文章资讯
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- 2015-05-12 Google steps up efforts for more racial diversity
- Google has had more trouble diversifying its workforce than its computer scientists have had writing programs that respond to search requests in the blink of an eye.
That seemed to be the conclusion when the Silicon Valley giant this week issued a gender and ethnic breakdown of its workforce. It showed that of its 26,600 U.S. employees, 61 percent are white, 30 percent Asian, 3 percent Hispanic and 2 percent black. Thirty percent of its employees are women. - See Details
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- 2015-05-11 How Google got states to legalize driverless cars (Update)
- About four years ago, the Google team trying to develop cars driven by computers—not people—became convinced that sooner than later, the technology would be ready for the masses. There was one big problem: Driverless cars were almost certainly illegal in the U.S.
And yet this week, Google said it wants to give Californians access to a small fleet of prototypes it will make without a steering wheel or pedals. - See Details
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- 2015-05-11 HBO's Silicon Valley finds fans in tech
- When HBO rolled out a mockumentary poking fun at high tech this spring, Silicon Valley checked it out.
Initially, its namesake geeks and nerds who spend their days coding, developing and hacking in a red hot tech economy weren't so sure it was funny: "Most startups are a soap opera, but not that kind of soap opera," said Tesla CEO Elon Musk, one of the valley's most charismatic billionaires, after a premier. - See Details
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- 2015-05-11 Solar modules embedded in glass
- Organic solar modules have advantages over silicon solar cells. However, one critical problem is their shorter operating life. Researchers are working on a promising solution: they are using flexible glass as a carrier substrate that better protects the components.
This approach is already being employed in electronic devices to some extent today: organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are embedded in film. These OPVs are a promising alternative to silicon-based solar cells. The materials can also be processed at atmospheric pressure. - See Details
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- 2015-05-11 Just add water: 3-D silicon shapes fold themselves when wetted by microscopic droplets
- Researchers from the University of Twente in the Netherlands have taken the precise art of origami down to the microscopic scale. Using only a drop of water, the scientists have folded flat sheets of silicon nitride into cubes, pyramids, half soccer-ball-shaped bowls and long triangular structures that resemble Toblerone chocolate bars – an omnium-gatherum of geometric objects, which are almost too tiny to see with the naked eye.
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- 2015-05-11 From thin silicate films to the atomic structure of glass
- Glass ranks as one of the most important materials of our age. You have only to think about smartphones, or drinking glasses, or look out of the window to realise that glass in its various forms is omnipresent. Fibre-optic cables transport our emails and research work out into the world, and buildings without architectural window glass are hardly conceivable nowadays. Glass plays an important role in everyday life without us being aware of its complex structure.
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- 2015-05-11 Clean power from waste heat
- Siemens has developed a technology to use waste heat, which previously had gone unused, to generate electricity. The solution employs silicone oils, which have a lower enthalpy of vaporization than water, and is needed because waste heat produced in industrial plants or power stations often does not have enough energy to drive a turbine with steam. Siemens recently introduced its "Organic Rankine Cycle" module. Under this solution, the working medium drives a turbine, and then cools and reverts to its initial liquid state. Thus, electricity can be generated without the additional use of energy or raw materials, and without producing additional carbon dioxide emissions.
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- 2015-05-11 Silicon Valley's interns enjoy perk-filled summer
- Sitting in a kitchen stocked with free food, a handful of 20-something Google summer interns weigh their favorite perks, but where to begin? With bikes, buses, massages, swimming pools, dance classes, nap pods, parties and access to their tech heroes, it's a very long list.
"Unlimited sparkling water?" someone says.
In the end, however, the budding Googlers are most excited about the work. - See Details
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- 2015-05-11 Reimagining silicon
- Silicon (Si) is ubiquitous in modern semiconductor manufacturing. Well-established procedures for its processing, perfected over more than five decades of industrial use, enable a diverse array of electronic devices that pervade everyday life. The highly evolved supply chain that accompanies Si's dominance also enables very low manufacturing costs. In fact, it is far cheaper to fabricate a Si-based transistor than print a single letter in a newspaper.
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- 2015-05-11 One step to solar-cell efficiency: Researchers' chemical process may improve manufacturing
- Rice University scientists have created a one-step process for producing highly efficient materials that let the maximum amount of sunlight reach a solar cell.
The Rice lab of chemist Andrew Barron found a simple way to etch nanoscale spikes into silicon that allows more than 99 percent of sunlight to reach the cells' active elements, where it can be turned into electricity. - See Details
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- 2015-05-11 Using silicon dioxide as a binding layer for replacement bone prosthetics
- Using the stuff of sand, silicon dioxide, as a binding layer for replacement bone prosthetics could allow more biocompatible artificial joints to be manufactured as well as reducing the risk of post-operative infection, according to research published in the International Journal of Surface Science and Engineering.
The metals titanium and tantalum are widely used to make replacement implants for diseased or damaged bone, in the classic hip replacement, for instance. Unfortunately, a smooth metal surface, while long-lasting and wear resistant is not entirely biocompatible so manufacturers are developing materials – such as the bony mineral hydroxyapatite – that can be used to coat such implants to allow the body to accept the prosthetic and for cells and blood vessels to accommodate it more effectively. - See Details
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- 2015-05-09 The goose bump sensor: A step toward direct detection of human emotional states
- Can emotional states be measured quantitatively, and if so what would advertising, manufacturing and social media companies do with that data? Imagine a world in which a consumer's real-time physical and emotional response helped to determine his/her experience of music, online ads or the temperature in the room.
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- 2015-05-09 Waveguiding and detecting structure for surface plasmon polaritons on silicon
- Toyohashi Tech researchers have developed a simple, low-loss waveguide for Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPPs) that is applicable to nanoscale photonic integrated circuits on silicon.
Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are waves that propagate along the surface of a conductor and collective oscillation of electrons coupled with the optical field at the nano-scale beyond the diffraction limit of propagating light waves. Recently, there is increasing interest in SPPs as signal carriers in nanoscale integrated circuits to increase the degree of accumulation and reduce power consumption. - See Details
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- 2015-05-09 Superconducting-silicon qubits: Using a bottom-up approach to make hybrid quantum devices
- Theorists propose a way to make superconducting quantum devices such as Josephson junctions and qubits, atom-by-atom, inside a silicon crystal. Such systems could combine the most promising aspects of silicon spin qubits with the flexibility of superconducting circuits. The researcher's results have now been published in Nature Communications.
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- 2015-05-09 Simple, inexpensive fabrication procedure boosts light-capturing capabilities of tiny holes carved into silicon wafers
- Increasing the cost-effectiveness of photovoltaic devices is critical to making these renewable energy sources competitive with traditional fossil fuels. One possibility is to use hybrid solar cells that combine silicon nanowires with low-cost, photoresponsive polymers. The high surface area and confined nature of nanowires allows them to trap significant amounts of light for solar cell operations. Unfortunately, these thin, needle-like structures are very fragile and tend to stick together when the wires become too long.
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- 2015-05-09 Researchers use aluminum nanostructures for photorealistic printing of plasmonic color palettes
- A team of researchers in Singapore has used plasmonic properties to create a photorealistic printing technique. In their paper published in Nano Letters, the researchers describe how they created pillars of hydrogen silsequioxane 95nm tall on a silicon substrate, each topped with an aluminum cap to take advantage of plasmon resonance, resulting in a printing palette of over 300 colors.
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- 2015-05-09 Record efficiency for large area industrial crystalline-silicon N-pert solar cell
- Nano-electronics research center imec, reported today an n-type PERT crystalline silicon (Si) solar cell fabricated on a large area wafer (15.6cm x 15.6 cm) reaching a top conversion efficiency of 21.5 percent (calibrated at ISE Callab). This is the highest efficiency achieved for this type of solar cell on an industrial large area wafer size. This result will accelerate the adoption of n-type PERT (Passivated Emitter, Rear Totally diffused) solar cells in the industry as it clearly shows the potential for improved conversion efficiencies for next generation standard two side contacted crystalline silicon solar cells.
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- 2015-05-09 Silicon sponge improves lithium-ion battery performance
- The lithium-ion batteries that power our laptops and electric vehicles could store more energy and run longer on a single charge with the help of a sponge-like silicon material.
Researchers developed the porous material to replace the graphite traditionally used in one of the battery's electrodes, as silicon has more than 10 times the energy storage capacity of graphite. A paper describing the material's performance as a lithium-ion battery electrode was published today in Nature Communications. - See Details
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- 2015-05-09 Sand-based lithium ion batteries that outperform standard by three times
- Researchers at the University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering have created a lithium ion battery that outperforms the current industry standard by three times. The key material: sand. Yes, sand.
"This is the holy grail – a low cost, non-toxic, environmentally friendly way to produce high performance lithium ion battery anodes," said Zachary Favors, a graduate student working with Cengiz and Mihri Ozkan, both engineering professors at UC Riverside. - See Details
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- 2015-05-09 IBM to spend $3 bn aiming for computer chip breakthrough
- IBM announced plans to pump $3 billion into an overhaul of computer chip technology to better meet modern demands of "Big Data" and computing pushed to the Internet "cloud."
