World's first anti-laser demonstrated

In the anti-laser, incoming light waves are trapped in a cavity where they bounce back and forth until they are eventually absorbed (Image: Yidong Chong/Yale University)
Much to the distaste of James Bond villains everywhere, scientists from Yale University recently demonstrated not a new, more powerful type of laser, but actually its opposite – the world’s first anti-laser. The device receives incoming beams of light, which interfere with one another in such a way as to cancel each other out. It could apparently have valuable applications in a number of technologies, such as optical computing and radiology.
Lasers work by using a “gain medium,” often gallium arsenide or some other semiconductor, to produce light waves with the same frequency and amplitude. These waves, which are in step with one another, make up a focused beam of coherent light.
By contrast, the anti-laser utilizes a silicon wafer “loss medium.” When two laser beams were shone into a cavity containing that wafer, it aligned the light waves so that they became “perfectly trapped,” causing them to ricochet back and forth until they were absorbed and transformed into heat.
The anti-laser, officially known as a coherent perfect absorber (CPA), is about one centimeter across, and capable of absorbing 99.4 percent of incoming light. According to Yale physicist A. Douglas Stone, however, the current model is merely a proof-of-concept. He believes that future versions should be able to absorb 99.999 percent of the light, and could be built as small as six microns – approximately one-twentieth the width of a human hair. The current CPA is also limited to absorbing near-infrared light, but Stone believes that by altering the cavity and the loss medium, future versions should be able to handle visible and infrared light.
CPAs could reportedly find use in optical computers, serving as components such as optical switches or detectors. Stone believes they could also be used in radiology, where they could focus electromagnetic radiation to a small region within opaque human tissue, for imaging or therapeutic purposes.
The research was just published in the journal Science.

Keyboard that uses sonar to protect sensitive data

 

KSI's SonarLocID Keyboard uses sonar to monitor the presence of the user
 
While the simple act of logging off a workstation is an obvious way to protect sensitive data – like that used by healthcare providers, pharmacies, banks and government agencies – it is all too easy for users to forget and leave the data not only viewable, but also editable by anyone who happens to pass by. Custom keyboard supplier Key Source International (KSI) has developed a keyboard that does the remembering for you, logging out as soon as the user physically leaves the keyboard.

      

KSI's SonarLocID Keyboard uses sonar to monitor the presence of a user. When a logged in user physically leaves the workstation it will then immediately log off the user who will be prompted to log back in when the sonar sensor detects that they – or someone else – has returned. The user can then log back into the system with a username/password, or via a proximity badge ID reader or fingerprint reader built into the keyboard.
The SonarLocID Keyboard connects to a PC via USB and can be configured via an included programming application that allows the user to program custom keystrokes as well as delays and a sequence to lock the computer when the user walks away. These user definable keystrokes, delays and settings aren't stored on the client or server, but rather stored in the keyboard's onboard flash memory. KSI also says the keyboard can be programmed to work seamlessly with most popular single sign on and web-based security applications.

New graphene transistor created with record high-switching performance

Graphene is a one-atom-thick planar sheet of carbon atoms that are densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice (Image: Lau lab UC Riverside)
Graphene has already brought us the world’s smallest transistor, a triple-mode, single transistor amplifier and a supercapacitor that can store as much energy as a battery while recharging in seconds. And these are sure to just be the tip of the iceberg. The latest breakthrough from the wonderful world of graphene is a new graphene field effect transistor (GFET) that boasts a record high-switching performance. The device promises improved performance for future electronic devices and means graphene could potentially replace silicon, or at least be used side by side with silicon, in electronic devices.
Although graphene boasts high electrical conductivity, it is what is known as a zero bandgap semiconductor. This means that there is no difference between its conductive and nonconductive state and transistors made of the material cannot be easily turned on and off.
Dr Zakaria Moktadir of the Nano research group at the University of Southampton discovered that by introducing geometrical singularities such as sharp beds and corners in bilayer graphene nanowires, the current could be turned off efficiently. According to Professor Hiroshi Mizuta, Head of the Nano research group, this engineering approach has achieved an on/off switching ratio 1,000 times higher than previous attempts.
"Enormous effort has been made across the world to pinch off the channel of GFETs electrostatically, but the existing approaches require either the channel width to be much narrower than 10 nanometres or a very high voltage to be applied vertically across bilayer graphene layers," he says. “This hasn't achieved an on/off ratio which is high enough, and is not viable for practical use."
The researchers believe the breakthrough will enable electronics that progress beyond current silicon complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, which is reaching its limits.
"It will have major implications for next generation computer, communication and electronic systems. Introducing geometrical singularities into the graphene channel is a new concept which achieves superior performance while keeping the GFET structure simple and therefore commercially exploitable,” says Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.
Now that he’s created the transistor, Dr Moktadir is now carrying out further research to understand the mechanism that causes the current to stop flowing in the channel. He is also testing the transistor’s reliability and performance under various noise and temperature conditions.

