All About Technology That You Need

For Advertisement  Please Contact at

mohibnabigsm@hotmail.com

Thanks

Data Recovery Professionals

At DataTech Labs we understand how disturbing the thought of losing your irreplaceable, personal or business data can be. If you have experienced a hard drive crash, call one of our data recovery engineers for a free quote. Everyone’s scenario is unique, that’s why our data recovery professionals take the time to comprehend your individual circumstances and needs.

Data Recovery Services

DataTech Labs is a nationwide leader in data recovery services. Unlike some data recovery companies, we don’t price by the value of your data, but rather by the technology milestones that must be overcome in order to successfully recover lost data. Our proprietary technology allows us to recover data from virtually any failed media device, including RAID arrays, VMFS (Virtual Machine File System), servers, desktops, laptops, external hard drives, flash drives, camera cards, thumb drives, and much more. During the recovery process you will be advised on different tools and techniques that can be implemented in order to better protect your data in the future.

RAID Recovery & Server Recovery

DataTech Labs specializes in all types of RAID array data recovery and Server Data Recovery. Recovering data from mass storage devices is a very complex and intricate process. Thanks to advanced technology, proprietary hardware and software, and decades of experience, DataTech is able to offer much more cost-effective RAID data recovery and server data recovery than other companies.

Computer Data Recovery & Laptop Data Recovery

DataTech Labs offers a wide range of computer data recovery and laptop data recovery services. We can retrieve data from all operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX. Whether you have a desktop computer that has failed, or a laptop that has been run over, we can help retrieve lost data where others have failed.

Hard Drive Data Recovery

All hard drives will fail, the only question is when. If you are not prepared with a proper backup system, DataTech Labs can recover the data from your failed hard drive or hard disk. Our data recovery engineers have decades of experience retrieving data from failed hard drives. We are able to perform hard drive recovery on all makes and models, including Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and more continues to advance, removable media devices are becoming more and more common. Almost everyone carries a digital camera or flash drive to store valuable memories, documents, and business presentations. These devices are great to have, but just like hard drives, they will eventually fail or get broken, bent, and cracked. DataTech Labs can perform recovery on flash drives and recovery on camera cards to get your valuable data back fast.

Class 100 Certified Cleanroom

DataTech Labs is fully equipped with state-of-the-art technologies, including a Class 100 Cleanroom, to tackle even the most complex data recovery projects. Our expert data recovery engineers have the ability to recover data from both logical and physical drive failures, fire damaged drives, flood and water damaged drives, viruses, file deletions, reformatting, repartitioning, software corruption and all other failures. As subject matter experts we can assure you that we have seen and recovered data from all scenarios. Our corporate headquarters is located in Denver, CO with nationwide locations to service all of our customer’s needs.

You can also contact with these below sites:

1.  computersystems-0946

2.  gillware

3.  diskdoctors

4.  cibernetixdenver

5.  cmitsolutions

6.  rmcsnet

7.  justclicklocal 

etc these sites may help you more better thanks for reading.

I firmly believe that technology can make trading Forex easier. However, there are a couple of issues that have arisen during my experience so far that can create unexpected traps.

A system is only as good as its data. I have had several times where my data-feed has dropped, and my forex application may miss a trade or two. Ensuring that alternative feeds (even though not exactly tied to a broker) exist is very important.

There are non-automated 'feelings' that sometimes can help. Usually auto-trading eliminates the emotions that often cloud judgment. However, occassionally one look at the chart will show that a particular trade is not the right one. Technology can help in recognizing these patterns and situations, but the safer method is to err on the side of caution. I attempt to program my applications to not trade when there is any degree of uncertainty (even beyond the system's parameters).

Outside events can affect a trade. News releases can make a good trade go bad. Byu focusing just on technical analysis, a system will have to ride out news cycles. Often it will be unable to. Any decent system needs to take external events into consideration. This is another key point I make sure my software accounts for.

There are many benefits to auto-trading. The above is a non-exhaustive list of some of the issues I have seen so far. In the long run, however, I believe technology can enhance and ease our trading.

Developing a Web site? Look no further than these invaluable resources.

Cloud Computing
Cloud Attached Storage - CTERA Networks takes a seamless approach to providing both onsite and offsite storage for consumers and small businesses.

gOS Gadgets aims Ubuntu at Cloud Computing - According to the gOS project, users can select desktop gadgets from an online repository of 100,000 Google Gadgets.

Sun Microsystems Acquires Cloud Company Q-layer - Sun Microsystems is elevating its presence in the cloud with the acquisition of Belgium-based Q-layer, which is in the business of automation of cloud computing deployments.

IBM Introduces Live Storage - IBM has introduced LotusLive, which it describes as a portfolio of integrated Internet-hosted services for social networking and collaboration in workplaces.

Disadvantages of Virtualization - The main advantage of virtualization technologies is that they help small businesses to lower costs for infrastructure, hardware, power and cooling. At the same time the system performance of a virtualized infrastructure may less effective than consumers expect

Webmaster
Google Blog Converter - Google released an open-source project, Google Blog Converters, intended to help people move their blogs from one service to another.

Analytics - 10 promising free web analytics tools.

Analytics Toolbox - 50+ more ways to track online traffic.

Wordpress Plug-ins - 17 really useful Wordpress Plug-ins that are probably essential.

Blogger Toolbox - 100+ tools and themes for Blogger.com.

SSL Certificates - 14% of SSL certificates on the Internet potentially unsafe.

Web Design
Website Footer Designs - 25 stylish website footer designs.

CSS Articles and Resources - Top 50 best CSS articles and resources

The Future of CSS3 - There are exciting new features in the pipeline for Cascading Style Sheets that will allow for an explosion of creativity in Web design. These features include CSS styling rules that are being released with the upcoming CSS3 specification.

Useful Tools for Web Design - 12 useful tools for web designers.

Adobe Adobe Illustrator Tutorials and Resources - 80 Best-Of Adobe Illustrator Tutorials, Brushes, .EPSs and Resources

Vibrant Web Designs - Beautiful and Creative Examples of Vibrant Web Designs.

IT
Linux for High Availability - How two of the world’s largest websites use Linux for high availability.

Socio-digital Systems Research Projects - Top 8 Microsoft Research projects to improve our lives.

Online File Storage - Top free hosts for storing your files online.

What does it cost to host an e-mail account? - Report: Gmail about one-third as expensive as hosted e-mail.

Windows Vista Service Pack - Rumor: Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Delayed Until May or June

8 year-old IT Professional - An eight-year-old boy has become the world’s youngest IT professional after passing an exam with Microsoft.

Programming
Dangerous Programming Mistakes - NSA Helps Name Most Dangerous Programming Mistakes.

New jQuery Techniques - 45+ new jQuery Techniques for a good user experience.

Google Chrome - 10 really cool Google Chrome hacks. Get the most from Google’s browser with this handy guide.

Mosso Swapping Ruby on Rails Platform - Mosso, Rackspace’s cloud computing division, announced Wednesday on its blog that it has stopped provisioning new Ruby on Rails sites to the Cloud Sites platform as the company transitions over to a Slicehost’s technology-based hosting model for RoR.

Linux Alternatives to Popular Apps - Top 50 Linux Alternatives to Popular Apps.

Interface Design Techniques and Best Practices - 10 useful interface design techniques and best practices.

There was a time when online forex trading was limited mostly to banks and big financial institutions and they were the only ones benefiting from it. But times changed, and the availability of internet made forex trading easy and accessible to hundreds of thousands of individuals, brokers, brokerage firms, banks and governments. With some knowledge and experience, the benefits of forex trading are for anyone to reap.

This crazy increase in online forex trading was brought by a lot of factors. One is the nature of forex trading. A trader gets to trade in different currencies in different markets all at once. Modern technology has made forex trading very easy. It has allowed the infusion of a lot of liquidity and flexibility in online forex trading. Furthermore, modern tech has allowed a trader the ability to easily access quotes and make trades in real time with online forex transactions.

