Hoist the Colours

New Chip Design Fuses Electronics and Photonics By Combining Silicon and Graphene

Physicist Swastik Kar and mechanical engineer Yung Joon Jung lay belts of carbon nanotubes on top of a silicon wafer. The junction created by the intersection of the two materials proved to be highly sensitive to light; shining a laser spot on it caused a sharp rise in the light-induced current. That allowed the pair to build logic circuits that could be manipulated both electrically and optically.

“What we’ve done is built a tiny device where one input can be a voltage and the other input can be light,” Kar says. The researchers built an optoelectronic AND gate and a two-bit optoelectronic ADDER/OR gate. They also built a four-bit digital-to-analog converter. Shining spots of light onto an array of these junctions converts the digital signal of the laser into an analog current, with the strength of the current depending on the on/off pattern of the laser.

Jung creates the nanotubes in solution, and they can then be placed on a patterned silicon/silicon oxide substrate, so the technology should be compatible with existing CMOS processes, he says. The process should also be reproducible and scalable to large numbers of junctions.

Using light to both move data around a chip and perform some of the logic operations should save time and make the chip work faster, according to the pair. Just how much faster they can’t say yet, as this is only an early step toward an actual chip.

Green energy from the bottom of the sea

First we got wind turbines to generate energy and now it seems scientists have found a way to tap the energy force of waves….

The device, pictured above, involves two air chambers: as a wave passes over the top of the first chamber, the pressure inside increases, forcing air through a passageway to the second chamber. Inside the passageway is a turbine, so the passing air is actually what generates the electricity. As the wave continues on, it raises the pressure inside the second chamber, pushing the air back through the turbine — importantly, it is a bidirectional turbine — and back into the first chamber. Another wave, another cycle. Repeat.

General Celes Chere by Armesan

So explaination time.

Recently the insanely talented Shoomlah posted a huuuuuuuge list of historical clothing resources on her blog. Lately we’ve been replaying the old Final Fantasy games in our household, and that blog post got me thinking about how a lot of the female characters’ aren’t really wearing armor so much as a costume. This has always bothered me on characters that are supposed to be in any sort of combat, male or female, so I decided to do some redesigns trying to keep with the setting and original costumes, but adjusting it to have actual armor (ceremonial or otherwise). Really this was to scratch an itch I have about female warrior characters and impractical armor, as well as an exercise in keeping things simple coloring/shading wise.

'Princess…! No need to worry. I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story… I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man…

Favorite Final Fantasy Characters (In No Particular Order): Balthier Bunansa, Final Fantasy XII/XII: Revenant Wings

The Phytoplankton Emiliania huxleyi Coccospheres up close and personal IMAGES: Natural History Museum, BBC, Rutgers/Woods Hole

Like other coccolithophores, Emiliania huxleyi is a single-celled phytoplankton covered with uniquely ornamented calcite disks called coccoliths (also informally known as liths or scales).  [WP]

It is one of the youngest species on Earth, appearing only around 250,000 years ago, about the same time as Homo sapiens.

E. huxleyi has a global population of about 7 x 1022 cells scattered across the world ocean and adapted to a wide range of environments.

It can grow explosively to produce massive blooms of milky water detectable from space.

It has a Cheshire Cat-like ability to escape from trouble by changing form. [Source: Natural History Museum, London]

BOTTOM IMAGE: Scanning electron microscope image of a partially dissolved Emiliania huxleyi coccosphere

Ocean acidification poses a potential threat to all marine organisms which produce calcareous skeletons.