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Category: electronics

This time, there is a very serious news about virtual reality as Google Inc. is said to be getting ready to unveil a new-fangled smartphone headset.

According to The Financial Times, the new headset will succeed Cardboard, and would be featuring much better sensors, lenses, and a more solid plastic skin.

It’s said the product is the like of Samsung’s Gear VR since it will use a smartphone to display as well as most of its processing power. The only difference is that the current Cardboard VR headset is just a cardboard headset like its name with an inserted smartphone, while the new one will be coming with an extra motion sensor for adding whatever the phone places out.

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More news on Qubits that are surprisingly intrinsically resilient to noise.

While a classical bit found in conventional electronics exists only in binary 1 or 0 states, the more resourceful quantum bit, or ‘qubit’ is represented by a vector, pointing to a simultaneous combination of the 1 and 0 states. To fully implement a qubit, it is necessary to control the direction of this qubit’s vector, which is generally done using fine-tuned and noise-isolated procedures.

Researchers at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Molecular Engineering and the University of Konstanz have demonstrated the ability to generate a quantum logic operation, or rotation of the qubit, that — surprisingly — is intrinsically resilient to noise as well as to variations in the strength or duration of the control. Their achievement is based on a geometric concept known as the Berry phase and is implemented through entirely optical means within a single electronic spin in diamond.

Their findings were published online Feb. 15, 2016, in Nature Photonics and will appear in the March print issue. “We tend to view quantum operations as very fragile and susceptible to noise, especially when compared to conventional electronics,” remarked David Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor of Molecular Engineering and senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, who led the research. “In contrast, our approach shows incredible resilience to external influences and fulfills a key requirement for any practical quantum technology.”

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This agreement places Oxford in a very nice position.

Quantum transport measurements are widely used in characterising new materials and devices for emerging quantum technology applications such as quantum information processing (QIP), quantum computing (QC) and quantum sensors. Such devices hold the potential to revolutionise future technology in high performance computing and sensing in the same way that semiconductors and the transistor did over half a century ago.

Physicists have long used standard electrical transport measurements such as resistivity, conductance and the Hall effect to gain information on the electronic properties and structure of materials. Now quantum transport measurements such as the quantum Hall effect (QHE) and fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) in two-dimensional electron gases (2DEG) and topological insulators – along with a range of other more complex measurements – inform researchers on material properties with quantum mechanical effects.

The ultra low temperatures and high magnetic fields provided by Oxford Instruments’ TritonTM dilution refrigerator make it a key research tool in revealing the quantum properties of many materials of interest. SPECS’ Nanonis Tramea QTMS is a natural complementary partner to the Triton, with its fast, multi-channel measurements.

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For several years now, Leap Motion has been working on bringing hand gestures to virtual reality. And it makes sense; using your hands to move digital objects is way more natural than fiddling with a controller. But to do this, you needed to strap one of the company’s motion sensor peripherals in front of an existing VR headset, which is a little clunky to say the least. Plus, the sensor was still running the same software built for desktop PCs; a holdover from the days when Leap Motion’s main focus was the aforementioned PC accessory. Now, however, the company is ready to take the next leap forward. Today it’s announcing Orion, a brand new hardware and software solution that’s built just for VR.

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More Intel Concerns

James Clapper tells senators the vulnerabilities in connected devices that hackers exploit can also be used for surveillance by foreign countries.

As the Internet of things has grown, so has the debate about security around it.

Much of the focus has been around the fact that with billions of new systems, devices and sensors connecting each year, the attack surface for hackers continues to widen. Add in a lack of security in many of these connected devices and their growing popularity in homes and businesses, and the issue becomes even more concerning.

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Liquid metal.

Abstract: Graphene is going to change the world — or so we’ve been told.

Since its discovery a decade ago, scientists and tech gurus have hailed graphene as the wonder material that could replace silicon in electronics, increase the efficiency of batteries, the durability and conductivity of touch screens and pave the way for cheap thermal electric energy, among many other things.

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Intel’s solid-state drives could be poised for a big jump in capacity and speed with new 3D flash chips coming from Micron.

Micron, which makes the flash in Intel’s SSDs, has started volume shipments of its 3D NAND flash chips. The chips could lead to SSDs the size of a pack of gum with more than 3.5TB of storage and standard 2.5-inch SSDs with capacities greater than 10TB.

SSDs have been advancing in capacity and durability. Fixstars last month shipped a 13TB SSD, which is priced at about $1 per gigabyte, or $13,000. This year, SanDisk plans to ship 6TB and 8TB SSDs, while Samsung is aiming to release a 4TB SSD.

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Graphene is going to change the world — or so we’ve been told.

Since its discovery a decade ago, scientists and tech gurus have hailed graphene as the wonder material that could replace silicon in electronics, increase the efficiency of batteries, the durability and conductivity of touch screens and pave the way for cheap thermal electric energy, among many other things.

It’s one atom thick, stronger than steel, harder than diamond and one of the most conductive materials on earth.

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Human and animal movements generate slight neural signals from their brain cells. These signals obtained using a neural interface are essential for realizing brain-machine interfaces (BMI). Such neural recording systems using wires to connect the implanted device to an external device can cause infections through the opening in the skull. One method of solving this issue is to develop a wireless neural interface that is fully implantable on the brain.

However, the neural interface implanted on the brain surface should be of small size and minimally invasive. Furthermore, it requires the integration of a power source, antenna for wireless communication, and many functional circuits.

Now, a research team at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology has developed a wafer-level packaging technique to integrate a silicon large-scale integration (LSI) chip in a very thin film of a thickness 10 µm (Sensors, “Co-design method and wafer-level packaging technique of thin-film flexible antenna and silicon CMOS rectifier chips for wireless-powered neural interface systems”).

Wirelessly Supplying Power To Brain

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Imagine a party on a warm summer’s evening. You can see the beautiful greenery and the dipping sun, you can smell the freshly cut grass and taste the cool drinks on offer. You hear someone walk up behind you and feel them tap you on the shoulder. Now imagine you’re not really at the party – but sitting at home and the scene and all these sensations are coming from your TV.

Working out how television programmes could one day stimulate all our senses is an interesting question for researchers like myself, who are exploring the future of TV. But the bigger, more exciting challenge is how we can not only imitate what is happening on the screen, but also use smell, taste and touch in a way that’s not a novelty and enhances the emotional experience of a show, just as a soundtrack does.

There’s good reason to think about how the TV industry can innovate in this way. Despite the rise of online video, millions if not billions of people still watch traditional broadcast media through television sets. TV remains a powerful format for programme making and watching that follows specific restrictions and guidelines.

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