Category Technology/Electronics

FAMU-FSU College of Engineering doctoral candidate Joshua DeGraff developed an advanced class of scalable motion sensors using silver ink electrodes and sheets of pure carbon nanotube buckypaper. Credit: FSU Photography Services

Researchers from the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering have developed a class of breakthrough motion sensors that could herald a near future of ubiquitous, fully integrated and affordable wearable technology...

An IBM cryostat wired for a 50 qubit system. Credit: IBM

IBM has announced a milestone in its race against Google and other big tech firms to build a powerful quantum computer. Dario Gil, who leads IBM’s quantum computing and artificial intelligence research division, said it’s scientists have successfully built and measured a processor prototype with 50 qubits. Gil says it’s the first time any company has built a quantum computer at this scale.

This new processor expands upon the 20 qubit architecture and will be made available in the next generation IBM Q systems. Clients will have online access to the computing power of the first IBM Q systems by the end of 2017, with a series of planned upgrades during 2018...

Light on a CMOS chip. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Twente

Electronics and light don’t go well together on a standard ‘CMOS’ chip. Researcher Satadal Dutta of the University of Twente succeeded in introducing a light connection into the heart of a semiconductor chip. In this way, two circuits can communicate. Or: the worlds of electronics and photonics are connected.

What is particularly attractive about Dutta’s solution is that no special materials or manufacturing processes are needed: the light comes from silicon. The light source, detector and the light channel can be made using the technology that is used to make the electronic circuits...

A new pencil-like wireless spectrometer can be used with a smartphone to collect 3-D spectral images of the body and other objects. This design could make the device useful for point-of-care diagnostics. Credit: Dan Wang, Beijing University of Chemical Technology

Easy-to-use spectrometer less than $300, holds promise for remote medical diagnostics. A new smartphone-compatible device that is held like a pencil could make it practical to acquire spectral images of everyday objects and may eventually be used for point-of-care medical diagnosis in remote locations. Spectral images, which contain more color information than is obtainable with a typical camera, reveal characteristics of tissue and other biological samples that can’t be seen by the naked eye...