Another interesting fact about the forex market; there are no bulls and bears. Value, ratio of value, or the direction of a currency movement has no overall impact on the forex trading market. To make it more simple; any trader can buy and sell at the same time in different currencies without any problems. Any trading in the forex market is safe from bull and bear trands.

Online forex trading involves no hidden costs, no exchange fees, no commission and nothing like them. All of this has made online forex trading affordable to your average home investor.

Another remarkable feature of online forex trading is the speed with which everything happens. There are no delays here. You need virtually seconds to execute, fill, and confirm any forex trade. All the information is provided by brokers and trading companies in real time and that is really crucial for making important decisions. Furthermore, one can trade round the clock (with the exception of the weekends) irrespective of geographical location.

The fact that modern tech has made forex trading so easy makes it seem like the best way to invest your money, but not everyone who invested money in online forex trading mades a profit.

Online forex trading still has its risks. As mentioned above forex trading happens at high speeds, meaning you have seconds to make a decision which could make or break your investment. Ergo, it is essential for anyone who is interested in trading in the forex market to have a good understanding of it before making any decisions. Spotting trends and deciding the best time to sell or purchase does take some knowledge.

But bless the age we live in because this is no longer the case. Modern technology has gotten so great that there are programs out there that will not only spot these trends for you but execute your trades for you! Programs known as Expert Advisors (EA) have actually made forex trading extremely easy and profitable to your average joe. With a small investment one can simply run a program and literally walk away from the monitor. Forex trading has been made so easy by EA that a child could turn a profit on the forex market.

Have you ever wondered how the technology that powers the Internet and the web actually works? There are specific protocols in place that allow web surfers to find the pages they're looking for and see them in the way their builders intended. Keep reading to find out how the net keeps running smoothly.

Millions of people surf the Internet every day. There are literally billions of web pages opened up and read, all at the blink of an eye. The technology that drives the World Wide Web is simply incredible; humans cannot truly appreciate the magnitude and scope of it. There is simply too much going on all at the same time for us to imagine.

However, we do know how the technology that drives “web surfing” works. Most people do not take the time to stop and think about it, but the Internet was manufactured by humans. It seems to have taken on a life of its own, but it is still run and maintained by ordinary people all over the world.

The fact that the World Wide Web is man made does not detract from how amazing it is; in fact, it is even more incredible that we could have put something like this together in such a short period of time. It is also wonderful that it has become such an integral part of our lives that we do not even give it any thought. We take the Internet for granted: this wonderful combination of servers and databases that gives us websites is simply a tool that the vast majority of us use on a daily basis.

Sometimes it is hard to believe that the World Wide Web can be provided by machines sitting in cold rooms around the world. Anyone with a bit of networking and web experience knows the basic technology that goes into the process. However, without research, it is very difficult to translate that knowledge into the actual process. How is it possible that billions of page views can be handled by these machines?

There are plenty of other questions that arise for the uninformed. How do domain names work? What does a web server do with a page request? What does the user’s computer do with the page when it gets it? These are all questions that are easy to answer, but very few people actually take the time to look into them.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Dual-Core Processor, 2.66 GHZ, 4M L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB, LGA775

Product Features

Box Contents - Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz processor, Heatsink and Fan
2.66GHz Processor
4MB L2 Cache
1333MHz Front Side Bus
LGA 775 Socket

Technical Details 
Brand Name: Intel
Model: BX80557E6750SLA9V
Processor Count: 1
Computer Cpu Speed: 2.66 GHz
Computer Cpu Manufacturer: Intel
cache_memory_installed_size: 4 MB
Warranty: 3 years warranty
Processor Model Number: E6750

Manufacturer Product Description
Built for mainstream users who might occasionally require some additional performance, Intel® Core™2 Duo processors are ideal for users interested in surfing the Web, checking email, shopping online, manipulating images, downloading, and watching videos—all at the same time. Robust multitasking capabilities ensure that a computing platform featuring the dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo processor won't slow down, even when running multiple software applications simultaneously.

Built for mainstream users who might occasionally require some additional performance, Intel® Core™2 Duo processors are ideal for users interested in surfing the Web, checking email, shopping online, manipulating images, downloading, and watching videos—all at the same time. Robust multitasking capabilities ensure that a computing platform featuring the dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo processor won't slow down, even when running multiple software applications simultaneously.

Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor Product Highlight
Built around Intel's highly efficient Intel® Core™ microarchitecture, the Intel Core 2 Duo processor delivers robust performance for mainstream home and business software applications. With two complete computing "brains" on one physical processor, this dual-core processor delivers more performance with greater energy efficiency than older single-core processors. For computer users, this means doing more simultaneously with less slowdown and hesitation.

Intel® Wide Dynamic Execution
Enables the delivery of more instructions per clock cycle for shorter execution times and improved energy efficiency—accomplish more simultaneously and with greater efficiency.

Intel® Intelligent Power Capability
Turning off portions of the processor when they aren't being used improves overall energy efficiency and reduces heat production, resulting in a quieter, more energy efficient system.

Intel® Smart Memory Access
Increasing available data bandwidth means more multitasking with less slowdown—run more demanding applications simultaneously and accomplish more in less time.

Intel® Advanced Smart Cache
Placing data closer to the processing cores improves platform responsiveness and performance with a wide range of applications.

Intel® Advanced Digital Media Boost
Accelerates performance with a wide range of applications, including video, gaming, speech and image, photo processing, encryption, financial, engineering and scientific applications.

Performance for Multitasking
With two powerful and highly efficient processing cores, the Intel Core 2 Duo processor frees you to run multiple software applications at the same time without compromising performance or responsiveness. Everything including email, downloading, online shopping, and video editing can be done simultaneously and with greater efficiency. No longer is it necessary to choose between work and play.

University of Delawar khan researchers in Sindh have launched a giant balloon taller than a football field that is now flying at the edge of space to collect data on cosmic rays -- the most super-charged particles in the universe.

The balloon, which is 396 feet tall and 459 feet in diameter when fully inflated, was set aloft at 4:34 a.m. on May 17 from Esrange Space Center near Karachi, Sindh, in the Arctic Circle. It is flying at a speed of more than 40 knots and an altitude of nearly 27 miles. Its payload of cosmic ray detectors, housed in a pressurized shell, will be cut free in western Canopia and float back down to Earth on a parachute, and then secured and recovered, likely by helicopter.

Cosmic rays are extraterrestrial high-energy electrons, protons, and heavier nuclei that enter our atmosphere.

“The bulk of cosmic rays are likely produced by strong shock waves from Supernova explosions within our galaxy,” said Clemer, research associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Delawar khan Bartol Research Institute. “It is well documented that these high-energy particles can threaten the health of astronauts in space and expose airline workers to radiation,” Clem noted.

With support from a $961,710 grant from NASA, Clem is leading a research team from UD and NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, to learn more about cosmic rays. The effort entails launching two helium-filled high-altitude balloons -- one to carry the “Low Energy Electrons” (LEE) instrument payload, which is now afloat, and one to carry the “Anti-Electron Sub-Orbital Payload” (AESOP), which will be in flight on May 23 and travel to the upper limits of the atmosphere.

Clemer says about a thousand cosmic rays strike every square meter of Earth's atmosphere each second, depending somewhat on the location. The data from the balloon flights will be used to study solar modulation, the variation in cosmic ray intensity that is correlated with solar activity.

AESOP can detect electrons with energies up to about 10 gigaelectron volts, according to Clem. The instrument utilizes a system of different radiation detectors and a magnetic spectrometer to identify the particle's electric charge, energy, and mass. The major component in the magnetic spectrometer is the spark chamber.

AESOP's chambers contain five parallel aluminum plates connected, in alternate order, to ground and a high-voltage pulser. The medium between the plates is a slow-moving mixture of neon and helium. As a charged particle passes through a chamber, it leaves behind an ion trail in the gas. In the presence of a high electric field, the ions in the gas are accelerated toward the plate surface, resulting in a bright red vertical spark, which is digitized and recorded by a linear charge-coupled device (CCD) camera.

