ENDEAVOUR
A Newsletter of National Centre for Physics
Vol: 4 No: 4 October – December 2006
http://www.ncp.edu.pk/newsletters/ In This Issue NCP Watch | Physics News | IT News International Conference on Global Change Jointly organized by AS-ICTP and NCP, the International
Conference on Global Change was held from November Editor-in-Chief 13 - 17, 2006. Its main objective was to address two Prof. Riazuddin Editorial Board phenomena of particular concern to mankind worldwide, Adeel-ur-Rehman(CS) M. Jamil Aslam(Physics) namely: Earthquakes and Global Climate Change. Ijaz Ahmed(Physics) Details on Page 2
5th Particle Physics Workshop The National Centre for Physics (NCP) has organized 5th Particle Physics Workshop during November 20-25, 2006 in Collaboration with European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland. The purpose of this workshop was to give an exposure to the participants to the current research in particle physics around the world. Details on Page 4 Nobel Prize shared for cosmic microwave background studies John C Mather and George F Smoot have won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”. The discovery has provided very strong evidence that the Universe was created in a massive explosion called the Big Bang. Details on Page 6
National Centre for Physics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
NCP Watch
International Conference on Global Change
Jointly organized by AS-ICTP and NCP, the International Conference on Global Change was held from November 13 - 17, 2006. The main objective of this conference was to address two phenomena of particular concern to mankind worldwide, namely: Earthquakes and Global Climate Change, and to take a stock of our knowledge to model and predict them and their associated consequences.
The catastrophic Muzaffarabad earthquake of 2005 has brought the realization that disaster prevention is as important as disaster response. The conference aimed to highlight the different scientific aspects of earthquake studies that could help in understanding this natural hazard, their prediction and prevention.
Global Climate Change resulting from an increasing concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is now generally considered as the greatest challenge to confront mankind in the 21st century. According to the scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the average surface temperature of the earth has increased by 0.6 oC over the past century and is expected to increase further by 1.4 – 5.8 oC during the current century, with an associated increase in precipitation worldwide. These changes will not be uniform in various parts of the world with the result that, while some regions may experience much larger warming, the others may undergo cooling instead. Likewise, the precipitation may also increase or decrease in different regions to varying extents. These climate changes are likely to have profound impacts (generally negative) on various socio-economic sectors like water resources, food production, human health, etc. One especially worrisome consequence of the global climate change is an expected large increase in, both, the frequency and intensity of extreme climate events such as floods, draughts and hurricane/tornadoes/tropical storms, etc., with an associated increase in their devastating consequences.
In the wake of the above, the last two days of the conference have been devoted to the modeling and predictability aspects of:
(i) Climate and Climate Change at the levels of World Regions and Sub-regions and (ii) Climate Variability and Occurrence of Climate Extremes, with focus on the South Asia region.
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NCP Watch
Numerous scientists and physicists from all over the world contributed their talks in the fields such as:
• Seismic Parameters and Microseismicity • Paleseismolgy • Modeling of Seismic Waves Hazard Assessments • Climate Variability and Extremes • Regional level Modeling of Climate and Climate Change
The summary of the speakers are as follows:
H. Al-Shukri (Arkansas), A. Ismail-Zadeh (Karlsruhe), V. Keillis-Borok (Los Angles), A. Kijko (Pretoria), V. Kossobokov (Moscow), Fabio Romanelli (), F. Roth (Postdam), A. Solov'ev (Moscow), N. Toksoz (Cambridge), I. Vorobieva (Moscow), M. Ashfaq (GCISC), Erasmo Buonomo (UK), Hong CHEN (China), J. Christensen (DMO), N. Diffanbaugh (West Lafayette), B. N. Goswami (Pune), Fei HU (China), R. Jones (Hadley Centre), K. Kamala (Pune), R. K. Kolli (Geneva), F. Kucharski (Italy), K. Krishna Kumar (Pune), N. Nicholls (Melbourne), R. K. Pachauri (Delhi), Jeremy Pal (USA), Savita Patwardhan (Pune), S. F. Saeed (Islamabad) & Zhenghui XIE (China).
The International Advisory Committee for the conference consisted of:
F. Giorgi (ASICTP, Trieste), V. Keilis-Borok (UCAL, Los Angles), R. K. Kolli (WMO, Geneva), G. F. Panza (ASICTP and University of Trieste, Trieste), L. A. Stevenson (APN), A. Solov'ev (MITP, Moscow) & N. Toksoz (MIT, Cambridge).
