2015 outlook: Tech trends and drivers

Tech trends for 2015?

In Brief

A Swiss led international team of scientists have made the first germanium-tin semiconductor laser.

Apple Inc. made a profit in the last three months of 2014 of a mere $18 Billion, selling 34,000 iPhone 6 and 6 Plus every hour. The Apple watch will go on sale in April.

France leads the world in providing internet access through local Wi-Fi hotspots. It has over 13 million hotspots compared to 9.8 million in the USA and 5.6 million in the UK.

Intel has announced its intention, along with partners, to develop and introduce many products in the area of wearable computing. Intel will sponsor their "Make it Wearable" challenge again later this year.

News from our partners

k-Space Associates and SUNY Polytechnic Institute to advance III-N Research
Thermo Scientific XPS Simplified webinar programme has started, next webinar in early March. If you want a link to last week's first in the new series, please email us.
PVD Products ships a combination sputter deposition tool to a major semiconductor manufacturer.
Riber launches an effusion cell that solves the Al creep problem especially in nitrogen containing environments.

IT (increasingly torpid)?

Physically inactivity is recognised as a major factor in the area of premature deaths due to non-communicable diseases. Is technology helping or hindering? An interesting debate is forming as to whether the overall impact of existing and planned consumer electronics and workplace technologies are significant factors. Will wearable fitness devices out-smart the static allure of the television or is diet, not technology, the culprit? 

Cold storage

The secure, error and hack free storage of data is becoming a major concern for many organisations. Data storage could be the new Eldorado for Switzerland. Swiss laws on the issue are amongst the most restrictive in the world: personal data is defined as a ‘precious good’  that can under no circumstances be handed over to governments or authorities without authorisation from a judge. The prediction is that within the next 25 years, a majority of the of assets stored in Switzerland will be digital rather than physical. The Gnomes of Zettabyte?

The IoT bubble could still burst

Pitfalls for IoT in 2015

Watch the keys

Message damage limitation

Adding to the family tree of life on Earth

An extra 221 in 2014

Giving your thumbs superpowers

Smartphones train the brain

Not just for Christmas

Mistletoe diet pills?

In 2014 we searched trillions of times ...

A Year in Search

Understand All Of Physics in 5 Minutes

All of Physics?

Back to the Future with Roman Architectural Concrete

Roman hard stuff

Optical link

Stanford engineers have designed and built a prism-like device that can split a beam of light and bend it at right angles a further step in their aim of developing nanophotonics and optical computing. The full paper is available here describing the optical link, a slice of silicon etched with a grating to split two different wavelengths of light at right angles separating O-band (1300 nm) and C-band (1550 nm) light into separate waveguides

Big things in Michigan

The most complicated crystal structure ever produced in a computer simulation has been achieved by researchers at the University of Michigan. The icosahedral quasicrystal looks ordered to the eye, but has no repeating pattern. At the same time, it's symmetric when rotated, like a soccer ball with five-fold and six-fold patches. Due to their symmetry under rotation, icosahedral quasicrystals may exhibit a photonic band gap making them of interest for displays and optical communications.