The New York-based technology veteran hopes to leave behind the silicon long used in computer chips for a material that could ramp up power while shrinking processors to molecular levels. - See Details
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- 2015-05-09 Rice's silicon oxide memories catch manufacturers' eye
- Rice University's breakthrough silicon oxide technology for high-density, next-generation computer memory is one step closer to mass production, thanks to a refinement that will allow manufacturers to fabricate devices at room temperature with conventional production methods.
First discovered five years ago, Rice's silicon oxide memories are a type of two-terminal, "resistive random-access memory" (RRAM) technology. In a new paper available online in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters, a Rice team led by chemist James Tour compared its RRAM technology to more than a dozen competing versions. - See Details
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- 2015-05-08 Maths can make the internet 5-10 times faster
- Mathematical equations can make Internet communication via computer, mobile phone or satellite many times faster and more secure than today. Results with software developed by researchers from Aalborg University in collaboration with the US universities the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are attracting attention in the international technology media.
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- 2015-05-08 A crystal wedding in the nanocosmos
- Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the Vienna University of Technology and the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Lublin have succeeded in embedding nearly perfect semiconductor crystals into a silicon nanowire. With this new method of producing hybrid nanowires, very fast and multi-functional processing units can be accommodated on a single chip in the future. The research results will be published in the journal Nano Research.
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- 2015-05-08 Twitter admits to diversity problem in workforce
- Twitter acknowledged Wednesday that it has been hiring too many white and Asian men to fill high-paying technology jobs, just like several other major companies in Silicon Valley.
The lack of diversity in Twitter's workforce of roughly 3,000 people was spelled out in data released by the San Francisco company behind the popular short messaging service. - See Details
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- 2015-05-08 Existence of two-dimensional nanomaterial silicene questioned
- Sometimes, scientific findings can shake the foundations of what was once held to be true, causing us to step back and re-examine our basic assumptions.
A recent study at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory has called into question the existence of silicene, thought to be one of the world's newest and hottest two-dimensional nanomaterials. The study may have great implications to a multi-billion dollar electronics industry that seeks to revolutionize technology at scales 80,000 times smaller than the human hair. - See Details
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- 2015-05-08 Graphene surfaces on photonic racetracks
- In an article published in Optics Express, scientists from The University of Manchester describe how graphene can be wrapped around a silicon wire, or waveguide, and modify the transmission of light through it.
Just as information can be carried by electrons in metal wires in a microchip, photons of light can carry information through silicon waveguides to form a photonic microchip. Photonic microchips are often regarded as the future of computer processing and telecommunications because of the vastly increased speeds of operation and bandwidth enhancements. - See Details
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- 2015-05-08 Dye-sensitized solar cell absorbs a broad range of visible and infrared wavelengths
- Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) rely on dyes that absorb light to mobilize a current of electrons and are a promising source of clean energy. Jishan Wu at the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and colleagues in Singapore have now developed zinc porphyrin dyes that harvest light in both the visible and near-infrared parts of the spectrum1. Their research suggests that chemical modification of these dyes could enhance the energy output of DSSCs.
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- 2015-05-08 Judge rejects Silicon Valley anti-poaching settlement
A federal judge Friday rejected a plan to compensate employees affected by an "anti-poaching" agreement involving Silicon Valley tech giants Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe.
Judge Lucy Koh said in a ruling that the $324 million class-action settlement was too low, compared with a deal with other companies sealed a year ago.
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- 2015-05-08 Researchers prove stability of wonder material silicene
- An international team of researchers has taken a significant step towards understanding the fundamental properties of the two-dimensional material silicene by showing that it can remain stable in the presence of oxygen.
In a study published today, 12 August, in IOP Publishing's journal 2D Materials, the researchers have shown that thick multilayers of silicene can be isolated from parent material silicon and remain intact when exposed to air for at least 24 hours. - See Details
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- 2015-05-08 Beyond six nines: Ultra-enriched silicon paves the road to quantum computing
- Using a relatively straightforward technique, a team of NIST researchers has created what may be the most highly enriched silicon currently being produced. The material is more than 99.9999% pure silicon-28 (28Si), with less than 1 part per million (ppm) of the problematic isotope silicon-29 (29Si). Many quantum computing schemes require isotopically pure silicon, for example to act as a substrate in which qubits – the quantum bits that store information – are embedded. In reaching "five nines" (99.9998%) last year and better than "six nines" this year*, the NIST team has surpassed its own enrichment goals.
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