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- IBM Labs develops 'initial step' towards commercial fabrication of carbon nanotubes
- Boxee hands out free Boxee TVs to its most eager cloud DVR fans
- Inhabitat's Week in Green: 30-foot-tall 'BUCKYBALL', diatoms and zombie pumpkins
- German robot arm learns ping-pong as it plays humans, might rival its masters
- US Navy tests first 11-meter missile-firing sea drone (video)
- Charizard 3DS XL burns through Japan's Pokémon Centers in December, snag one if you're lucky
- Nokia Lumia 822 and HTC 8X show up in Verizon colors, get pegged for November 8th release
- Ask Engadget: best Skitch replacement?
- Nexus 4 priced at £390 by purported Carphone Warehouse in-store display placard
- Mobile Miscellany: week of October 22nd, 2012
- Alt-week 27.10.12: ancient texts, super-Earths and special-ops mice
- Engadget Mobile Podcast 156 - 10.27.2012
| IBM Labs develops 'initial step' towards commercial fabrication of carbon nanotubes Posted: 28 Oct 2012 11:00 AM PDT
Commercialization of carbon nanotubes is one of the holy grails of next-gen computing, and IBM thinks it's made crucial steps toward making this a reality. This isn't the first time that we've heard such a claim, of course, but IBM's considerable resources will make this particularly interesting. The specific problem it's been tackling is placing enough semiconducting nanotubes together to be useful in commercial chips, with current attempts being more in the hundreds, rather than billions that would be required. The new approach uses ion-exchange chemistry that allows controlled placement of nanotubes at two orders of magnitude greater than before, with a density of roughly a billion per square centimeter. To achieve this, the nanotubes are mixed with a soap-like substance that makes them water-soluble. Next, a substrate comprising two oxides and a hafnium oxide "trench" is immersed in the soap-solution, which results in the nanotubes attaching to the hafnium oxide canals with a chemical bond. Simple when you think about it! IBM hopes that as the materials and method are readily accessible now, that industry players will be able to experiment with nanotube technology at a much greater scale. Though, as we've become accustomed, there's no solid timescales on when this might realistically unfold. Made in IBM Labs: Researchers Demonstrate Initial Steps toward Commercial Fabrication of Carbon Nanotubes as a Successor to Silicon YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY – 28 Oct 2012: IBM (NYSE: IBM) scientists have demonstrated a new approach to carbon nanotechnology that opens up the path for commercial fabrication of dramatically smaller, faster and more powerful computer chips. For the first time, more than ten thousand working transistors made of nano-sized tubes of carbon have been precisely placed and tested in a single chip using standard semiconductor processes. These carbon devices are poised to replace and outperform silicon technology allowing further miniaturization of computing components and leading the way for future microelectronics. Aided by rapid innovation over four decades, silicon microprocessor technology has continually shrunk in size and improved in performance, thereby driving the information technology revolution. Silicon transistors, tiny switches that carry information on a chip, have been made smaller year after year, but they are approaching a point of physical limitation. Their increasingly small dimensions, now reaching the nanoscale, will prohibit any gains in performance due to the nature of silicon and the laws of physics. Within a few more generations, classical scaling and shrinkage will no longer yield the sizable benefits of lower power, lower cost and higher speed processors that the industry has become accustomed to. Carbon nanotubes represent a new class of semiconductor materials whose electrical properties are more attractive than silicon, particularly for building nanoscale transistor devices that are a few tens of atoms across. Electrons in carbon transistors can move easier than in silicon-based devices allowing for quicker transport of data. The nanotubes are also ideally shaped for transistors at the atomic scale, an advantage over silicon. These qualities are among the reasons to replace the traditional silicon transistor with carbon – and coupled with new chip design architectures – will allow computing innovation on a miniature scale for the future. The approach developed at IBM labs paves the way for circuit fabrication with large numbers of carbon nanotube transistors at predetermined