文章资讯
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- 2015-06-05 Gov't weighs permitting cellphone calls on planes (Update)
- Rules against making cellphone calls during airline flights are "outdated," and it's time to change them, federal regulators said Thursday, drawing immediate howls of protest from flight attendants, airline officials and others.
Tom Wheeler, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said in a statement that the commission was proposing greater in-flight access to mobile broadband. The proposal will be considered at the commission's Dec. 12 meeting. - See Details
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- 2015-06-04 AP-GfK poll: Strong opposition to in-flight calls
- As federal regulators consider removing a decades-old prohibition on making phone calls on planes, a majority of Americans who fly oppose such a change, a new Associated Press-GfK poll finds.
The Federal Communications Commission will officially start the debate Thursday, holding the first of several meetings to review the agency's 22-year-old ban. New FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has called the current rules "outdated and restrictive." - See Details
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- 2015-06-04 SKorea court says Apple didn't violate Samsung patents
- A Seoul court rejected Samsung's claim that iPhone and iPad models violated three of its patents, another setback for the South Korean electronics giant in a global battle with Apple over rights to technologies that power smartphones and tablets.
A Seoul Central District Court judge ruled Thursday that Apple did not violate Samsung's intellectual property rights. The technology in two of Samsung's patents could be developed easily from other inventions, Judge Shim Woo-yong said, making it unlikely they were copied. He said one patent was not used in the iPad. - See Details
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- 2015-06-04 Agencies differ on allowing in-flight phone calls (Update)
- Just because it is safe to use cellphones on a plane, it does not mean that passengers should call just to say hello.
That argument played out across Washington Thursday as one U.S. government agency voted to remove its prohibition of in-flight calls while another considered its own ban. - See Details
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- 2015-06-04 Study opens graphene band-gap
- Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) announced a method for the mass production of boron/nitrogen co-doped graphene nanoplatelets, which led to the fabrication of a graphene-based field -effect transistor (FET) with semiconducting nature. This opens up opportunities for practical use in electronic devices.
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- 2015-06-04 BlackBerry posts 3Q loss of $4.4B (Update)
- BlackBerry reported a massive $4.4 billion loss in the third quarter and a 56 percent drop in revenue in its first quarterly report under new chairman and chief executive John Chen.
Despite the results, Chen said on a conference call with analysts that BlackBerry "has a really good shot" of turning a profit in 2016 and management will try its best to achieve the goal. Chen later laughed when an analyst wished him the "best of luck." - See Details
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- 2015-06-04 Computerizing people may be next step in tech
- It's likely the world in the not-so-distant future will be increasingly populated by computerized people like Amal Graafstra.
The 37-year-old doesn't need a key or password to get into his car, home or computer. He's programmed them to unlock at the mere wave of his hands, which are implanted with radio frequency identification tags. The rice-size gadgets work so well, the Seattle resident says, he's sold similar ones to more than 500 customers through his company Dangerous Things. - See Details
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- 2015-06-04 Apple is granted hover and heart-rate monitoring patents
- Apple has been awarded patents that include one for an accurate touch and hover panel, originally filed back in 2010, and another for an embedded heart rate monitor, originally filed in 2009. Details of the patents were reported by AppleInsider.
The touch and hover patent involves devices that can recognize something like a finger or stylus hovering above a display panel without actually touching the screen. The name of the patent is "Touch and hover signal drift compensation" and it describes a system in which a touchscreen display can accurately determine both hover and touch events. - See Details
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- 2015-06-04 Philippines allows phone use on planes
- The Philippines' civil aviation authority said Tuesday it would allow passengers to use mobile phones and laptops to make calls and access the Internet during flights.
Civil aviation director general William Hotchkiss said the order covered "transmitting portable electronic devices".
With immediate effect, the move will allow "people on board the aircraft conditional use of laptops, cellular phones, Internet or short-based-messaging service, voice communications and other broadband services during flights", he said in a directive. - See Details
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- 2015-06-04 Electronic 'mother' watches over home
- Resembling a Russian nesting doll, the pint-sized robotic device wants to be your "mother."
The electronic device with wireless connectivity can transform any object in the home into a smart one.
