Unsticking MEMS - [update]

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, think they may have the answer to a vexing problem called stiction, which causes ultrasmall components of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to stick together. This impediment to micromovement is caused by the Casimir effect (after the Dutch theoretical physicist Hendrik Casimir), an odd attractive force that influences only objects that are very close together. As MEMS components are shrunk to a scale of hundreds of nanometers or less, many engineers predict that the Casimir effect will become more of a problem.     

Open-source voting - [update]

In the aftermath of the Florida recount debacle of the 2000 presidential election, the U.S. Congress appropriated billions of dollars for state and local governments to buy electronic voting systems. But in the years since, a string of problematic elections has led much of the voting public to join early critics in concluding that available machines are buggy, easily subverted, and impossible to accurately audit.     

Car talk - [update]

Under pressure to improve safety and reduce traffic congestion, fuel consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions, the European Union has spawned a batch of projects to give cars the ability to communicate wirelessly with the road and among themselves. The effort, similar to some in Japan and the United States, has reached a major milestone following a June EU ruling that set aside RF spectrum for vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Those developing car- and road-communications systems will begin testing their wares this fall ahead of large-scale road trials at six sites in Europe, which will begin in early 2009. Experts expect the technologies to begin commercial deployment as soon as 2011.     

Europe replaces old wind farms - [update]

The construction crane hauling wind turbines at the 20?year-old N?rrek?r Enge wind farm in northern Jutland, Denmark, is performing a highly energetic sleight of hand. By next summer it will have transformed a 77-turbine facility into one with just 13. Amazingly, this reduction will help double the farm?s energy production. The trick is in the scale of the replacement turbines. At 2.3 megawatts, they should each generate as much peak power from N?rrek?r Enge?s winds as 8 to 15 of the vintage turbines installed on the site in 1988 and 1990.     

Sound waves for brain waves - [update]

When most people hear the word ultrasound, they think of the diagnostic tool used to look inside the womb and steal glimpses at a fetus. But researchers at Arizona State University at Tempe have developed a new use for it: to control brain activity from outside the skull.     

The trouble with touch screens - [update]

Chances are that if you purchased a new handheld gadget this holiday season, it had some kind of touch screen. That?s good news for touch-screen makers, but they face a problem that is literally invisible. Indium-tin oxide (ITO), the transparent conductor used in touch displays, is in short supply. In fact, experts predict that we could run out of indium, a silvery metal produced as a by?product of zinc mining, in the next 10 years. The price of the metal has shot up from around US $100 per kilogram to nearly $1000 in the past six years. Fortunately, many companies and research groups are coming up with alternatives to conventional ITO technology.     

WiMAX-EVDO interworking using mobile IP - [WiMAX update]

WiMAX, a fourth-generation wireless-access technology, has made significant progress both in the standard forums and with wireless network carriers. To ensure service continuity to a legacy end user, it is important for a WiMAX mobile device to interwork with existing thirdgeneration access networks before it is uniquely and ubiquitously deployed. This article addresses this issue and shows how interworking can be achieved with EVDO wireless-access technology, using mobile IP in a dual mode terminal. We present a network architecture solution and detailed call flows.     

Self-healing hulls [update]

Among the claims to fame of Switzerland?s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is Alinghi, the yacht, which won not one but two America?s Cups. Part of that success can be attributed to the state-of-the-art carbon-fiber composites that make up Alinghi?s hull. In many cases, such composites can substantially heal themselves following a collision. Now a graduate student has invented a way to juice the self-healing with a little electric current.     

Home fuels cells to sell in Japan - [update]

After a number of false starts in the United States and elsewhere, fuel cells scaled to home heating and electrical needs may be nearing a commercial debut?at least in Japan. During the last four years the Japanese government has spent more than US $100 million on a program to demonstrate such systems, supporting the work of five companies, including Toyota and Toshiba. Now Matsushita Electric plans to start mass production of the system it developed in the program, with an admittedly modest sales target of 1000 units in 2009. Two other participants, Ebara Corp. and Eneos Celltech, are also reportedly preparing for full-scale manufacturing and marketing in 2009.     

Colon cancer screening, The easy way - [update]

A new software program promises to make one of medicine?s more grimace-inducing checkups significantly simpler. By devising a way to digitally clean up three-dimensional X-ray images of the colon, a group of researchers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook hope to encourage more patients to receive their recommended colon cancer screenings.     

Tsunami alert system starts up in Indonesia - [update]

Indonesia has switched on a tsunami detection system designed to prevent a recurrence of the disaster following the monstrous wave of 2004, which killed at least 130 000 of its people and nearly half that many in other countries.     

