文章资讯
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- 2015-04-28 Nissan, NASA to work on autonomous car technology
- Japanese automaker Nissan and NASA are teaming up to advance the technology behind cars that drive autonomously.
Yokohama-based Nissan Motor Co. and NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, announced Thursday a five-year research-and-development partnership for autonomous vehicle systems so they can eventually be applied to commercially sold cars. - See Details
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- 2015-04-28 Researchers find exposure to nanoparticles may threaten heart health
- Nanoparticles, extremely tiny particles measured in billionths of a meter, are increasingly everywhere, and especially in biomedical products. Their toxicity has been researched in general terms, but now a team of Israeli scientists has for the first time found that exposure nanoparticles (NPs) of silicon dioxide (SiO2) can play a major role in the development of cardiovascular diseases when the NP cross tissue and cellular barriers and also find their way into the circulatory system. Their study is published in the December 2014 issue of Environmental Toxicology.
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- 2015-04-28 From quirky to revolutionary, the CES show has them all
- Sure, the International CES show was chock full of connected cars, smart home sensors, music gear and computer gadgets, as you'd expect. There were even drones buzzing the 160,000-plus people that tromped across the 2.2 million square feet of exhibit space along the Las Vegas Strip. But if you didn't get to see some of these goodies, well, you just haven't lived.
Of the tons of products on display, here are a few that inspired, brought a chuckle, or made you just say, hmmm, yeah, I definitely need that. (Wink.) - See Details
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- 2015-04-28 Wearable sensors gather lots of data—now to make it useful
- It's not just about how many steps you've taken or how many calories you've burned in a day. Wearable fitness trackers and health monitors are becoming more commonplace and diverse, but just what do you do with all of that data?
"We have a lot of people buy wearables and then stop using them," said Paul Landau, president of Fitbug, a British maker of fitness trackers. Landau attended the International CES gadget show in Las Vegas last week, promoting a series of 12-week fitness coaching programs that offer detailed and custom recommendations for getting in shape. "If you want to help people," said Landau, "they've got to have more than just self-tracking." - See Details
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- 2015-04-28 GM's new electric could upstage Tesla—and its own Volt (Update 2)
- With the introduction of an affordable electric car that can go 200 miles on a single charge, General Motors sets up a showdown with Tesla to sell an electric vehicle to the masses. It may also upstage a car of its own.
GM on Monday unveiled the Chevrolet Bolt, a $30,000 concept car that will probably go on sale in about two years. The range will make it attractive to many buyers who would not consider a fully electric car for fear of running out of juice. The rollout of the orange compact hatchback eclipsed GM's unveiling of a revamped Chevy Volt at the Detroit auto show. - See Details
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- 2015-04-28 Mechanical engineer seeks to make solar cells competitive
- One day in the 1990s, as he was riding home from high school in São Paulo, Tonio Buonassisi looked out the bus window at the Brazilian city's long lines of traffic, and its smoggy haze. In that moment, he realized that there had to be better ways for people to produce and use energy—and that he wanted to try to do something about it.
"São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world, and was one of the world's most polluted cities," Buonassisi recalls. "I was taking the bus home from basketball practice … one of the worst times to be breathing in pollution is right after exercising." The pollution, which was especially bad that day, led to his decision, at age 16, to work to advance solar energy or public transportation. - See Details
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- 2015-04-27 Researchers develop novel multiferroic materials and devices integrated with silicon chips
- A research team led by North Carolina State University has made two advances in multiferroic materials, including the ability to integrate them on a silicon chip, which will allow the development of new electronic memory devices. The researchers have already created prototypes of the devices and are in the process of testing them.
Multiferroic materials have both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties. - See Details
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- 2015-04-27 Ripple patterns in silicon can enhance solar cell efficiency
- A*STAR scientists have produced a uniform nanoscale ripple pattern over a wide area on a silicon surface by scanning a femtosecond laser beam across it. Given that a rippled surface is much less reflective than a smooth surface, this simple innovation could enhance the efficiency of solar cells by boosting their ability to harvest more sunlight.
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- 2015-04-27 Apple, Google reach new settlement in high-tech wage case
- A revised settlement has been reached in a class-action lawsuit alleging Apple and Google conspired with other Silicon Valley companies to block more than 60,000 high-tech employees from getting better job offers.
The terms of the new agreement weren't disclosed in a letter filed Tuesday with an appeals court in San Francisco. Donald Falk, a lawyer who filed the letter on behalf of Google Inc., declined to comment Wednesday. - See Details
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- 2015-04-27 Perovskites provide big boost to silicon solar cells
- Stacking perovskites onto a conventional silicon solar cell dramatically improves the overall efficiency of the cell, according to a new study led by Stanford University scientists.