It can detect unexpected activity at the front door, keep track of watering of plants, and even ensure family members take their medicine or brush their teeth. - See Details
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- 2015-06-04 Kids get their own tablets, with parents in control
- Kid-safe tablets and smartphones are hitting the market, giving parents more control over how the mobile devices are used.
Hollywood studio DreamWorks has joined the move, introducing its DreamTab at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in partnership with California-based manufacturer Fuhu. - See Details
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- 2015-06-03 Smartphone apps multiply, but so do germs
- As innovators descended on the Consumer Electronics Show, companies offering better sanitizing were also promoting the cause of cleanliness.
The technology show has long had a focus on health, but makers of sanitizing devices said people need to look in their pockets and purses to the microbes on their personal gadgets. - See Details
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- 2015-06-03 Staying cool in the nanoelectric universe by getting hot
- As smartphones, tablets and other gadgets become smaller and more sophisticated, the heat they generate while in use increases. This is a growing problem because it can cause the electronics inside the gadgets to fail.
Conventional wisdom suggests the solution is to keep the guts of these gadgets cool. - See Details
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- 2015-06-03 Stretchable electronics: A gel that is clearly revolutionary
- Researchers are determined to manufacture stretchable biomedical devices that interface directly with organs such as the skin, heart and brain. Electronic devices, however, are usually made from hard materials that are incompatible with soft tissue. Choon Chiang Foo from the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing, Singapore, and researchers at Harvard University, United States, are aiming to solve this dilemma with squishy, see-through gels that can act as integral components of stretchable devices thanks to an innovative ionic conduction mechanism.
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- 2015-06-03 3D-stacked hybrid SRAM cell to be built by European scientists
- European scientists from both academia and industry have begun an ambitious new research project focused on an alternative approach to extend Moore's Law. The goal is to reduce costs and improve the energy efficiency of electronic devices ranging from mobile phones to supercomputers. The research project, called COMPOSE³, is based on the use of new materials to replace today's silicon, and on taking an innovative design approach where transistors are stacked vertically, known as 3D stacking.
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- 2015-06-03 Crossing the threshold for laser cooling
- Gallium nitride has emerged as one of the most widely used materials in the optoelectronics industry and the most important semiconducting material after silicon.
GaN's hardness, crystalline structure and wide bandgap make it ideal for a variety of applications. These include light-emitting diodes (LEDs), laser diodes that read blu-ray discs, transistors that operate at high temperatures, solar cell arrays for satellites, biochemical sensors and, because of GaN's relative biocompatibility, electronic implants in humans. - See Details
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- 2015-06-03 Ballistic transport in graphene suggests new type of electronic device
- Using electrons more like photons could provide the foundation for a new type of electronic device that would capitalize on the ability of graphene to carry electrons with almost no resistance even at room temperature – a property known as ballistic transport.
Research reported this week shows that electrical resistance in nanoribbons of epitaxial graphene changes in discrete steps following quantum mechanical principles. The research shows that the graphene nanoribbons act more like optical waveguides or quantum dots, allowing electrons to flow smoothly along the edges of the material. - See Details
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- 2015-06-03 Researchers produce first ever atom-by-atom simulation of ALD nanoscale film growth
- Researchers at Tyndall National Institute, Ireland, have produced the first ever atom-by-atom simulation of nanoscale film growth by atomic layer deposition (ALD) – a thin-film technology used in the production of silicon chips.
Present in all electronic devices such as credit cards, mobile phones and computers, each chip is made up of multiple thin layers that provide different functions. ALD has a key role to play in the manufacture of chips with ever thinner layers for the next generation of electronic devices. - See Details
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- 2015-06-03 Researchers develop framework for understanding current-switched magnetic devices
- An international collaboration led by researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) has made significant progress in modelling how electric currents affect the magnetization in some current-switched magnetic devices. While a number of such devices hold promise as low energy electronics, progress on some of the latest ideas has been impeded because different and contradictory models have been proposed to understand how they work and how to best optimize their performance.
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- 2015-06-03 House takes step toward ban on in-flight calls (Update)
- Allowing airline passengers to make cellphone calls in-flight is asking for trouble, lawmakers said Tuesday as a House panel approved a bill to ban such calls.