Patrimony Traditionally World Time captures all the world's 37 time zones simultaneously

Vacheron Constantin's Patrimony Traditionnelle World Time model tells the time in all the world's 37 time zones
A longstanding part of the Vacheron Constantin watchmaking heritage, the World Time complication is making a noteworthy comeback in the form of the Patrimony Traditionnelle World Time model. Developed and manufactured by Vacheron Constantin, this new mechanical self-winding movement is distinguished by its capacity to indicate the world’s 37 time zones, including those offset from Universal Coordinated Time (UCT) by a half or quarter-hour.

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The new Patrimony Traditonnelle World Time by Vacheron Constantin marks the return to the collection of a complication inextricably bound to the history of the Geneva-based manufacturer.
A pioneer in the development and production of innovative watches, the Manufacture Vacheron Constantin has displayed the same approach in being resolutely open to the world at large. Created in 1755 in Geneva and able to look back over more than 255 years of uninterrupted activity, Vacheron Constantin soon began exploring the four corners of the earth. It established a presence in the United States in 1832 and in China in 1845 – well before the International Meridian Conference held in Washington in 1884 which divided the world into 24 time zones, taking the Greenwich meridian as the longitude 0 point of reference. This new approach became indispensable in keeping step with the development of international travel and of railways.
Driven by a wish to demonstrate that the multiple time-zone watch could be further perfected, Vacheron Constantin introduced its first timepieces endowed with an international time mechanism in 1932.
This movement was the work of a brilliant Geneva watchmaker, Louis Cottier, who had imagined and developed a mechanical movement indicating the 24 time zones from 1 to 24 by means of a disc rotating around the central dial and the outer bezel bearing the names of the world’s major cities.
This first Vacheron Constantin World Time “Cottier system” watch (reference 3372) enabled simultaneous read-off of the time in 31 cities around the world. It marked the start of a rich and longstanding relationship between Vacheron Constantin and the World Time complication. In 1936, Vacheron Constantin presented two new versions of its World Time model with a 31-city dial (reference 3650) and a 30-city dial (reference 3638) without Cairo.
In 1937 and 1938, the Geneva-based manufacturer unveiled six table clocks with a mobile dial featuring 67 locations, including summer and winter time in Paris. From the 1940s onwards, Vacheron Constantin attributed the reference number 4414 to a world time model with a 41-city dial and a day/night division of the mobile 24-hour disc. During the 1940s and 1950s, many famous customers were captivated by this useful and ingenious mechanism, and contributed to spreading the fame of this new complication.
In 1957, Vacheron Constantin wrote a new chapter in its history of World Time watches by introducing the first World Time wristwatch, reference 6213, ordered by an Egyptian dignitary. It was the first of a long line of models incorporating this remarkable complication and that earned it an outstanding reputation among connoisseurs and collectors.

A patented new World Time calibre

Eager to make a major new contribution to the history of this complication, the Vacheron Constantin master-watchmakers and engineers have sought to create a mechanical movement capable of indicating not only the full time zones, but also the partial ones, so as to reflect the exact temporal reality in the 37 time zones. A number of countries have indeed adopted a half-hour or quarter-hour difference from UTC, and the Calibre 2460WT by Vacheron Constantin takes account of these specific characteristics. By way of example, it provides the correct time indication for Caracas, since Venezuela decided in 2007 to switch from a full time zone to a half time zone (GMT – 4:30).
The indication of the 37 time zones as proposed by Vacheron Constantin in its Patrimony Traditionnelle World Time is as complete as one could wish for. The display consists of three dials: a sapphire dial with a unique day/night shading; a metal dial with a “Lambert projector” type map; and a metal chapter ring. Beating at a frequency of 4 Hz (28,800 vibrations per hour) and endowed with a 40-hour power reserve, mechanical self-winding Calibre 2460WT drives displays of the hours, minutes, central seconds and World Time. It enables simultaneous read-off of the time in all regions of the world, along with the day/night indication provided by the central world map. All indications are adjusted via the crown, thus considerably simplifying the use of this highly technical watch. A patent has been filed for the new Vacheron Constantin Calibre 2460WT bearing the prestigious Hallmark of Geneva.

Appreciable user friendliness

Despite its complex construction principles, the new mechanical World Time movement is extremely user-friendly. The wearer chooses the reference time and places it opposite the black triangle at 6 o’clock. The time in the reference location can then be read off either by the hour hand, or by the 24-hour disc, while the time in the other 36 time zones is simultaneously readable. The cities shown in black represent the full time zones, while the cities in red indicate half-hour or quarter-hour zones.
Incorporating all the signature characteristics of the collection – a slender bezel, a knurled motif on the case-back, a screw-down sapphire crystal case-back, and dauphine hands – the new Patrimony Traditionnelle World Time comes with a 42.5 mm diameter 18K pink gold case that is water-resistant to 30 meters. It is fitted with a brown alligator leather strap secured by an 18K pink gold folding clasp.

Gesture-controlled computers and robotic nurses being developed for operating rooms

Researchers are developing a system that would allow surgeons to control both computers and robotic scrub nurses via hand gestures (Photo: Purdue University)
Although surgeons need to frequently review medical images and records during surgery, they’re also in the difficult position of not being able to touch non-sterile objects such as keyboards, computer mice or touchscreens. Stepping away from the operating table to check a computer also adds time to a procedure. Researchers from Indiana’s Purdue University are addressing this situation by developing gesture-recognition systems for computers, so that surgeons can navigate through and manipulate screen content simply by moving their hands in the air. The system could additionally be used with robotic scrub nurses, also being developed at Purdue, to let the devices know what instruments the surgeon wants handed to them.
The system incorporates a Microsoft Kinect camera (yes, from the gaming system) and specialized algorithms to recognize hand gestures as instructions.
“One challenge will be to develop the proper shapes of hand poses and the proper hand trajectory movements to reflect and express certain medical functions,” said Juan Pablo Wachs, an assistant professor of industrial engineering. “You want to use intuitive and natural gestures for the surgeon, to express medical image navigation activities, but you also need to consider cultural and physical differences between surgeons. They may have different preferences regarding what gestures they may want to use.”

There are also other considerations that the researchers are taking into account in the design of the system. For instance, they don’t want surgeons to be required to wear special types of gloves or colors of clothing in order for their hands to be “read.” The system should also be able to recognize and respond to gestures quickly, and provide confirmation that it understands the request. At the same time, however, it should not accidentally respond to extraneous gestures, such as those made to colleagues in the room.
The Purdue team also want the system to be relatively inexpensive, and to be quickly and easily adaptable to different operating rooms, lighting conditions, and other variables.
The system could be particularly effective when combined with the robotic scrub nurses, although they wouldn’t be intended to replace human nurses in all situations. “While it will be very difficult using a robot to achieve the same level of performance as an experienced nurse who has been working with the same surgeon for years, often scrub nurses have had very limited experience with a particular surgeon, maximizing the chances for misunderstandings, delays and sometimes mistakes in the operating room,” Wachs said. “In that case, a robotic scrub nurse could be better.”
While other groups have also researched the use of robotic scrub nurses, Wachs claims that his is the first to look into the incorporation of gesture – instead of voice – recognition. The Purdue system is also apparently unique in that it uses advanced algorithms to predict where the surgeon’s hands will be next, or what screen images will next be requested.

