Etching 3D Silicon for Optical Effect
Across the world researchers are working to create the next generation of electronics, and are hoping what they come up with is compatible with modern production techniques. This is to keep costs down and make it relatively easy for a company to adopt the new technology. Unfortunately there are some things the modern techniques cannot do, such as etching a 3D structure out of silicon, but researchers are working on that, and those at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have succeeded in doing so for an optical device.
The optical device should be useful for processing optical signals used in telecommunications. To achieve this though it has to be manufactured with great precision, as it is the structure of the silicon that determines its optical properties. For that the researchers took a piece of silicon and applied a solution of polystyrene spheres just a micrometer wide to it. As the solution evaporated, the spheres self-assembled into a monolayer on the silicon. After adding a metal coating and removing the spheres, an etching mask is left on the silicon. Where ever the mask is missing, a plasma is be used to etch away the silicon, and with an electric field, the researchers can control what direction the plasma moves.
While the researchers developed this method to create this specific optical device, it can be used to produce other structures just by changing the mask. By freely manipulating the mask, it may be possible to manufacture some truly unique optical devices for telecommunications.
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Samsung Creates Flash-Friendly File-System for Linux
Samsung has created and added a new file-system to the Linux kernel aimed at solid state hard drives. The Flash-Friendly File-System, or F2FS, was added to the kernel by Jaegeuk Kim and contains around 13,000 lines of code. The post to the Linux kernel mailing list described F2FS as "a new file system carefully designed for the NAND flash memory-based storage devices. We chose a log structure file system approach, but we tried to adapt it to the new form of storage. Also we remedy some known issues of the very old log structured file system, such as snowball effect of wandering tree and high cleaning overhead. Because a NAND-based storage device shows different characteristics according to its internal geometry or flash memory management scheme aka FTL, we add various parameters not only for configuring on-disk layout, but also for selecting allocation and cleaning algorithms."
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Finding Where Black Hole Jets Originate
Black holes are awe-inspiring objects that are still not well understood despite the amount of research dedicated to them. Researchers at MIT, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and other institutions have linked multiple telescopes across the planet to create the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) which can capture details 2000 times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope. They aimed this array at the heart of the galaxy M87 and its 6 billion solar-mass black hole. What they found could determine how the jets emanating from black holes form.
Orbiting many black holes are accretion disks that reach as close to the black hole as matter can get, without falling in. Also at many black holes are massive jets that launch matter hundreds of thousands of light years away from the black hole at very high speed. Exactly what powers these jets has been a matter of debate for some time, but the EHT and its observations may finally explain if it is the black hole's spin itself that powers the jets or energy from the nearest edge of the accretion disk. Among these observations is a measure of the nearest stable orbit matter can have before being doomed to fall into the black hole; roughly 5.5 times larger than the size of the event horizon from which light cannot escape.
As more observations are made and new details not before observable are discovered, theories, including General Relativity, can be tested against reality and either validated or rejected. To help with this, the researchers are looking to add even more radio telescopes to the EHT, which will increases its power significantly.
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Apple Reportedly Anticipating Immense Demand for iPad Mini
Apple has yet to confirm the existence of a smaller-sized iPad, but hype is already rising considerably for a product which is expected to be officially announced this month. According to The Wall Street Journal's sources from component suppliers, Apple is gearing up for the deluge of consumer demand with an order of 10 million units in Q4 2012. The 7.85-inch tablet is rumored to have a display sourced from LG and AU Optronics, which will stand to compete against similar offerings from Amazon's Kindle Fire HD and Google's Nexus 7. Apple hasn't been toppled over from its reign as the biggest tablet manufacturer, but increased pressure from Google's Android devices may have forced the Cupertino-based giant to come out with an iPad mini. Pricing for the diminutive tablet could be a little tricky though, as Apple is known for charging a premium on its products. For the iPad mini to flourish, RBS analyst Wanli Wang says that it "will be a big hit if Apple prices it below $300."
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Silicon Oxide Plus Graphene Equals Transparent and Flexible Memory
Two materials are intensely being studied for their potential use in future electronics. Graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon, and oxides, with their various properties, could revolutionize technology and now researchers at Rice University have created just such a revolutionary product. By combining graphene and silicon dioxide, the researchers have created a transparent and flexible memory device that can be built up into a 3D structure.
Researchers at Rice have previously discovered that a high enough voltage on silicon dioxide can cause the oxygen atoms to break off of the silicon, creating a conducting channel just 5 nm wide on the insulating material. With a lower voltage the oxygen atoms can immediately reattach to the silicon, which enables the material to act as a switch. The researchers sandwiched the silicon dioxide between pieces of graphene, which act as electrodes, to create the new two-terminal memory that can be built into a 3D structure. Flash memory with its three-terminal requirement cannot be stacked in that way.
When producing the memory the researchers achieved 80% yield, which is quite respectable for a non-industry lab. Once industry gets a hold on this technology, they suspect it will push that yield even higher.
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Dishonored's Awe-Inspiring Gameplay Wows Reviewers
Reviews for Dishonored have started trickling in, and critics are all universally proclaiming the game as an undeniable gaming masterpiece. It certainly won't be hard to recommend the uniquely gorgeous game now, especially for those with a penchant for stealthily prowling a city that maintains a beautifully unchanging contrast of the divide between its decrepit slums and the wealthy facade of the elite. Fortunately for those wanting a more violent FPS approach, it's still possible to go gung-ho - although you might be dismayed to discover that piling up the corpses hastens the deadly effects of the encroaching rat plague. A few reviewers seemed to think Corvo Attano's quest for vengeance as a straightforward tale, but it redeems itself effortlessly with abundantly enjoyable gameplay options that you'd easily want replay the game.
In essence, Dishonored is described as a successful marriage of the shadowy approach of Thief with the vast play-as-you-please style of Deus Ex and elevates it to enthralling levels of brilliance. As most of the gushing articles suggest, Dishonored is an easy contender for 2012 game of the year - and no doubt it's an even more graphically rich experience on the PC with its visual enhancements and some very welcome PC-only options, such as field-of-view, increased resolutions and the unrivaled accuracy of stalking your prey with a very responsive mouse.
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