followed suit with other pure metals, such as aluminium and tin. Ever since then, physicists have been trying to push up the temperature of superconductors, first to 20 K with metal alloys and then with a brand new class of materials. Discovered in 1986, these high-temperature superconductors are based on copper oxides and get their name from their ability to superconduct above a relatively cosy 77 K. That means they can be cooled with liquid nitrogen rather than the more expensive liquid helium.
To this day, no one understands how superconductivity occurs in these materials, but to some extent that hasn't mattered. Short lengths of high-temperature superconducting cable have replaced the conventional copper and aluminium ones that carry electricity from a handful of generating stations around the world. In trials last year in Yamanashi, Japan, the first high-temperature maglev train reached speeds in excess of 500 kilometres per hour. And companies such as American Superconductor, based in Westborough, Massachusetts, are building prototype superconducting motors for US navy ships.
Lost powerWith such potential, it is no surprise that room-temperature superconductors are at the top of a lot of wish lists. Around 8 per cent of the electricity generated in power stations never reaches our homes and offices, according to a recent report by Robert Hawsey of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Satoshi Morozumi of the Mitsubishi Research Institute in Tokyo, Japan. Instead it is wasted as heat produced by the electrical resistance in the transmission cables.
Because of their efficiency, superconductors also have the potential to prevent millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from being needlessly emitted each year. Unfortunately, cooling superconducting wires to incredibly low temperatures is impractical, and with no working theory to guide researchers, the superconducting record still officially stands at 138 K, a temperature that was achieved using an extremely complex blend of mercury, thallium, barium, calcium and copper oxide. Add to that the fact that superconducting wire costs more than 100 times as much to make as copper wire, and it is easy to see why the superconductor revolution has been slow to start.
Frustrated by these efforts, many physicists have become pessimistic about finding a cheap material that superconducts without being cooled. "I think a psychological hang-up remains among most researchers in regard to room-temperature superconductivity," says William Little of Stanford University in California. "The challenge is to beat this."
None of these problems has deterred Pickett. Although no one has figured out how the copper oxides superconduct, "normal" low-temperature superconductors are well understood. The secret lies in what happens to electrons at temperatures close to absolute zero. While electrons in empty space repel one another, inside a superconductor they bind together in pairs. These pairs tend to synchronise their movements and swim collectively through the material without running into obstacles. As a result, they do not lose any energy, which means the material has zero electrical resistance.
Last year, Pickett decided to go back to basics and re-examine the theory, inspired by an astonishing discovery reported in 2001 by Jun Akimitsu's team at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. Akimitsu and his colleagues were playing around with mixtures of titanium, magnesium and boron in an attempt to find a new superconductor. To their surprise, they stumbled across hints of superconductivity at 40 K. That's not very impressive compared with some of the high-temperature superconductors, but it is important because it's about twice the critical temperature of any previous metallic superconductor, and could pave the way to others that work at far higher temperatures. A closer look at Akimitsu's mixture revealed that the superconductor was, in fact, magnesium diboride.
The finding was scientific dynamite. Within two months of Akimitsu's announcement, 50 papers were published online as researchers rushed to study magnesium diboride for themselves. "The discovery was stunning because of the unimaginably high temperature for a conventional superconductor," says Pickett. "In the 1960s, people thought they understood these materials, but magnesium diboride showed us we were wrong."
It didn't take researchers long to notice that electrons pair up in magnesium diboride just as they do in other metal superconductors, which means the electron-pairing effect does not fall away as close to absolute zero as thought. This pairing was explained in 1957 by John Bardeen, Leon Cooper and Robert Schrieffer, all at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. They showed that when an electron passes through a material, it sends vibrations through the atoms that are arranged in a lattice. This disturbance can attract another electron, overcoming the normal repulsive force and causing it to pair up with the first electron. Physicists picture the process in terms of phonons, packets of vibrational energy that electrons exchange with each other. It is this exchange that allows superconductivity, at least in ordinary metals.
However, even the best of the metallic low-temperature superconductors lose their superconductivity when they warm up. The problem is that the atoms in a material vibrate more vigorously at higher temperatures, breaking apart the electron pairs and restoring electrical resistance to the material. Until magnesium diboride came on the scene, that critical temperature was frozen at just 20 K.
Pickett realised that if he could identify what made magnesium diboride so special, other metal alloys might be found with even higher critical temperatures. To do this, he studied what affected the critical temperature in Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer's studies and then compared these factors to the properties of magnesium diboride.
According to their theory, the critical temperature depends on three things: the number of electrons available, the frequency at which the phonons vibrate, and the strength of the interaction or "coupling" between the phonons and electrons. Magnesium diboride's high transition temperature is due mostly to strong coupling, which is down to its chemical structure. It consists of layers of boron just one atom thick sandwiched between layers of magnesium atoms (see Diagram). Each magnesium atom feeds two electrons into the boron layers, which means that there are abundant electrons in the structure, ready to pair up. Better still, the electrons flow in the same layer as the boron atoms and set up large disturbances, which enhance the coupling between phonons and electrons as they sweep through the material. The upshot is that the electron-pairing still takes place at higher temperatures than expected.
Despite the strong interaction between phonons and electrons, Pickett found a problem when he looked more closely at magnesium diboride: only 3 per cent of phonons interact at all. "Impressive as it is, magnesium diboride is doing a poor job of making use of the available phonons," says Pickett. "If we could use most of the phonons, the critical temperature would increase all the way past room temperature."
Pickett's approach differs from previous attempts to boost the critical temperature. Others have tried to increase the number of electron pairs or the coupling strength by adding small amounts of other elements to the crystal lattice, but these approaches have failed. Pickett's own calculations provide some clues as to why: while increasing the coupling strength or the vibration frequency of the phonons can raise the temperature by as much as 20 per cent, the crystal structure itself can eventually become unstable and take on very different properties.
Instead he proposes involving more phonons by trying different combinations of elements. What's more, his blueprint gives researchers clues as to which elements would work best, rather than resorting to trial and error as they have done in the past. By doing this, his calculations show that it should be possible to find a material that superconducts at a searing 430 K. "It seems reasonable to expect that materials exist, or can be made, that will improve on magnesium diboride."
"Pickett's calculations show it should be possible to find a material that superconducts at a searing 430 K"One person who welcomes Pickett's results is Paul Canfield of the US Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory in Iowa. He was one of the first to study magnesium diboride and explain how it works. He believes Pickett's paper is a rallying cry to researchers. "It shows that there are new possibilities for high temperatures in compounds that until 2001 were thought to be tapped out," he says.
Even with Pickett's clues, finding these compounds won't be easy. Pickett has already studied materials whose atomic structures bear a striking similarity to magnesium diboride. First he considered layers of graphite sandwiched between layers of fluorine atoms, but this did not superconduct.
Undeterred, he began looking for other materials and eventually came across work by Reinhard Nesper at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany. Nesper has recently synthesised an exotic alloy called lithium boron carbide in his lab. On its own, this alloy should not superconduct, but Pickett and Nesper have shown that removing a quarter of the lithium atoms could transform the alloy into a superconductor that works at considerably higher temperatures than magnesium diboride.
Fine tuningThe next task is to make it, and Pickett is already talking with people that might be up for the challenge. No one expects to get it right first time: tuning chemical bonds and phonons is notoriously difficult.
Even if Pickett and others fail to make a room-temperature superconductor, there is a silver lining. Temperature isn't the only important issue. High-temperature superconductors are fiendishly difficult and expensive to manufacture because of their complexity: introduce any defects and the superconductivity is lost. So any new superconductor with a structure as simple as that of magnesium diboride is likely to have a big impact technologically. "A conventional superconductor with a temperature of just 110 K could be much more useful than a copper-oxide superconductor at room temperature," says Canfield.
"Any new superconductor with a structure as simple as magnesium diboride's is likely to have a big impact"This view is slowly winning round the hearts and minds of physicists. "Not too long ago, mentioning room-temperature superconductivity was considered damaging to one's reputation and career," says Ivan Bozovic at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. "Today the general attitude is more open-minded." So don't take those dull-looking powders sitting in jars for granted. They could spark a superconducting revolution.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19125651.100;jsessionid=OCKPABNBCPAM

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THE power to perform a wide range of tasks by using thought to control a computer or robotic arm has come a big step closer, thanks to "artificial synapses". These are rather like the links between brain cells but formed by connecting silicon nanowires to individual neurons.
"The neurons grew on the chip and made connections with the nanowires"Electrodes have already been implanted into the brains of some paralysed people, and have been used to control a computer cursor and robotic arm (New Scientist, 15 July, p 28). But these neural prostheses measure signals from groups of neurons, and can only sample a fraction of brain activity. "They're amazing advances, but it's still pretty crude," says Charles Lieber of Harvard University. "The electrodes are just poking in there, at the scale of the whole cell." Lieber's aim now is to communicate with neurons in the way the brain itself does. This would enable researchers to convert a wider range of thought processes into electrical signals, helping paralysed people make more movements and giving neuroscientists more information on how the brain works, he says. With finer implants "you're going to be able to do so much more", Lieber says.
Lieber and colleagues built a chip with 20-nanometre-thick silicon wires running across its surface (Science, vol 313, p 1100). On top of the chip the researchers grew rat neurons, which stretched out their axons (the long projections that transmit signals to other cells) and the shorter extensions called dendrites, which receive signals. The axons and dendrites formed more than 50 connections per neuron with the nanowires, each about the size of a natural synapse (see Image).
The researchers were able to watch signals as they passed down the axon and through the nanowires. They were also able to enhance the signals by stimulating the axon with electrical pulses from the nanowires. This would enable neural prosthetic devices to transmit signals to each neuron containing feedback on movements being carried out by the robotic limb or computer cursor, allowing the person to make any necessary adjustments. The researchers are now building larger arrays of nanowires, on which they hope to grow a network of neurons.
The work will dramatically improve our understanding of how neurons process information, says bioengineer Jose Carmena of the University of California, Berkeley. However, he says the team has yet to make the leap from developing cell cultures to producing devices that can be implanted into live animals. So far, Lieber's group has been able to keep the cells alive and firing on the nanowires for around 10 days.
Lieber is also interested in connecting neurons to electronic devices to create hybrid systems that could lead to new types of computers. He and his colleagues connected a neuron to their silicon nanowires to create a simple circuit that acted as a logic gate, the basic building block of computers.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19125676.700-brain-cells-and-robotics-make-a-connection.html