substrate positions. The ability to isolate semiconducting nanotubes and place a high density of carbon devices on a wafer is crucial to assess their suitability for a technology – eventually more than one billion transistors will be needed for future integration into commercial chips. Until now, scientists have been able to place at most a few hundred carbon nanotube devices at a time, not nearly enough to address key issues for commercial applications. "Carbon nanotubes, borne out of chemistry, have largely been laboratory curiosities as far as microelectronic applications are concerned. We are attempting the first steps towards a technology by fabricating carbon nanotube transistors within a conventional wafer fabrication infrastructure," said Supratik Guha, Director of Physical Sciences at IBM Research. "The motivation to work on carbon nanotube transistors is that at extremely small nanoscale dimensions, they outperform transistors made from any other material. However, there are challenges to address such as ultra high purity of the carbon nanotubes and deliberate placement at the nanoscale. We have been making significant strides in both." Originally studied for the physics that arises from their atomic dimensions and shapes, carbon nanotubes are being explored by scientists worldwide in applications that span integrated circuits, energy storage and conversion, biomedical sensing and DNA sequencing. This achievement was published today in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Nanotechnology. The Road to Carbon Carbon, a readily available basic element from which crystals as hard as diamonds and as soft as the "lead" in a pencil are made, has wide-ranging IT applications. Carbon nanotubes are single atomic sheets of carbon rolled up into a tube. The carbon nanotube forms the core of a transistor device that will work in a fashion similar to the current silicon transistor, but will be better performing. They could be used to replace the transistors in chips that power our data-crunching servers, high performing computers and ultra fast smart phones. Earlier this year, IBM researchers demonstrated carbon nanotube transistors can operate as excellent switches at molecular dimensions of less than ten nanometers – the equivalent to 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair and less than half the size of the leading silicon technology. Comprehensive modeling of the electronic circuits suggests that about a five to ten times improvement in performance compared to silicon circuits is possible. There are practical challenges for carbon nanotubes to become a commercial technology notably, as mentioned earlier, due to the purity and placement of the devices. Carbon nanotubes naturally come as a mix of metallic and semiconducting species and need to be placed perfectly on the wafer surface to make electronic circuits. For device operation, only the semiconducting kind of tubes is useful which requires essentially complete removal of the metallic ones to prevent errors in circuits. Also, for large scale integration to happen, it is critical to be able to control the alignment and the location of carbon nanotube devices on a substrate. To overcome these barriers, IBM researchers developed a novel method based on ion-exchange chemistry that allows precise and controlled placement of aligned carbon nanotubes on a substrate at a high density – two orders of magnitude greater than previous experiments, enabling the controlled placement of individual nanotubes with a density of about a billion per square centimeter. The process starts with carbon nanotubes mixed with a surfactant, a kind of soap that makes them soluble in water. A substrate is comprised of two oxides with trenches made of chemically-modified hafnium oxide (HfO2) and the rest of silicon oxide (SiO2). The substrate gets immersed in the carbon nanotube solution and the carbon nanotubes attach via a chemical bond to the HfO2 regions while the rest of the surface remains clean. By combining chemistry, processing and engineering expertise, IBM researchers are able to fabricate more than ten thousand transistors on a single chip. As this new placement technique can be readily implemented, involving common chemicals and existing semiconductor fabrication, it will allow the industry to work with carbon nanotubes at a greater scale and deliver further innovation for carbon electronics. |
| Boxee hands out free Boxee TVs to its most eager cloud DVR fans Posted: 28 Oct 2012 08:55 AM PDT
