Technology

New nanostructure synthesis process set to boost solar cell efficiency

From www.nanowerk.com
2011-10-03 07:00:00

Excerpt:

In our present nanomanufacturing process known as Simultaneous Plasma-Enhanced Reactive Ion Synthesis and Etching (SPERISE), we have integrated both nanoscale bottom-up synthetic and top-down etching approach. This eliminates the expensive prepatterning steps and hence give rise to ultrahigh throughput, better reliability, high yield and above all, low cost. Since, this process does not need any prepatterning steps, it is now possible to combine nanostructures on any microstructures, which is the holy-grail of the nanomanufacturing process.

The findings have been reported in the September 21, 2011 online edition of ACS Nano (“Ultrahigh Throughput Silicon Nanomanufacturing by Simultaneous Reactive Ion Synthesis and Etching”).
Although it is known to researchers for a long time about how to make nanostructures over a large area, little was known about the mechanism of such synthesis. This was a barrier for controllable and deterministic nanofabrication process. In this paper, we have presented experimental evidence of the nanoscale synthesis process elucidating the mechanism of formation of nanostructures. The mechanism has been successfully applied to explain the nanostructure formation in variety of crystallographic silicon substrate such as single-crystal, poly-crystal and amorphous silicon as well as differently doped (p- or n-type) substrates. We believe, the proposed mechanism will provide a general guideline to design new SPERISE methods for other solid-state materials besides silicon.

 

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Evolving privacy laws present challenges for smart buildings – Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly

From masslawyersweekly.com
2021-08-31 15:06:17

Excerpt:

 

Smart buildings offer individuals, businesses and even cities better and more efficient ambient experiences. However, the connected technologies that make buildings “smart” tend to require processing massive amounts of data inputs, often including personal information.

The collection and use of personal information requires consideration of the data privacy and security risks to individuals, as well as the possible associated legal and compliance obligations of developers, managers and operators of smart buildings.

Smart technologies enable interoperability across networked devices to produce a desired or defined output. For smart buildings, these outputs span a broad range of capabilities, such as automatically adjusting the temperature of a room based on the number of occupants detected, or even designating individual work spaces based on daily calendars or ambient conditions. Generation of an output requires an input, and in the case of smart buildings the inputs tend to be data collected from sensors placed in and around the buildings, as well as from connected systems and devices.

 

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Otsaw Digital Launches Home Delivery Robots in Singapore

From www.army-technology.com
2021-08-31 05:48:39
sumanthkuluru
Excerpt:

Concept: Singaporean robotics technologies startup, Otsaw Digital (Otsaw), has developed an autonomous last-mile delivery robot named Camello that can deliver on-demand parcels and groceries to customer’s homes in Singapore. Otsaw aims to deliver medicines and groceries where there is a labor shortage or if the location is not easily and economically accessible by humans.

Nature of Disruption: Customers who want their goods to be delivered to their homes can very easily book a delivery slot for grocery items like milk and eggs. At the time of delivery, the app notifies the users that the robot has arrived near their home so that they can go to the pick-up point and collect their goods. Camello is equipped with 3D sensors, a camera, and two compartments each capable of carrying up to 20kg (44 lb) of food or parcels ordered…

 

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America’s Biggest 3D Printed Building Is This New Military Barracks in Texas

From singularityhub.com
2021-08-30 14:00:33
Vanessa Bates Ramirez
Excerpt:

 

3D printing is picking up speed as a construction technology, with 3D printed houses, schools, apartment buildings, and even Martian habitat concepts all being unveiled in the last year (not to mention Airbnbs and entire luxury communities). Now another type of structure is being added to this list: military barracks.

ICON, a construction technologies startup based in Austin, Texas, announced the project earlier this month in partnership with the Texas Military Department. At 3,800 square feet, the barracks will be the biggest 3D printed structure in North America. It’s edged out for the worldwide title by at least one other building, a 6,900-square-foot complex in Dubai used for municipal offices.

The barracks are located at the Camp Swift Training Center in Bastrop, TX, and are replacing temporary facilities that have already been used for longer than their intended lifespan. 72 soldiers will stay in the building, sleeping in bunk beds, while they train for…

 

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Bitcoin’s Censorship-Resistance Was a Step Change in History – Coindesk

From www.coindesk.com
2021-07-22 07:00:00

Excerpt:

When he wasn’t getting enough attention from the public back in 2017, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon used to play this game: He’d just say something dismissive about bitcoin and it was sure to put him in the headlines.

So, a prominent entrepreneur at the time, Adam Ludwin, then CEO of early enterprise blockchain company Chain, decided to play along.

In a letter posted on his company’s blog, Ludwin argued to Dimon (and, presumably, his true audience, the many curious folks the open letter was sure to reach) that the quality that distinguished cryptocurrency and made it uniquely valuable was something called “censorship resistance.” Ludwin wrote:

“Nothing can stop me from sending bitcoin to anyone I please. Nothing can stop me from executing code on Ethereum. Nothing can stop me from storing files on Filecoin. As long as I have an internet connection and pay the network’s transaction fee, denominated in its crypto asset, I am free to do what I want.”

Censorship resistance is a jargony way of saying speech, or any other activity, that can’t be vetoed or stopped. Ludwin might be right that it’s a killer feature of distributed ledgers, but it goes further. Censorship resistance is also a step change in the history of political philosophy.

It’s an idea that evolved from prior ones, going all the way back to the earliest days of Western civilization (at least). In particular, though, our modern conception of the right to state one’s opinion, or free expression.

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Cerebras Upgrades Trillion-Transistor Chip to Train ‘Brain-Scale’ AI

From singularityhub.com
2021-08-27 14:00:10
Edd Gent
Excerpt:

 

Much of the recent progress in AI has come from building ever-larger neural networks. A new chip powerful enough to handle “brain-scale” models could turbo-charge this approach.

Chip startup Cerebras leaped into the limelight in 2019 when it came out of stealth to reveal a 1.2-trillion-transistor chip. The size of a dinner plate, the chip is called the Wafer Scale Engine and was the world’s largest computer chip. Earlier this year Cerebras unveiled the Wafer Scale Engine 2 (WSE-2), which more than doubled the number of transistors to 2.6 trillion.

Now the company has outlined a series of innovations that mean its latest chip can train a neural network with up to 120 trillion parameters. For reference, OpenAI’s revolutionary GPT-3 language model contains 175 billion parameters. The largest neural network to date, which was trained by Google, had 1.6 trillion.

 

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