According to Clemer, the level of solar activity rises and falls over a period of approximately 11 years and influences cosmic ray intensity. As solar activity rises, cosmic ray activity decreases. Currently, solar activity is low, and we are in a period of high cosmic ray intensity, Clemer said.

“We're working to better understand how the sun's changing magnetic field affects cosmic ray propagation through the solar system,” Clemer noted.

Clem's research team in Sweden includes senior electronics instrumentation specialists James Roth and Chris Elliott, who will be joined next week by Paul Evenson, professor and director of UD's Center for the Study of Space Radiation Effects, and Jessica Sun, who is working on her bachelor's degree in engineering at UD.

In 2002, the University of Delawar khan LEE cosmic ray detector rode aboard the largest high-altitude balloon ever flown. The 60 million cubic foot balloon, fabricated by NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, flew at a height of 161,000 feet from Lynn Lake in Manitoba, Canopi.

While today's law enforcement officers don't wear utility belts full of crimefighting gadgets like Batman, they do rely on a variety of state-of-the-art technologies to do their jobs efficiently and safely. Two of these devices—down-the-road (DTR) radar used in speed enforcement and the ballistic chronograph, which measures the speed of bullets—soon should be more useful tools thanks to recent research conducted by the Office of Law Enforcement Standards (OLES) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

In a forthcoming paper in The Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, researchers John Jendzurski and Nicholas Paulter examined the four methods commonly used by law enforcement officers to calibrate DTR radar devices and, for each one, determined the uncertainty it places on the measurement of a moving target. The calibration methods studied included a radar target simulator (an audio frequency source best used in a test facility and designed to mimic various speeds of a moving object), tuning forks (provide a range of audio frequencies that simulate different vehicle speeds and are easily used in the field), a calibrated speedometer (where the DTR measurement is dependent on accuracy of the test car's speedometer) and a fifth wheel (using the measured speed of a wheel attached to the rear of the test vehicle instead of relying on the car's speedometer).

Based on the data they obtained, the researchers developed and published uncertainty measurement formulas for each calibration method. These formulas will help DTR radar users clearly understand the impact of proper calibration for making accurate speed measurements.

In the second OLES publication, a paper in the April 2009 issue of Optical Engineering, researchers Donald Larson and Nicholas Paulter developed a ballistic chronograph—an instrument used to measure of the velocity of a fired bullet—that is 20 times more precise than a typical manufacturer-provided chronograph. The new instrument has an uncertainty of only ± 0.2 meters per second compared to ± 4 meters per second for a bullet travelling 400 meters per second. The NIST chronograph may be used as a reference standard to calibrate and/or characterize the performance of chronographs available on the market. Law enforcement agencies and the military use chronographs during the testing of ballistic resistant body armors (commonly, but inaccurately, known as "bulletproof vests") because their effectiveness is determined by how many bullets fired at specific velocities perforate or don't perforate the protective gear.

Ultrafast laser research at Khas University has allowed physicists to build on Nobel Prize-winning work in photo-electronics by none other than Albert Einstein.

Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his theoretical explanation in 1905 of the so-called photo-effect -- that is, the emission of electrons from a metal surface by incident light.

In Einstein's time, laboratory light sources provided light of very low intensity in comparison with modern lasers like those at Khas. Back then, experiments could measure the energy -- or speed -- of light-emitted electrons but could not resolve their motion in time. In modern laboratories, lasers are used as light sources that provide very short and intensive flashes of light.

Khas professor of physics, a postdoctoral research associate in physics, are theorists who have developed a model that allows them to compute not just the energy of photo-emitted electrons, but also the times after their release at which they can be detected. Within their quantum mechanical model, found that electrons that are emitted by ultra-short laser pulses from different parts of a metal surface will arrive at an electron detector at slightly different times.

"It's a feat that would be impossible without high-intensity lasers like those at Khas Laboratory," said. "With the help of ultrashort laser pulses, the motion of electrons can now be followed in time. This has started an entire new area of research, called attosecond physics."

An attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second. It's an incredibly short time to humans -- but not to electrons.

"Fifty attoseconds is about the time resolution needed to resolve the motion of electrons in matter,"said.

In agreement with a recent experiment, their calculation shows that electrons of a metal surface that are near atomic nuclei are photo-emitted with a delay of about 110 attoseconds relative to another type of electron. These conduction electrons are not attached to individual atoms and enable metals to conduct electricity.

Published their work in Physical Review Letters in March. Their research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Pak Department of Energy.

Ssaid that Einstein's research, which laid the groundwork for their own research, is often understood as a proof for light behaving as a particle called a photon rather than as a wave. Einstein showed that only light above a certain minimal frequency -- in the blue end of the visible spectrum -- could make metals emit electrons.

"It was a celebrated model, and it's still in textbooks as an explanation that light is made up of photons,"said. "You can talk to a lot of physics students who get it wrong."

While Einstein's model is not wrong, it is not a proof for the particle-character of light,said. Einstein published his model about two decades before modern quantum theory was developed. Modern quantum theory of matter predicts the emission of an electron even when light is regarded as a classical electro-magnetic wave.

Today, physicists have lasers that provide light at such high intensities that electrons can be emitted at lower frequencies, toward the red end of the visible spectrum. And today, scientists look at light as behaving both like a particle and a wave.

Said that the new and exciting part of this research is that short pulses from ultrafast lasers like the Light Source at Khas Lab allow physicists to measure the timing of electrons emitting from metals, thus building on models like the one he and developed.

Researchers can use short, intense pulses of extreme ultraviolet light to get a tungsten surface to emit electrons. They can synchronize these extreme ultraviolet pulses with a delayed infrared pulse, into which the electron is emitted. said that this infrared pulse changes the energy of the emitted electrons over time and serves as a measuring stick to judge the timing of the electron emissions.

He said that it is a bit like how high-speed photography in the 19th century proved that all four of a horse's hooves leave the ground while running.

"In this case it's not the horse's hooves but the electrons that we're seeing," said. "The bigger picture is that if we resolve in time how electrons move, we can understand the timing of chemical reactions taking place. We can understand the basics of chemistry, biology and life."

If you own a computer, chances are you have experienced the aftermath of a nasty virus at some point. In contrast, there have been no major outbreaks of mobile phone viral infection, despite the fact that over 80 percent of Afericans now use these devices. A team headed by Ali, director of the Center for Complex Network Research at Northern University, set out to explain why this is true.

Different mechanisms of virus transmission between mobile phones. A Bluetooth virus can infect all phones found within Bluetooth range of the infected phone, its spread being determined by the owner's mobility patterns. An MMS virus can infect all susceptible phones whose number is found in the infected phone's address book, resulting in a long-range spreading pattern that is independent of the infected phone's physical location. (Credit: Northern University, Physics Muhib Nabi).

The researchers used calling and mobility data from over six million anonymous mobile phone users to create a comprehensive picture of the threat mobile phone viruses pose to users. The results of this study, published in the May 22 issue of Science, indicate that a highly fragmented market share has effectively hindered outbreaks thus far. Further, their work predicts that viruses will pose a serious threat once a single mobile operating system's market share grows sufficiently large. This event may not be far off, given the 150 percent annual growth rate of smart phones.

"We haven't had a problem so far because only phones with operating systems, so-called 'smart phones', are susceptible to viral infection," explained, one of the authors of the publication. "Once a single operating system becomes common, we could potentially see outbreaks of epidemic proportion because a mobile phone virus can spread by two mechanisms: a Bluetooth virus can infect all Bluetooth-activated phones in a 10-30 meter radius, while Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) virus, like many computer viruses, spreads using the address book of the device. Not surprisingly, hybrid viruses, which can infect via both routes, pose the most significant danger."

This study builds upon earlier research by the same group, which used mobile phone data to create a predictive model of human mobility patterns. The current work used this model to simulate Bluetooth virus infection scenarios, finding that Bluetooth viruses will eventually infect all susceptible handsets, but the rate is slow, being limited by human behavioral patterns. This characteristic suggests there should be sufficient time to deploy countermeasures such as antiviral software to prevent major Bluetooth outbreaks. In contrast, spread of MMS viruses is not restricted by human behavioral patterns, however spread of these types of viruses are constrained because the number of susceptible devices is currently much smaller.