If you like the idea of the Boxee TV, you'll be glad to hear that Boxee is handing units out like so much Halloween candy... as long as you live in the right areas, that is. Those who've signed up for product notifications and live in the cloud DVR coverage areas of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, DC can get a free Boxee TV just by filling out a survey. They'll even have the privilege of getting their units ahead of everyone else. Boxee hasn't said if any new sign-ups will qualify, though it can't hurt to try the source link and potentially get a welcome treat. |
| Inhabitat's Week in Green: 30-foot-tall 'BUCKYBALL', diatoms and zombie pumpkins Posted: 28 Oct 2012 07:00 AM PDT |
| German robot arm learns ping-pong as it plays humans, might rival its masters Posted: 28 Oct 2012 04:57 AM PDT
We like to tell ourselves that learning by doing is the best strategy for improving our skills, but we seldom apply that philosophy to our robots; with certain exceptions, they're just supposed to know what to do from the start. Researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt disagree and have developed algorithms proving that robot arms just need practice, practice, practice to learn complex activities. After some literal hand-holding with a human to understand the basics of a ping-pong swing, a TUD robot can gradually abstract those motions and return the ball in situations beyond the initial example. The technique is effective enough that the test arm took a mere hour of practice to successfully bounce back 88 percent of shots and compete with a human. That's certainly better than most of us fared after our first game. If all goes well, the science could lead to robots of all kinds that need only a small foundation of code to accomplish a lot. Just hope that the inevitable struggle between humans and robots isn't settled with a ping-pong match... it might end badly. |
| US Navy tests first 11-meter missile-firing sea drone (video) Posted: 28 Oct 2012 02:18 AM PDT
Advances in unmanned military tools and vehicles have come on leaps and bounds, but, until now, we haven't seen a weapon firing drone operating in the seas. A recent test taking part offshore near Maryland saw several missiles launched from a new remote-controlled inflatable-hulled ship. While the Navy has used drones before for mine clearing and other defensive tasks, the small boat (similar to that pictured above) is the first experiment to involve true offensive capabilities. The almost zodiac-like craft has been an ongoing project over recent years, and contains a fully automated system which the Navy calls a "Precision Engagement Module" which uses an Mk-49 mounting with a dual missile launcher manufactured by Rafael. The hope is that such vehicles could patrol the coastline, or serve as a first defense against pirates, and other such small, fast-moving seafaring dangers. If you want to catch it in action, head past the break for the video, but don't be fooled. While it might look like a series of misses, the Navy claims this is just a trick of the camera angle, with all six missiles apparently making contact.
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Charizard 3DS XL burns through Japan's Pokémon Centers in December, snag one if you're lucky Posted: 28 Oct 2012 12:16 AM PDT
Nintendo is notorious for releasing awesome limited edition hardware abroad, but here in the US of A, we tend to get the short end of the joystick. Case in point, the house that |
| Nokia Lumia 822 and HTC 8X show up in Verizon colors, get pegged for November 8th release Posted: 27 Oct 2012 10:03 PM PDT
The Verizon-flavored Nokia Lumia 822 hasn't exactly been camera-shy, nor has it been coy about its imminent arrival, but the details on price and availability have, as yet, not been pinned down. That is until now, according to a tip-off at WPCentral. The candid shot shows the Nokia next to an HTC 8X -- both with Verizon livery. The word is that the Lumia 822 will run you $99 at launch, while the HTC 8X will command $199, both with a contract. The same source claims that these will launch on November 8th. Just in time to get that first killer app then. |
| Ask Engadget: best Skitch replacement? Posted: 27 Oct 2012 08:15 PM PDT
We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget inquiry is from Benjamin, who feels a little let down by the most recent changes to Evernote's image-sharing software. If you're looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.
We feel your pain Benjamin, even if we did have to slice out your more colorful descriptions of Evernote from your e-mail. A site favorite has been ruined by the changes, and as such we're on the hunt for an alternative.
