System Bits: Oct. 29


Coupling photons with electrons With the potential to lead to the creation of materials whose electronic properties could be “tuned” in real time simply by shining precise laser beams at them, researchers at MIT have produced and measured a coupling of photons and electrons on the surface of an unusual type of material called a topological insulator. This type of coupling had been predicte... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 8


X-Ray Vision Researchers led by the University of Manchester have developed a new type of X-ray vision. The technology can look inside objects and map the properties in 3D and in real time. This technology is called pair distribution function-computed tomography. Applications include materials science, biomaterials, geology, environmental science and palaeontology. The technology enable... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 8


The next big thing in particle accelerators Stanford University engineers have helped create what may be the next big thing in particle accelerators – and it fits on a fingertip. In a project that included scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a linear accelerator two miles long, accelerators energized charged particles to accomplish a ran... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 1


Origami-Shaped Antennas A Georgia Tech-led research team is working to develop a unique approach to making extremely compact and highly efficient antennas and electronics based on principles derived from origami paper-folding techniques to create complex structures that can reconfigure themselves by unfolding, moving and even twisting in response to incoming electromagnetic signals. The str... » read more

System Bits: Sept. 17


Multicore memory management According to MIT researchers, it may be time to let software rather than hardware manage high-speed on-chip memory caches. Traditionally, managing the caches has required fairly simple algorithms that can be hard-wired into the chips but as multiple cores in SoCs proliferate, cache management becomes much more difficult. As such, MIT’s Department of Electric... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: August 20


Rechargeable flow battery for cheaper, large-scale energy storage In a creation that may eventually enable cheaper, large-scale energy storage, MIT researchers have engineered a new rechargeable flow battery that doesn’t rely on expensive membranes to generate and store electricity. According to the researchers, the palm-sized prototype generates three times as much power per square centi... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 20


Child’s Play MIT has created lightweight composite building blocks that can be snapped together like Legos to create complex shapes. MIT says those structures can be used to assemble everything from airplanes to dikes. The new material is used to create identical interlocking parts, according to the university. The parts are 10 times stiffer than other ultralight materials, though. And ev... » read more

System Bits: August 13


Analyzing ad hoc networks Now that the basic protocols of the Internet are more than 30 years old, network scientists are increasingly turning attention to ad hoc networks in which communications networks set up, on the fly, by wireless devices. Here, unsolved problems still abound. Most theoretical analyses of ad hoc networks have assumed that the communications links within the network ar... » read more

System Bits: July 30


Controlling nanomaterials To find out why some sets of flat nanocrystals arrange themselves in an alternating, herringbone style even though it wasn’t the simplest pattern, University of Pennsylvania researchers turned to experts in computer simulation at the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The result of the collaboration gives nanotechnology research... » read more

System Bits: July 23


Bottom-up nanoribbons Concentric hexagons of graphene grown in a furnace at Rice University represent the first time anyone has synthesized graphene nanoribbons on metal from the bottom up — atom by atom. As seen under a microscope, the layers brought onions to mind, according to Rice chemist James Tour, until a colleague suggested flat graphene could never be like an onion. “So I said,... » read more

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