Photo: Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics
Source: IEEE.ORG
4 May 2010—Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, led by Gerhard Rempe, have created a system based on a single atom that they’re calling a ”quantum optical transistor.” The transistor could someday serve as part of a quantum computer or as a node of a quantum data network.
”We’re doing what people in the Bell Laboratories did in the 1950s,” says Eden Figueroa, one of the physicists involved in the project. ”They were inventing the transistor, and people thought they were crazy. But 50 years later, everyone is using a laptop.” Now, he says, ”we’re inventing the quantum transistor that may be used in computers 30 years from now.”
Their process relies on a complex light manipulation technique called electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). In EIT, one beam of light controls the properties of another, much as the gate voltage controls current through a regular transistor. The researchers demonstrated EIT through the mediation of a single atom, which is a first; previously the technique was applied to hundreds of thousands of atoms in a gas.
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Alex Internet, Sci/tech, Technology Internet, Sci/tech, Technology
It’s a good idea to use a bookmarklet to download videos from YouTube.
You could save the following link as a bookmarklet by dragging it to your Links bar (in Firefox, Safari) or right-clicking and adding it to your favorites (in Internet Explorer, Opera):
When you want to download a YouTube video, just click on “Get YouTube video” and the bookmarklet adds a small link below the video’s description: “Download: standard MP4“. Click on that link and you’ll download the video. For some videos, you’ll also see the option to download the HD version like – “Download: standard MP4 | HD 720p | HD 1080p“.
original post:
Download YouTube Videos as MP4 Files
Alex Home audio video, Video, YouTube mp4, Video, YouTube
The new Wallpaper page has been created with the high resolution images for the desktop.
Alex wallpaper Christmas, wallpaper
Windows 7 packages sold at a rate of three per minute during a special midnight opening of an electrical store to mark the launch.
More than 500 people queued outside PC World in central London to be the first to get a copy when the store opened at midnight on October 21.
The DSGi group, which includes Currys, Dixons and PC World, reported a huge surge in trade throughout the morning.
“Within an hour we were up 180% on sales,” said a spokesperson.
The figure was set against a standard day of Vista sales.
DSGi’s top selling upgrade was the home premium family pack, which contains licences for up to three users. Read more…
Alex Technology Technology
A Pentagon-sponsored project to control flying insects remotely has sent ripples of excitement across the scientific pond.
Part insect, part machine, the “cyborg beetle” has been tested successfully by its developers at the University of California, Berkeley.
Video footage shows a beetle being “flown” around a room by a man using a laptop.
At one point it is tethered to a transparent plastic plate, and its tiny limbs can be seen twitching in response to the operator’s joy stick.
The developers, Michel Maharbiz and Hirotaka Sato, “demonstrated the remote control of insects in free flight via an implantable radio-equipped miniature neural stimulating system”, they told the current edition of Frontiers in Neuroscience magazine.
Noel Sharkey, professor of robotics and artificial intelligence at the UK’s Sheffield University, says that while attempts to control insects such as cockroaches are not new, this is the first time man has managed to remotely control a flying insect.
What intrigues him is the Berkeley project’s ultimate military application. Read more…
Alex Biotech, Sci/tech, Technology Biotech, Sci/tech, Technology
From: smashingmagazine.com
Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data – tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years.
So what can we expect? Which innovative ideas are already being used? And what are the most creative approaches to present data in ways we’ve never thought before?
Let’s take a look at the most interesting modern approaches to data visualization as well as related articles, resources and tools.
1. Mindmaps
Trendmap 2007
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Alex Design, Graph Design, Graph
from: NASA
Remember the LCROSS project, the one in which NASA plans to fire a huge exploding rocket into the moon? The goal is to eject debris from the surface of one of moon’s craters and discovering whether there’s frozen water there.
Well, the time to sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and watch the mission as it unfolds is drawing near. Early tomorrow, on October 9, 6:15 a.m. EDT/3:15 a.m. PDT, NASA will start a live TV broadcast that will include live footage from the spacecraft camera, real-time telemetry based animation, expert commentary, and possibly some live footage from the 88-inch telescope located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Alex Sci/tech Sci/tech
from: OttawaSitizen.com
OTTAWA — Google has activated its controversial Street View service in Canada, providing address-by-address photographic views of Ottawa and at least 10 other cities.
The service, already available in the U.S. and other countries, is certain to do two things:
1. Send everyone with a computer to the Google site to look up their homes and other addresses of interest; Read more…
Alex Internet, Technology Internet, Technology
By Priya Ganapati
From: Wired.Com
Touchscreen displays are going to get a big boost from Windows 7’s built-in support for multitouch tech — but there’s a hitch: Flicking, scrolling and opening programs can be cumbersome when stubby fingers meet Windows’ tiny icons and menu items.
“PCs with touchscreens look cool, but what do you with them?” says Jennifer Colegrove, a director at Display Search. “When it comes to the iPhone there are 50,000 applications that use touch — but what do you do an PC with touch?”
To help answer that question, some companies are building touchscreen-centric “skins” for Windows aimed at making tactile navigation more pleasant. Two big PC companies, HP and Lenovo, as well as a startup called BumpTop, have built touch-oriented user interfaces that will run on top of Windows. Read more…
Alex wired wired
From:Wired.Com
By Ryan Singel
Skype on the iPhone is now OK by AT&T, the company said in letters to Apple and the FCC.
AT&T’s change of heart comes just after the FCC controversially announced that it was planning to extend internet openness rules to mobile networks. The wireless carriers are fighting back, arguing that wireless networks are not robust enough to operate without intense network management.
AT&T made no mention of the FCC in its announcement, crediting the change instead to a routine examination of its policies.
“IPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago,” said Ralph de la Vega, AT&T’s president of Mobility & Consumer Markets. “Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer.”
Now the only thing standing between iPhone users and VoIP applications is Apple and its inscrutable app-approval process. Read more…
Alex wired wired