The local Advisory Committee was constituted with:
Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhary (PMD, Islamabad), Arshad M. Khan (GCISC, Islamabad), Shahid A. Khan (MSSP, Islamabad), Azam Ali Khawaja (QAU, Islamabad), MonaLisa (QAU, Islamabad), M. Qaisar (MSSP, Islamabad), Riazuddin (NCP, Islamabad) & M. Munir Sheikh (GCISC, Islamabad).
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NCP Watch
5th Particle Physics Workshop
The National Centre for Physics (NCP) has organized the 5th Particle Physics Workshop during November 20-25, 2006 in collaboration with European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland. The purpose of this workshop was to give an exposure to the participants to the current research in particle physics around the world.
The workshop has been attended mostly by students working towards their Ph.D in particle physics or related fields. The faculty and young researchers involved in particle physics research from various Pakistani universities were also invited. The number of participants was limited to a small number of 30 from outside Islamabad. A limited participation allows close contact and productive discussions between the speakers and the participants.
Generally each speaker delivered 2-3 lectures of one hour duration, starting with the introduction to the subject during the first lecture and gradually moved to a current research topic in particle physics. All lectures have been scheduled in the morning with the discussions followed in the afternoon. Some time has also been reserved in the afternoons for seminars by the students and as well as by the faculty. The workshop had provided a forum for Ph.D students to present their topic of research in afternoon seminars where their research work could have been discussed by the leading experts in the field.
A number of renowned scientists from CERN, Switzerland shared their knowledge and expertise in the areas such as Flavor Physics, Neutrino Physics, Linear Collider, Accelerator Physics, Standard Model, Heavy Ion Physics, LHC Detector, Gaseous Detector etc.
The names of the speakers were:
Robert Fleischer, Alain Blondel, Hans Braun, Walter Wuensch, Oliver Buchmuller, Federico Antinori, Rinaldo Santonico and Andreas Hoecker.
The organizing committee consisted of some eminent scientists of Pakistan along with few Ph.D. students of NCP including:
Dr. Riazuddin (Chairman), Dr. Hafeez Hoorani, Dr. Faheem Hussain, Dr. Fayyazuddin, Dr. Pervez Hoobhoy, Dr. Jamila Butt, Mr. Ijaz Ahmed and Mr. Jamil Aslam.
A special session on 21st November on the occasion of 10th death anniversary of Prof. Abdus Salam has been taken place. Dr. Riazuddin, Dr. Mujahid Kamran, Dr. Fayyazuddin and Dr. Faheem Hussain delivered their talks in the session.
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NCP Watch
Return of an NCP Employee from CERN
One member of the Central Computing Facility Group of NCP, Mr. Usman Ahmad Malik (working as the System Administrator) went to CERN, Switzerland to work with TDAQ Sys- Admin group at ATLAS Experiment in the end of August. The purpose of the visit was to learn ways and techniques to be able to manage large computing farms in an experimental environment.
He studied the TDAQ computing system and worked on various tools and technologies which include high availability clusters and management of online processing farms, network monitoring tools, and remote management using IPMI etc. He setup a high availability cluster offering various network services ensuring zero downtime for users. These tools and technologies are equally beneficial to NCP as it is planning to expand its computing infrastructure, ramping up for the LHC data by the end of year 2007.
He has had different meetings and exchange of views with IT experts at CERN, in which he discussed various aspects and issues about expanding the computing infrastructure at NCP, which include setup of a data centre, storage and network management solutions. The outcome of these discussions was shared with group members at NCP, which proved quite helpful in defining the future directions of computing infrastructure at NCP.
Mr. Usman has arrived back at the end of December.
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Nobel Prize shared for cosmic microwave background studies 3 October 2006
John C Mather and George F Smoot have won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”. The discovery has provided very strong evidence that the Universe was created in a massive explosion called the Big Bang.
The work was carried out in the 1990s using data from NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. John Mather coordinated the entire process of analysing the COBE data and also had primary responsibility for the experiment that revealed the black-body form of microwave radiation. George Smoot was responsible for measuring the small variations in the temperature of the radiation.