The researchers describe their novel perovskite-silicon solar cell in this week's edition of the journal Energy & Environmental Science. - See Details
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- 2015-04-27 Funding boom shows power of tech startups, raises concerns
- Venture capitalists poured a whopping $48.3 billion into U.S. startup companies last year, investing at levels that haven't been seen since the heady days before the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.
Software and biotechnology companies were the leading recipients of venture funding in 2014, which rose more than 60 percent from the previous year, according to a new report issued Friday. - See Details
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- 2015-04-27 Boy, 13, builds Braille printer with Legos, starts company
- In Silicon Valley, it's never too early to become an entrepreneur. Just ask 13-year-old Shubham Banerjee.
The California eighth-grader has launched a company to develop low-cost machines to print Braille, the tactile writing system for the visually impaired. Tech giant Intel Corp. recently invested in his startup, Braigo Labs. - See Details
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- 2015-04-27 Scientists construct the first germanium-tin semiconductor laser for silicon chips
- Scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland in cooperation with international partners have presented the first semiconductor consisting solely of elements of main group IV. As a consequence, the germanium-tin (GeSn) laser can be applied directly onto a silicon chip and thus creates a new basis for transmitting data on computer chips via light: this transfer is faster than is possible with copper wires and requires only a fraction of the energy. The results have been published in the journal Nature Photonics.
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- 2015-04-27 Y Combinator report shows difficulty in diversifying tech workforces
- As much as tech firms talk about diversifying their workforces, and as much as venture capitalists talk about funding more women and people of color, there is one glaring and persistent problem - not enough women, blacks and Latinos are signing up for the tech industry.
Y Combinator, arguably the most prestigious startup accelerator in the nation and backer of companies like Airbnb and Dropbox, recently released a self-assessment of its diversity - part of the broader Silicon Valley push to find solutions to its chronic underrepresentation of blacks, Latinos and women. - See Details
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- 2015-04-27 With $15 billion valuation, Palantir looks to raise more money
- Palantir Technologies, the big data company founded by entrepreneur and billionaire investor Peter Thiel, is looking to raise yet another round of capital, after landing $500 million from investors last year, according to a report from Bloomberg News.
The report said Palantir raised the money in late 2014 "because investors were eager to invest." The company is currently raising even more financing, Bloomberg News said. - See Details
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- 2015-04-27 Wireless charging system on cusp of commercialization
- Imagine a world where you don't have to plug in your smartphone, tablet or laptop, or even lay it on one of the Duracell charging mats that Starbucks is rolling out nationwide. Instead, your refrigerator sends them power from across the room via a WiFi-like radio signal.
Now, forget that for a while - though it might happen someday.
Energous Corp., a Silicon Valley startup, won awards in Las Vegas at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show for its WattUp system of "wire-free charging of multiple devices at up to 15 feet." At least one other company, Texas' DK Tek Innovations, made similar claims at the show. - See Details
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- 2015-04-25 Gold 'nano-drills'
- Spherical gold particles are able to 'drill' a nano-diameter tunnel in ceramic material when heated. This is an easy and attractive way to equip chips with nanopores for DNA analysis, for example. Nanotechnologists of the University of Twente published their results in Nano Letters.
Researcher Lennart de Vreede applied a large number of microscopic discs of gold on a surface of silicon dioxide. When heated up for several hours, the gold is moving into the material, perpendicular to the surface, like nanometer-sized spheres. Nine hours of heating gives a tunnel of 800 nanometers in length, for example, and a diameter of 25 nanometer: these results can normally only be acieved by using complex processes. - See Details
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- 2015-04-25 Millennials use tech tools to jump into investing
- It's the Facebookification of financial investing. From social networking platforms that allow young investors to follow each other's stock-picking mojo, to websites for first-timers hungry for a piece of the Silicon Valley venture capital pie, to mobile apps that let 20-something hipsters find equally hip financial planners, the millennial generation is embracing new tech tools to put their newfound wealth to work.
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- 2015-04-25 Ford goes Silicon Valley with new research center
- Ford opened a new research center in Silicon Valley on Thursday, stepping up the company's efforts on connected vehicles, autonomous driving and ways to use big data.
"At Ford, we view ourselves as both a mobility and an auto company, as we drive innovation in every part of our business," said chief executive Mark Fields as he opened the new center in Palo Alto, California. - See Details
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- 2015-04-25 Pinholes are pitfalls for high performance solar cells
- The most popular next-generation solar cells under development may have a problem – the top layer is full of tiny pinholes, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Japan have found.