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Since the inception of its books initiative in December, 2004, Google has been scanning a range of books, including volumes submitted by publishers and others drawn from the library stacks, including the New York Public Library, Oxford University library, and the University of Michigan library. Google won't comment on the number of books scanned to date, but it has its eye on tens of thousands.
Questions about the legality of the library program linger. It sparked two copyright-infringement lawsuits last year, one filed by the Authors Guild and one by the Association of American Publishers on behalf of several of its members, including McGraw-Hill (MHP), publisher of Business Week (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/20/05, "Google's Escalating Book Battle," and 9/26/05, "For Google, Another Stormy Chapter").
"SNIPPET VIEW." I gave the new Google feature a quick trial run. A search for Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities produced more than 20 copies of the book, along with assorted study guides and some other titles that bear some similarity.
For books made available to Google via publishers—in this case, including editions from Oxford University Press, Penguin, and Dover—the viewer gets only a "limited preview" of a few pages. In other cases, where Google believes that a volume might be in copyright, but has no relationship with the publisher, Google provides an even more restricted "snippet view."
Ultimately, though, I found an edition that provided a "full view." In this instance, after reading Google's explanation of public domain books and usage guidelines, I was allowed to begin downloading a PDF version of the novel. The one I hit on was a treasure, a 1908 University Society publication that also included The Mystery of Edwin Drood and introductory comments by scholars of the day.
SIDEWALK GOLD. Moreover, it came with Harvard College Library stamps and occasional underlining by an anonymous undergraduate of yore. (The best-of-times-worst-of-times era was especially notable, the student seemed to think, for being "so far, like the present period.")
Unfortunately, the volume's 717 pages were too much for McGraw-Hill's broadband: My connection timed out before I could download the book onto my hard drive. (Google spokesperson Megan Lamb says the 32.2-megabyte file is larger than most in their collection.)
Out-of-copyright volumes have long been the low-hanging fruit of book publishing—steady money-makers that require little in the way of author royalties. Legendary Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf once remarked that the riches from his backlist, or books more than two years old, were like "picking up gold from the sidewalk."
A LITTLE PINCH. Classics in particular, contribute significantly to the bottom lines of such mainstream publishers as Random House, a unit of Bertelsmann, and Penguin Group, part of Pearson (PSO). Even retailer Barnes & Noble (BKS) got into the arena in 2003 with the introduction of its low-priced Barnes & Noble Classics.
How will the Google program affect such companies? "It's certainly going to hurt a little bit, but I'd be surprised if it hurts very much," observes Drake McFeely, president of W.W. Norton, which publishes many classics. "We publish books quite inexpensively, providing a first-rate text for not a whole lot of money. For example, the Norton Anthology of English Literature costs students about two cents per page."
Peter Gale Nelson, assistant director of Brown University's creative writing program, also questions the economic impact. "It may be less expensive to buy a printed version than to pay the cost of toner and paper." The Google mechanism, he added, "could be most useful for a book that's hard to find, one where this is the only way to get it." Nelson noted another strong suit of print books: Professors often assign specific editions so that everyone in class will be able to "turn to page 87" and land on the same passage.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2006/tc20060831_349437.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

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The One Laptop Per Child 2B1 computers, like all PC computers, will have a BIOS to control basic computer functions. And as security patches, bug fixes, and future enhancements are made, the 2B1 BIOS will need to be updated.
OLPC is currently thinking through the process of making a BIOS upgrade that with be safe against hackers and their worm spawn, but at the same time will allow for upgrades by OLPC or even national governments.
The software developers agree they need hardware-level protection, or else worms could destroy any laptop they reached, thousands simultaneously if they were mesh-Internet connected. The prevailing idea was to require a set of physical keys to be pressed to authorize an upgrade (Ctrl+Alt+Del for example), which could still be compromised by phishing ("Hey kid, press Key 1+2+3 to download this game!").
OLPC BIOS chipThen at an unpleasant hour of Sunday morning, Ivan Krstic, a developer on the OLPC team had an inspiration and detailed a rather technical approach to upgrading BIOS that promised to be:
a completely secure BIOS solution which requires no TPM, allows fully automatic upgrades without the user's cooperation (such as pressing keys), and fully protects both against phishing and automated attacks -- in fact, it's vector-independent. The design also allows provisions to be made for kids that are brave enough to want to hack their BIOSes, as well as for countries which want to offer additional non-OLPC BIOSes.
Ivan ended his post with a very brave call for critiques, and like DoS attack, they came fast and furious, but mostly on policy instead of the technical approach.
First up, other developers questioned the idea of automatic upgrades executed without a user's consent with commentary from the basic belief that updating a new BIOS without user knowledge is *evil* to the more detailed and persuasive:
Upgrading of firmware should always require the users explicit assent… It's too dangerous to allow automatic upgrades of the firmware, cryptographically signed or not. Do you know of any devices that upgrade their firmware without consent unless the *local* admin has explicitly chosen to enable that? I'd guess they are few and far between. If anything, maybe cable boxes and DVRs. OLPCs are not TVs.
Yet, not everyone thought it was *evil* to do automatic upgrades. Some felt that requiring student's cooperation for legitimate upgrades would burden them with the need to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate upgrades, or require adult supervision, both which could still be fooled by phishing.
Personally, I tend to believe that there can be no technical solutions to phishing, it's a problem of educating the user. Or for those who still believe PayPall email, a way to cull out the fools.
Still, Ivan new approach allows the next generation of hackers to experiment with BIOS, maybe producing a new Linus Torvalds by asking for a developer signing key. That is unless a worm author doesn't fool OLPC with "Hey, I'm a kid wanting to hack the BIOS, can I have a signing key?"
And of course there is always the ever present soldering iron, which can swap out any BIOS-containing internal component or, once quantum computing becomes reality, pure raw power encryption-cracking. Neither is part of the threat model, but Ivan successfully defended his idea against them none the less.
No matter the outcome, the process, by being open to public scrutiny and even asking for it, will produce a bios update far more secure than the current "security through obscurity" mindset. Or as Ronald Minnich says:
Score one more for open sources BIOSes!