Cosmologists believe that cosmic microwave background radiation was created about 13 billion years ago -- immediately after the Big Bang. At this time the Universe was a very hot body (3000 K) that emitted radiation with a distinct temperature signature – called the black-body spectrum. This radiation still exists today as cosmic microwave background radiation.
Mather determined that this radiation still bore the black-body signature, albeit at a much lower temperature (2.7 K) due to the ongoing expansion of the Universe. He also observed that the black-body radiation was very nearly the same throughout the Universe (isotropic). These two observations offer the first clear insights into the origin of the Universe and confirm the Big Bang hypothesis.
When Smoot analysed the COBE data he discovered tantalizing irregularities -- or anisotropy -- in the background radiation that have shed light on one of the most intriguing mysteries of cosmology: how and why did structures such as galaxies and stars form out of the homogeneous Big Bang? Irregularities present just after the Big Bang could have evolved over time into the galaxies of today.
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John Mather was born in 1946 and received his PhD in physics from the University of California in Berkeley, CA, USA. He took a postdoctoral position at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York for two years, during which time he led the proposal efforts for the Cosmic Background Explorer. In 1976 he assumed the position of study scientist, later to become project scientist, at the Goddard Space Flight Centre, where he performed his groundbreaking work on microwave radiation. Since 1995 has has also been senior project scientist for the infrared James Webb Space Telescope, an observatory intended as an improvement to the Hubble telescope.
Born in 1945, George Smoot is Mather's elder by just a matter of months. After completing his PhD in physics in 1970 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, USA, he went on to become a researcher at the University of California, where he began to look for evidence of the big bang. He has worked there ever since, and is currently making the final touches to a next-generation experiment called the Planck Surveyor, which will try to determine the high-energy physics of the early universe when it is launched in 2007.
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Now you see it, now you don’t 5 October 2006
Danish physicists have managed to light-up a cloud of atoms using light teleported from a source half a metre away. Since Charles Bennett and his team first proposed quantum teleportation in 1993, science fiction enthusiasts have had to be content with frustratingly prosaic examples of the principle. However, at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, physicists have passed a milestone that will help to bring some practical applications of teleportation within sight.
Glowing caesium
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“This is the first time teleportation has been achieved between the ‘flying’ medium of light and the ‘stationary medium’ of atoms,” said Eugene Polzik of Copenhagen. “Such teleportation could serve as a main building block of a quantum network connecting distant quantum processors.” To get around this problem, which prevents communication in the classical manner, quantum teleportation makes use of a pair of entangled states. One half of the pair is kept by the sender (affectionately known as “Alice” to quantum physicists), while the other is taken by the receiver (“Bob”) on his travels. When Alice wants to transmit the quantum state of new particle to Bob, she performs a joint measurement, called a “Bell measurement”, on both it and her half of the entangled pair. She then sends the result over to Bob using any classical means available (telephone, homing pigeon, etc.). Then, by using his half of the entangled pair, he can “reconstruct” an exact copy of the initial state. In Polzik’s experiment, a beam of light was shone through an ensemble of caesium atoms, possessed by Bob, becoming entangled through a quantum-mechanical version of the Faraday effect, in which the polarization of light rotates as it passes through a medium. The light travelled half a metre to Alice’s location, where it was mixed on a beamsplitter with the object to be teleported – a weak laser pulse. The amplitude and phase of the combined light was then measured on each of the two outputs of the beamsplitter respectively (the Bell measurement), and then sent through a classical channel to Bob. “The result is that the pure state of the light state is recovered in the atoms,” explained Polzik. “More importantly, our experiment has involved a macroscopic atomic object – something that can, in fact, be visible.” While the number of atoms in the ensemble may not be quite up to the expectations the science fiction enthusiasts (1012 atoms, as opposed to about 1027 in a small person), the fact that the cloud of caesium is an observable object is a major step towards feasible quantum communication. Large ensembles of atoms could, in the future, serve as “memory nodes” by storing quantum states, using photons for the transmission.
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Researchers discover element 118 19 October 2006
If you think you have seen the above headline somewhere before, then you probably have. In 1999, nuclear physicists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US claimed to have produced three atoms of the super-heavy element with atomic number 118 -- the heaviest ever detected. But that claim was retracted three years later when it emerged that some of the data had been falsified.