Biknd Helium protects your bike with air

The Biknd Helium is a bicycle shipping case that uses inflatable bladders to protect one's bike
If you’ve shelled out several thousand dollars for a high-end road or mountain bike, it’s understandable that you might want to bring it with you when you travel to far-away cycling locales. Should you be traveling to compete in a race, it’s pretty much essential that you bring the bike you’ve trained on. It’s also understandable, however, that you might not want to entrust the safety of your precious cargo to a simple cardboard box or giant plastic bag. While several companies offer foam-padded bicycle-shipping cases, Biknd takes a different approach with its Helium case – it uses inflatable air bladders to protect your ride.

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To fit one’s bike into the Helium, both wheels have to first be removed, along with the seatpost, rear derailleur, pedals, and the handlebars and stem. This is definitely more work than is required for the cardboard box or airline-supplied plastic bag methods, but is fairly typical of dedicated bicycle-shipping cases. The frame is secured to the hard bottom of the case via an attachment point at the front fork dropouts, a foam block and strap located near the bottom bracket, and a strap at the rear. Protective covers slip over the forks, handlebar stem and drive train, while front and rear protective axles keep the forks and rear triangle from being compressed inward while in transit.
The wheels and other removed items stow in assigned side, top or bottom compartments, with room provided for an additional set of wheels.

When the case is folded closed, the bladders sit between the frame and the wheels, so the air pressure won’t be forcing the wheels into the frame – this also, however, means that the air bladders won’t be protecting the outsides of the wheels.
Using the supplied pump, the user then inflates the bladders through two air valves. The company claims it should take about 70 pump strokes per side. Besides being lighter than foam, the air bladders also reportedly result in form-fitting padding that minimizes shifting and rattling.
The Biknd Helium weighs 11 kg (24 lbs) empty, has a 900 denier ballistic nylon exterior, and four caster wheels on the bottom. It sells for US$599.

Get some virtual culture with the Google Art Project

Google has announced a collaboration with 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums that lets people view over 1,000 high res artwork images and 17 "gigapixel" images while taking a virtual stroll through their galleries using “Street View” technology. While nothing can beat seeing a work of art in person, the Google Art Project could be the next best thing for those without the time and money to pop on a plane and trade elbows with crowds of tourists looking to catch a glimpse of what some of the best museums have on offer.

Google has spent the last 18 months working with museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, the National Gallery and Tate in London, The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and Uffizi Gallery in Florence to capture super high resolution images of famous artworks. While many art museums already provide access to some of their collections online, Google Art Project is the first that allows virtual tourists to walk through the museum’s halls using Street View technology to see how the works are arranged.

To capture the 360 degree Street View images a specially designed trolley was taken through over 385 rooms within the museums. In addition to being viewed through the Google Art Project website, the gallery interiors can also be accessed directly within Street View in Google Maps.

As the user moves around the virtual galleries they can choose to go for a closer look on any of the 1,061 works of art captured in high resolution with the use of a custom built zoom viewer that Google says, “allows art-lovers to discover minute aspects of paintings they may never have seen up close before, such as the miniaturized people in the river of El Greco’s ‘View of Toledo’, or individual dots in Seurat’s ‘Grandcamp, Evening’.

Additionally, each of the 17 museums taking part in the project was asked to select one artwork to be photographed in super high "gigapixel" resolution. The resultant images each contain around 7 billion pixels, which enables viewers to study details fine details, such as the brushwork and patina, that can’t even be seen with the naked eye.

The site allows visitors to create their own personalized collection by saving specific views of any of the artworks. They can also add their own critiques to each painting, which can then be shared with friends and family. Google also sees this as an ideal tool for students or groups working on collaborative projects or collections.

