GPS & Navigation

- In Part 3 of his SOA series Eric Giguere explores how to do SOA when the target device does not support Web Services (JSR 172). Dig in to learn what your options are.

ALTERthought Blogs

This summer we gave a presentation on simplifying the software estimation process for modern distributed systems. In it, we tried to boil down 10  years of thinking and experience on the subject; our goal was to make the process much more repeatable than it has historically been and as simple as is appropriate. On this [...]

With the accidental discovery of "black silicon," Harvard physicists may have very well changed the digital photography, solar power and night vision industries forever. What is black silicon, you say? Well, it's just as it sounds. Black silicon. It's what this revolutionary new material does that's important, starting with light sensitivity. Early indications show black silicon is 100 to 500 times more sensitive to light than a traditional silicon wafer.

To create the special silicon, Harvard physicist Eric Mazur shined a super powerful laser onto a silicon wafer. The laser's output briefly matches all the energy produced by the sun falling onto the Earth's entire surface at a given moment in time. To spice the experiment up, he also had researchers apply sulfur hexafluoride, which the semiconductor industry uses to make etchings in silicon for circuitry. Seriously, he did this just for kicks and to secure more funding for an old project.

“I got tired of metals and was worrying that my Army funding would dry up,” he said. “I wrote the new direction into a research proposal without thinking much about it — I just wrote it in; I don’t know why," he said.

The new experiment made the silicon black to the naked eye. Under an electron microscope, however, the dark sheen was revealed to be thousands, if not millions, of tiny spikes. As we said above, those spikes had an amazing effect on the light sensitivity of the wafer. Mazur said the material also absorbs about twice as much visible light as traditional silicon, and can detect infrared light that is invisible to today's silicon detectors.

And there's no change to the manufacturing process, Mazur said, so existing semiconductor facilities can create black silicon without much additional effort or, more importantly, money. [New York Times]

Reports claim the seven surviving actors who played The Doctor will reunite for this year's BBC 'Children in Need' telethon. That means David Tennant and Peter Davision would join Tom Baker, Colin Baker, Sylvestor McCoy, Paul Mcgann and Christopher Eccleston for a reunion fans thought was impossible.

Wired.com

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