This time, however, element 118 -- and its slightly lighter counterpart element 116 -- is here to stay, pushing back the boundaries of the periodic table and helping researchers to understand why some nuclei are more stable than others The world is made up of about 90 naturally occurring elements, but since the 1940s physicists have been able to produce heavier, less stable elements. Such elements are vital for testing models of the nucleus, and to date researchers have amassed data on 29 "super-heavy" nuclei with atomic numbers between 104 and 118. The definitive discovery of element 118, which is expected to be a noble gas that lies right below radon in the periodic table, was a collaborative effort between researchers at the Livermore lab and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. Based on data taken early last year in experiments at the JINR cyclotron, in which a target of californium (atomic number 98) is bombarded with a beam of calcium-48 ions, the team observed alpha decay chains that could only occur if element 118 exists. In these decay chains, previously observed element 116 is produced via the alpha decay of element 118. "Element 118 is the last one in a series of superheavy elements produced in nuclear reactions with calcium-48," says Dubna team-leader Yuri Oganessian. "So far all the experimental data point to the existence of an 'island of stability' in the region of superheavy elements, as theory says it should."
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Hydrogen Storage goes metal-free 22 November 2006
Researchers in Canada have developed a new solid material that can store and release hydrogen near room temperature without involving a transition metal. The discovery could lead to the development of low-cost and lightweight materials for the onboard storage of hydrogen fuel in cars.
Hydrogen is often touted as an environmentally-friendly fuel for road vehicles of the future. When consumed in a fuel-cell powered electric car, it produces nothing more than pure water as a by- product. However, many technological challenges remain before it can be used commercially. In particular, hydrogen has a low energy density compared to conventional fuels and therefore it must be stored as a liquid or an extremely high-pressure gas to ensure that reasonable distances can be travelled before refuelling.
These storage methods are both expensive and cumbersome and some researchers believe that it would be better to store hydrogen within solid materials that can absorb large quantities of the gas. In such materials a chemical reaction splits the hydrogen molecule into two hydrogen atoms at the surface of the material. The atoms then migrate into the bulk of the material and form a metal- hydride compound. The hydrogen can be released by heating the material.
Current materials that can easily absorb and discharge hydrogen near room temperature contain transition metals and the storage process must be catalysed by expensive precious metals such as platinum. This makes them too heavy and too expensive for commercial use.
But now Douglas Stephan and colleagues at the University of Windsor have developed the first non-metallic material that can absorb and store hydrogen at room temperature, releasing the gas when heated above 100 ºC. The material contains pairs of boron and phosphorous atoms, which are separated by a ring of carbon atoms. This structure has a net neutral charge but the boron and phosphorous atoms carry a positive and negative charge respectively. The researchers believe that this property allows the two atoms to work together to split the gaseous hydrogen molecules into two hydrogen atoms, which are then covalently bound within the material. According to Stephan, this mechanism is known as “heterolytic cleavage” and has only been observed in transition-metal complexes.
Although the metal-free material offers hope of lighter and cheaper storage materials, Stephan admits that there is still a long way to go. Crucially, the material stores less than 0.25% of its weight in hydrogen, which is far off the US Department of Energy’s target of 6% set for 2010 and the 2.5% achieved by some transition metal materials. Stephan describes the DOE target as a “challenging problem” and the researchers are currently exploring alternative molecular structures.
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The Best of 2006 22 December 2006
It was the year that water flowed on Mars and the first cloak of invisibility was unveiled. Physicists also made important advances in the manipulation of materials at the quantum level in 2006, furthering our knowledge of the fundamental properties of matter and bringing futuristic technologies like quantum computers closer to reality.
