Two new technologies for removing heat from electronic devices could help future generations of laptops, PDAs, mobile phones, telecom switches and high-powered military equipment keep their cool in the face of growing power demands.

The patented technologies – synthetic jets that rely on trains of turbulent air puffs and a system that uses vibration to atomize cooling liquids such as water – were developed by Professor Ari Glezer and co-workers at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Schoo

Australia’s breakthrough low-cost, thin magnesium sheet technology will be made fully production-ready during the next twelve months.

This follows the successful development by CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation) of an industrial-scale pilot plant now producing near-net-shape, or close to production thickness, low-cost magnesium sheet.

Ms Vicki Tutungi, the Head of Commercial Development at CSIRO Manufacturing & Infrastructure Technology, says, “

With increasingly sophisticated in-vehicle communication systems it could be easy to become overloaded with information when driving. Managing the driver’s information needs, COMUNICAR, has designed, developed and tested an in-vehicle, integrated multimedia Human Machine Interface (HMI) that holds the potential to improve both safety and driving comfort.

More than 40,000 people die and 1.7 million are injured on Europe’s roads each year. The direct cost is €45 billion and indirect

The perfect bun: That’s one of the goals of an automated product-inspection prototype under development by Georgia Tech researchers working with Flowers Bakery in Villa Rica, Ga.

An automated product-inspection prototype is under development by Georgia Tech researchers working with Flowers Bakery in Villa Rica, Ga. Researchers are introducing continuous imaging technology to the large-scale production of sandwich buns.
Georgia Tech Photo 300 dpi version

The first phase

Anyone who has ever waited for a bus can relate to the saying that you hang around for an hour and then three come along at once. It has been true in Europe’s congested cities for years, but with the development of a best practice guide for prioritising bus services by the PRISCILLA project it may well be a phrase that falls into disuse.

Through trials in medium-sized European cities where buses are the principal method of public transport, PRISCILLA has detailed solutions to one of the

Desktop manufacturing for home desks seen

A University of Southern California inventor has created a machine that can produce 3-dimensional “printouts” in plastic and even metal more quickly and cheaply than widely-used existing systems.

The new machine is a significant improvement on the laser sintering machines now widely used around the world to build complex 3D forms from computer files, according to its creator, Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis of the USC School of Enginee

The hassles and frustration of commuting and road trips may not seem so bad if you drive down scenic, tree-lined streets, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that people who viewed a videotape of a drive down a scenic parkway scored lower on a test of frustration than did others who viewed a drive through a metro area cluttered with buildings and utility poles.

While commuters may not get to choose their views as they drive to work, the results suggest that nature can have a ca

New research from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests that next-generation, high-temperature superconductor (HTS) wire can withstand more mechanical strain than originally thought. As a result, superconductor power cables employing this future wire may be used for transmission grid applications. Projected to become available in three to four years, the advanced superconductor wire (known in the industry as second generation HTS wire) is expected to cost less than the HT

The building community soon may have radio vision—a new way to “see” moisture inside walls. Building researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have joined forces with Intelligent Automation Inc. in Rockville, Md., to develop a way to use ultra wide-band radio waves to non-destructively detect moisture within the walls of a building. As any homeowner who’s suffered with leaky plumbing or mold problems will tell you, the current state of the art for pinpointing moi

The European Space Agency is working with Portuguese organisations on how space technology can improve road safety.

Each year in Europe, 40 000 people die and 1 700 000 are injured in road accidents. Statistics show that one in three Europeans will become road accident victims during the course of their lifetime. These appalling figures are from the European Commission’s White Paper “European Transport policy for 2010: time to decide”.

Europe is looking at ways to lower thes

Alistair Lees spends much of his research time hoping to see the light.

Using tools that improve by several orders of magnitude on the accuracy of microscopes and stopwatches, Lees is working at the molecular level to explore the effect of light on chemical systems. The field is called photochemistry and Lees’ efforts could help to find less-expensive ways to produce gasoline, make the environment cleaner and safer, and enhance the quality of microcircuitry and the equipment tha

Breakthrough proves possible to use biology to create electronics

Scientists at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology have harnessed the power of DNA to create a self-assembling nanoscale transistor, the building block of electronics. The research, published in the Nov. 21, 2003 issue of Science, is a crucial step in the development of nanoscale devices.

Erez Braun, lead scientist on the project and associate professor in the Faculty Physics at the Technion, says scien

Researchers achieve breakthrough in development of ultraviolet light-emitting diodes

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories developing ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) recently demonstrated two deep UV semiconductor optical devices that set records for wavelength/power output. One emits at a wavelength of 290 nanometers (nm) and produces 1.3 milliwatts of output power, and the other emits at a wavelength of 275 nm and produces 0.4 milliwatts of power.

“Emis

New technology from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm is teaching a household robot a more efficient way to get around a house, for example. The method was recently awarded a prize for the best contribution among 500 others at IROS, one of the world’s largest robot conferences.

Philipp Althaus describes the concept in his dissertation, to be defended on November 21. Robots are making their way into our homes, toy robots and simple household robots. This is a clear trend, a

How can you be sure your watch is not a fake? How can you avoid a cargo container’s shipment changing, or disappearing, between departure and the arrival?

The Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has developed technical devices that support the fight against falsification and illegal trafficking. Using sophisticated technologies, originally devised for nuclear safeguards, the Commission has invented and tested prototypes and applications for the identification of watches and for the sea

More than 1.2 million accidents on European Union roads each year result in approximately 1.6 million injuries and 42,000 deaths. But recent studies estimate that the introduction of passive safety systems in cars could reduce these casualties by 120,000 annually. IST project CHAMELEON’s pre-crash demonstrator system with sensing and processing modules for obstacle detection and crash prediction might prove to be a future lifesaver on Europe’s highways.

Vehicles installed with a pre-crash