There are fewer of them this time, so I'll keep them above the fold.
- Graphene
makes for better optical displays - physicsworld.com"According to the same group of
researchers that first fabricated the 2D sheets of carbon nearly four
years ago, graphene has the ideal optical properties to form the
transparent electrodes in liquid crystal displays (LCDs)." - Is
graphene the new silicon?"Research results from University of
Maryland physicists show that graphene, a new material that combines
aspects of semiconductors and metals, could be a leading candidate to
replace silicon in applications ranging from high-speed computer chips
to bioch - Silicon
chips for optical quantum technologies"The team were able to fabricate their
controlled-NOT gate from silica wave-guides on a silicon chip,
resulting in a miniaturised device and high-performance
operation." - Cooperative
classrooms lead to better friendships, higher achievement in young
adolescents"The findings suggest that when
teachers structured their classrooms more cooperatively, students felt
more support and connection with their peers, had better success on
academic tests and tasks, and sustained higher levels of achievement
because of the - Man
tells police 'I've been raped by a wombat' - 27 Mar 2008 - NZ Herald:
New Zealand National news"Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris
Stringer told the court alcohol played a large role in Cradock's
life."
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A big step in improving the efficiency of photovoltaic cells in on the horizon. A paper published over the weekend in Nature Physics describes the ability of a substance called Graphene to convert a high percentage of the energy from sunlight into electricity.
Last week's Reader Request Thread produced a bunch of good suggestions, some of which I'll be responding to this week as I put the last touches on the book draft and send it off.
I'm on vacation this week, and taking this opportunity to clear out a large backlog of news items that I flagged as interesting, but never got around to commenting on.
The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Geim and Novoselov for their work on graphene, a material consisting of one-atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms in a hexagonal array.
Cut the crap with graphene,
1) Graphene with length and width specs at will, 10^15 sheets at a whack, arises from plebeian chemistry,
http://www.coronene.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/polymer.png
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/jacsat/2008/130/i13/abs/ja7102…
2) Gold trace circuitry is easy - etch, e-beam, ion mill, lithography, offset electroless plating...
3) Terminate (1) with (revealable) thiols or other aurophilic moieties, then soak (2). Nano-transistors build themselves, five billion gates/CPU within minutes, for a hundred 20 nm architecture quad-core CPUs on a 30 cm diameter silicon production wafer.
Stop trying to do it and do it. Hire a chemist, solve the problem, then fire the chemist and reward your managers. Bloody stop whining.
I think that these five links in that order cut out an interesting dramatic arc.