100 science questions

A rose by any other name

2015 R&D Award Winners

Moore pumps?

Prosperous Norway

Google too slow?

Big computing beasties

Despite some performance related concerns, Los Alamos National Laboratory has followed Google and NASA in ordering a D-Wave 2X quantum computer.

InP lasers on Si

Imec and Ghent University have announced the fabrication of indium phosphide laser arrays monolithically integrated on 300 mm silicon substrates in a CMOS pilot line.

Chipping away at the leader

Samsung is set to make in-roads into Intel's lead as the world's largest chip manufacturer in 2015, according to a list of chip companies ranked by forecast chip revenues from market research firm IC Insights.

Double decker

Interesting work at EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, where they have enhanced overall conversion efficiencies by stacking two different solar cells on top of each other. The upper, perovskite based, solar cell is semi-transparent with the lower cell made from copper indium gallium diselenide. The upper cell absorbs and converts the blue and yellow spectrum of visible light leaving the visible red and infrared radiation to transmit through for absorption by the lower cell.

Friendly or factual?

As reported by Reuters, the more technology companies can get us to rely on their virtual digital assistants the more valuable data they will accumulate about our spending habits, interests and preferences. This information could be fodder for lucrative digital advertising. However it is apparently not yet clear what amount of personality we like with our artificial intelligence. Will Apple’s Siri charm or Facebook and Google’s more no-nonsense approach be more to our tastes in the long run? Personally I’m still waiting on the Grumpy Old Man version.