The perfect cut for silicon wafers

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Cutting silicon blocks to make wafers for solar cells is not a matter of luck, its a honed skill. You need a special slicing tool to produce paper-thin wafers from silicon blocks ("ingots"): reminiscent of an egg slicer, a filigree wire is used to cut through the ingot at a speed of up to 60 km/h.

This wire is several hundred kilometers long and arranged in such a way that the ingot is sliced into hundreds of wafers simultaneously. The process takes around six hours and the resultant slices are approximately 180 µm thick.

Weather forecasting takes to the sky, in millimeter surfaces

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More accurate global weather forecasts and a better understanding of climate change are a possibility following new research by engineers at Queen's University Belfast's Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT).

The ECIT team has developed a high performance electronic device - known as a dual polarized Frequency Selective Surface filter - that is to be used in future European Space Agency (ESA) missions.

NIST demonstrates sustained quantum information processing

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BOULDER, Colo. – Raising prospects for building a practical quantum computer, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated sustained, reliable information processing operations on electrically charged atoms (ions). The new work, described in the August 6 issue of Science Express,* overcomes significant hurdles in scaling up ion-trapping technology from small demonstrations to larger quantum processors.

Like opening a can of worms, but with DNA instead

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Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and Harvard University have opened a new toolbox for building nanoscale structures out of DNA, using complex twisting and curving shapes. In the journal Science they report a series of experiments in which they folded DNA, like origami, into three dimensional objects including a beachball-shaped wireframe capsule just 50 nanometers in diameter.

Typhoon Morakot's cloud top extent doubled in size in 1 day

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Satellite imagery over the last two days has shown Typhoon Morakot to be a monster, and over the last two days, NASA satellites have confirmed the typhoon doubled its size!

Math tackles the scheduling of English football matches

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Can computers solve the logistical nightmare of planning English football fixtures?

Professor Graham Kendall from the School of Computer Science at The University of Nottingham believes they can. He has devised a special software programme for the Christmas and New Year fixtures which automatically takes into account detailed criteria laid down by the football authorities and reduces travel distances for clubs and fans.

New computer program searches for possible molecular treatments of cancer

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Tracking down new active agents for cancer or malaria treatment could soon become easier - thanks to a computer program with which researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund aim to facilitate the search for suitable pharmaceutical substances. The program, which is called Scaffold Hunter, acts as a tool for navigating chemical space. It generates maps of chemically-related structures and links them to biological activity, that is, to their potential to bind to proteins, in particular medically relevant proteins.

Electronic health records help cardiac patients remain healthy

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An innovative program that cut cardiac deaths by 73 percent by linking coronary artery disease patients and teams of pharmacists, nurses, primary care doctors, and cardiologists with an electronic health record also kept the patients healthy two years after they left the program by keeping them in touch with their care givers electronically, according to a randomized study by Kaiser Permanente published in The American Journal of Managed Care.

Complex diseases caused by genetic variations are more detectable

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Computational biologists at Carnegie Mellon University have developed an analytical technique to detect the multiple genetic variations that contribute to complex disease syndromes such as diabetes, asthma and cancer, which are characterized by multiple clinical and molecular traits.

NRL's XFC UAS achieves flight endurance milestone

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Washington, DC - (August 6, 2009) – The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has completed a successful flight test of the fuel cell powered XFC (eXperimental Fuel Cell) unmanned aerial system (UAS). During the June 2 flight test, the XFC UAS was airborne for more than six hours. NRL's Chemistry and Tactical Electronic Warfare Divisions are developing the XFC UAS as an expendable, long endurance platform for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR).