Tiny Solar Cells Built To Power Microscopic Machines

The cells were made of an organic polymer and were joined together in an experiment aimed at proving their ability to power tiny devices that can be used to detect chemical leaks and for other applications, says Xiaomei Jiang, who led the research at the University of South Florida.

Traditional solar cells, such as the commercial type installed on rooftops, use a brittle backing made of silicon, the same sort of material upon which computer chips are built. By contrast, organic solar cells rely upon a polymer that has the same electrical properties of silicon wafers but can be dissolved and printed onto flexible material.

"I think these materials have a lot more potential than traditional silicon," says Jiang. "They could be sprayed on any surface that is exposed to sunlight -- a uniform, a car, a house."

Jiang and her colleagues fabricated their array of 20 tiny solar cells as a power source for running a microscopic sensor for detecting dangerous chemicals and toxins. The detector, known as a microeletromechanical system (MEMS) device, is built with carbon nanotubes and has already been tested using ordinary DC power supplied by batteries. When fully powered and hooked into a circuit, the carbon nanotubes can sensitively detect particular chemicals by measuring the electrical changes that occur when chemicals enter the tubes. The type of chemical can be distinguished by the exact change in the electrical signal.

The device needs a 15-volt power source to work, so far and Jiang's solar cell array can provide about half of that -- up to 7.8 volts in their laboratory tests. The next step, she says, is to optimize the device to increase the voltage and then combine the miniature solar array to the carbon nanotube chemical sensors. Jiang estimates they will be able to demonstrate this level of power with their next generation solar array by the end of the year.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081106121938.htm

Ubuntu to debut on smartphones

Mobile phone chip designer Arm has announced an alliance with the makers of the Ubuntu open source software.

The deal will produce a version of the operating system for small net-browsing computers known as netbooks.

It marks a departure for Arm, which before now has been best known for designing the chips inside smartphones and feature phones.

The new operating system for Arm-powered machines looks set to be available in April 2009.

Battery power

Rob Coombs, director of mobile marketing at Arm, said he expected to see the first devices running the version of Ubuntu by the time of the Computex show in June.

The devices will be based around the Arm7 architecture and, in particular, the Cortex A8 and A9 processors.

"It's significant in that it is taking Arm onto larger screen formats," he said.

The resultant netbooks were likely to sport screens up to 25cm (10in) across and be able to run good quality video, web browsers, and the well-known suite of Open Office programs, said Mr Coombs.

Equally, he said, these netbook devices would have the long battery life enjoyed by many mobiles.

"They'll be for people who want a small internet-centric device," he said.

Small form-factor notebooks have proved hugely popular with many people looking for a small device that they can use to go online while out and about.

The interest in the market sector is being driven by devices such as the XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child project and the Eee machine from Asus.

Arm produces chip designs that firms such as TI, Qualcomm and many others turn into processors that power 70-80% of the world's mobiles.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7729978.stm

Innovator in medical electronics

Minneapolis--California's Silicon Valley and Route 128 outside Boston are famous as hotbeds of invention and incubators of new companies. But during the 1970s and 1980s, new technology-based companies kept popping up in Minneapolis and St. Paul like baby bunnies in springtime. The Twin Cities then were a place where someone with vision and the willingness to run risks could put together a company and make it work.

In 1977, Don Maurer had been Director, Neurological Research and Engineering at Medtronic, the largest medical electronics firm in the country, for three years. His salary was in the range from $55,000 to $60,000--at the time quite a comfortable range. "He was a very inquisitive person," says Earl Bakken, who founded Medtronic in 1949. "He was eager, honest, professional, very anxious to learn. He's determined to succeed, a hard worker, good with people." When the company founder holds these views of you, your position is fairly solid. At 41, Maurer seemed well-established in a satisfying career with a fine company.

So he quit! Maurer wasn't satisfied at Medtronic, he decided to start his own business. "If you're too thoughtful, and you're too introspective, you're liable to decide to stay where you're at. But I always like to challenge myself. In a way, I tend to put myself in a bind where I have to follow through. And that's what I did when I started my own company," says Maurer.

Some people who knew and liked Maurer had their doubts about his decision to break away from Medtronic, though they wished him well. Dwayne Murray, a Medtronic engineer for 20 years, remembers when Maurer made the leap.

source-http://www.designnews.com/article/6123-Innovator_in_medical_electronics.php

The mobile future is calling

Developers are being asked to devise applications for mobile devices so users can "access it, mix it up, save it, and store it".

The plea to harness the creativity of the internet and apply it on mobile phones was made by Mitchell Baker the chair of Firefox developer Mozilla.

All of this functionality "should be the same if I am on a laptop or phone, at home or on a train," says Ms Baker.

"The breadth of the new ideas floating around and the different ways that people are thinking about information and using the web further away from browsing into more personalised information is exciting," said Ms Baker, speaking to the BBC News website at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

She is convinced that mobile phones will be one of the forces that will help people make better use of information pertinent to them

"Information that matters to me is what the future is about," she said.

Transforming experience

For Marc Davis, Yahoo's social media guru, there's no doubt that the future is about mobility - with the numbers of handsets about to hit 4 billion there's plenty of evidence of their popularity.

We are about 18 months from an incredible boom in mobile applications and mobile adoption Mike Butcher, TechCrunch

"The mobile web is not just about accessing the web from your phone," he said "Mobile phones that are location aware, temporarily situated and socially connected will transform our experience of the web, the world and ourselves."

"The next web," he says, "will be about place and time."

He suspects that we are near the point at which more people will be able to access the web via their phone than their desk top computer.

Open strategy

Echoing Mozilla's call to developers, Mr Davis is urging them to get involved in being part of Yahoo's mobile future. As a way to convince his audience he highlighted the company's earlier announcement at the Expo called Yahoo Open Strategy (Y!OS).

"Openness is deeply in our DNA and we are coming out as an 'open company' now in a big way. So we are making it possible for developers to write an application, to write a widget and open this up."

Add-on applications known as widgets are starting to show up on phones

Yahoo is not the only one championing widgets. Mobile giant Nokia has announced the next stage of its Widget platform for Symbian Series 60 smartphones .

The new stage will give developers access to GPS, contacts book, communications stacks, e-mail and SMS functions on the phone.

"These are the kinds of things that really make a phone unique," says David Rivas, vice president for Nokia's Series 60 technology management devices group.

"We are at a real crossroads in terms of mobile phone technology and it is this availability of web technology on the mobile device that signals that crossroads."

But when can consumers expect results? Not for a while said Mike Butcher from technology blog TechCrunch.

"We are not there yet," he said. "We are about 18 months from an incredible boom in mobile applications and mobile adoption."

"I think there are two things that are going to happen," he said. "Firstly the mobile platform is being opened up for other people to create interesting applications. And the second is the handsets are constantly improving which means the overall experience promises to be good."