IUPAP Prize

The International Union of Pure & Applied Physics (IUPAP) is seeking nominations for its 2012 Young Scientist Prize in Physics of Semiconductors. The IUPAP C8 Young Scientist Prize recognizes exceptional achievement in the study of semiconductor physics by scientists at a relatively junior stage of their career. Two prizes will be awarded in 2012. The recipient must be no more than eight years post PhD (excluding career interruptions) and is expected to have displayed significant achievement and exceptional promise for future achievement in an area of semiconductor physics. Further details are available via this link.

RTA celebrates 10 years of trading!

In January 2002 we issued our first invoice, number 2002/01. We started trading as Richard Thomson Associates and our early customers engaged us for sales market consultancy, sales service provision and customer satisfaction surveys - areas of our strong expertise.

Huawei completes acquisition of CIP Technologies

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, today announced the acquisition of the Centre for Integrated Photonics Ltd (CIP), a world-leading photonics research laboratory, from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA).

CIP will significantly deepen the optical research and development (R&D) capabilities of Huawei and demonstrates the company’s ongoing commitment to R&D in the UK. The CIP R&D team, which is located in Ipswich, will be retained by Huawei and will form the core of the new Huawei UK R&D centre, part of Huawei’s global R&D network.

CIP has a reputation as a world-class incubator in fibre optic transmission and carries out world-leading cutting edge research work in this hi tech area. Huawei will continue to invest in fibre optic R&D to ensure that CIP remains an innovator in this important technology sector.

Sensorable garments?

A group of researchers in the US, Italy, and France have made transistors made from cotton fibres. The cellulose that makes up cotton is naturally insulating, so to make a fibre conductive, the team coated each strand with gold nanoparticles. Polymers such as pentacene and PEDOT are used to provide the dielectric and semiconducting properties. The team considers that the most realistic application areas reside with sensors. For example, fire-fighter's uniforms might be able to detect dangerous chemicals, while security personnel could be alerted to airborne signatures of explosives or drugs.

Building blocks of matter

It is good to know that the best brains of Europe are on the case at CERN. Fundamental physics and high speed neutrinos are one thing but a scale model of the LHC ATLAS detector made out of LEGO has to take precedent. The real ATLAS project is 44 metres long and 22 metres wide and weighs 7,000 tonnes. Mehlhase’s model at approximately 1:50 scale is approximately 1 metre long by a half metre wide. The real ATLAS has millions of parts, the model has 9,500 pieces, mostly LEGO blocks. I know that it is not easy looking for elusive particles such as the Higgs Boson but is the ATLAS experiment that boring?

iTV for 2012?

The rumours keep coming. There has been speculation for several years that Apple would move into selling televisions, but the slow sales of its Apple TV boxes suggested that the company didn't see this as a priority. Steve Jobs, Apple's late chief executive, told his biographer that he had "cracked" the problem of building a television. Not surprisingly when this comment appeared in his biography published shortly after his death, rumours of an Apple TV intensified. Last week, Taiwan sources reported that Apple was going down the route of the iTV with 32 inch and 37 inch screens from Sharp and chips from Samsung. Previous reports have suggested that Apple's TV set would have voice control using Siri, the voice controlled personal assistant used in the iPhone 4S. The industry is very keen to ascertain what Apple could have as a surprise package. What could they do with the humble TV to make the iTV a must-have product alongside its MP3 players, smartphones and tablets?

Low cost tablets

The digital divide between India and the West will be eliminated quicker than five years, if a recent report in the Times of India is anything to go by. Sales bookings for the Aakash tablet soared to 1.4 million units just two weeks after it was put on sale for Rs 2500 ($45). To cater for the demand, the UK-based vendor Datawind will establish three new factories, in Cochin, Noida and Hyderabad, in the first half of 2012 to assemble the tablet, giving a total output of 70,000 units per day by April. The Aakash is an computer tablet jointly developed by Datawind and the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan. The 7-inch touch screen tablet features 256 MB RAM, uses an ARM processor with the Android 2.2 operating system, has two USB ports and delivers HD-quality video.

IBM and EE Times predict

The end of one year and the start of another always brings out a series of gurus and soothsayers foretelling the future. Many are quite rightly forgotten by mid February, but the guys at IBM and EE Times probably deserve a hearing more than most. IBM have revealed five innovations that they expect to change our lives within five years. Briefly they encompass: Capturing and recycling energy from anything that moves; using biometrics security to safeguard access to information; linking human brain activities to control and activate electronic systems; the end of the digital divide and smarter, personalised priority e-mail. EE Times have produced their list of 20 hot technologies for 2012, it includes MEMS, plastic electronics, graphene, EUV lithography and 3D ICs.

Time for a (completely) new calendar?

We put a new calendar on the kitchen wall in the Grange household every January 1st. This year it has pictures of old railway advertising posters on it. A group at the Johns Hopkins University want to change things a bit more radically. The current Gregorian calendar has been in place since 1582, when Pope Gregory altered a calendar that was instituted in 46 BC by Julius Caesar. The JHU team wish to create a new calendar in which each new 12-month period is identical to the one which came before, and remains that way from one year to the next in perpetuity. Under the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, if Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2012 it will also fall on a Sunday in 2013, 2014 and beyond. Under the new calendar, September has 31 days, as does June, March and December, the remaining months have 30 days. The advocates suggest that the benefits of such a calendar are many, including the stability which allows the permanent, rational planning of annual activities, from school to work holidays along with simplified financial calculations such as mortgage interest calculations. And they also encourage the abolition of world time zones and the adoption of “Universal Time” in order to synchronize dates and times worldwide, streamlining international business.