The majority of high-performance solar cells under development use a combination of materials including perovskite and spiro-MeOTAD. These cells are far cheaper than traditional silicon-based solar cells, and their efficiency has been increasing significantly in the past few years. But perovskite, which is the layer that converts sunlight to electricity, degrades quickly. - See Details
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- 2015-04-25 NTU unveils Singapore's first 3-D printed concept car
- Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students have built Singapore's first urban solar electric car with an innovative 3D-printed body shell that has 150 parts.
Mounted on a carbon fibre single shell chassis, the NTU Venture (NV) 8 will race in the Urban Concept category at this year's Shell Eco-marathon Asia.
NTU students have also built the NTU Venture (NV) 9, a slick three-wheeled racer which can take sharp corners with little loss in speed due to its unique tilting ability inspired by motorcycle racing. - See Details
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- 2015-04-25 Report: Silicon Valley tech economy booming
- Silicon Valley's tech economy is continuing to boom, with 58,000 new jobs and 42,000 new residents last year and all indications the record growth will continue, according to study released Tuesday.
The annual Silicon Valley Index released by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, representing businesses, government and the broader community, also shows record venture capital investment in technology. - See Details
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- 2015-04-25 High efficiency concentrating solar cells move to the rooftop (w/ Video)
- Ultra-high efficiency solar cells similar to those used in space may now be possible on your rooftop thanks to a new microscale solar concentration technology developed by an international team of researchers.
"Concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) systems leverage the cost of high efficiency multi-junction solar cells by using inexpensive optics to concentrate sunlight onto them," said Noel C. Giebink, assistant professor of electrical engineering, Penn State. "Current CPV systems are the size of billboards and have to be pointed very accurately to track the sun throughout the day. - See Details
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- 2015-04-25 New silicon peptide biopolymers
- Copolymers made from synthetic and biomimetic components open new and interesting perspectives as biocompatible, biodegradable materials that can also be given biological functionality. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, French scientists have now introduced silicon-peptide copolymers. Their extremely simple synthesis is applicable to all types of peptides and produces both linear and branched polymer chains.
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- 2015-04-25 Why 'baking powder' increases efficiency of plastic solar cells
- The efficiency of plastic solar cells can be doubled or tripled if an extra solvent is added during the production process, comparable with the role of baking powder in dough mixture. Exactly how this works has been unclear for the last ten years. But now researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) have come up with the answer in a publication in Nature Communications. This new understanding will now enable focused development of plastic solar cells.
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- 2015-04-25 Facebook, LinkedIn join to help women in tech
- Facebook and LinkedIn want to boost dwindling numbers of women studying engineering and computer science with a collaborative initiative announced Friday that they hope will eventually fill thousands of lucrative Silicon Valley jobs long dominated by men.
In an exclusive joint interview with The Associated Press, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and LinkedIn CEO Jeffrey Weiner said they're launching mentoring and support programs at colleges to get more women involved in studying technology in general, but also as future employees for their companies. - See Details
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- 2015-04-24 Study shows benefits of silicon carbide for sensors in harsh environments
- The use of silicon carbide as a semiconductor for mechanical and electrical sensor devices is showing promise for improved operations and safety in harsh working environments, according to new research from Griffith University.
Experiments with silicon carbide grown at the Queensland Micro- and Nanotechnology Centre (QMNC) at Griffith University have demonstrated the compound's superiority as a semiconductor for high performance sensors. - See Details
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- 2015-04-24 Novel non-stick material joins portfolio of slippery surface technologies
- More than 80 percent of microbial infections in the human body are caused by a build-up of bacteria, according to the National Institutes of Health. Bacteria cells gain a foothold in the body by accumulating and forming into adhesive colonies called biofilms, which help them to thrive and survive but cause infections and associated life-threatening risks to their human hosts. These biofilms commonly form on medical surfaces including those of mechanical heart valves, urinary catheters, intravenous catheters, and implants.
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- 2015-04-24 Google buys Altamont wind energy to power Googleplex
- Google has spent $1.5 billion around the world on clean energy projects cutting the pollution from millions of users clicking on search links, watching YouTube videos and sending emails, but now it's found a powerful electricity source close to home.
The company will announce Wednesday that it is buying power from the Altamont Pass, one of the nation's oldest, largest and most iconic wind farms that is about to get a Google-funded makeover. - See Details
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- 2015-04-24 Jasper CEO Jahangir Mohammed on the Internet of Things
- Jasper, a maker of cloud-based systems, had just finished moving into its new Santa Clara headquarters when its CEO and founder Jahangir Mohammed sat down for a conversation about the rapidly evolving "Internet of Things."
Mohammed realized his dream of starting a company 11 years ago, before the term Internet of Things had been coined to denote a growing array of smart, connected devices. But he had a vision of a connected world, and he realized that if he created a platform that helped companies launch, manage and bill for services provided by their products, he might have a winner. - See Details