UKSAF Student Travel Awards - The UK Surface Analysis Forum (UKSAF) has available a number of student travel awards.

Each award will provide a contribution towards the expenses of a student presenting their work at an international conference. Awards of £250 are available for international conferences in the UK or EU and £1000 for other locations. UKSAF have allocated £2000 for travel awards and, in the case that applications exceed this allocation, awards will be made to those applications deemed by the UKSAF committee to have the most relevance to surface analysis, the highest quality of contribution and the most prestigious conference. Applicants must be a registered student (full or part-time) and be a UKSAF member i.e. have attended at least one UKSAF Meeting within the last three years. The applicant must also have had an abstract accepted for presentation (oral or poster) at the conference, and this work must include the use of surface analysis techniques. If the student is currently studying at a university outside the UK or Ireland, the work to be presented must have been carried out in, and have a co-author from, a British or Irish university or company.
To apply, please send details (name & copy of abstract) including proof of abstract acceptance, or details of the decision date to: alex.shard at npl.co.uk. The deadline for all applications is 13th August 2012.

Ready for ET

Never mind elusive bosons what about hard to find extra-terrestrials? Last week saw people with an interest in the search for intelligent life beyond planet earth meet at SETICon2 in Santa Clara, USA. Like Higgs, ET was not observed, but the conference highlighted that we are now in a better position than ever before to find evidence of its existence. I like positive thinking, England football supporters have survived on it for years.

All carbon solar cell

Admittedly it is only at the early proof of concept stage, with a paltry 0.1% energy conversion efficiency, but the MIT report into an all carbon solar cell crafted from carbon nanotubes and C60 buckyballs is interesting. The driving force being that around 40 percent of the energy reaching us from the sun lies in the near-infrared region, part of the spectrum that conventional silicon-based solar cells are unable to harness. So perhaps a less efficient device might find applications to harvest at least some of the radiation.

R&D 100 Awards

The editors of R&D Magazine have announced the winners of the 50th Annual R&D 100 Awards, which salute the 100 most technologically significant products introduced into the marketplace over the past year. The 100 products include: a novel coating that repels almost every type of liquid and solid; a compact mass spectrometer and an iPad oscilloscope.

Tokyo or Karachi?

Those considering relocating abroad will want to look at the recent Mercer's Cost of Living rankings. It may even be useful for those considering the venue for an international conference. Mercer measured the comparative cost of living for in 214 major cities including renting an apartment, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment. The overall rankings being heavily influenced by the local cost of suitable accommodation. The top five, most expensive, cities in the rankings for 2012 were: Tokyo, Luanda, Osaka, Moscow and Geneva. Karachi in Pakistan was bottom of the list rated as being one-third as expensive as Tokyo. Other rankings included: London (25), New York (33) and Paris (37). Some US cities appear quite cheap with Chicago ranked at 110 and Washington DC at 107.

Softwear

The US military need for stealth bombers and smart munitions I can understand but automated garment manufacturing? US agency DARPA has just awarded a contract with the stated goal of having complete production facilities that produce garments with zero direct labour. The $1.25 million funding is to create a beta unit at SoftWear Automation, Inc. to develop a numerically controlled sewing machine that tracks fabric movement by observing passing threads and under servo control moves the fabric under the needle stitch by stitch. But with an estimated annual military clothing budget estimated at $4 billion the potential savings from an automated sweatshop are real and probably avoid unpleasant human rights, poverty wage discussions.

Sequoia stands tall

The bi-annual TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers shows that IBM has regained top spot. The supercomputers were ranked according to The Linpack Benchmark test which gives each computer a petaflop/s score (quadrillion floating-point operations per second). Sequoia, the IBM BlueGene/Q system at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory tested at 16.32 petaflop/s compared to second place, Fujitsu's K Computer with 10.51 petaflop/s. The 96 rack Sequoia is used to carry out simulations to help extend the life of aging nuclear weapons. The first list in 1993 was headed by the CM-5/1024 designed by Thinking Machines; the 2012 IBM machine is 273,930 times faster. The IBM 'Blue Joule' at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory is the UK's top supercomputer listed as number 13 in the world.

Solar cells for windows

A team at UCLA have developed a transparent solar cell that is an advance toward giving windows in homes and other buildings the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside. Based on the PEDOT:PSS polymer with a silver metal oxide composite electrode, the devices can exhibit a 66% transparency whilst simultaneously giving a 4% power conversion efficiency. The polymer solar cells are lightweight, flexible and can be produced in high volumes and at low costs.

Brighter lights

US Department of Energy (DoE) aims to develop all aspects of solid state lighting (SSL). Three new DoE projects will focus on improving SSL manufacturing equipment, processes, or monitoring techniques. Cree, Inc. will develop an optimized LED fixture design for efficient manufacture that can be readily integrated into buildings; KLA Tencor, Inc. will seek to improve the colour consistency of LEDs by utilizing a measurement tool during manufacturing that reduces the variation in LED quality; k-Space Associates, Inc. will develop optical metrology for use during volume OLED manufacturing, the tool will measure layer thickness and composition to ultimately control the efficiency, colour, and lifetime of OLEDs. Total funding for the three projects is $7.1 million and leverages an additional $5 million in private-sector funding from the three companies.

Croeso i Gymru

Last month saw the announcement that Cardiff based IQE plc will acquire the in-house MBE epi-wafer manufacturing unit of RFMD. RFMD outsources all MOCVD-based starting material, and will outsource MBE-based starting material with the completion of the transfer. In addition, RFMD and IQE have entered into a long term agreement with IQE supplying RFMD both MBE and MOCVD deposited wafers. The assets transferred to IQE include a fully fitted cleanroom of over 90,000sq ft, 16 MBE manufacturing systems and associated equipment, all currently housed in a stand-alone building in Greensboro, NC, USA. IQE will use any spare capacity from the transferred MBE facility to meet the growing demand for concentrator photovoltaic solar products. RFMD view this outsourcing approach as being a route to lower manufacturing costs.