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Electronix Express Newsletter

April 2010 Issue

Welcome to the April 2010 Issue of the Electronix Express Newsletter

1. Physicists Score Nobel Win for Nanotech Breakthrough

GMR is considered one of the first real applications of the field of nanotechnology, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which granted the award. It has also made possible the compact hard disks used in today's laptops and music players. GMR technology has revolutionized the way data is read on hard disk drives, which store information such as music in the form of microscopically small areas magnetized in different directions.

Information from hard disks is retrieved by read-out heads that scan the disk and register the magnetic changes. The smaller and more compact the hard disk, the smaller and weaker the individual magnetic areas, making it necessary to find more sensitive read-out heads in order to allow information to be packed more densely. By using the GMR effect in a read-out head, very small magnetic changes can be converted into significant differences in electrical resistance and therefore into changes in the current emitted by the read-out head, making ever-tinier drives possible. The first read-out head based on the GMR effect was launched in 1997, and the technology quickly became a standard. Today, even the most recent read-out techniques are further developments of GMR.

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2. 'Neurotech' Links Brain Waves With Computers

According to Neurotech Reports' market research report entitled "The Market for Neurotechnology: 2006-2010," the neurotechnology market outlook is very positive. The report said the market for neurotechnology products is poised to become one of the most dramatic growth areas of the 21st century. Encouraged by medical developments and discoveries that cure disease, alleviate suffering, and greatly improve quality of life, many leading research institutions and health care firms have gained the world's attention and respect in recent years.

Regarding investment potential, the report states that the field of neurotechnology offers the promise of generating significant venture capital interest and funding, despite the current depressed state of new technology ventures Some "neurotech" companies are already well on their way to developing viable products for medical treatment. During a symposium last month in Europe, Cyberkinetics said it has developed a technology that it calls "The BrainGate System." The technology is currently being tested in a pilot clinical trial for those who have lost the ability to speak as a result of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or another motor neuron disease (MND). The technology is said to be able to contribute to the diagnosis and treatment of neurological conditions in patients who have undergone craniotomy by providing neurologists and neurosurgeons a new resource to detect, transmit and analyze neural activity. Investment in these technologies is likely to increase.

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3. What Dreams May Come With Google's Super-Speedy Network?

What will developers and users do with Google's planned ultra high-speed broadband network? Google's answer can be summed up in four words: We don't know yet.

Google wants to see how consumers, small businesses, anchor institutions and local governments will take advantage of ultra high-speed access to the Net. "There are many developers and entrepreneurs waiting for technology to become advanced enough to make their dreams a reality," Google's Martin pointed out. "There are many working applications now that will perform better at ultra-high speeds. Just as we expect a great deal of learning to come out of building experimental networks, we anticipate that a number of forward-thinking developers will see the benefits of the same opportunity."

According to Al Hilwa, program director of IDC, "If you look at today's crop of Internet applications and use cases such as video broadcast, video telephony and video conferencing, you'll quickly see that, to the extent we get everyone on the Internet and engaged, we're going to need tons more bandwidth. Further, Hilwa feels Google's ambitions have a political angle. "There are political aspects to this in the sense that Google is also attempting to drive a national agenda that would open up the pipes, both wired and wireless. That has been its mantra, and it makes sense for Google to push that given its business model." Google might even displace the traditional telephone carriers, whose networks form the backbone of the Internet today. The level of the carriers' response will indicate how much Google's plans will hurt them, Hilwa said.

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4. Tiny Sensor Measures Tiny Magnetic Fields

Because of its small size, it could run for several weeks on a single AA battery. According to Kitchings, "Magnetic fields are all over the place. Anything that has iron in it has a magnetic field." Electric currents, such as those from power lines, emit a magnetic field, as do the electrical impulses that make the heart contract or brain cells fire. Larger magnetometers are used by geologists to find iron deposits and by archaeologists to find buried objects. They can also be used by satellites to track the earth's magnetic field. The most sensitive magnetic sensors - superconducting quantum interference devices or SQUIDS - can detect very weak changes in magnetic fields but must be kept very cold, making them much bigger and far more power-hungry.

While the NIST device sacrifices a bit of that sensitivity, it makes up for it in portability. The prototype consists of a tiny container holding about 100 billion atoms of rubidium. The researchers shoot an infrared laser beam through the container and measure how much light the atoms absorb-- the higher the absorption, the stronger the magnetic field. Kitching says the device is highly adaptable. It could be used to measure electrical activity in the brain, helping to spot tumours or monitor brain function. Or it could be used in war zones to detect bombs that may not have exploded. "It really does open up a wide range of possibilities," he says.

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5. Technology Tunes Into Our Emotions

In developing the project, McIntyre plotted 65 landscape points on the face that change during various emotional states, such as the eyebrows, lips and nose. The computer determines emotions by measuring changes in the location of these landscape points compared to an average or expression-free face. McIntyre says work by body language scientists such as the University of California, San Francisco's Professor Emeritus Paul Ekman, suggests an anxious face will often show contracting eyebrows, a tightening of the upper lip and a deepening of the furrow between the nose and lips. "We build up an average shape of a face from a database, and then measure the difference between an average face and one that is subject to the emotion," McIntyre says.

McIntyre, who is working with psychology colleagues to develop the program, says there are two types of anxiety. Long-term anxiety is more easily recognised via facial expressions, while short-term anxiety is revealed through speech. One of his major hurdles is the lack of anxious face samples from which to develop a template image of the emotion. McIntyre plans to create his own database with the help of ANU's School of Psychology. He hopes to run a series of experiments next year where anxiety will be induced in participants through computer games or dialogue. Their speech and faces will be recorded for inclusion in McIntyre's database. He says a computer that can detect anxiety could be used to help train medical practitioners to recognise the condition and to monitor patients not able to communicate their needs clearly.

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6. Rainbows to Give Computers Some Oomph

The research, by Professor Ortwin Hess of the UK's University of Surrey and colleague Kosmas Tsakmakidis, is based on the so-called 'negative refractive index' of metamaterials. Metamaterials are novel materials with metal components that are smaller than the wavelength of light, while the refractive index measures the slowing of light when it passes through an object. The innovation exploits a principle called the Goos-Hänchen effect, an optical phenomenon discovered 60 years ago that happens to polarised light travelling in a straight line. When this light hits an object or an interface between two media, it does not immediately bounce back but travels very slightly along that object. In the case of metamaterials, the light travels backwards slightly along the object.

The researchers say that by exploiting the different frequencies that comprise the light spectrum and by slowing, stopping and capturing these frequences, the way is open for a massive boost in data handling. "The technique would allow the use of light rather than electrons to store memory in devices such as computers, enabling an increase in operating capacity of 1000%," they say. "Previous attempts to slow and capture light have involved extremely low or cryogenic temperatures, have been extremely costly and have only worked with one specific frequency of light at a time."

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