The bill—passed without opposition by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee—requires the Department of Transportation to issue regulations prohibiting such calls. The department has already said it is considering creating such a ban as part of its consumer protection role. - See Details
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- 2015-06-03 Mechanical engineer investigates passive cooling system for microelectronics
- On a cold February day, heat is a good thing, but not when it comes to electronics. Assistant professor Gregory Michna of the SDSU Mechanical Engineering Department is developing a means of cooling laptops and portable electronic devices more efficiently.
He is investigating tiny flexible pipes that can cool a device while using a minimum amount of power. It's called a pulsating or oscillating heat pipe cooling system. - See Details
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- 2015-06-02 Lufthansa expands in-flight smartphone usage
- Lufthansa, Germany's biggest airline, said Thursday it will allow passengers to use a range of mobile electronic devices in flight on all Airbus aircraft starting from next month.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) agreed in November to allow the use of personal electronic devices such as tablets, smartphones, e-readers and mp3 players in all phases of flight. - See Details
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- 2015-06-02 Team aims to create graphene nanoribbon 'wires' capable of carrying information thousands of times faster
- "Ballistic transport " – it sounds like a blast into the future. And it is.
By fabricating strips of carbon only one-atom thick and less than 15 atoms wide, researchers aim to create molecular-scale "wires" capable of carrying information thousands of times faster than is possible today. - See Details
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- 2015-06-02 Fractal wire patterns enhance stretchability of electronic devices
- Fractals—patterns defined by their scale-invariance that makes them look the same on large scales as they do on small scales—are found in nature everywhere from snowflakes to broccoli to the beating of the heart. In a new study, researchers have demonstrated that metal wires patterned in various fractal motifs, when integrated into elastic materials, enable highly stretchable electronic devices.
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- 2015-06-02 Researchers demonstrate holographic memory device
- A team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and Russian Academy of Science have demonstrated a new type of holographic memory device that could provide unprecedented data storage capacity and data processing capabilities in electronic devices.
The new type of memory device uses spin waves – a collective oscillation of spins in magnetic materials – instead of the optical beams. Spin waves are advantageous because spin wave devices are compatible with the conventional electronic devices and may operate at a much shorter wavelength than optical devices, allowing for smaller electronic devices that have greater storage capacity. - See Details
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- 2015-06-02 Self-charging battery gets boost from nanocomposite film
- In 2012, a research team at the Georgia Institute of Technology led by Professor Zhong Lin Wang fabricated the first self-charging power pack, or battery, that can be charged without being plugged into a wall socket or other source of electricity. Instead, the battery is charged by applying a mechanical stress, which causes lithium ions to migrate from the cathode to the anode due to the piezoelectric effect. Now the researchers have improved the battery by adding nanoparticles to the battery's piezoelectric material, resulting in a higher charging efficiency and storage capacity.
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- 2015-06-02 Optical nanocavity to boost light absorption in semiconductors
- Associated with unhappy visits to the dentist, "cavity" means something else in the branch of physics known as optics.
Put simply, an optical cavity is an arrangement of mirrors that allows beams of lightto circulate in closed paths. These cavities help us build things like lasers and optical fibers used for communications. - See Details
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- 2015-06-02 Rough surface could keep small electronic parts from sticking together
- When a piece of gift-wrapping tape sticks to itself, it's frustrating, but when small parts in a microgear or micromotor stick together, an electronic device may not work well, if at all. Scientists now report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that rough zinc oxide coatings can prevent tiny silicon parts from adhering to each other. The study could accelerate the development of even more advanced, high-performance electronics and small sensors.
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- 2015-06-02 The next generation of electronics is a press-on tattoo
- For John Rogers, the inspiration to develop ground-breaking stretchable circuits that are compatible with human tissue came from an unlikely source.
"A kid's temporary tattoo was a great model," said Rogers, a materials scientist and former MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant recipient. Temporary tattoos conform to human skin without any negative implications. Once applied, people forget they're even there and they eventually wash off without a trace. If he could make an electronic device that worked the same way, he realized, it could open up a world of opportunities. - See Details
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- 2015-06-02 Spintronic thermoelectric power generators: A step towards energy efficient electronic devices
- Imagine a computer so efficient that it can recycle its own waste heat to produce electricity. While such an idea may seem far-fetched today, significant progress has already been made to realize these devices. Researchers at the Nanostructured Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Utah have fabricated spintronics-based thin film devices which do just that, i.e. convert even minute waste heat into useful electricity.
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