Of course, this is the moment where we turn it over to our amazing commenters, who we hope will share the skinny. You never know, maybe some enterprising indie dev has already created the program to replace that hole in our lives -- friends, head down below, grab the candle and bang on. |
| Nexus 4 priced at £390 by purported Carphone Warehouse in-store display placard Posted: 27 Oct 2012 07:30 PM PDT
Oh, Carphone Warehouse -- it just can't seem to keep what it knows about the LG / Google Nexus 4 under lock and key. Just days after briefly listing the phone on its website, purported in-store displays for the yet unannounced device have leaked out to Android Authority. While essentially of the details are the same as what we saw last (1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 SoC, 8MP cam, 12-hour talk time rating, etc.), the listing reveals that the "sim-free" phone itself will sell for £390 (about $504) -- previously we'd only seen the per-month pricing at £31, which is also found here. There's no mention of that October 30th sale date this time, and it would seem unlikely now given that Google's had to indefinitely postpone its NYC-based Android event for the 29th due to hurricane Sandy. For now, you can get more details from the source link below. |
| Mobile Miscellany: week of October 22nd, 2012 Posted: 27 Oct 2012 04:20 PM PDT
If you didn't get enough in mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This past week, T-Mobile announced the price and release date for the Optimus L9, carriers were announced in Canada for the ATIV S Windows Phone and ZTE released a low-priced Android smartphone for Virgin Mobile in the UK. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of October 22nd, 2012. LG Optimus L9 arrives at T-Mobile on October 31st for $80 T-Mobile announced the price and release date for the LG Optimus L9 smartphone this week, which confirms the date that we'd previously reported in the carrier's leaked roadmap. The Optimus L9 will arrive on US shelves come October 31st for $80 after a $50 mail-in rebate. Naturally, a two-year commitment is required to snag the device at this price. The Optimus L9 features a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4430, along with 1GB of RAM, a 4.5-inch qHD display and Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Also on deck is a 5MP rear camera that records video at 1080p, 4GB of internal storage and a 2,150mAh battery. [Android Central] Canadian carriers revealed for Samsung ATIV S It's now official: Samsung's forthcoming Windows Phone, the ATIV S, will debut in Canada this November at Bell, Rogers, Telus and Sasktel. The phone combines a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4, a 4.8-inch HD (1,280 x 720) Super AMOLED display and Windows Phone 8. You'll also find an 8-megapixel rear camera that captures video in 1080p, either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage and a 2,300mAh battery. [Unwired View] ZTE Kis now available at Virgin Mobile UK for £60 Brits in need of a smartphone on the cheap now have another option from ZTE, which debuted the Kis at Virgin Mobile in the UK this week. The phone costs £60, and while it's not much in the spec department, shoppers can expect an Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) device that's powered by an 800MHz CPU. The Kis is also outfitted with a 3.5-inch HVGA (480 x 320) display, a 3.2-megapixel AF rear camera, 256MB of RAM and a 1,400mAh battery. The phone is available in either white or black as members of the PAYG lineup, and when purchased with £10 of airtime, Virgin Mobile will discount the handset to just £50. As a special promotion, purchasers will also be treated to 1GB of free monthly data usage for one full year. [Virgin Mobile UK] Videotron welcomes smartphones from HTC, LG and Motorola to the fold Quebec's regional carrier Videotron added three new smartphones to its lineup this week, which includes the HTC One S, the LG Optimus 4X HD and the Motorola RAZR V. The One S is available as low as $50, whereas the Optimus 4X HD starts at $130. For those unable to afford either, the RAZR V can be snagged for as low as $30. [MobileSyrup 1, 2] Black Samsung Galaxy S III arrives at Expansys and Negri Electronics Verizon customers got early dibs on this one, but the unlocked Samsung Galaxy S III is now available in black through both Expansys and Negri Electronics. Shoppers in the US can snag the handset from Negri for $563.50, whereas Expansys comes in a bit steeper at $575. Meanwhile, UK-based shoppers can get their hands on the black Galaxy S III at a SIM-free price of £410. [Negri Electronics, Expansys USA, Expansys UK] |
