sugaratoms:

ANU scientists have successfully bent light beams around an object on a two dimensional metal surface, opening the door to faster and cheaper computer chips working with light.

The international team, including three members from the Research School of Physics and Engineering at ANU, have successfully demonstrated that a tiny beam of light on a flat surface can be bent around an obstacle, and course-correct itself on the other side of that obstacle. It’s the world’s first two-dimensional demonstration of so-called ‘Airy beams’. Their paper on the subject will be published in this month’s Physical Review Letters.

“Students in science class learn that light rays travel along straight trajectories and that it can’t go around corners,” said ANU team member Professor Yuri Kivshar.

“Recently it was discovered that small beams of light can be bent in a laboratory setting, diffracting much less than a regular beam. These rays of light are called ‘Airy Beams,’ and named after the English astronomer Sir George Biddell Airy, who studied light in rainbows.

“Our team has demonstrated that these beams can also be bound on the flat surface of a chip. We also observed a fascinating property of these beams – the so-called self-healing phenomenon, where the wave recovers after passing through surface defects,” he said.

Fellow ANU team member Dr Dragomir Neshev says that this demonstration offers potential in a number of areas.

“This discovery offers some exciting possible applications, particularly in the area of communications technology where it could allow us a cheap way to manipulate light on a chip,” he said.

Researchers in Singapore have discovered a way to bump up hard disk storage capacity to six times current figures, and all it takes is a pinch of sodium chloride — also known as chemical-grade table salt.

A new take on the idea, headlined by Joel Yang of Singapore’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), ditches the idea of inefficient patternless clumps and instead makes slightly larger grains (10 nanometers, up from seven to eight nanometers), in regular patterns, which each store one bit.

(via How Salt Could Multiply Hard Drive Space | Wired Science | Wired.com)

For the good of all of us: CERN launches open source hardware effort

Open source software is used extensively by CERN, the particle physics lab behind the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. In fact, the organization even maintains its very own Linux distribution—based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux—called Scientific Linux CERN. Inspired by the productivity of Linux development, a group of CERN engineers have decided to bring the advantages of the open source software development model to the world of hardware.

CERN has launched a new community-centric effort called the Open Hardware Repository (OHR) with the aim of encouraging collaborative electronics design. CERN has also developed a new license, called the Open Hardware License (OHL), to govern the distribution of open hardware designs.

(via Ars Technica )

Check out the awesome audio clip on the first page of the article.

(via Ars photo essay: standing in the beam line of a neutrino detector)

evilmadlinks:

Everything that’s good about Maker Faire in one picture (by kapshure)

Snail Braille reader could read books to the blind

To most of us, Braille is largely a mystery. It feels really cool, but the idea of actually reading it is kind of a pipe dream. Our sense of touch simply is not as sensitive as that of a blind person. That is not a problem if you happen to have picked up a Braille book out of curiosity. If however, you have recently lost your eyesight, then this is a major problem. As with learning any new language, it takes time to adapt.

That time can be very frustrating, since writing and reading are still important forms of communication in our society. That is where a tool such as the Snail Braille reader could come in handy.

This tool takes Braille text, and by rolling over a straight line of Braille text, the machine is able to read the Braille, and then translate it into speech. The machine, which is capable of storing text for latter replay, can also be paired with a standard Bluetooth headset, similar to the ones you get with your cell phone. That is good news for students who want to study without having to search for the page in a book, or for people who like to hear the instructions while they are completing a task.

(via PhysOrg.com)

unknownskywalker:

ESA’s Bulletin May 2010 Issue

ESA released today the 142^nd issue of their flagship magazine Bulletin, featuring the scientific advancements and discoveries in the 20 years of the Hubble Space Telescope and its most stunning images, the other programmes of this space agency, such as Alphabus, a network of telecommunication satellites, GMES, the European Earth Observation Program, and ESA’s ‘Space & Energy’ project, which is looking at how satellites, technologies and related operational services can help energy production, transportation, consumption and security.

Download PDF: ZIP File (9.52 MB) or Read Online

unknownskywalker:

3D Printing Device Could Build Moon Base from Lunar Dust

Future astronauts might end up living in a moon base created largely from lunar dust and regolith, if a giant 3-D printing device can work on the lunar surface. The print-on-demand technology, known as D-Shape, could save on launch and transportation costs for manned missions to the moon. But the concept must first prove itself in exploratory tests funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).

D-Shape has created full-size sandstone buildings on Earth by using a 3-D printing process similar to how inkjet printers work. It adds a special inorganic binder to sand so that it can build a structure from the bottom up, one layer at a time. The device raises its printer head by just 5 to 10 millimeters for each layer, moving from side to side on horizontal beams as well as up and down on four metal frame columns.

Finished structures end made out of a marble-like material that’s superior to certain types of cement. The buildings do not require iron reinforcing. Such a concept might help future lunar colonists live off the land, as well as provide thick-walled structures that protect against solar storms or micrometeorites. D-Shape offers the added attraction of having a somewhat straightforward building process that does not require huge amounts of construction machinery or many robot laborers.

Space agencies have already begun testing other technologies meant to mine water and oxygen from the lunar regolith. NASA scientists have also played with possible recipes for a sort of lunar concrete based on moon dust.

Image: This 2-meter-tall gazebo was built with D-shape 3-D printing technology. The monolithic sandstone structure was made of about 200 thin layers and was designed to look like a micro-organism called Radiolaria. The structure in the background, overhead, is the printing device.

Source: SPACE.com

j-p-g:

drill (via s8)

“Ferrofluids are made up of tiny magnetic fragments of iron suspended in oil (often kerosene) with a surfactant to prevent clumping (usually oleic acid). The fluid is relatively easy to make at home yet extremely expensive to buy on-line. How does $165 a liter sound? Pretty bad, right? Read on to learn how to make ferrofluids on the cheap.”

2000-year-old computer recreated (via newscientistvideo)

This is the first of three posts about/featuring Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune. Why three? Well, I’d be satisfied by posting it twenty-five times, but people have limits. This one was made by Stephen Malinowski, creator of the Music Animation Machine.

IEEE Spectrum: Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens

Oh, hell.

I can’t tell what that is (helicopter maybe?), but it looks like it’s belching out soldiers, like there’s some secret Terry Gilliam film being shot somewhere.

metafilter:

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posted by limepi