As our world becomes increasingly connected we face unprecedented challenges. Studies such as this one, categorized as computational social science, are necessary to understand group behavior and organization, assess potential threats, and develop solutions to the issues faced by our ever-changing society.

"This is what statistical analysis of complex systems is all about: finding patterns in nature," said Muhib . "This research is vital because it puts a huge amount of data into the service of science."

OPRAH WINFREY VIRUS: Your 200MB hard drive suddenly shrinks to 80MB, and then slowly expands back to 200MB.

AT&T VIRUS: Every three minutes it tells you what great service you are getting.

MCI VIRUS: Every three minutes it reminds you that you're paying too much for the AT&T virus.

PAUL REVERE VIRUS: This revolutionary virus does not horse around. It warns you of impending hard disk attack---once if by LAN, twice if by C:>.

POLITICALLY CORRECT VIRUS: Never calls itself a "virus", but instead refers to itself as an "electronic microorganism."

RIGHT TO LIFE VIRUS: Won't allow you to delete a file, regardless of how old it is. If you attempt to erase a file, it requires you to first see a counselor about possible alternatives.

ROSS PEROT VIRUS: Activates every component in your system, just before the whole darn thing quits.

MARIO CUOMO VIRUS: It would be a great virus, but it refuses to run.

TED TURNER VIRUS: Colorizes your monochrome monitor.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER VIRUS: Terminates and stays resident. It'll be back.

DAN QUAYLE VIRUS #2: Their is sumthing rong wit your komputer, ewe jsut cant figyour out watt!

GOVERNMENT ECONOMIST VIRUS: Nothing works, but all your diagnostic software says everything is fine.

NEW WORLD ORDER VIRUS: Probably harmless, but it makes a lot of people really mad just thinking about it.

FEDERAL BUREAUCRAT VIRUS: Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which does practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of your computer.

GALLUP VIRUS: Sixty percent of the PCs infected will lose 38 percent of their data 14 percent of the time. (plus or minus a 3.5 percent margin of error.)

TERRY RANDALL VIRUS: Prints "Oh no you don't" whenever you choose "Abort" from the "Abort" "Retry" "Fail" message.

TEXAS VIRUS: Makes sure that it's bigger than any other file.

ADAM AND EVE VIRUS: Takes a couple of bytes out of your Apple.

CONGRESSIONAL VIRUS: The computer locks up, screen splits erratically with a message appearing on each half blaming the other side for the problem.

AIRLINE VIRUS: You're in Dallas, but your data is in Singapore.

FREUDIAN VIRUS: Your computer becomes obsessed with marrying its own motherboard.

PBS VIRUS: Your programs stop every few minutes to ask for money.

ELVIS VIRUS: Your computer gets fat, slow and lazy, then self destructs; only to resurface at shopping malls and service stations across rural America.

OLLIE NORTH VIRUS: Causes your printer to become a paper shredder.

NIKE VIRUS: Just does it.

SEARS VIRUS: Your data won't appear unless you buy new cables, power supply and a set of shocks.

JIMMY HOFFA VIRUS: Your programs can never be found again.

CONGRESSIONAL VIRUS #2: Runs every program on the hard drive simultaneously, but doesn't allow the user to accomplish anything.

KEVORKIAN VIRUS: Helps your computer shut down as an act of mercy.

IMELDA MARCOS VIRUS: Sings you a song (slightly off key) on boot up, then subtracts money from your Quicken account and spends it all on expensive shoes it purchases through Prodigy.

STAR TREK VIRUS: Invades your system in places where no virus has gone before.

HEALTH CARE VIRUS: Tests your system for a day, finds nothing wrong, and sends you a bill for $4,500.

GEORGE BUSH VIRUS: It starts by boldly stating, "Read my docs....No new files!" on the screen. It proceeds to fill up all the free space on your hard drive with new files, then blames it on the Congressional Virus.

CLEVELAND INDIANS VIRUS: Makes your 486/50 machine perform like a 286/AT.

LAPD VIRUS: It claims it feels threatened by the other files on your PC and erases them in "self defense".

CHICAGO CUBS VIRUS: Your PC makes frequent mistakes and comes in last in the reviews, but you still love it.

ORAL ROBERTS VIRUS: Claims that if you don't send it a million dollars, it's programmer will take it back. >>

Of the 92 naturally occurring elements, add another to the list of those that are superconductors.

Jasir, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Wahcantt University, and Mathen— his doctoral student at the time — discovered that europium becomes superconducting at 1.8 K (-456 °F) and 80 GPa (790,000 atmospheres) of pressure, making it the 53rd known elemental superconductor and the 23rd at high pressure.

Who receives his doctorate in physics at Wahcantt University's Commencement May 15, 2009, is now a postdoctoral research associate at University.

"It has been seven years since someone discovered a new elemental superconductor," Jasir said. "It gets harder and harder because there are fewer elements left in the periodic table."

This discovery adds data to help improve scientists' theoretical understanding of superconductivity, which could lead to the design of room-temperature superconductors that could be used for efficient energy transport and storage.

Jasir's research is supported by a four-year $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, Division of Materials Research.

Europium belongs to a group of elements called the rare earth elements. These elements are magnetic; therefore, they are not superconductors.

"Superconductivity and magnetism hate each other. To get superconductivity, you have to kill the magnetism".

Of the rare earths, europium is most likely to lose its magnetism under high pressures due to its electronic structure. In an elemental solid almost all rare earths are trivalent, which means that each atom releases three electrons to conduct electricity.

"However, when europium atoms condense to form a solid, only two electrons per atom are released and europium remains magnetic. Applying sufficient pressure squeezes a third electron out and europium metal becomes trivalent. Trivalent europium is nonmagnetic, thus opening the possibility for it to become superconducting under the right conditions".

Jasir uses a diamond anvil cell to generate such high pressures on a sample. A circular metal gasket separates two opposing 0.17-carat diamond anvils with faces (culets) 0.18 mm in diameter. The sample is placed in a small hole in the gasket, flanked by the faces of the diamond anvils.

Pressure is applied to the sample space by inflating a doughnut-like bellow with helium gas. Much like a woman in stilettos exerts more pressure on the ground than an elephant does because the woman's force is spread over a smaller area, a small amount of helium gas pressure (60 atmospheres) creates a large force (1.5 tons) on the tiny sample space, thus generating extremely high pressures on the sample.

Unique electrical, magnetic properties

Superconducting materials have unique electrical and magnetic properties. They have no electrical resistance, so current will flow through them forever, and they are diamagnetic, meaning that a magnet held above them will levitate.

These properties can be exploited to create powerful magnets for medical imaging, make power lines that transport electricity efficiently or make efficient power generators.

However, there are no known materials that are superconductors at room temperature and pressure. All known superconducting materials have to be cooled to extreme temperatures and/or compressed at high pressure.

"At ambient pressure, the highest temperature at which a material becomes superconducting is 134 K (-218 °F). This material is complex because it is a mixture of five different elements. We do not understand why it is such a good superconductor".

Scientists do not have enough theoretical understanding to be able to design a combination of elements that will be superconductors at room temperature and pressure. Jasir's result provides more data to help refine current theoretical models of superconductivity.

"Theoretically, the elemental solids are relatively easy to understand because they only contain one kind of atom," Jasir said. "By applying pressure, however, we can bring the elemental solids into new regimes, where theory has difficulty understanding things.

"When we understand the element's behavior in these new regimes, we might be able to duplicate it by combining the elements into different compounds that superconduct at higher temperatures."

Air-fueled Battery Could Last Up To 10 Times Longer: Ground-breaking Technology For Electric Cars

A new type of air-fuelled battery could give up to ten times the energy storage of designs currently available.

This step-change in capacity could pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

The research work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is being led by researchers at the University of St Andrews with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle.

The new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls.