“This initiative started as ‘20% project’ by a group of Googlers passionate about making art more accessible online. Together with our museum partners around the world we have created what we will hope will be a fascinating resource for art-lovers, students and casual museum goers alike - inspiring them to one day visit the real thing,” said Amit Sood, head of the project.

So if you’re looking to inject a touch of culture into your day, you can head on over to the Google Art Project to view artworks from the following museums:

• Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
• Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC - USA
• The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
• Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
• MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
• Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
• Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
• Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
• National Gallery, London - UK
• Palace of Versailles - France
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
• The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia
• State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia
• Tate, London - UK
• Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy
• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

Google catches Microsoft with pants down, copying search results

Google doesn't have a lot of competition in the search world – it rose from obscurity in the late 1990s to its current position of utter dominance on the back of its clever results ranking algorithm; Google is the megalithic entity it is today, because for the last decade people have chosen its results over MSN, Yahoo and other search options. And now it seems Microsoft's new(ish) search competitor, Bing, is copying Google results in order to make its own search results better. In an embarrassing sting operation, Google claims it has proven that Bing is taking Google search results and displaying them as if they're coming from the Bing engine – and you'd have to imagine the guys at Google are absolutely delighted.

Search team engineers at Google have proven that Microsoft's Bing is watching what people search for at Google, then altering its search results to match Google's.

Google engineers had suspected for some time that Bing was looking over their shoulders – competitive analysis has shown an increasing number of top-10 Google search hits appearing in the Bing top 10, including a very noticeable correlation in #1 hits, but this could be explained away if Bing was operating on a similar search algorithm to Google.

Web search algorithms are incredibly complex. Not only do search engines have to find relevant results based on keyword searches, they also have to filter out spam sites designed to take advantage of search engine traffic, rank how influential and authoritative each result is, and perform a thousand other tweaks to help users get what they're looking for.

One thing Google prides itself on is its ability to correct misspellings in the search box and return valid results for the correctly spelled search term - both for common misspellings and for others that have never been made yet. Type "Vagita" into Google and straight away you'll receive search results for vagita.

And it's this ability to correct for misspellings, and Bing's seeming ability to bring up the same answers not long afterward, that finally gave Google a place to strike.

The sting setup

Google engineers created around 100 bizarre search terms that it reasoned would never be used in an actual search – things like "hiybbprqag" and "mbzrxpgjys" – and wrote some sneaky manual code that pointed these search terms at particular pages.

The search terms didn't appear anywhere on the results pages, so there was nothing but Google's own search results to link these terms with the pages they brought up. So if these results started showing up on Bing, Microsoft would be caught red-handed stealing search results.

The Google engineers then went home, and booted up Internet Explorer with the Bing toolbar installed. They went to Google.com and started searching for the list of false search terms, and clicking on the results they'd planted.

Sure enough, within two weeks, you could search Bing for "hjybbprqaq" and get Google's planted search result. This didn't work for all the new search terms, but for 7 or 8 of them; enough to prove a point.

What does it mean?

It means that it seems Internet Explorer, its 'Suggested Sites' feature and the Bing Toolbar appear to be watching what you search for at Google.com, then feeding those results back into its own search algorithm.

So if Microsoft's own search algorithm isn't finding the same things as Google, it seems Bing tends to correct itself towards the Google results.

For users, this means that Google can offer a more up-to-date search experience, since it seems to take Bing a few weeks to copy the results and start using them – and for Google, it's quite a PR piece.

Although it's a PR piece that might backfire - after all, in Microsoft's eyes, what Bing is doing is trying to improve the user experience. The toolbar setup is designed to check what people are searching for, see where they clicked through to, and then measure how long they spent on each of those pages, presuming that users will spend more time on relevant pages and less time on pages that shouldn't be ranked so high. And that does seem to be a clever way of helping build search rankings.

Still, it's an interesting spat to watch, and an interesting insight into how our search results are built, and the competitive, innovative environment in Silicon Valley.