An overview of next-generation mobile WiMAX technology - [WiMAX update]

The growing demand for mobile Internet and wireless multimedia applications has motivated the development of broadband wirelessaccess technologies in recent years. Mobile WiMAX has enabled convergence of mobile and fixed broadband networks through a common wide-area radio-access technology and flexible network architecture. Since January 2007, the IEEE 802.16 Working Group has been developing a new amendment of the IEEE 802.16 standard (i.e., IEEE 802.16m) as an advanced air interface to meet the requirements of ITU-R/IMT-advanced for 4G systems, as well as for the next-generation mobile network operators. Depending on the available bandwidth and multi-antenna mode, the next-generation mobile WiMAX will be capable of over-the-air datatransfer rates in excess of 1 Gb/s and of supporting a wide range of high-quality and high-capacity IP-based services and applications while maintaining full backward compatibility with the existing mobile WiMAX systems to preserve investments and continuing to support first-generation products. This tutorial describes the prominent technical features of IEEE 802.16m and the potential for successful deployment of the next generation of mobile WiMAX in 2011+.     

The battle for the desktop [network computers]

This article describes how, with a new type of machine called the network computer, or NC, a group of upstarts wants to muscle in on the personal computer's turf. The author examines whether this type of computer, designed from the outset to work on a network, can topple the PC's dominance of the workplace and details how the masterminds behind the PC are fighting back-with the even newer NetPC     

Putting computers to work [Lyons Electronic Office]

Fifty years after British catering company J.C. Lyons embarked on a project to develop its own 'electronic office', the author recalls how an act of faith resulted in the creation of the world's first business IT system. Lyons decided to build an electronic computer to master the mountains of paper in its offices. Business computing was unknown and Lyons Electronic Office effectively started with a blank sheet of paper. The only work that had been done on a stored program computer anywhere in the world was sequences of a handful of instructions of a mathematical nature. These were on the 'Baby' at Manchester University and the EDSAC system at Cambridge University; systems which at that time still possessed no mechanism for inserting data or printing out results. It could be said to have been an enormous act of faith to go ahead on that flimsy basis. But to the office management at Lyons, the possibilities seemed so great that this first trivial demonstration was deemed to be enough. The author describes the development the computer system and some of the issues raised such as data entry and output, security and accuracy of data     

An evolved cellular system architecture incorporating relay stations - [WiMAX update]

Shrinking cell sizes, primarily a result of keeping up with the increasing demand for higher data rates, are stretching thin the notion of our traditional cellular system architecture. More and more base stations are serving smaller and smaller areas (cells) which in effect is driving up deployment costs. The option of deploying relay stations is increasingly beginning to look like a solution to the problem of providing a cost-effective way to extend the coverage and capacity in a cellular network. A relay station can be used to extend the point-to-multipoint link between the base station and mobile stations. Relay stations connect to the base stations without wires and are expected to be deployed to cover smaller geographic areas. Primarily the deployment costs but also the equipment costs are expected to be substantially lower than those of base stations. In this article we first introduce the relay station and discuss the place it is likely to carve out for itself in the traditional cellular architecture. We highlight the important economic and performance benefits relay stations could potentially offer, and outline a few scenarios where relays are likely to be deployed in the beginning. The multihop relay standard developed by the IEEE 802.16 working group is then used as a basis to provide an overview of the relay-enhanced cellular architecture and the key choices that can be made in developing relay support within a cellular system ? a precursor to what can be expected in later releases of the Mobile WiMAX system. Finally, we discuss some future directions in the development of relay systems.     

High speed down under [update]

An Australian national broadband network began as a 2007 election campaign promise. Liberal party Senator Helen Coonan, then communications minister, said it couldn?t be done. The Labor party?s telecom expert, Senator Stephen Conroy, thought otherwise. Now that Conroy?s party is in the majority, he?s taken over as communications minister, and Australia plans to invest AUS $4.7 billion (US $3.1 billion) in a national network. After numerous delays and worry that the government would not follow through, the project seems to be on track?telecommunication companies vying for the job are to submit their proposals by 26 November. The government plans to pick a winner in early 2009.     

Nanoelectronics [quantum electron devices]

The dimensions of semiconductor devices can now be reduced to the point where quantum-mechanical effects must be considered in device performance. New device concepts have therefore been proposed, and already realised, in which quantum-mechanical effects are used to achieve increased electron mobilities or in which interference phenomena are utilised. At present, the major drawbacks of nanoelectronics are the technological problems of realising the devices. The emphasis of the paper is on new technological concepts for device realisation. Additionally, an overview of proposed and realised devices is given. Future advances in nanofabrication may come from the development of the scanning tunnelling microscope and related systems