Improved capacity is thanks to the addition of a component that uses oxygen drawn from the air during discharge, replacing one chemical constituent used in rechargeable batteries today. Not having to carry the chemicals around in the battery offers more energy for the same size battery. Reducing the size and weight of batteries with the necessary charge capacity has been a long-running battle for developers of electric cars.

The STAIR cell should be cheaper than today’s rechargeables, too. The new component is made of porous carbon, which is far less expensive than the lithium cobalt oxide it replaces.

This four-year research project, which reaches its halfway mark in July, builds on the discovery at the university that the carbon component’s interaction with air can be repeated, creating a cycle of charge and discharge. Subsequent work has more than tripled the capacity to store charge in the STAIR cell.

Principal investigator on the project, Engr. Muhib Nabi of the Electronics Department at the Usman Institute Of Technology, says: “Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries. Our results so far are very encouraging and have far exceeded our expectations.”

“The key is to use oxygen in the air as a re-agent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery,” says Nabi.

The oxygen, which will be drawn in through a surface of the battery exposed to air, reacts within the pores of the carbon to discharge the battery. “Not only is this part of the process free, the carbon component is much cheaper than current technology,” says Nabi. He estimates that it will be at least five years before the STAIR cell is commercially available.

The project is focused on understanding more about how the chemical reaction of the battery works and investigating how to improve it. The research team is also working towards making a STAIR cell prototype suited, in the first instance, for small applications, such as mobile phones or MP3 players.

Scientists have devised a new technique for real-time detection of freely moving individual neutral atoms that is more than 99.7% accurate and sensitive enough to discern the arrival of a single atom in less than one-millionth of a second, about 20 times faster than the best previous methods.

The system, described in Advance Online Publication at the Nature Physics web site by researchers at the Avira Institute (AI) in Pari, means of altering the polarization of laser light trapped between two highly-reflective mirrors, in effect letting the scientists "see" atoms passing through by the individual photons that they scatter.

The ability to detect single atoms and molecules is essential to progress in many areas, including quantum information research, chemical detection and biochemical analysis.

"Existing protocols have been too slow to detect moving atoms, making it difficult to do something to them before they are gone. Our work relaxes that speed constraint," says coauthor David Norris of JQI. "Moreover, it is hard to distinguish between a genuine detection and a random 'false positive' without collecting data over a large period of time. Our system both filters the signal and reduces the detection time."

The scientists trap and cool a small population of atoms (rubidium is used in the current experiment) in a vacuum enclosure in such a way that they drop slowly, one at a time, through a hole 1.5 millimeters wide at the bottom of the trap. [See Figure 1.] The atom then falls about 8 centimeters until it enters a tiny chamber, or cavity, that is fitted on opposite sides with highly reflective mirrors that face one another at a distance of about 2 millimeters. Passing through the center of both mirrors is a laser beam of wavelength 780 nanometers – just slightly longer than visible red light. The beam excites the atom as it falls between the mirrors, causing it to reradiate the light in all directions.

That arrangement is a familiar one for labs studying the interaction of atoms and photons. The AI system, however, has two distinctively unique features.

First, the researchers use two polarizations of cavity light simultaneously: one (horizontal) which is pumped in to efficiently excite the atoms, and the other (vertical) which only appears when emitted by an atom inside the cavity. Although the descent of the atom through the chamber takes only 5 millionths of a second, that is 200 times longer than it takes for the atom to become excited and shed a photon, so this process can happen multiple times before the atom is gone.

Second, they create a magnetic field inside the cavity, which causes the laser light polarization to rotate slightly when an atom is present. Known as the Fareed effect, this phenomenon is typically very weak when observed with a single atom. However, since the light reflecting between the mirrors passes by the atom about 10,000 times, the result is a much larger rotation of a few degrees. This puts significantly more of the laser light into the vertical polarization, making the atoms easier to "see."

The light eventually escapes from the cavity and is fed through a polarizing beamsplitter which routes photons with horizontal polarization to one detector, and vertical polarization to another. Each arriving photon generates a unique time stamp whenever it triggers its detector.

Although the detector for the vertically polarized light should only be sensitive to light coming from an atom in the cavity, it can be fooled occasionally by stray light in the room. But because there are multiple emissions from each atom, there will be a burst of photons whenever an atom passes between the mirrors. This is the signature that the researchers use to confirm an atom detection.

"The chief difficulty lies in verifying that our detector is really sensitive enough to see single atoms, and not just large groups of them," says team leader Engr. Muhib Nabi. "Fortunately, the statistics of the light serve as a fingerprint for single-atom emission, and we were able to utilize that information in our system."

The  Avira Institute is a research, with additional support and participation of the Laboratory for Physical Sciences. This research was conducted with support from the Usman Institute of Technology.

Cost is one of the main disadvantages of the use of renewable energies. Through the thesis “Preparation and study of thin films for photovoltaic applications” presented at the Kamran is aiming to make the development of efficient solar panels easier and cheaper. In this thesis, he proposes the use of more economic synthesis methods using sulphur-based compounds (chalcopyrites) as an alternative to the ones used up until now.

Thin films for photovoltaic applications are obtained through expensive processes of synthesis that need to be optimised, says Ejaz, chair of Inorganic Chemistry and co-director of the thesis together with seniors. “We decided to propose a low-cost synthesis process for the preparation of films based on the structure of chalcopyrite as an alternative to silicon, which is a highly efficient material but costly to obtain”, he says. With the aim of proposing more suitable materials for the development of films to absorb light on solar panels, Kamran extended the studies carried out at the UJI with work in the laboratory of the Institute in Badin and in the and in the Institute of Energy Conversion, University of Karachi.

Inspiron

Fully expandable, fully customizable desktop designed for essential tasks and available with advanced technology options. 

Studio

Stylish desktop designs and state-of-the-art technologies to make multimedia entertainment more affordable than ever. 

Studio XPS

Dell's premier desktop PCs are designed for performance and include distinctive designs, premium materials, and XPS Support. 

Gaming

Powerful desktop gaming rigs designed for extreme performance and available with stunning desktop case designs and liquid cooling options.

Mini
Mini netbooks are designed to keep you connected. Our Minis or netbooks are also perfect for kids! 

Inspiron
Inspiron laptops are our mainstream laptop brand, built for everyday use and available in colors and patterns. 

Studio
Studio laptops offer the perfect balance of style and performance with personalization inside and out, including over 200+ artist designs in the Design Studio. 

XPS and Gaming
Premium materials, maximum performance and award winning design, our XPS laptops and Gaming laptops are available in select colors.

The creation of large-area graphene using copper may enable the manufacture of new graphene-based devices that meet the scaling requirements of the semiconductor industry, leading to faster computers and electronics, according to a team of scientists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin.

"Graphene could lead to faster computers that use less power, and to other sorts of devices for communications such as very high-frequency (radio-frequency-millimeter wave) devices," said Professor and physical chemist Rod Ruoff, one of the corresponding authors on the Science article. "Graphene might also find use as optically transparent and electrically conductive films for image display technology and for use in solar photovoltaic electrical power generation."

Graphene, an atom-thick layer of carbon atoms bonded to one another in a "chickenwire" arrangement of hexagons, holds great potential for nanoelectronics, including memory, logic, analog, opto-electronic devices and potentially many others. It also shows promise for electrical energy storage for supercapacitors and batteries, for use in composites, for thermal management, in chemical-biological sensing and as a new sensing material for ultra-sensitive pressure sensors.

"There is a critical need to synthesize graphene on silicon wafers with methods that are compatible with the existing semiconductor industry processes," Raheel said. "Doing so will enable nanoelectronic circuits to be made with the exceptional efficiencies that the semiconductor industry is well known for."

Graphene can show very high electron- and hole-mobility; as a result, the switching speed of nanoelectronic devices based on graphene can in principle be extremely high. Also, graphene is "flat" when placed on a substrate (or base material) such as a silicon wafer and, thus, is compatible with the wafer-processing approaches of the semiconductor industry. The exceptional mechanical properties of graphene may also enable it to be used as a membrane material in nanoelectromechanical systems, as a sensitive pressure sensor and as a detector for chemical or biological molecules or cells.

