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    Category Technology/Electronics

    Intelligent robots threaten millions of jobs

    February 14, 2016, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Robots at the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles US Warren Stamping Plant are seen in Michigan

    Robots at the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles US Warren Stamping Plant are seen in Michigan

    Advances in artificial intelligence will soon lead to robots that are capable of nearly everything humans do, threatening tens of millions of jobs in the coming 30 years, experts warned Saturday.

    “We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task,” said Moshe Vardi, director of the Institute for Information Technology at Rice University in Texas.

    “I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?” he asked at a panel discussion on artificial intelligence at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

    Vardi said there w...

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    Common Glass used to Optimize Graphene’s Electronic Properties

    February 13, 2016, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Left: This is a schematic of a graphene field-effect-transistor used in this study. The device consists of a solar cell containing graphene stacked on top of a high-performance copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) semiconductor, which in turn is stacked on an industrial substrate (either soda-lime glass, SLG, or sodium-free borosilicate glass, BSG). The research revealed that the SLG substrate serves as a source of sodium doping, and improved device performance in a way not seen in the sodium-free substrate. Right: A scanning electron micrograph of the device as seen from above, with the white scale bar measuring 10 microns, and a transmission electron micrograph inset of the CIGS/graphene interface where the white scale bar measures 100 nanometers. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

    Left: This is a schematic of a graphene field-effect-transistor used in this study. The device consists of a solar cell containing graphene stacked on top of a high-performance copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) semiconductor, which in turn is stacked on an industrial substrate (either soda-lime glass, SLG, or sodium-free borosilicate glass, BSG). The research revealed that the SLG substrate serves as a source of sodium doping, and improved device performance in a way not seen in the sodium-free substrate. Right: A scanning electron micrograph of the device as seen from above, with the white scale bar measuring 10 microns, and a transmission electron micrograph inset of the CIGS/graphene interface where the white scale bar measures 100 nanometers...

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    Silicon Chip with Integrated Laser: Light from a Nanowire: Nanolaser for information technology

    February 12, 2016, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Gallium-arsenide nanowires are on a silicon surface. Credit: Thomas Stettner/Philipp Zimmermann / TUM

    Gallium-arsenide nanowires are on a silicon surface. Credit: Thomas Stettner/Philipp Zimmermann / TUM

    Physicists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a nanolaser, a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Thanks to an ingenious process, the nanowire lasers grow right on a silicon chip, making it possible to produce high-performance photonic components cost-effectively. This will pave the way for fast and efficient data processing with light in the future. Ever smaller, ever faster, ever cheaper – since the start of the computer age the performance of processors has doubled on average every 18 months. 50 years ago already, Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore prognosticated this astonishing growth in performance. And Moore’s law seems to hold true to this day.

    But the mi...

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    Terahertz Wireless Tech Could Bring Fiber-Optic Speeds out of a Fiber

    February 11, 2016, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Scientists have developed a terahertz (THz) transmitter capable of signal transmission at a per-channel data rate of >10 Gb/s over multiple channels at ~300 GHz. The aggregate multi-channel data rate exceeds 100 gigabits per second. The transmitter was implemented as a silicon CMOS integrated circuit, which would have a great advantage for commercialization and consumer use.

    This technology could open a new frontier in wireless communication with data rates 10X higher than current technology allows. The THz band is a new, vast frequency resource not currently used for wireless communications. Its frequencies are even higher than those used by the mm-wave wireless local area network (57 GHz to 66 GHz), and bandwidths are much wider...

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