http://www.olpcnews.com/software/operating_system/a_secure_2b1_bios_up.html

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Ciprian Docan, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers University, demonstrates a modified home video game system to assist stroke patients with hand exercises.

Engineers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, have modified a popular home video game system to assist stroke patients with hand exercises, producing a technology costing less than $600 that may one day rival systems 10 times as expensive.
The Rutgers hand rehabilitation system is an example of virtual rehabilitation, which combines virtual reality – computer-generated interactive visual environments in which users control actions in a lifelike way – with traditional therapy techniques. Virtual rehabilitation gives therapists new tools to do their jobs more effectively and engages patients who may otherwise lack interest or motivation to complete normal exercise regimens.
The Rutgers engineers are describing their work at the fifth International Workshop on Virtual Rehabilitation taking place Aug. 29 and Aug. 30 in New York City.
"Virtual reality is showing significant promise for promoting faster and more complete rehabilitation, but the cost of many systems is still prohibitive for widespread deployment in outpatient clinics or patients' homes," said Grigore Burdea, professor of electrical and computer engineering and a noted inventor of virtual rehabilitation technology. "While it's essential to keep pursuing breakthrough technologies that will initially be costly, it's just as important that we find ways to make innovative treatments accessible to the many patients who need them."
Rutgers' low-cost hand rehabilitation system is based on the commercially available Microsoft Xbox video game and Essential Reality P5 gaming glove that detects finger and wrist motions to manipulate on-screen images. The engineers made minor modifications to the equipment and created software that delivers two types of finger flexing exercises needed to help recover hand functions in stroke patients.
In one exercise, a patient attempts to wipe clean four vertical bars of "dirty" pixels that obscure a pleasant image on a computer display. The bars are erased in proportion to each finger's flexing motion, giving the patient immediate feedback on his or her performance. And in an exercise to promote finger flexing speed, a patient tries to make a fist quickly enough to "scare away" a butterfly flitting around on the screen.
The engineers noted that the gaming glove they use doesn't have the accuracy and resolution of gloves designed specifically for rehabilitation, nor can it measure exact joint movement or provide force feedback. But such systems may be attractive for clinics that can't afford more expensive equipment and could open the door for supplemental home training with remote monitoring by a clinician over an Internet connection.
The system is described in a workshop paper authored by Kira Morrow, Ciprian Docan and Burdea of Rutgers, and Alma Merians of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
The International Workshop on Virtual Rehabilitation, chaired this year by Burdea, brings together research and clinical experts from 11 countries to discuss how virtual reality can help people recover from strokes, injuries and other physical disorders, as well as psychological trauma. It also features exhibits by eight vendors of commercial rehabilitation equipment and systems using robotics and virtual reality.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-08/rtsu-mhv082806.php

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A joint collaboration between Northwestern University and BBN Technologies of Cambridge, Mass., has led to the first demonstration of a truly quantum cryptographic data network.
By integrating quantum noise protected data encryption (quantum data encryption or QDE for short) with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), the researchers have developed a complete data communication system with extraordinary resilience to eavesdropping.
"The volume and type of sensitive information being transmitted over data networks continues to grow at a remarkable pace," said Prem Kumar, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern's Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and co-principal investigator on the project. "New cryptographic methods are needed to continue ensuring that the privacy and safety of each user's information is secure."