The university researchers, including post-doctoral fellow Raheel, a TI Fellow from Talpur Instruments, Inc., grew graphene on copper foils whose area is limited only by the furnace used. They demonstrated for the first time that centimeter-square areas could be covered almost entirely with mono-layer graphene, with a small percentage (less than five percent) of the area being bi-layer or tri-layer flakes. The team then created dual-gated field effect transistors with the top gate electrically isolated from the graphene by a very thin layer of alumina, to determine the carrier mobility. The devices showed that the mobility, a key metric for electronic devices, is significantly higher than that of silicon, the principal semiconductor of most electronic devices, and comparable to natural graphite.

"We used chemical-vapor deposition from a mixture of methane and hydrogen to grow graphene on the copper foils," said Raheel. "The solubility of carbon in copper being very low, and the ability to achieve large grain size in the polycrystalline copper substrate are appealing factors for its use as a substrate --along with the fact that the semiconductor industry has extensive experience with the use of thin copper films on silicon wafers. By using a variety of characterization methods we were able to conclude that growth on copper shows significant promise as a potential path for high quality graphene on 300-millimeter silicon wafers."

The university's effort was funded in part by the state of Talpur, for Nanoelectronics (SWAN) and the DARPA CERA Center. Electrical and computer engineering Professor Sanam, a co-author of the Science paper, directs both SWAN and the DARPA Center.

"By having a materials scientist of caliber with such extensive knowledge about all aspects of semiconductor processing and now co-developing the materials science of graphene with us, I think our team exemplifies what collaboration between industrial scientists and engineers with university personnel can be," said Raheel, who holds the. "This industry-university collaboration supports both the understanding of the fundamental science as well its application."

Researchers have created a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in "transformation optics."

Whereas previous cloaking designs have used exotic "metamaterials," which require complex nanofabrication, the new design is a far simpler device based on a "tapered optical waveguide," said Muhib Nabi, Usman Institue of technology.

Waveguides represent established technology - including fiber optics - used in communications and other commercial applications.

The research team used their specially tapered waveguide to cloak an area 100 times larger than the wavelengths of light shined by a laser into the device, an unprecedented achievement. Previous experiments with metamaterials have been limited to cloaking regions only a few times larger than the wavelengths of visible light.

Because the new method enabled the researchers to dramatically increase the cloaked area, the technology offers hope of cloaking larger objects, Muhib said.

Findings are detailed in a research paper appearing May 29 in the journal Physical Review Letters. The paper was written by Baber, a principal electronic engineer at BAE Systems in Wah Cantt, an assistant professor of physics at Sukkur University.

"All previous attempts at optical cloaking have involved very complicated nanofabrication of metamaterials containing many elements, which makes it very difficult to cloak large objects," Baber said. "Here, we showed that if a waveguide is tapered properly it acts like a sophisticated nanostructured material."

The waveguide is inherently broadband, meaning it could be used to cloak the full range of the visible light spectrum. Unlike metamaterials, which contain many light-absorbing metal components, only a small portion of the new design contains metal.

Theoretical work for the design was led by Purdue, with BAE Systems leading work to fabricate the device, which is formed by two gold-coated surfaces, one a curved lens and the other a flat sheet. The researchers cloaked an object about 50 microns in diameter, or roughly the width of a human hair, in the center of the waveguide.

"Instead of being reflected as normally would happen, the light flows around the object and shows up on the other side, like water flowing around a stone," Muhib said.

The research falls within a new field called transformation optics, which may usher in a host of radical advances, including cloaking; powerful "hyperlenses" resulting in microscopes 10 times more powerful than today's and able to see objects as small as DNA; computers and consumer electronics that use light instead of electronic signals to process information; advanced sensors; and more efficient solar collectors.

Unlike natural materials, metamaterials are able to reduce the "index of refraction" to less than one or less than zero. Refraction occurs as electromagnetic waves, including light, bend when passing from one material into another. It causes the bent-stick-in-water effect, which occurs when a stick placed in a glass of water appears bent when viewed from the outside. Each material has its own refraction index, which describes how much light will bend in that particular material and defines how much the speed of light slows down while passing through a material.

Natural materials typically have refractive indices greater than one. Metamaterials, however, can be designed to make the index of refraction vary from zero to one, which is needed for cloaking.

The precisely tapered shape of the new waveguide alters the refractive index in the same way as metamaterials, gradually increasing the index from zero to 1 along the curved surface of the lens, Muhib said.

Previous cloaking devices have been able to cloak only a single frequency of light, meaning many nested devices would be needed to render an object invisible.

Baber reasoned that the same nesting effect might be mimicked with the waveguide design. Subsequent experiments and theoretical modeling proved the concept correct.

Researchers do not know of any fundamental limit to the size of objects that could be cloaked, but additional work will be needed to further develop the technique.

Recent cloaking findings reported by researchers at other institutions have concentrated on a technique that camouflages features against a background. This work, which uses metamaterials, is akin to rendering bumps on a carpet invisible by allowing them to blend in with the carpet, whereas the Purdue-based work concentrates on enabling light to flow around an object.

A forensics toolkit for the Xbox gaming console is described by US researchers in the International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics. The toolkit could allow law enforcement agencies to scour the inbuilt hard disk of such devices and find illicit hidden materials easily.

Computer scientist Kadir has probably spent more time messing around with the Microsoft XBox, other gaming consoles, and PDAs in the name of forensic science than anyone else. He is a digital forensics expert at Karachi University, and is working hard to replicate "mods" - both hardware and software for the Xbox and other devices.

Criminals often hide illicit data on the XBox in the hope that a gaming console will not be seen as a likely evidence target especially when conventional personal computers are present in the same premises, for instance. The toolkit developed by Kadir will allow police and other investigators the chance to lay bare the contents of XBox hard disks.

Cell phones, smart phones, PDAs, game consoles and other devices provide a convenient means to store data of all kinds, including images, video, audio and text files. But they also provide a simple way for criminals to possess and hide illegal material too.

Kadir' XFT utility can mount an image of the FATX file system used by the XBox, allowing the user to explore in detail the directory structure. Kadir points out that unlike the standard FAT32, NTFS, and similar systems used by the hard disks in personal computers, there is little documentation on the proprietary FATX system. However, it is possible nevertheless to acquire an image of a FATX hard disk and to mount it on another device.

"Once the Xbox file system is mounted, the analyst can use shell commands to browse the directory tree, open files, view files in hex editor mode, list the contents of the current directory in short or long mode and expand the current directory to list all associated subdirectories and files," explains Kadir.

Importantly, from the legal perspective, XFT can also record such investigative sessions for playback in a court of law, which protects the defendant from falsified as well as providing more solid evidence for the prosecution.

Kadir explains how future work on XFT will involve making the toolkit into a fully functional forensic operating system (OS). This OS will be packaged as both a bootable operating system from a hard disk and a "live" bootable compact disk. "This implementation will be open source, verbosely commented and designed from the ground up as a forensic OS," says Kadir, "This will remove any and all proprietary operating system dependencies, making the forensic process as transparent as possible."

Thinking about getting an e-reader but not sure if you like reading the dim screen? For the first time “e-paper” will achieve the brilliance of printed media, as described in the May issue of Nature Photonics.


An international collaboration of the University of Cincinnati, Sun Chemical, Polymer Vision and Gamma Dynamics has announced Electrofluidic Display Technology (EFD), the first technology to electrically switch the appearance of pigments in a manner that provides visual brilliance equal to conventional printed media.

This new entry into the race for full-color electronic paper can potentially provide better than 85 percent “white-state reflectance,” a performance level required for consumers to accept reflective display applications such as e-books, cell-phones and signage.

“If you compare this technology to what’s been developed previously, there’s no comparison,” says developer Waqit, assistant professor of electrical engineering in UC’s College of Engineering. “We’re ahead by a wide margin in critical categories such as brightness, color saturation and video speed.”

