R & D articles from April 2006

R & D archives from April 2006

The sky is not falling.(Editorial)
April 1, 2006... Everyone talks about the rising rates in population, pollution, energy usage, health risks, and the associated falling rates in animal diversity, forestation, natural habitats, and open areas. We've talked about these issues for more than 50...

Sensing explosives with THz.(MATERIAL)
April 1, 2006... Chemical and explosives detection remains as one of the U.S. military's most pressing needs. Looking to answer this call is a team of engineers from the Dept. of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Illinois, and their suite of chemical...

Pittcon products pull in praise.(ANALYTICAL)
April 1, 2006... Several new technologies were recently honored with Editor's Choice awards at this year's Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon). Garnering top honors was Thermo Electron's, Waltham, Mass., LTQ Orbitrap...

P&G divests in pharma discovery.(PHARMACEUTICAL)
April 1, 2006... Procter & Gamble (P&G) Pharmaceuticals, Mason, Ohio, will discontinue its discovery-phase R&D operations in order to focus on acquiring new drugs from other companies; particularly those in Phase II development or later. According to P&G...

'Flying Wing' program moves ahead.(AVIATION)
April 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A new series of funding has recently been approved by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the development of its Oblique Flying Wing (OFW) program. Longtime defense contractor, Northrop Grumman...

Marrying semiconductors and fiber.(VACUUM)
April 1, 2006... Teams from Pennsylvania State Univ. (PSU), University Park, and the Univ. of Southampton, UK, have developed a new approach for fusing microelectronics and optical fibers. The fusion of these technologies "opens the possibility of true...

IEEE to chart nanotech standards.(NANOTECHNOLOGY)
April 1, 2006... Increasing calls from industry, government, and academia for nanotechnology standards has prompted The Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers Standards Association, Piscataway, N.J., (IEEE-SA), to announce the launch of the IEEE...

ABL program gets a reprieve.(LASERS)
April 1, 2006... The U.S. Pentagon has recently tempered claims that it will discontinue its ambitious $1.1 billion Airborne Laser (ABL) program. Established in 1996, the ABL program calls for the development of a 747-400F aircraft, equipped with a...

Testing gravitomagnetic fields.(TEST & MEASUREMENT)
April 1, 2006... With funding by the European Space Agency (ESA), researchers have claimed to have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a lab. If confirmed, this work could help physicists to make a significant step...

Summer ushers in SEMICON West.(Upcoming: Conferences & Events)(Calendar)
April 1, 2006... SEMI will be holding its annual SEMICON West conference this summer, from July 10-14 in San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. New to the conference this year will be the inclusion of four "TechXPOTS"--technology-focused...

Towards 2020 Science.(BULLETIN)
April 1, 2006... Microsoft Research Cambridge, U.K., in association with more than 30 distinguished scientists, have published a set of new findings that indicate advances in computing are set to radically transform science and play a critical role in tackling...

RNAi library serves industry and academia.(LIFE SCIENCE)
April 1, 2006... The potential of RNA-interference (RNAi)-based therapies to transform medicine is the framework behind a new RNAi library, created by an international public/private research team led by researchers at the Broad institute of MIT, Cambridge,...

NIST nanotech center launched.(LABORATORY DESIGN)
April 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In a ceremony held in late-March, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez announced the launch of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology...

Targeting searches for molecules.(Data Management & Analysis)
April 1, 2006... Theoretical chemists from Duke Univ., Durham, N.C., are investigating a new computer method that could help scientists identify the best molecules for drugs, electronic devices, and an array of other uses. Their method addresses the fact that...

Microbial database established.(Data Management & Analysis)
April 1, 2006... Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Polytechnic and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, have launched a publicly-available database of microbial genome sequences, called the VBI Microbial Database (VMD)....

Nanotube forecast.(Data Management & Analysis)
April 1, 2006... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Demand for nanotubes is expected to reach $250 million worldwide in 2009 and by 2020 will likely approach $10 billion. Early successes will be in electronics, where performance-enhancing attributes offered by nanotubes...

Storage software growth.(Data Management & Analysis)
April 1, 2006... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] The worldwide storage software market grew 11.2% year over year to $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005. For the full year 2005, storage software revenues totaled $8.9 billion, injecting nearly $1 billion of new...