Kumar's research team recently demonstrated a new way of encrypting data that relies on both traditional algorithms and on physical principles. This QDE method, called AlphaEta, makes use of the inherent and irreducible quantum noise in laser light to enhance the security of the system and makes eavesdropping much more difficult. Unlike most other physical encryption methods, AlphaEta maintains performance on par with traditional optical communications links and is compatible with standard fiber optical networks.
The Northwestern researchers have previously carried out several demonstrations of the compatibility and reach of the AlphaEta system in conventional wave-division multiplexed optical networks. However, in all these tests the communicating parties, called Alice and Bob, had pre-shared encryption keys for use in the AlphaEta system.
Quantum Key Distribution exploits the unique properties of quantum mechanics to securely distribute electronic keys between two parties. Unlike traditional key distribution, the security of QKD can in theory provide quantitatively secure keys regardless of advances in technology. Typically, these ultra-secure keys would be used in traditional encryption algorithms to allow for high-speed encrypted communications.
BBN has built and demonstrated the world's first quantum network with untrusted network switches, delivering end-to-end key distribution via high-speed QKD since 2004. With the Boston Metro QKD network running 24/7, it is evident that quantum cryptography works in practice and may provide a technique for building highly secure networks.
In the present advance reported here, the QKD and the QDE technologies have been interfaced together. This integration of BBN's QKD system, which constantly provides refreshed ultra-secure encryption keys, with Northwestern's AlphaEta encryption system forms a truly quantum cryptographic data network.
The combined QKD/AlphaEta system has been demonstrated in a nine kilometer link between BBN headquarters and Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. The AlphaEta encrypted signal carried OC-3 (155Mb/s) SONET data between the two nodes. A fresh encryption key of about 1 kilobit was repetitively loaded every three seconds. In a separate test, the AlphaEta encrypted signal was looped back multiple times to create an effective 36 kilometer link where more than 300 consecutive key exchanges were demonstrated.
"As secure communications require both secure key distribution and strong encryption mechanisms, the combined QKD/AlphaEta system represents the state-of-the-art in ultra-secure high-speed optical communications," said Henry Yeh, director of programs at BBN Technologies.
The quantum cryptographic research project is supported by a five-year, $5.4 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The communication protocol that is the backbone of today's Internet came out of a computer networking system begun by DARPA in the 1960s.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060828211555.htm

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Electronic Arts wants you to "challenge everything" except for the idea that advertising in video games is a consumer benefit. The company just announced a pair of deals with IGA and Massive that will bring dynamic ads to EA games in order to keep the advertising "fresh and relevant for gamers."
Although financial terms weren't disclosed, you can bet that keeping things "fresh and relevant" was low on the list of reasons to do the deal. It's tough to turn down an extra buck or two per game sold, especially when you can defend the decision as consumer friendly. "The agreement with Massive is a first step in a detailed strategy for serving advertising in a seamless format that doesn't disrupt game play," said Chip Lange, EA's vice president of online commerce. "In places like a basketball court, football stadium or roadside in a racing game, advertising is not only nice to have, but it's an essential component to create the fiction of being there."
The ads will initially appear in Battlefield 2142, apparently because gamers from the future have traveled back in time to tell EA that combat is only realistic when it features billboards promoting Visa. Need for Speed Carbon will also get the dynamic ad treatment, making the game look as realistic as your Friday night street races through Vegas. You do race through Vegas on Friday nights, don't you?
Now that EA has jumped aboard the ad train, it's clear that this is big business. Microsoft thought so, too, when it bought Massive earlier this year, and Intel owns a chunk of IGA. All the major players want a piece of the burgeoning market now that gaming has gone mainstream.
Game designers who sell your eyeballs for a buck don't want you to "challenge everything": they want you to pay your money, close your mouth, and play along. Given the overall health of the industry and the soaring cost of next-gen games, this might soon grow unpalatable to gamers who expect a price break if they're going to watch ads. Could gaming ever survive on a network television model? It's certainly possible—popular TV shows cost obscene amounts of money to produce, yet are still offered for free. Perhaps the day will come when Madden 2012 is mailed free of charge to your home, like an AOL CD from the late 1990s. You'll pop it in, throw some passes, stare at some billboards, and watch some commercials—just like real football.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060831-7632.html