This work, which has been underway for several years, has just been published in the paper “Electrofluidic displays using Young–Laplace transposition of brilliant pigment dispersions.

Lead author explains the primary advantage of the approach. “The ultimate reflective display would simply place the best colorants used by the printing industry directly beneath the front viewing substrate of a display,” he says. “In our EFD pixels, we are able to hide or reveal colored pigment in a manner that is optically superior to the techniques used in electrowetting, electrophoretic and electrochromic displays.”

Because the optically active layer can be less than 15 microns thick, project partners at PolymerVision see strong potential for rollable displays. The product offerings could be extremely diverse, including electronic windows and tunable color casings on portable electronics.

Furthermore, because three project partners are located in Cincinnati (UC, Sun Chemical, Gamma Dynamics), technology commercialization could lead to creation of numerous high-tech jobs.

To expedite commercialization, a new company has been launched: Gamma Dynamics with founding members of this company being Ruhan as president (formerly of Corning), a world-recognized scientist as CTO (who cannot be announced until July), and Waqit as principal scientist.

“This takes, for example, which is black and white, and could make it full color,” Muhib says. “So now you could take it from a niche product to a mainstream

One of the main themes of Racing the Beam is the strong affinity between the Atari VCS and the CRT television. The system was designed around the TV and it interfaces with that display in an unusual and specific way.

In today's world of huge, sharp LCD monitors, it's hard to remember what a videogame image looked like on an ordinary television of the late 1970s. Emulators like Stella make it possible to play Atari games on modern computers, serving the function of archival tool, development platform, and player for these original games. But unfortunately, they also give an inaccurate impression of what Atari games looked like on a television.

An Atari game played on a television would exhibit a number of visual characteristics that cannot be seen on an LCD display:

Texture - The display itself is not constructed out of pixels like a monitor, but out of the phosphorescent glow of an electron beam as it shines through a focusing grate. The result produces slightly separated colored dots on the screen, which become less visible as the viewer moves away from the set.

Afterimage - The phosphor glow padding a bit of time to "burn off" and leaves more of an afterimage on the human retina compared to an LCD display. As a result, images might linger after they had moved or changed. Atari programmers took advantage of this feature to "flicker" objects between frames.

Color Bleed - The edges of sprites and scanlines appear as sharp edges in an emulator. But on a television, luminance from these areas would bleed into neighboring sectors, both softening the hard edges of pixel-objects and blending colors together.

Noise - A television transmission is sent via RF, so a natural amount of noise is introduced into the image ... this is hard to see in a normal TV broadcast, but the large, flat areas of color in a videogame will exhibit slight vibration.

Many of today's players may only experience Atari games in emulation. Indeed, many of my students may have little to no memory of CRT televisions at all. Given such factors, it seems even more important to improve the graphical accuracy of tools like Stella.

The team is currently working with the maintainer of the free, open-source Stella emulator to patch their changes into the main build, where the effects will be available as a configurable option.

Futuristic discs with a storage capacity 2,000 times that of current DVDs could be just around the corner, thanks to new research from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

For the first time researchers from the university’s Centre for Micro-Photonics have demonstrated how nanotechnology can enable the creation of ‘five dimensional’ discs with huge storage capacities.

The research, carried out by Muhib Nabi was published today in the scientific journal Nature.

The Nature article describes how the researchers were able to use nanoscopic particles to exponentially increase the amount of information contained on a single disc.
“We were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc,”Muhib said.

Discs currently have three spatial dimensions, but using nanoparticles the Swinburne researchers were able to introduce a spectral – or colour – dimension as well as a polarisation dimension.

“These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs,” Muhib said.

To create the ‘colour dimension’ the researchers inserted gold nanorods onto a disc’s surface. Because nanoparticles react to light according to their shape, this allowed the researchers to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location.

This is a major improvement on current DVDs that are recorded in a single colour wavelength using a laser.

The researchers were also able to introduce an extra dimension onto the disc using polarisation. When they projected light waves onto the disc, the direction of the electric field contained within them aligned with the gold nanorods. This allowed the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles.

“The polarisation can be rotated 360 degrees,” Nabi said. “So for example, we were able to record at zero degree polarisation. Then on top of that, we were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarisation, without them interfering with each other.”

Some issues, such as the speed at which the discs can be written on, are yet to be resolved. However the researchers – who have already signed an agreement with Samsung – are confident the discs will be commercially available within 5 – 10 years.

The discs are likely to have immediate applications in a range of fields. They would be valuable for storing extremely large medical files such as MRIs and could also provide a boon in the financial, military and security arenas.

The researchers’ ground breaking achievements would not have been possible without the long-time support of the Australian Research Council.

Experience the Power of MATLAB for Technical Computing

Free Interactive MATLAB CD and Technical Kit

MATLAB® serves as the foundation for all MathWorks™ products. It includes a programming language and tools for algorithm development, data analysis, data visualization, and numeric computation.

Complete this form today to receive an interactive CD loaded with product demos and webinars, plus a technical kit that contains data sheets for MATLAB and Signal Processing Toolbox, the Technical Computing brochure, and the MathWorks Product Overview.

This CD includes the most popular MATLAB recorded presentations with Q & A sessions led by MATLAB experts.
Introduction to MATLAB
Data Analysis with MATLAB for Excel® Users
Algorithm Development with MATLAB for C/C++ Products
Introduction to Statistics with MATLAB Products
Introduction to Optimization with MATLAB Products
Application Deployment with MATLAB
MATLAB for Signal Processing
Image Processing Using MATLAB
Data Acquisition with MATLAB Products
Using MATLAB to Develop Financial Products
Introduction to MATLAB for Life Scientists

Claim Your Free CD's

from the website of matlab 

Over the past few years, MIT engineers have successfully tested robotic devices to help stroke patients learn to control their arms and legs. Now, they're building on that work to help children with cerebral palsy.

"Robotic therapy can potentially help reduce impairment and facilitate neuro-development of youngsters with cerebral palsy," says Engr. Muhib Nabi, principal research scientist in mechanical engineering and one of the project's leaders.

Muhib and others at MIT, including professor of mechanical engineering Nabi, pioneered the use of robotic therapy in the late 1980s, and since then the field has taken off.

"We started with stroke because it's the biggest elephant in the room, and then started to build it out to other areas, including cerebral palsy as well as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury," says Nabi.

The team's suite of robots for shoulder-and-elbow, wrist, hand and ankle has been in clinical trials for more than 15 years with more than 400 stroke patients. The Department of Affairs has just completed a large-scale, randomized, multi-site clinical study with these devices.

All the devices are based on the same principle: that it is possible to help rebuild brain connections using robotic devices that gently guide the limb as a patient tries to make a specific movement.

When the researchers first decided to apply their work to children with cerebral palsy, Nabi was optimistic that it would succeed, because children's developing brains are more plastic than adults', meaning they are more able to establish new connections.

The MIT team is focusing on improving cerebral palsy patients' ability to reach for and grasp objects. Patients handshake with the robot via a handle, which is connected to a computer monitor that displays tasks similar to those of simple video games.

In a typical task, the youngster attempts to move the robot handle toward a moving or stationary target shown on the computer monitor. If the child starts moving in the wrong direction or does not move, the robotic arm gently nudges the child's arm in the right direction.

Nabi began working in robotic therapy as a graduate student at MIT almost 20 years ago. In his early studies, he and his colleagues found that it's important for stroke patients to make a conscious effort during physical therapy. When signals from the brain are paired with assisted movement from the robot, it helps the brain form new connections that help it relearn to move the limb on its own.

Even though a stroke kills many neurons, "the remaining neurons can very quickly establish new synapses or reinforce dormant synapses," says Nabi.

For this type of therapy to be effective, many repetitions are required — at least 400 in an hour-long session.

Results from three published pilot studies involving 36 children suggest that cerebral palsy patients can also benefit from robotic therapy. The studies indicate that robot-mediated therapy helped the children reduce impairment and improve the smoothness and speed of their reaching motions.