1. January: Light and atoms get entangled The year got off to a good start for quantum computation with two research groups reporting breakthroughs in the entanglement of atoms and light. Entanglement is a cornerstone of quantum information theory and could lead to quantum computers that outperform the machines of today. Unfortunately, entangled states tend to be much too fragile and short-lived to be of any practical use – but these results show that real progress has been made in 2006. Light and atoms get entangled 2. February: Great balls of lightning Is ball lightning a spectacular natural phenomenon or pure folklore? Physicists in Israel addressed this pressing issue by using a modified microwave oven to simulate how conventional lightning strikes are believed to create ball lightning. They managed to generate glowing fireballs that were described as “hot jellyfish, quivering and buoyant in the air”. Great balls of lightning 3. March: Hurricane intensity linked to warmer oceans The devastation wrought in 2005 by Katrina and other intense storms in the North-Atlantic basin focused the world’s attention on the possible link between increased hurricane intensity and global warming. In March leading climate physicists raised the warning that rising sea-surface temperatures are increasing the frequency of very intense hurricanes and tropical cyclones worldwide. Thanks to an el Niño event in the Pacific Ocean, 2006 was a relatively quiet storm season in the North Atlantic -- but there could be worse to come if temperatures keep rising. Hurricane intensity linked to warmer oceans
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4. April: Fermilab probes matter-antimatter transitions There is much more matter than anti-matter in the Universe and cosmologists explain this asymmetry by invoking a phenomenon called charge-parity (CP) violation. In March, the international CDF collaboration at Fermilab made the most precise measurement to date of the extremely rapid transitions between matter and antimatter, providing a new system in which to study CP violation. In the experiment, certain B mesons were observed to spontaneously turn into their own antiparticle equivalents -- anti-B mesons -- & back again at a rate of 3 trillion times/secs. Fermilab probes matter-antimatter transitions 5. May: Quantum gases in 3D Optical lattices -- which user laser beams to trap atoms in regular arrays -- allow physicists to study quantum phenomena in "labs-on-a-chip" in which almost all aspects of the interactions between the atoms can be manipulated to great precision. In May two independent teams of physicists managed to trap bosons and fermions together in a 3D optical lattice for the first time. The breakthrough should provide a model system in which to study interactions in real-life solid materials – particularly interactions between electrons and phonons, which are fermions and bosons respectively. Quantum gases in 3D 6. June: A fresh look at glass Glass is perhaps most enigmatic of all everyday materials and its seemingly contradictory physical properties defy simple material classifications like "liquid" or "solid". In June researchers in the US reported that glass can return completely to its original state after being bombarded with high- energy electrons. This high level of thermodynamic stability was completely unexpected given the disordered atomic structure of glass. The result is good news for those charged with disposing of nuclear waste -- who could soon be entombing radioactive materials in “self-healing” glass. A fresh look at glass
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7. July: New look for graphene If Physics Web gave awards for “Most popular material of the year”, the 2006 prize would go to graphene, which is a two-dimensional sheet of carbon that is just one atom thick. Graphene was first made in 2004 and since then physicists have scrambled to be the first to report on its many unique properties. Early incarnations of graphene were extremely fragile flakes that were difficult to manipulate, but in July researchers in the US unveiled a new technique for making graphene by embedding it in a sturdy polymer matrix. This could open the door to transistors and other circuits that exploit the two-dimensional properties of graphene’s conduction electrons. New look for graphene 8. August: World's most creative physicist revealed He’s an outspoken critic of particle physics, the scourge of string theorists and he’s won a Nobel Prize – now the condensed-matter theorist Philip Anderson has been declared the most creative physicist in the world. This was the conclusion of José Soler, a statistical physicist at the University of Madrid, who developed a "creativity index" based on the impact of scientific research papers. Particle theorist Steven Weinberg -- another Nobel laureate -- was the second most creative physicist, followed by in third place by string theorist Ed Witten. All three researchers have links to Princeton University and Physics Web can now declare New Jersey the most creative place for physics. World's most creative physicist revealed 9. September: BECs confound at higher temperatures Bose-Einstein condensation hit the headlines in October when two separate teams claimed to have produced Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) at much higher temperatures than has previously been possible. BECs are systems in which large numbers of bosons collapse into the same ground state as their temperature drops to near absolute zero. Now, one team says they have created a BEC at 19 K, while the other claims to have witnessed the phenomenon at room temperature – but some are asking if these systems can really be classified as BECs. BECs confound at higher temperatures
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10. October: Invisibility cloak unveiled in the US The invisibility cloak passed from science fiction to science fact in October when researchers in the US unveiled a device that can make an object almost invisible to the microwave radiation used in some radar systems. The cloak is based on metamaterials designed by the physicist John Pendry of Imperial College and it bends microwave radiation around the object, like water flowing around a smooth stone. Metamaterials allow physicists to push Maxwell’s equations beyond the limits of conventional materials to create devices with novel – and potentially useful – electromagnetic properties such as negative indices of refraction. Invisibility cloak unveiled in the US 11. November: Spin measured without destruction Physicists have long dreamed of building practical electronic circuits that can exploit the spin of the electron. This prospect is particularly tantalizing at the single-electron level, where the quantum nature of spin could be harnessed in quantum computers to achieve the parallel processing of information on a massive scale. However, success hinges on being able to read the spin state without destroying the state – something that is very difficult to do in the quantum world. Now, physicists in the US have used a laser to make the first such measurement – perhaps opening the door to systems that use the quantum properties of single electrons and photons to process and transmit information. Spin measured without destruction 12. December: Water flows on Mars While it is unlikely to be raining on Mars at the moment, there is a good chance that water is flowing somewhere on the planet. This is the claim of US-based researchers who in December presented the first convincing evidence of recent alluvial activity on Mars. The researchers monitored images of the planet’s surface taken by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and spotted telltale signs that liquid water had flowed in two different places in the last seven years. This is guaranteed to fuel speculation about the possibility of life existing on Mars
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Wireless USB poised to cut the Cable 18 October 2006
The computer industry is still working on the paperless office, but new short-range wireless technologies on tap for next year could at last bring about the cable-free desktop.
