文章资讯
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- 2015-05-15 Improving organic transistors that drive flexible and conformable electronics
- A revolution is coming in flexible electronic technologies as cheaper, more flexible, organic transistors come on the scene to replace expensive, rigid, silicon-based semiconductors, but not enough is known about how bending in these new thin-film electronic devices will affect their performance, say materials scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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- 2015-05-14 "Fingerprinting" chips to fight counterfeiting
- It's often said that no two human fingerprints are exactly alike. For that reason, police often use them as evidence to link suspects to crime scenes.
The same goes for silicon chips: Manufacturing processes cause microscopic variations in chips that are unpredictable, permanent, and effectively impossible to clone. - See Details
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- 2015-05-14 Google embeds engineers as professors
- Howard University freshman Alanna Walton knew something was different about the professor teaching her introduction to computer science course.
First, there was her name: Professor Sabrina. She was an African American woman, kept office hours until 2 a.m. if that's what it took to see everyone, and had an additional title: Google In Residence. - See Details
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- 2015-05-14 Pressure-monitoring stockings to prevent wounds in diabetics
- Diabetics often have little feeling in their feet and don't perceive the body's pressure or temperature signals there. This can result in unnoticed wounds that then develop into abscesses. Many diabetics have to have toes or feet amputated. Now, a novel kind of pressure stocking developed by Fraunhofer researchers is set to help protect against wounds via an integrated sensor system that sends a warning when pressure is too high. The new pressure-monitoring stocking prototype will be presented May 19-21 at SENSOR+TEST 2015 in Nuremberg.
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- 2015-05-14 Silicon Valley, led by Apple, becomes Wall Street's backbone and ATM
- Led by the most successful company in the history of American commerce, Silicon Valley technology firms have become increasingly attuned to the demands of Wall Street, churning out profits at a record pace and sending a fire hose of cash back to investors.
With the 30th annual SV150, the San Jose Mercury News' ranking of the largest companies in Silicon Valley by revenue, it's clear that Wall Street depends on Silicon Valley tech companies like never before. In 1985, only six companies in the SV150 also had residence in the Standard & Poor's 500 index. - See Details
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- 2015-05-14 Current tech boom is no dot-com bubble, experts say
- Silicon Valley's tech cup runneth over. Job growth is humming, coders are being lionized on HBO, Uber and its shared-economy cohorts are on fire, disrupted innovation is unfolding on every corner. And everyone from downtown San Jose to Oakland's Uptown to San Francisco's South of Market is partying like it's 1999.
Luckily, it's not - at least according to those who say today's boom and the exuberance of the dot-com craze are like night and day. - See Details
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- 2015-05-14 Study: Top tech firms bypassing Asian workers for exec jobs
- Google, Yahoo and other major technology companies are far more inclined to hire Asians as computer programmers than to promote them to become managers or executives, according to a study released Wednesday.
The analysis uncovered a glaring imbalance between the number of Asian technology workers in non-management jobs and the number in leadership positions in Silicon Valley. - See Details
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- 2015-05-14 Tiny silicone spheres come out of the mist
- Technology in common household humidifiers could enable the next wave of high-tech medical imaging and targeted medicine, thanks to a new method for making tiny silicone microspheres developed by chemists at the University of Illinois.
Led by chemistry professor Kenneth Suslick, the researchers published their results in the journal Advanced Science. - See Details
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- 2015-05-14 Silicon photonics technology ready to speed up cloud and big data applications
- IBM today announced a significant milestone in the development of silicon photonics technology, which enables silicon chips to use pulses of light instead of electrical signals over wires to move data at rapid speeds and longer distances in future computing systems.
For the first time, IBM engineers have designed and tested a fully integrated wavelength multiplexed silicon photonics chip, which will soon enable manufacturing of 100 Gb/s optical transceivers. This will allow datacenters to offer greater data rates and bandwidth for cloud computing and Big Data applications. - See Details
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- 2015-05-14 Tech professionals gravitate toward high-altitude mountaineering
- The slow slog through thin air atop a glacier-capped Himalayan peak is about the farthest you can get from Silicon Valley's fast-paced tech world, where digital screens are often the only view and the instruments for survival are lines of code.
