20 things 20-year olds don’t get

Advice from an experienced entrepreneur

Raspberry Pi’s versatility

The Raspberry Pi is showing up in all kinds of places.

Urine power

Mobile phone runs on urine power

800 square metres per gram

Impossible material made by Uppsala University researchers

The Oxford Questions on the foundations of quantum physics

A ‘snapshot’ of the present state of physics.

Tips to improve your memory

It's hard to recall every single little detail. Here are 10 tips to make remembering easier.

2013 R&D 100 Award winners

Includes 5 for Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

A long wait at the bar ...

Experiments can take a while to yield results but physicists at Trinity College Dublin have waited since 1944 to successfully see a drop of black stuff.

Smartphone giants

Samsung (72.4 million units) and Apple (31.2 million units) combined had over 43% of the smartphone market in the second quarter of 2013.

From pHEMTs to lasers

Compound Photonics has acquired the Newton Aycliffe GaAs manufacturing facility from RFMD and will use it for the production of green, red and infrared lasers.

E-skin

Researchers at University of California, Berkeley have created the first user-interactive sensor network on flexible plastic. The new electronic skin, or e-skin, responds to touch by instantly lighting up. The more intense the pressure, the brighter the light it emits. The experimental samples of the latest e-skin measure 16-by-16 pixels, within each pixel sits a transistor, an organic LED and a pressure sensor. In addition to giving robots a finer sense of touch, the engineers believe the new e-skin technology could be used to create things like wallpapers that double as touchscreen displays and dashboard laminates that allow drivers to adjust electronic controls with the wave of a hand.

Inventive Eindhoven

It is only one metric but worthy of note, based on the statistic of ‘patent intensity’ Eindhoven is the most inventive city in the world. According to a recent press report citing the OECD the city of Eindhoven produced 22.6 patents per 10,000 residents with second place San Diego generating 8.9 patents per 10,000 residents. No UK or Japanese city is in the list of the world’s 15 most inventive cities, which is dominated by those in the US (six cities), Germany (three cities) and Sweden (three cities). Brainport Eindhoven is the home to many high technology organisations and focuses on five spearhead sectors: Automotive, Design, Food, High Tech Systems & Materials and LifeTec.

Challenges for lithography

According to Ajit Manocha of GlobalFoundries, keynote speaker at last month’s Semicon West, 20nm lithography equipment now comprises a staggering 85% of the cost of a new fab. No wonder that the ever present drive to deliver on Moore's Law is causing angst. On one hand we have the chip manufacturers bemoaning costs and missed technology deadlines. On the other those trying to produce the next generation of lithography equipment have real technological issues in the complexities (or impossibilities) in further extending immersion multiple patterning or the lack of suitable power sources for EUV lithography. Creating a roadmap is one thing but delivering is another matter.

Monomaths or polymaths?

Last month I visited Westminster Abbey, I viewed the tablet in memory of Thomas Young and walked on the stones covering the mortal remains of Isaac Newton. Not quite standing on the shoulders of giants but as close as I will ever get. Both Young and Newton were polymaths. I worry that we are in an age of over concentration on monomaths. Specialists have the time and focus to drill down to establish new scientific knowledge but are we creating silos, imposing barriers and missing opportunities? Whilst the depth and complexity of modern science probably precludes recreating the historical polymath the development of human thought is not the sole preserve of the specialist. Innovations often come from a fresh eye from another discipline. For example, the marriage of physics and biology showed how nerves work and DNA is structured. Are we in an age of overly preaching intellectual monogamy when we would all benefit from a dose of intellectual polygamy?