Science Daily January 29, 2018 Researchers in Switzerland have developed a technology called Hydro-bot based on osmosis. To ensure that liquid is actively transported from the inside to the outside by means of electro-osmosis, a polymer membrane with a thickness of 20 micrometers is used, which is coated on both sides with a noble metal by means of plasma coating. A voltage of around 1.5 volts is applied to accelerate the process. When the voltage is applied, salt ions and the liquid surrounding them migrate through tiny pores in the membrane to the outside. The membrane is equipped with a […]
SynBioHub: A Standards-Enabled Design Repository for Synthetic Biology
ACS Synthetic Biology January 9, 2018 The SynBioHub repository (https://synbiohub.org) is an open-source software project that facilitates the sharing of information about engineered biological systems. SynBioHub provides computational access for software and data integration, and a graphical user interface that enables users to search for and share designs in a Web browser. By connecting to relevant repositories (e.g., the iGEM repository, JBEI ICE, and other instances of SynBioHub), the software allows users to browse, upload, and download data in various standard formats, regardless of their location or representation… read more.
Top 10 Science and Technology Innovations for the Week of 1/26/2018
01. Engineers design artificial synapse for “brain-on-a-chip” hardware 02. Researchers use sound waves to advance optical communication 03. Scientists create high-speed coding system 04. Engineers invent tiny vision processing chip for ultra-small smart vision systems and IoT applications 05. Synthesis of Horsepox Virus: Implications for Biosecurity and Recommendations for Preventing the Reemergence of Smallpox 06. Inverse-design approach leads to metadevices 07. Magnetosensitive e-skin senses objects without touching (w/video) 08. Forget viruses or spyware—your biggest cyberthreat is greedy currency miners 09. Making Data Simple: What’s next in the world of data & analytics with Seth Dobrin (Podcast – part 1) 10. […]
Engineers design artificial synapse for “brain-on-a-chip” hardware
Kurzweil AI January 22, 2018 A team of researchers in the US (MIT, Arizona State University) has demonstrated analog resistive switching devices that possess desired characteristics for neuromorphic computing networks with minimal performance variations. They used a single-crystalline SiGe layer epitaxially grown on Si as a switching medium. It utilizes threading dislocations in SiGe to confine metal filaments in a defined, one-dimensional channel which results in drastically enhanced switching uniformity and long retention/high endurance with a high analog on/off ratio. In tests their neural network hardware recognized handwritten samples 95 percent of the time, compared to the 97 percent accuracy […]
Engineers invent tiny vision processing chip for ultra-small smart vision systems and IoT applications
Physorg January 19, 2018 In energy-quality scaling, the trade-off between energy consumption and quality in the extraction of features is adjusted. It mimics the dynamic change in the level of attention with which humans observe the visual scene, processing it with different levels of detail and quality depending on the task at hand. Researchers in Singapore used this concept to develop EQSCALE, a microchip that can perform continuous feature extraction at 0.2 milliwatts. This translates into a major advancement in the level of miniaturization for smart vision systems. It paves the way for cost-effective IoT applications… read more.
Forget viruses or spyware—your biggest cyberthreat is greedy currency miners
MIT Technology Review January 19, 2018 The cybersecurity firm Check Point published its regular Global Threat Index which shows that Coinhive, a piece of software that uses processing power on someone’s device to mine cryptocurrency, has become the most prevalent form of malware on the Internet. Another piece of cryptojacking malware, called Cryptoloot, is now the third most prevalent. A regular antivirus product should help many people identify and remove rogue mining software from their computers. But more sophisticated examples of cryptomining software installed on servers and websites that some rule-based threat detection tools wouldn’t spot… read more.
Inverse-design approach leads to metadevices
Science Daily January 22, 2018 Researchers in at Northwestern University essentially input the behavior they wanted into a computer and the computer optimized a structure that has the required behavior and then it came out at the other end of a three-dimensional printer. They used computer modeling, optimization software, and complex algorithms to build metadevices that could bend or focus millimeter waves but that avoided problems with conventional approaches, such low efficiency, narrow bandwidth, and the bulkiness of the devices. The research could prove revolutionary for consumer products, defense, and telecommunications… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE […]
Magnetosensitive e-skin senses objects without touching (w/video)
Nanotechweb January 22, 2018 A device that can manipulate virtual objects needs to have two basic functions: the “touch” function and being able to detect the position of an object in space. An international team of researchers (Germany, Austria) synthesized very thin foils upon which they patterned two Wheatstone bridges accommodating a set of eight magnetic field sensors, each with a well-defined magnetic anisotropy axis. By using this configuration, and the intrinsic properties of the sensors themselves, the whole circuit can output two signals associated with the x and y in-plane components of the external magnetic field. The software processes […]
Making Data Simple: What’s next in the world of data & analytics with Seth Dobrin (Podcast – part 1)
IBM Big Data & Analytics Hub January 18, 2018 What’s next in the world of data and analytics in 2018? In part one of Al Martin’s discussion with Seth Dobrin, Vice President and Chief Data Officer for IBM Analytics, explores the strategies and people a company needs to disrupt and succeed in the year ahead. Do you or your team members need new credentials to work in data? They discuss what you need in your toolkit to be a data scientist at IBM… read more. Transcript
Physics in 2018 (podcast)
Physics World January 23, 2018 In their first podcast of 2018, Physics World catches up with a selection of their journalists to get their thoughts on the year ahead in physics. Also appearing in the episode is Dave Newbold, a particle physicist from the University of Bristol, who speaks about the possibilities for new physics discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)… read more. Download podcast