China's soaring space program.(R&D ASIA)
April 1, 2006... China has begun construction of the Shenzhou 7 rocket scheduled to put astronauts into orbit in 2008, according to China's state media organization. This would be China's third manned space launch. The first was a single astronaut launched in...

Good U.S.-China relations.(R&D ASIA)
April 1, 2006... A recent poll by the Global Times, a publication of China's People's Daily, revealed that 60% of the Chinese people are generally satisfied with the current level of Sino-U.S. ties, and nearly 20% are satisfied with or very satisfied with...

Matsushita-NEC-TI venture.(R&D ASIA)
April 1, 2006... Japanese electronics giants, Matsushita Electric and NEC are expected to create a joint venture with Texas Instruments, Dallas, Texas, for fabricating electronic chips for third-generation mobile telephones. The three companies want to set...

Chinese facial recognition system installed.(R&D ASIA)
April 1, 2006... China has developed and installed its own biometric face recognition system that it says will speed up the immigration process to less than 10 sec for each person, according to a report from China's police authority. The system is...

Singapore's joint venture.(R&D ASIA)
April 1, 2006... Singapore Technologies Kinetics, the land systems arm of Singapore Technologies Engineering, and DSO National Laboratories, have signed an equal joint venture to establish an R&D company for developing advanced materials for defense and...

A new paradigm in time: Silicon MEMS resonators vs. Quartz crystals: Quartz crystals have dominated accurate frequency generation since the mid-1940s. That is about to change with the fruition of 40 years of research in MEMS resonators.
April 1, 2006... Quartz crystals have remarkable mechanical and piezoelectric properties that have made them the fundamental timing component of choice since the mid-1940s. Despite 60 years of research into ceramic, silicon, and RLC circuits, no material or...

A new series of NMR refinements: NMR specialists offer a range of new solutions in hardware, software, and even technique.
April 1, 2006... Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has remained a powerful and extremely versatile method for determining the physical, chemical, and biological properties of a substance. First demonstrated in the mid-1940s, this physics-heavy...

CFD models added to diagnostician's medical bag: computational fluid dynamic software is increasingly finding acceptance in the highly conservative medical community for evaluating a number of respiratory and vascular flow issues.
April 1, 2006... After more than 30 years experience with continuing upgrades and refinements, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software has become an accepted part of the product designer's analysis toolbox. In fact, it is difficult to find any fluid flow...

Nanotechnology drives UHV growth: R&D in nanoscale materials and processes are finding unique situations that only occur or are resolvable in ultrahigh vacuum environments.
April 1, 2006... Rapid growth in the research and development of nanoscale technologies has broadened the need for ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) technologies and systems with minimal molecular contamination. Areas such as next-generation lithography, semiconductor...

Working under pressure: at one time, all electron microscopy had to take place in a high vacuum. But today, environmental and variable pressure electron microscopes (EMs) have become an integral part of the microscopist's toolbox.
April 1, 2006... Conventional EMs require that all samples be dry, clean, able to withstand the high vacuum conditions of the system, and conductive. But this presents numerous limitations in the types of samples that can be observed. Nonconductive samples...

Report: waste laws inconsistent.(Regulatory Update)(Report)
April 1, 2006... A new report from the National Research Council, Washington, D.C., asserts that the rules governing the disposal of low-activity radioactive waste (LAW) are inconsistent and are based on where the waste originates, rather than the waste's...

GM corn OK'd in EU.(Regulatory Update)
April 1, 2006... Regulators from the European Union gave the green light for use of genetically modified (GM) maize, also called 1507 corn, for food and food ingredients, or derivatives such as oil and starch. The corn is developed by Dew Chemical,...

Growth at what cost?(Regulatory Update)
April 1, 2006... The State Environmental Protection Administration of China predicts a catastrophe if the country of more than 1 billion people does not drastically improve its environmental standards. After 20 years of rapid growth, the administration's...

Some babies at higher risk.(Regulatory Update)
April 1, 2006... According to a new study by re-searchers at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, and the Univ. of Washington, Seattle, some babies may be at a higher risk from pesticides than originally thought. The human body has hundreds of enzymes that...

New EPA rules halted.(Regulatory Update)
April 1, 2006... The U.S. Court of Appeals sided with 14 states recently and declared new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violate the Clean Air Act. The EPA planned to ease rules on power plants, and says the act, as it is now...

