Current semiconductor technology is based on silicon, gallium arsenide (GaAs), and other opaque materials. But a promising alternative, metal oxide semiconductors (consisting of molecules with both metallic and oxygen atoms) are very efficient, and happen to be transparent. However, fabricating them by ordinary means requires extremely high temperatures, high enough to melt the types of polymers that structure the devices.

 

A new method for making metal oxide devices at much lower temperatures uses ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. Yong-Hoon Kim and colleagues used UV light to chemically activate metal particles in … Read More → "Using ultraviolet light to fabricate thin flexible electronics"

The world of human-powered helicopters is getting competitive. Over the past month, twice as many pedal-propelled machines have undergone testing compared to years past, with a team from Canada (pictured above) joining the University of Maryland in the quest for the Sikorsky Prize.

We’ve been following the University of Maryland’s Gamera as the team has steadily been increasing the performance of their quad-copter. The team from Canada includes … Read More → "Two human-powered helicopter teams fly in one week"

In July, scientists announced that they’d discovered what they strongly suspected to be the Higgs Boson, a particle that’s believed to be the key to unifying the standard and quantum models of physics. In August more experiments made the finding more certain—and now, the results have been peer-reviewed and published, making them, for want of a better term,real science.
via Gizmodo

Continue reading</ … Read More → "The Higgs Boson discovery is now real science"

Most consumer technologies, when wielded correctly, are magnificent. But so are bagpipes. In the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, technology can be an annoyance enabler. These 12 technologies are not the future we were hoping for.
via Wired

… Read More → "12 of the world’s most annoying technologies"

… Read More → "DARPA’s AlphaDog tracks humans"

“In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”

The great Richard Feynman — champion of scientific culture, graphic novel hero, crusader for integrity, holder of the key to … Read More → "Richard Feynman on the one sentence to be passed on to the next generation"

Smokey Bear was created by the U.S. Forest Service in an attempt to prevent forest fires — and it worked too well. By preventing the small fires that are part of how forests function (clearing out underbrush and small trees), the “Smokey Bear Effect” is causing massive, forest-destroying fires that eradicate large forests. In this short video, NPR explores the effect — and how we must accept small fires as an integral part of the life of forests.
via … Read More → "The “Smokey Bear Effect”"

While most new Monopoly sets desperately try to keep up with the times—swapping cash for credit cards or using circular boards—here’s one which celebrates the past. Now you can play the property-trading game while celebrating the life of the father of computer science, Alan Turing.

Announced over the weekend by Bletchley Park, where Turing worked during the second world war, the new set is inspired … Read More → "Celebrate computer science while playing Monopoly – the Alan Turing Edition"

The next time you hinge open that notebook PC and smile at a feature that makes it easier to use, give a thought to Bill Moggridge, who passed away Saturday from cancer at the age of 69. The pioneering designer invented the modern clamshell design seen in all modern laptops, and is also viewed as the father of human interaction software design.

The Compass Computer he designed for Grid Systems with the screen folded over the keyboard appeared in 1981, flew on the space shuttle, and inspired virtually every notebook design since. Perhaps more importantly, when he … Read More → "William Moggridge, portable computer and human interaction trailblazer, dies at 69"

This week, the ENCODE project released the results of its latest attempt to catalog all the activities associated with the human genome. Although we’ve had the sequence of bases that comprise the genome for over a decade, there were still many questions about what a lot of those bases do when inside a cell. ENCODE is a large consortium of labs dedicated to helping sort that out by identifying everything they can … Read More → "Most of what you read was wrong: how press releases rewrote scientific history"