Pushing The Transmission Rate Of Copper Cables

Trapped Rainbow Professor Ortwin Hess, his PhD student Kosmas Tsakmakidis of the Advanced Technology Institute and Department of Physics at the University of Surrey and Professor Alan Boardman from Salford University have revealed a technique which may be able to slow down, stop and capture light. The technique would allow the use of light rather than electrons to store memory in devices such as computers, enabling an increase in operating capacity of 1,000% by using light’s broad spectrum rather than single electrons. Slow light could also be used to increase the speed of optical networks, such as the Internet. At major interconnection points, where billions of optical data packets arrive simultaneously, it would be useful if we could control this traffic optically, by slowing some data packets to let others through. This system would work in the same way as traffic congestion calming schemes do on our motorways, when a reduction in the speed limit enables swifter overall flow of traffic.
"Single Use" and "Not For Resale" The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to protect consumers' traditional right to use, repair, and resell the products they own, even if those products are patented. At stake is the enforceability of "single use" and "not for resale" labels on patented products. The amicus brief -- submitted on behalf of EFF, Consumers Union, and Public Knowledge -- was filed in Quanta v. LG Electronics, currently pending before the Supreme Court. The case will test the vitality of the "patent exhaustion" doctrine, which entitles a consumer to use, repair, or resell patented products that they have purchased.
Daniel Reed Joins Microsoft Research Daniel A. Reed will join Microsoft Research as director of Scalable and Multicore Computing, reporting to Senior Vice President of Research Rick Rashid. Reed is an expert in high-performance computing, multicore architectures and scientific applications, as well as a leader in U.S. information technology research policy. Reed is the director of the Renaissance Computing Institute, a major collaborative venture of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, North Carolina State University and the state of North Carolina. He is also a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), and is the current chair of the board of directors of the Computing Research Association, which represents the interests of the major academic computing departments and industrial research laboratories in North America.
Mini-Sensor, Biomedical and Security Applications A tiny sensor that can detect magnetic field changes as small as 70 femtoteslas—equivalent to the brain waves of a person daydreaming—has been demonstrated at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The sensor could be battery-operated and could reduce the costs of non-invasive biomagnetic measurements such as fetal heart monitoring. The device also may have applications such as homeland security screening for explosives.
Flytrap-Inspired Lenses Imagine paint that adheres to a surface but releases on command, or road signs that change their reflectivity with changing weather conditions. These are two potential uses of a novel, responsive material designed by researchers in the University of Massachusetts Amherst polymer science and engineering department. The research was published online this week in the journal Advanced Materials. Inspired by the way a Venus flytrap captures its pray, Alfred Crosby and his doctoral candidate Douglas Holmes created a polymer surface covered with small holes capped by thin lenses of the same material. The lenses can snap between convex and concave when triggered.