Applied Physics

SAN JOSE, California, April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- - AT91CAP7X-DK Includes ARM7-based Microcontroller with 80K LC FPGA Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) today announced its AT91CAP7X-DK development kit for designers to develop, emulate, and ultimately migrate ARM7(TM)-plus-FPGA designs to Atmel's CAP7 customizable microcontrollers. Atmel's CAP7 customizable MCU is an ARM7-based microcontroller with a metal-programmable (MP) block with 450K gates or the equivalent of 56K FPGA logic cells (LC), as well as a USB 2.0 full speed device, SPI master and slave, two USARTs, three 16-bit timer counters…

Public scandals, such as Enron, Societe Generale and Global Crossing, the sub-prime mortgage problem, and the ensuing global credit crunch have led to dwindling confidence in the business world. A study published in the International Journal of Business Excellence suggests that relearning the ancient notion of virtue could create better harmony between business and society. Businesses that excel in the services and products they offer their customers are usually the ones that succeed and post a healthy profit for their shareholders, but Alistair Anderson of the Aberdeen Business School at The…

Researchers from the UAB Research Park have created the first nanomotor that is propelled by changes in temperature. A carbon nanotube is capable of transporting cargo and rotating like a conventional motor, but is a million times smaller than the head of a needle. This research opens the door to the creation of new nanometric devices designed to carry out mechanical tasks and which could be applied to the fields of biomedicine or new materials. The "nanotransporter" consists of a carbon nanotube - a cylindrical molecule formed by carbon atoms - covered with a shorter concentric nanotube…

WAALWIJK, The Netherlands, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Industrial Automation Integrators (IAI) B.V. in Veldhoven, a subsidiary of DOCDATA N.V. in Waalwijk, will supply a SheetMaster Flex system and a WebMaster Flex system to the Government of South Africa (Government Printing Works), to enhance the security of documents. These systems are especially designed to process documents other than banknotes, passports and ID-cards for which IAI offers dedicated systems. Because of the huge variety in such documents worldwide, the systems need to be very flexible in order to meet the requirements of a…

Varanus komodoensis, the fearsome Komodo dragon, is the world's largest living lizard and, with 60 razor-sharp serrated teeth, can take on very large animal prey. A new international study has revealed how it can be such an efficient killing machine despite having a wimpy bite and a featherweight skull - clever engineering. The Komodo dragon grows to an average length of two to three meters and weighing around 70 kilograms. The reptile's unusual size is attributed to island gigantism, since there are no other carnivorous mammals to fill the niche on the islands where they live. As a result…

KeeLoq, a remote keyless system used for access control since the mid-1990s, is by many the most popular of such systems in Europe and the US. Besides the frequent use of KeeLoq for garage door openers and other building access applications, several automotive manufacturers like Toyota/Lexus base their anti-theft protection on assumed secure devices featuring KeeLoq. Researchers from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, presented a complete break of remote keyless entry systems based on the KeeLoq RFID technology. The shown vulnerability applies to all known car and building access control…

Countless hours spent designing, hand-building and testing model rockets has paid off for 100 teams that will be vying for the sixth annual Team American Rocketry Challenge national title next month. The Aerospace Industries Association announced the finalists for the world's largest rocket contest Friday. The teams will meet at Great Meadow in The Plains, Va., on May 17 for a final fly-off and a chance to win more than $60,000 in scholarships and other prizes. About 7,000 students on 643 teams from 43 states and the District of Columbia took part in the qualifying rounds of competition.…

There’s a strange wave phenomenon that’s plagued rocket scientists for years, a lurking threat with the power to destroy an engine at almost any time. For decades, scientists have had a limited understanding of how or why it happens because they could not replicate or investigate the problem under controlled laboratory conditions. Scientists generally believe that these powerful and unstable sound waves, created by energy supplied by the combustion process, were the cause of rocket failures in several U.S. and Russian rockets. Scientists have also observed these mysterious oscillations in…

Ethanol is not great. Even Al Gore had to eventually concede he had made a mistake in promoting it for almost two decades once it became common knowledge that driving food prices up for a costly, energy-negative alternative to gasoline that didn't improve the environment was a bad idea. But what if it weren't energy negative or costly and used a lot less corn? Cows, with help from bacteria, convert plant fibers, called cellulose, into energy, but this is a big, expensive step for biofuel production. In the commercial biofuel industry, only the kernels of corn plants can be used to make…

Fungi processing audio signals. E. Coli storing images. DNA acting as logic circuits. It’s not only possible, in some cases it’s already happened. Performing digital signal processing using organic and chemical materials without electrical currents could be the wave of the future, according to Sotirios Tsaftaris, Northwestern University research professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Aggelos Katsaggelos, Ameritech Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in their recently published “point of view” piece in the Proceedings of the IEEE (Institute of…