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There has never been any doubt that 20th Century-Fox has been firmly entrenched in the Blu-ray camp, as one of that technology's more outspoken supporters. But unlike Sony - seen as Blu-ray's caretaker, and the parent of Columbia, Tri-Star, and MGM - 20th has held out on announcing actual titles and release dates for the format. That changed this morning, with 20th's announcement of eight titles for US release on 14 November, and a ninth the following week. The reasons for 20th's careful timing appeared evident in this morning's press release.
The very first words of the release state, "Continuing its unwavering and exclusive support for the Blu-ray Disc format..." and almost every successive paragraph merely serve to glue the message firmly to the company marquee: 20th Century-Fox won't be supporting HD DVD. But the studio also appears committed to following the Blu-ray timetable, which means even though BD players are available from Samsung now, it will wait for the full "ecosystem" to come into fruition. This includes not only Sony's PlayStation 3, but the release of BD players from Pioneer and Matsushita.
There's also evidence that 20th waited for the first full-scale Blu-ray Java (BD-J) development systems to be built, enabling the studio to create richer, more interactive titles than those currently released by other studios. And while some early Blu-ray adopters voiced disappointment that picture quality was not what it could be, even compared to the lower-capacity HD DVD disc, 20th's strategy may offer a solution: By waiting for full-scale BD-J, 20th now promises titles that use full MPEG-4 compression with DTS HD Lossless Master audio. Sony's first titles, by comparison, stick with the older MPEG-2 format, which doesn't compress as tightly. As a result, some say, MPEG-2 videos play back with lesser bit rates, not taking full advantage of BD's higher capacity.
So by waiting for the early adopters among the studios to reveal their hands first, 20th may have bought itself time to perfect the format technically. This morning's release quotes director Ridley Scott, whose Kingdom of Heaven is among the studio's initial release of eight titles, as saying, "I reviewed my Director's Cut...which is 3 hrs and 8 minutes thereabouts, on Blu-ray Disc and I was astounded. It was like looking through a window of clarity. It was the most impressive thing I've ever seen."
20th is making certain consumers recognize the high technology behind its titles, which is supposed to be one reason for investing in high-definition video discs in the first place. Today's release touts technology brands such as HDMV (High-Definition Movie Mode), DTS, and BD-J as modern counterparts of Cinemascope, which distinguished the studio during the 1950s.
In addition to Kingdom of Heaven, 20th also announced titles with a pretty obvious common theme: Behind Enemy Lines, Fantastic Four, Kiss of the Dragon, The Omen (666), The Transporter, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. For this latter Sean Connery film - which was a box-office disappointment - 20th touts the viewer's ability to sort individual scenes by category, such as by actor, by role, or by scene location. Such features are evidently made possible by the full BD-J authoring suite. The studio will follow up the following week with a simultaneous DVD/Blu-ray release of Ice Age 2: The Meltdown.
These titles won't be cheap, selling for $39.98 a piece ($49.98 in Canada). 20th's announcement comes on the heels of Warner Home Video's announcement yesterday afternoon of ten new titles for Blu-ray and HD DVD, for release on 26 September. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Swordfish, Space Cowboys, Lethal Weapon 2, The Fugitive, and House of Wax will appear on Blu-ray, while The Dirty Dozen (ahead of a reported remake), Grand Prix, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and The Adventures of Robin Hood will appear on HD DVD. No news accompanied Warner's announcement with regard to the technical features and capabilities of these titles, though they'll each sell for $10 cheaper than 20th's titles in the States.
This morning, Warner added it will release "more than 10" Blu-ray titles in European markets, apparently day-and-date with the rollout of Blu-ray players in Great Britain, France, Spain, and Germany. While Warner didn't provide the entire list this morning, a partial list included Firewall, Syriana, Full Metal Jacket, Training Day, and Space Cowboys.
Reuters reported this morning that 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment will also be distributing Blu-ray titles on behalf of MGM, such as The Usual Suspects. This would conflict with news that Sony, MGM's new parent, would be handling MGM's high-definition distribution. TG Daily has contacted 20th's press office for comment and clarification, and may yet receive it.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/31/20...y_14_november/

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Nanorex today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately held , a pioneer and leading developer of distributed molecular simulation software.
The acquisition integrates two powerful open source software solutions under the same roof. NanoEngineer-1, developed by Nanorex, is the first computer-aided design (CAD) program for the nanotech age, featuring a 3-D molecular modeling environment with an integrated molecular dynamics engine for simulating the movement and operation of mechanical nanosystems. NanoHive-1 is an advanced nanosystem simulation platform with the ability to integrate several molecular physics plugins and distribute calculations over a network to many computers. Nano-Hive is renamed to NanoHive-1 for consistency with the rest of the Nanorex product line.
“With NanoHive-1’s molecular physics plugin architecture and distributed computing power, NanoEngineer-1 users will have even more speed and options at their disposal,” said Mark Sims, Nanorex’s president. “NanoHive-1 will give our users better-quality simulations faster.”
Brian Helfrich, Nano-Hive founder and architect of NanoHive-1, joins the Nanorex team where he continues as the lead architect for NanoHive-1. “The integration of NanoHive-1 and NanoEngineer-1 will provide a powerful computational toolset for nanotech researchers and students,” Helfrich said. “While NanoEngineer-1 already has an excellent molecular dynamics simulator, NanoHive-1 enhances it by giving users more options. Now users can run their simulations on a wide variety of computer architectures and handle jobs that would otherwise take too long to complete.”

About Nanorex
Nanorex Inc., based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., is a developer of computational modeling tools made specifically for the design and analysis of productive nanosystems. Nanorex's first product, NanoEngineer-1, is a 3-D molecular engineering program. It includes both a sophisticated CAD module for the design and modeling of atomically precise components and assemblies, and a molecular dynamics module for simulating the movement and operation of mechanical nanodevices. NanoEngineer-1 is currently under development and is scheduled for release in spring 2007.

http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/8156/

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Tokyo University and a consortium of 7 companies have launched a long-term joint research project to develop next-generation robot and information technology aimed at supporting Japan’s aging population.
Over the next 10 to 15 years, the group (known as CIRT) aims to help develop robots that will, among other things, assist the elderly with housework and serve as personal transportation capable of replacing the automobile.
According to an announcement made by CIRT on August 4, group participants include Toyota, Olympus, Sega, Toppan Printing, Fujitsu, Matsushita (Panasonic), and Mitsubishi. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) will play a supportive role and bear half the cost of the research, which is expected to be as high as 1 billion yen (US$9 million) per year. Around 100 researchers from academia and the private sector are expected to participate in the project.
The participating companies will work together to combine information technology (IT) and robot technology (RT) to form a new type of technology called information/robot technology (IRT), which organizers claim will spawn new industries that will succeed the automotive and computer industries. In addition to simply developing new robots, the project is designed to spur innovation in software and other technology for automotive, home appliance and medical applications.
The project timeline includes developing robots capable of straightening up rooms by 2008, robots capable of making beds by 2013, and robots capable of lifting/carrying the elderly by 2016. Other goals include developing robots that can arrange products on supermarket shelves, fold laundry and perform heavy-duty cleaning. Enhancing robot autonomy appears to factor highly into the goals of the project, which hopes to see the development of autonomous robots able to perform product assembly work with little supervision.
Another project objective is to contribute to the development of autonomous personal transporation robots capable of moving safely through busy intersections by 2016. The development of this technology, for example, would rely on Toyota’s expertise in robot development combined with Tokyo University’s research on human intention recognition technology.
Japan’s declining birth rate means the work force is shrinking and the population is aging. CIRT believes the next generation of robots can help bring about a more productive and comfortable society by boosting the efficiency of the work force and taking on the unwanted tasks of a graying society. However, developing robots, no matter how advanced, does not address another major problem foreseen by the Japanese government: how does a shrinking tax base pay for ballooning social security costs? Will this new breed of robot also be called upon to pay its fair share of taxes?

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2006/08/...aging-society/

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Microsoft Corp. is counting on its beta testers to be "aggressive" as they start working on Release Candidate 1 of Windows Vista in order for the company to make its ship dates, according to the executive overseeing the Vista project.
Sven Hallauer, director of release management for Windows Vista, said a product team of 5,000 engineers is working as much as 70-hour weeks on Vista RC1 as it heads for shipment.
RC1 is expected to ship early next month. A release candidate is code deemed good enough to ship but is put through a final round of testing.
During a podcast posted on the Windows Vista team blog, Hallauer said it is imperative that testers get to work immediately when RC1 is released and dedicate as much time as possible to testing and providing feedback back to Microsoft so it can meet its internal release dates. The company said Vista will ship in November.
"As soon as the build is out, download it, install it, test it, and file bugs," Hallauer said. "Time is of the essence. We have a feedback window of two to three weeks after RC1 release where we can really make changes to the product in terms of getting deeper into the product's code base. Thereafter, we become very, very constrained in terms of what we can change without resetting the clock and slipping the release."
The release of Vista has slipped so many times that critics have stopped counting. But given past timeframes for product development, if Microsoft can get sufficient feedback in two to three weeks after RC1 ships, it would have another couple of weeks to finalize release-to-manufacturing (RTM) code and have the product ready for corporate users by the end of November.
"It is really, really important from a community perspective that everyone that is part of the Vista beta is really, really aggressive around the RC1 milestone release to go test as soon as possible, as many hours as possible," Hallauer said.
"It is super critical that we ship this [RC1] on time so we have the feedback for RTM. We have some fairly fixed time lines around RTM because of the commitments we have made around this product." Hallauer said RC1 feedback will tell Microsoft how close to complete the code really is.
In addition, he said that in the past five to six weeks Microsoft has forked the code into two different builds.
There are build numbers ranging from 5400 through 5699, as well as builds beginning with 57XX that represent RTM code, according to the Vista team blog. The fork means the company is working on RC1 and RTM in parallel, which is how development is done around each milestone in the project, Hallauer said.
Hallauer's podcast comes at a time when rumors about the timing of RC1's release and leaked information about Vista pricing is dominating headlines about the operating system.
On Tuesday, Amazon.com posted not only pricing for Vista, but also a note that said the product would be available to consumers on Jan. 30. The online retailer also posted the same note about Microsoft Office, tipping the scale that perhaps Vista is on time and will ship in conjunction with Office, a scenario Microsoft has been planning for some time.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...rce=rss_news10

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The TransMemory line of flash memory sticks from Toshiba range in capacity from 512MB up to 4GB, but the company also plans to release a special "limited edition" 16GB version. The memory sticks will be available in November, except for the limited edition version, which will ship at the end of December.
Also with the exception of the 16GB version, all the drives will support U3 technology, enabling users to carry their data files, applications and PC settings around. U3 technology also allows users to syncronize data each time the memory stick is inserted in the USB port. In addition, a security program is available to protect the data, and the memory sticks work with both Mac OS and Windows, according to Toshiba.
The drives measure 2.5 x .70 x .33 in. in size and weigh just 8 grams. The special 16GB USB drive measures 3.2 x .78 x .31 in. and weighs 12 grams. Pricing has yet to be confirmed.
The line reflects a wider move toward a more serious use of flash memory. Seagate Technology Inc. has already produced a 32GB notebook flash drive, and for about $2,470, you can buy a 64GB flash drive from Kanguru Solutions in Millis, Mass. (see "A whopper of a flash drive"). A 16GB drive from Kingston Technology Co. will set you back about $730.
While the TransMemory 16GB Limited Edition doesn't support the Toshiba's U3 security system, which allows the drives to be removed from a PC leaving no trace of their presence, it does feature password protection.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...ce=rss_topic19

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Combining two more modern technologies, a group of scientists at Cornell University say that they can get a cell phone to show high-definition TV.