| Alt-week 27.10.12: ancient texts, super-Earths and special-ops mice Posted: 27 Oct 2012 02:00 PM PDT Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. If, like us, you struggle to read the front of the Corn Flakes box of a morning, you likely gave up any hope of cracking ancient codes long ago. If you didn't, however, then your time might be now -- as one of the oldest scripts know to man is still up for grabs. Prefer just to observe? No problem, as we've got super-Earth-searching satellites, military mice and vertical farms, all for your Ancient civilizations, and cracking the code of long-lost languages is usually the reserve of Hollywood, or a good old-fashioned book. So, you might be surprised / pleased to discover that there are still some real-world ancient mysteries to be solved, and technology could play a leading role. Proto-Elamite is the oldest known undeciphered writing system. It's estimated that only 10- to 20 percent of it is truly understood. It dates from between 3200 to 3000 BC, and although bearing some similarities to Mesopotamian, and coming from a region not too far away (what is now South West Iran), it has experts stumped. Now, a team of researches from the University of Oxford and the University of Southampton in the UK has developed what they are calling the "Reflectance Transformation Imaging system," which uses 76 lights to illuminate different sections of the ancient artifacts, one at a time, while an image is taken. All of the component pictures are then stitched together to form one fully illuminated high-resolution representation of the object -- allowing scientists to observe details that might otherwise be missed. If you fancy yourself as a bit of a Robert / Roberta Langdon, then you'll be glad to know that the images will be made available to the public, also. The other discovery no one noticed? Surely this will be the oldest high-res tablet known to man? The hunt for life-supporting planets has to be one of the most exciting, yet painfully difficult, of current scientific endeavors. A new program set up by the European Space Agency, however, hopes to up the ante a little bit more, by sending a satellite with the specific task of studying such candidates. The Characterising Exoplanets Satellite -- or Cheops -- will target nearby, stars already known to have potential targets in their orbit. As well as using high-precision monitoring to check for fluctuations in the star's brightness, the satellite will also determine the planet's radius. In cases where the mass is known, scientists can determine the density, ultimately hinting at the internal structure (gas, rock and so on). While this is similar to how distant planets are discovered already, much like satellite telescopes, the vantage point of space will deliver much clearer and more detailed information. The project was chosen from a list of 26 submitted proposals, and is the first in a potentially new class of small missions that could become a regular part of the ESA's space program. It's been going on in our cities for years, but now the humble farm might also be going up in the world -- literally. Singapore has just seen its first commercial vertical farm open, making thrift use of the country's sparse real estate. By growing crops upwards -- in more ways than one -- it means heavily developed areas can decrease dependence on imports. The prototype was developed back in 2009, but has now finally gone commercial. As it currently stands, there are 120 vertical towers, with three types of vegetables being grown. The bunk-bed crops only cost about 10 - 20 cents more than their conventionally grown cousins, and Channel News Asia reports that despite the extra cost, demand for the locally sourced produce has been high. Sky Greens, who developed the project, hopes that with investment, and more installations, the price of the vegetables will come down, and the whole venture can really start to make an impact to local diets and economies. Sounds good to us, but we're not expecting corn or sunflowers any time soon. Mice, they don't often get the best jobs in science. Unless they've got a special vocal talent perhaps. So when you hear of a project involving the plucky rodents, and land mines, things don't bode well. In reality, the news might not be that bad. Researchers, at Hunter College of the City University of New York, have genetically engineered mice to be 500 times more sensitive to TNT, with the hope that they might be able to effectively "sniff" out landmines. This isn't the first time rodents have been used, a Belgian team successfully taught rats to discover the explosives, but the training is resource heavy. By genetically modifying the mice to be hyper-sensitive, no training is needed. The little chaps don't get off the hook entirely though. It's possible that with such intense sensitivity to the chemical, that reactions to it could be involuntary, or worse, result in seizures. One small consolation, however, is that the animals themselves are likely too light to actually set off the explosives. There are a few drawbacks to the mouse-method though, as the release of vapor from mines can depend on conditions in the ground, leading to detection some meters from the actual device, or no detection at all. So at best they'd need to be part of a two-pronged approach. Seen any other far-out articles that you'd like considered for Alt-week? Working on a project or research that's too cool to keep to yourself? Drop us a line at alt [at] engadget [dot] com. [Image Credits: University of Oxford, Channel News Asia, ESA, MIT] |
| Engadget Mobile Podcast 156 - 10.27.2012 Posted: 27 Oct 2012 12:31 PM PDT  O hai! Welcome to the 156th edition of the Engadget Mobile Podcast, where we've managed to rope in the elusive, globetrotting device-shaker Richard Lai for his opinions on all the hottest new PadFones in the multiverse. If you're in North America, beware: he sounds much smarter because he's British. Actual intelligence quotient of Richard Lai may vary from continent to continent. Hosts: Myriam Joire (tnkgrl), Brad Molen 00:01:44 - ASUS PadFone 2 review: two times is a charm for this phone-in-tablet combo Hear the podcast This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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