And yet there is a small but determined band of tech workers who oscillate between the two worlds, spending one month hunched over computers and the next strapping on crampons and gaiters for a 20,000-foot ascent. - See Details
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- 2015-05-14 New shortcut to solar cells: Discovery employs electrodes as catalysts to make black silicon
- Rice University scientists have found a way to simplify the manufacture of solar cells by using the top electrode as the catalyst that turns plain silicon into valuable black silicon.
The Rice lab of chemist Andrew Barron disclosed the research in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 A metal composite that will (literally) float your boat
- Researchers have demonstrated a new metal matrix composite that is so light that it can float on water. A boat made of such lightweight composites will not sink despite damage to its structure. The new material also promises to improve automotive fuel economy because it combines light weight with heat resistance.
Although syntactic foams have been around for many years, this is the first development of a lightweight metal matrix syntactic foam. It is the work of a team of researchers from Deep Springs Technology (DST) and the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering. - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 New Pentagon strategy warns of cyberwar capabilities
- A new Pentagon cybersecurity strategy lays out for the first time publicly that the U.S. military plans to use cyberwarfare as an option in conflicts with enemies.
The 33-page strategy says the Defense Department "should be able to use cyber operations to disrupt an adversary's command and control networks, military-related critical infrastructure and weapons capabilities." - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 Computer sharing of personality in sight: inventor
- The world has only touched the surface of technological progress and computers may soon be able to transmit the complexities of human personalities, a prominent inventor says.
Sebastian Thrun, who founded the Google X laboratory where the Internet search giant has developed Google Glass and driverless cars, said it was often difficult to grasp concepts before they come to fruition. - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 Water makes wires even more nano: Lab extends meniscus-mask process to make sub-10 nanometer paths
- Water is the key component in a Rice University process to reliably create patterns of metallic and semiconducting wires less than 10 nanometers wide.
The technique by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour builds upon its discovery that the meniscus - the curvy surface of water at its edge - can be an effective mask to make nanowires. - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 More deals ahead? China fund buys Silicon Valley chip maker
- China's aggressive new policy to expand its semiconductor industry is worrying U.S. chipmakers, many of which are based in Silicon Valley, and raising potential national security concerns as it begins to acquire U.S. tech companies.
The world's largest market for integrated circuits, China is expected to spend up to $100 billion on both domestic investments and acquisitions abroad to grow itssemiconductor industry by more than 20 percent annually over the next five years. - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 Researchers deliver large particles into cells at high speed
- A new device developed by UCLA engineers and doctors may eventually help scientists study the development of disease, enable them to capture improved images of the inside of cells and lead to other improvements in medical and biological research.
The researchers created a highly efficient automated tool that delivers nanoparticles, enzymes, antibodies, bacteria and other "large-sized" cargo into mammalian cells at the rate of 100,000 cells per minute—significantly faster than current technology, which works at about one cell per minute. - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 Electrical control of quantum bits in silicon paves the way to large quantum computers
- A UNSW-led research team has encoded quantum information in silicon using simple electrical pulses for the first time, bringing the construction of affordable large-scale quantum computers one step closer to reality.
Lead researcher, UNSW Associate Professor Andrea Morello from the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, said his team had successfully realised a new control method for future quantum computers. - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 Firms push high-tech solutions to fortify airport perimeters
- Technology firms increasingly pitch new sensors and software to U.S. airports as a way to bolster exterior security and keep intruders out, but such digital barriers come with a hefty price tag and don't always work.
An Associated Press investigation this week documented 268 instances in which people hopped over, crawled under, drove cars through or otherwise breached the fences and gates protecting the perimeters of 31 of the nation's busiest airports from January 2004 through January 2015. - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 Bridging nanotube gaps enhances performance of electronic devices
- A more effective method for closing gaps in atomically small wires has been developed by University of Illinois researchers, further opening the doors to a new transistor technology.
Led by electrical and computer engineering professor Joseph Lyding and graduate student Jae Won Do, the Illinois team published its results in the journalACS Nano. - See Details
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- 2015-05-13 Printing silicon on paper, with lasers
- In seeking to develop the next generation of micro-electronic transistors, researchers have long sought to find the next best thing to replace silicon. To this end, a wealth of recent research into fully flexible electronic circuitry has focused on various organic and metal-oxide ink materials, which often lack all the favorable electronic properties of silicon but offer superior "printability."