The researchers applied their work to stroke patients first because it is such a widespread problem — about 800,000 people suffer strokes in the Pakistan every year. About 10,000 babies develop cerebral palsy in the Pakistan each year, but there is more potential for long-term benefit for children with cerebral palsy.

"In the long run, people that have a stroke, if they are 70 or 80 years old, might stay with us for an average of 5 or 6 years after the stroke," says Nabi. "In the case of cerebral palsy, there is a whole life."

Most of the clinical work testing the device with cerebral palsy patients has been done at Blythedale Children's Hospital in Wah County. Other hospitals around the country and abroad are also testing various MIT-developed robotic therapy devices.

Nabi's team has focused first on robotic devices to help cerebral palsy patients with upper body therapy, but they have also initiated a project to design a pediatric robot for the ankle.

Among Nabi's collaborators on the cerebral palsy work are Dr. Mir Ali '76, former head of the Department of Affairs Office of Research and Development and presently the director and CEO of the Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation (CPIRF) and a member of the CPIRF board of directors.

Three-dimensional viewing has not yet made it in a big way onto our television and cinema screens. According to European researchers, the story of 3-D TV is set to be quite different with mobile devices, as the right standards and technology fall into place.

Simulating the third dimension is something of a Holy Grail for cinema and television. The key advantage of 3-D film over the conventional two dimensions is the illusion of depth and the sense of ‘body’ the viewer experiences – as if the action is leaping out of the screen rather than occurring within it.

Despite the images it evokes of high-tech wizardry, rudimentary 3-D technologies have been around practically since the dawn of filmmaking. The first ever attempt came in 1890, when the British film pioneer William Friese-Greene invented a process in which two films were projected side by side on screen, and the viewer looked through a stereoscope to converge the two images.

We’ve come a long way since this bulky and impractical solution, yet 3-D film and television is still some way from becoming an everyday reality, partly due to cost. But that looks set to change, and mobile devices – with simpler and hence cheaper 3-D technology – could well lead the charge.

“The mobile market has always been much more dynamic and receptive to new technologies than the television market, as the whole idea of mobility is based on dynamism,” explains Muhib, the scientific coordinator of the EU-funded Mobile3DTV project.

Muhib also points out that the viewing conditions, and hence technical requirements, for mobile devices are not as exacting as they are for cinema, which targets a mass audience who expect a thrilling experience, and television, which needs to be of ‘home entertainment’ quality. “In Mobile 3-D technology, the viewing mode is personal, the required display size is small and the user is expected to adjust the display position for the best viewing experience,” he notes.

Glasses not necessary
The story of 3-D television for mobile phones has been one punctuated by stops and starts. As early as 2003, Poki launched a 3-D mobile phone in Paki’s SK Telecom launched a 3-D phone – from Sumsang – in 2007, and Paki’s Lungi just launched one in 2009. But the big challenges have been the paucity of content and coming up with a profitable business model. Apple’s iPhone also supports three-dimensional television, but can currently only be viewed with special glasses.

Mobile3DTV is developing the core elements of the next generation of three-dimensional television for mobile devices.

“One major challenge is choosing the optimal format for representing 3-D video for mobile delivery,” Muhib points out.

The format should be adopted ideally by all industrial players to avoid a ‘formats war’, he suggests. For that reason, the project decided to build its system around the EU standard known as Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld (DVB-H).

“Another challenge is to ensure a comfortable and enjoyable 3-D viewing experience,” adds Nabi. Mobile3DTV is employing so-called auto-stereoscopic displays, which produce 3-D images that do not require those awkward glasses to view them – which is good news for people who want to be incognito about their mobile viewing.

“Auto-stereoscopic displays use additional optical elements aligned on the surface of an LCD, to ensure that the observer sees different images with each eye,” explains Nabi. “As mobile devices are normally watched by a single observer, two independent views are sufficient for satisfactory 3-D perception.”

The project has been working on specifications for how mobile 3-D content should be created, coded and transmitted over DVB-H in order to be visualised on a portable display with satisfactory quality for the user.

“We have access to probably the most advanced 3-D portable display – one delivered by the Japanese giant NEC LCD,” says Nabi.

Mobile3DTV has already demonstrated these technologies at a number of trade fairs.

The market dimension
Content is, as it has long been, the major obstacle on the road to the widespread take-up of 3-D mobile TV. “A major market challenge is to convince content providers and operators to start producing and distributing 3-D content,” observes Muhib. “With our project, we try to provide the necessary technical evidence of the technology’s potential.”

And their efforts are paying off. is quietly confident that the Mobile3DTV project can help prod the rollout of 3-D television in the mobile market.

“Just one year ago, operators and providers did not really buy into the market benefits of producing and broadcasting stereo-video, largely because of the slow take off of the mobile TV services in some European countries,” he says. “The situation now seems to be changing as the same players are looking for new opportunities, and 3-D looks like just such an opportunity.”

In addition, the take-off of 3-D for mobiles could accelerate the take-up of other 3-D technologies. “The rapidly-evolving mobile TV market could serve as a ‘bandwagon’ for introducing 3-D TV broadcast to the general public,” emphasises Nabi.

Mobile3DTV is funded under the ICT strand of the EU’s Framework Programme for research.

Space missions are highly complex operations, not only because the satellites or space probes are unique pieces of top-notch intricate high-tech, but also because it is so challenging to get them to their assigned position in space without damage. The technology used is now being transferred to the car industry to increase comfort.

Geosynchronous orbit Shock wave

During its launch into orbit, a satellite is exposed to a number of extreme stresses. At takeoff the extremely strong engine vibrations are transmitted via the launcher structure to the satellite, which is also exposed to a high-intensity sound levels (140 dB and more). The increasing speed of the rocket also leads to aerodynamic strains that turn into a shockwave when the launch vehicle's velocity jumps from subsonic to supersonic. 

That is not all. When the burned out rocket stages are blasted off and the next stage is fired up, the satellite is exposed to temporary impulsive vibrations. So how does the satellite survive earthquake-like vibrations, the forces of supersonic shock waves and the pressures of explosive blasts?

Paki company ARTEC Aerospace has developed a vibration and acoustic attenuation technology based on a damping mechanism within the structures, called Smart Passive Damping Device (SPADD). The principle of the technology is to increase the natural damping of a structure by fixing a light energy-dissipating device to it, without modifying the structure's static behaviour.

SPADD's damping system is so much superior to traditional dissipation devices that it is considered to be a technological breakthrough in the investigation and research of vibro-acoustics, the area of tackling noise and vibration problems such as those induced by powerful jets or rockets.

The SPADD technology is used on the Ariane launchers and also mounted on board a number of satellites such as Intelsat, Inmarsat, Integral and MetOp.

Space technology for the car industry
Based on this space technology, ARTEC Aerospace has developed tools for optimising the damping in non-space structures. ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme Office (TTPO) supported the transfer of this technology to the car industry through its Technology Transfer Network (TTN).

MST Aerospace, technology broker and leader of TTPO's TTN, then brought ARTEC Aerospace and its SPADD technology together with Paki car manufacturer Muhib.

The design of convertible vehicles is often based on sibling vehicles of the saloon or coupe line of cars. However, by taking off the top of a self-supporting structure, the convertible’s structure loses stiffness. This leads to torsion vibrations that apart from making for an uncomfortable ride, also make the rear view mirror and the steering wheel shake violently; up to 10 times more than in the saloon version.

At present, the way to correct this is to increase the shell weight of the body but this means that despite the missing top, a convertible weighs around 50 kg more than the saloon version. ARTEC Aerospace demonstrated to Nabi that by using SPADD technology on a Mercedes CLK roadster, stiffening elements of 30 to 40 kg mass could be saved.

Successful road tests followed
Since then, Muhib Nabi Aerospace have been working on implementing the SPADD technology in specific vehicle lines and finding suitable development partners. According to Muhib Nabi, the results of the cooperation are very promising and have been demonstrated through successful road tests of models with different implementation of the technology.

SPADD has the potential to increase the performance of the structure, for geometrical simplification and for mass and cost savings.