Miniature synchrotron lights up.(Industrial: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Researchers from Lyncean Technologies, Palo Alto, Calif., have produced the first x-ray beams from their Compact Light Source (CLS), a miniature synchrotron that was designed to generate high-intensity, tunable, near-monochromatic x-ray beams....

Transforming RFID.(Industrial: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Scientists at Philips Research, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, have developed a plastic RFID chip that is as thin as paper. The fully functional RFID tag is based entirely on plastic electronics and is capable of transmitting multi-bit digital...

Improving heat transfer.(Industrial: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Researchers at Honeywell Electronic Materials, Morristown, N.J., have released a new screen-printable phase change material that allows manufacturers to apply these materials in a variety of different shapes depending on the shape of the chip...

Enhancing semiconductors.(Industrial: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Researchers at IBM, Yorktown Heights, N.Y., have built the first complete electronic circuit around a single carbon nanotube using standard semiconductor processes. The researchers observed circuit speeds nearly a million times faster than...

Accelerating chemical reactions.(Academic: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Chemists at Duke Univ., Durham, N.C., have found that they can accelerate a complex chemical reaction by using a chain of molecules as an infinitesimal lanyard to tug on a chemical bond that is about to break. Their unusual manipulative...

Analyzing cell health.(Academic: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... The organization of proteins in the nuclei of cells varies tremendously between normal and malignant cells. This distinction can now be verified with a technique developed by researchers at Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, Ind. The team used an...

Bolstering transparent ICs.(Academic: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Researchers at Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, have created a completely transparent integrated circuit from indium gallium oxide using conventional photolithography techniques. The materials are safe compared with alternative heavy metals such...

Creating nano capsules.(Academic: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Researchers at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a process of mixing lipids and nanoparticles to produce new materials delivery vehicles. To stabilize the lipids, the researchers prepared a dilute solution of lipid...

New twist on chem analysis.(Eureka: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Physicists at JILA, Boulder, Colo., have designed and demonstrated a highly sensitive tool for simultaneous, real-time analysis of the quantity, structure, and dynamics of a variety of atoms and molecules. The new technology is an...

Building vessel networks.(Eureka: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Biomedical engineers at Yale Univ., New Haven, Conn., have created an implantable system that can form and stabilize a functional network of fine blood vessels. The team created a "micro-scaffold" of a macroporous hydro-gel polymer for cells to...

Creating durable coatings.(Eureka: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... Researchers at the Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C., have created two durable compounds called noble metal nitrides by using extreme pressures and temperatures. Both nitrides possess a diamond-like hardness, and some compositions might...

Micro-optical imaging.(Eureka: Emerging Technologies)
April 1, 2006... A team of engineering students at the Rochester Institute of Technology, N.Y., has developed a method capable of optically imaging the smallest-ever semiconductor device geometry. The team used evanescent wave lithography (EWL) to accomplish...

Pressure transducers.(New Products)
April 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Rugged, solid-state pressure transducers with amplified outputs--PX209/PX219 series. Designed to withstand vibration and shock, OMEGA's PX209 (cable style) and PX219 (connector style) transducers deliver...

Expanded line of medical grade isolation transformers.(New Products)
April 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Certified to UL 60601.1, CSA and international standards Bridgeport Magnetics/Tortran Inc. has expanded its line of medical grade power transformers up to 6000 VA. The product line is fully certified to the most...

SPEX SamplePrep 7170 Electrofluxer[R].(New Products)
April 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SPEX SamplePrep announces the ELECTROFLUXER[TM], a new departure in fusion flux equipment for the analytical laboratory. Safe and inexpensive, the ELECTROFLUXER can quickly transform cement, sand, ore, refractories,...

UltraVolt's[R] HV Rack[R] floats to new heights.(New Products)
April 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] UltraVolt, Inc., a world-leading manufacturer of high-voltage power supplies, announces the expansion of its HV Rack Series of high-voltage, multi-channel rack-mount power supplies. The new configuration options...

Goertz balanced symmetrical power system.(New Products)
April 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Alpha-Core Inc. introduces the Goertz BP Power System, a balanced symmetrical power supply, in three sizes, rated 300VA, 600VA and 1000VA for 117V/60Hz. The system provides optimum performance of audio and video...

Adjustable ergonomic chairs.(New Products)
April 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BioFit[R] Engineered Products' EEC Series ergonomic chairs provide the adjustability for work at both a lab bench and a desk. Chair users can adjust seat and backrest as needed for desk-to-bench heights. The...