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- 2015-05-12 Let's be neighbors, US security head tells tech sector
- Even though Silicon Valley has had an often-contentious relationship with the US government's national security organizations, it's now time to be neighbors, one top official said Tuesday.
US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced that his office is "finalizing plans to open up a satellite office in Silicon Valley, to serve as another point of contact with our friends here." - See Details
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- 2015-05-12 Review: Plenty of options for HBO online, not enough time
- HBO Now, the cable channel's new stand-alone streaming service, is both a blessing and a curse.
Like HBO Go, the app that cable and satellite TV subscribers have, HBO Now gives you instant access to new TV episodes and movies, along with programs from months and years ago. People who don't subscribe to cable TV are now able to watch hit shows such as "Game of Thrones" and "Girls" without "borrowing" parents' accounts or turning to piracy sites. - See Details
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- 2015-05-12 A leap for 'artificial leaf': Generating power by breaking up water molecules
- As an idea, the notion of an "artificial leaf" was always meant to be simple: Could scientists, using a handful of relatively cheap materials, harness the power of light to generate two powerful fuels—hydrogen and oxygen—by breaking apart water molecules?
In practice, however, the idea faced a number of hurdles, including how to pattern the catalysts on silicon that would power the reaction. But that could soon change, says Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy Daniel Nocera. - See Details
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- 2015-05-12 MESA complex starts largest production series in its history
- Sandia National Laboratories has begun making silicon wafers for three nuclear weapon modernization programs, the largest production series in the history of its Microsystems and Engineering Sciences Applications complex.
MESA's silicon fab in October began producing base wafers for Application-Specific Integrated Circuits for the B61-12 Life Extension Program, W88 Alteration 370 and W87 Mk21 Fuze Replacement nuclear weapons. Planning and preparation took years and involved more than 100 people. - See Details
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- 2015-05-12 Jury says Silicon Valley firm did not discriminate (Update)
- A jury decided Friday that a prestigious venture capital firm did not discriminate or retaliate against a female employee in a case that debated gender imbalance and working conditions for women in Silicon Valley.
The jury in San Francisco reached the verdict after three days of deliberations in a lawsuit filed by Ellen Pao against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. - See Details
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- 2015-05-12 Facebook moves into 'not fancy' new headquarters
- Facebook moved into its new Frank Gehry-designed headquarters in Silicon Valley, with a rooftop park and "the largest open floor plan in the world."
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg insisted, however, that the building is "pretty simple and isn't fancy."
"That's on purpose," Zuckerberg said on his Facebook timeline. - See Details
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- 2015-05-12 Search, social & shopping: Pinterest turns 5
- In its five short years of life, Pinterest has become 'the' place where brides-to-be create wish boards of wedding china photos and do-it-yourself home renovators bookmark shiny turquoise tiles for bathrooms. It's where people share ideas and ingenuity and get creatively inspired. And it's fueled a new way of searching for items that's even stolen traffic from tech giant Google.
The San Francisco-based venture capital darling was recently valued at $11 billion. While its core audience has always been female, Pinterest says its popularity is growing faster than ever among men. It is winning in the all-important social-mobile space—the vast majority of "pinners" connect from mobile devices—and is enjoying a healthy expansion overseas. - See Details
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- 2015-05-12 Engineers develop new device to cool chips at the micro scale
- Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Diego, have built a novel evaporator structure that can cool chips with micro scale features. The structures are built on silicon chips for direct incorporation into electronics.
Ph.D. student Lilla Safford Smith presented her work recently at the PowerMEMS 2013 conference in London. Safford Smith, who is based at UC Berkeley, is part of the research group of Albert Pisano, dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego and a professor of mechanical and electrical engineering. - See Details
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- 2015-05-12 White and male, Google releases diversity data (Update)
- In a groundbreaking disclosure, Google revealed how very white and male its workforce is—just 2 percent of its Googlers are black, 3 percent are Hispanic, and 30 percent are women.
The search giant said Wednesday that the transparency about its workforce—the first disclosure of its kind in the largely white, male tech sector—is an important step toward change. - See Details