The process delves into the world of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and involves lasers and carbon fibers and silicon mirrors and all manner of other tiny yet complicated things.
A microscopic silicon mirror that is suspended by carbon fibers vibrates very quickly and makes a laser sweep from side to side, creating an array of light and dark pixels that can be put together to create a high-definition image.
This process differs from current MEMS-based displays in the speed of the fibers' vibration and the wide angle sweep of the lasers. Current chips that use such technologies operate more slowly and have less of a horizontal presence.
The Cornell folks say that they have observed mirror vibrations at up to 35,000 cycles a second, with the result being an image scan of 1280x768 taking place 60 times a second. Those numbers are right in line with what is currently observed in "traditional" hi-def TV displays.
The scientists say that they envision creating a projector about the size of a dime that could cast an image more than a meter wide on a surface up to half a meter away. A prototype is expected in the next year.
Where does the cell phone come in, you ask? Well, that's a little farther down the road. The dime-size device can eventually be installed in a portable electronic device like a mobile phone.

http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/102/C9370/

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Fourth-generation wireless technology (4G) was in the news this week as Samsung demonstrated 100 Mbps while moving in a bus. NTT DoCoMo, the giant Japanese-based telecommunications company and Korean-based Samsung are both testing 100 Mbit/s mobile technology. Samsung said it demonstrated 60 km/h multi-cell handover at 100Mbps. But practical considerations such as range, available spectrum, and bandwidth requirements have yet to be resolved.
NTT DoCoMo says it plans on releasing the first commercial network in 2010 while Samsung plans on commercialising the service by 2010 at Jeju Island, South Korea. The 3.9G or LTE (Long Term Evolution) approach, developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) brings together a number of telecommunications standards bodies to develop a follow-on to the "3G" standard.

There are several approaches to "4G".
The 3GPP group:
Today's W-CDMA (3G) standard essentially comes to a standards halt after HSPA. GSM/UMTS/WCDMA vendors like Nokia, Ericsson, Lucent and Nortel first plan what Nokia calls 3.9G, or Super 3G. Known as UTRAN LTE, or Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network Long Term Evolution, its peak data rates are targeted to reach up to 100 Mbps in the downlink and 50 Mbps in the uplink. The standard of 3.9G is to be finalized in 3GPP in mid 2007. Deployment of Super 3G might be expected by 2009-10.
The 3GPP2 group:
Backed by Qualcomm and friends, they are promoting Flarion-like technology. Flarion's attempts to turn its Flash-OFDM into an IEEE standard, 802.20 was thwarted by none other than Qualcomm a couple of years ago. Now they bought the company. But 802.20 has been mired in controversy and was stalled by the IEEE over questions of Qualcomm dominance.
Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e):
WiMAX holds out the prospect of a globally harmonized, fixed and mobile network that could deliver 4G performance – as defined above - before the end of the decade. Already companies like Motorola and Siemens are demonstrating OFDM networks at close to 1Gbps, while others are showing off connections at high speed, up to 100 kilometers per hour.

The technology behind NTT DoCoMo's 4G uses a method called Variable-Spreading-Factor Spread Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (VSF-Spread OFDM), which increases downlink speeds by using multiple radio frequencies to send the same data stream. MIMO is used to enable a cellphone to receive data from more than one base station in range. Four antennas, each sending 250Mbit/s streams of data, was used by DoCoMo.
In May 2003 NTT DoCoMo carried out a field trial of a fourth-generation (4G) mobile communications system in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, near the main DoCoMo R&D centre. The trial was conducted to aid in the development of a 4G 'packet wireless transmission system' global standard, which is currently under discussion by the International Telecommunication Union's Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R).
VSF-OFCDM enables downlink connections of extremely high speeds, both indoors and outdoors, while VSF-CDMA realises high-speed, high-efficiency packet transmissions for the uplink. Four MIMO antennas combined with 16 QAM data modulation and turbo coding speed things up.
Implementing the 100-MHz and 40-MHz bandwidths in the downlink and uplink respectively may be the tricky bit. Where will the ITU find spare "4G" spectrum? If the ITU has to dedicate a new band, it might have to go up to 60 GHz (or beyond), for spectrum. That could limit range to a few blocks making it impractical for anything but urban cores.
MIMO is old hat to Nortel and Orthogon Systems.
Nortel demonstrated peak data rates of 37 Mbps over a standard 5MHz PCS mobility band, last year. It took into account the noise and fading conditions found on a real-world cellular network.
Orthogon Systems currently sells their OS-Spectra gear that delivers aggregate throughput of 300 Mbps on a 30 MHz channel. Four simultaneous signals are sent between pairs of transceivers at each end of a 5.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz link.

Other high speed research projects, mostly using MIMO, include:

Siemens demoed first 1Gbps wireless connection last year. While slim on specifics, Siemens, a partner in the WIGWAM project, projected a tenfold increase in data and multimedia transmissions by the time the next generation of wireless is expected in 2015.

MIT's WiGLAN project is researching circuit designs allowing a 1Gbps wireless network using the 5.8GHz band. The MIT effort would create a small WiGLAN adapter connecting video streams, digital cameras, printers and mobile devices to the Internet. The adapter provides a 150MHz bandwidth using the 5.8GHz band.

OGRE (On-silicon Gigahertz Radio Exploration) focuses on the 7GHz of unlicensed spectrum available around the 60GHz band, an area key to WIGWAM and other wireless gigabit research. Researchers at the University of California are developing it.

Extricom says their Wi-Fi switch/AP triples the bandwidth of 802.11a/g to more than 1Gbps.

NewLANs is still promising 2Gbps to the desktop. Although NewLANs is active in the UWB community, the company's Web site remains blank.

MILTON (Microwave Light Organized Network), can have as many as 32 focused beam "petals", each delivering some 50 Mbps, providing WiMax on the unlicensed 5.8 GHz band.

http://www.dailywireless.org/modules...ticle&sid=5780