The PC and consumer electronics industries have been talking up Certified Wireless USB (Universal Serial Bus) links as a replacement for those tried-and-true USB cables connecting the PC to everything from iPods to keyboards. Delays, unfortunately, have plagued more than a few companies trying to make this a reality.
But by the end of this year, the products that rid your desktop of that tangle of wires should finally start hitting the market.
It's happening now for a combination of reasons. The WiMedia Alliance is planning to make the technology known as "ultrawideband," or UWB, work among a wide variety of consumer electronics devices, from PCs and printers to external hard drives and MP3 players. The USB Implementers Forum, the 1394 Trade Association and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) have chosen the WiMedia Alliance's version of UWB technology as the foundation for their next- generation networking technology.
UWB technology can deliver data rates at up to 480 megabits per second at around 3 meters, with speeds dropping off as the range grows to a limit of about 10 meters. Real-world speeds will probably be a little slower, but this is as fast as the wired version of USB 2.0 and much faster than current Wi-Fi networks are capable of transmitting data.
"This stuff is plumbing," Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates, said of the newer-generation wireless technology. "It's important that it be there, it's going to be handy for getting rid of cables hanging around your desk."
However, like many future technologies, high-bandwidth short-range wireless has been a long time in the making. Progress has been delayed in part by a pitched battle between the WiMedia Alliance, led by Intel, and the UWB Forum, led by Freescale, to determine the industry-standard implementation for UWB technology. The WiMedia backers, which also include Sony, Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard and Samsung, are pushing forward with chips and devices under the Certified Wireless USB brand.
Hints of the future Freescale and Belkin attracted attention at the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show with the introduction of Belkin's CableFree USB Hub. But in April, Freescale left the UWB Forum to focus on developing its own cable-free USB products, killing much of the momentum behind the UWB Forum. Belkin was forced to change suppliers; as a result, the CableFree USB Hub has yet to make it onto store shelves.
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The WiMedia Alliance also took longer than expected to deliver so-called Certified Wireless USB products--in part because it needed to improve how the technology dealt with shifting between environments, such as walking into an office full of wireless networks, said the WiMedia Alliance's Mark Fidler, also a senior engineer at Hewlett-Packard. But with those hurdles cleared, products are starting to appear that hint at the future of short-range networking.
At last month's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel, Kodak and UWB chipmaker Alereon demonstrated how the Certified Wireless USB version of the technology would work.
Pictures taken on a digital camera could be immediately downloaded to a PC with the push of a button. The first time the devices notice each other, the PC would ask the user if it should connect to that particular camera, hard drive or smart phone. With the PC user's authorization, the latest vacation photos start flowing on the desktop and the devices can be set to automatically recognize each other in the future. It's not hard to imagine these capabilities extending to other devices, such as high-definition televisions, said Eric Broockman, CEO of Alereon.
MP3 players are another potentially big market for this technology, Broockman said. Microsoft's Zune player is going to ship with a 802.11g Wi-Fi chip later this year, allowing two Zune users to share songs. But Certified Wireless USB is much faster and uses less power than Wi-Fi, he said.
Early Certified Wireless USB setups are still going to involve a lot of cables, since the only way consumers will be able to wirelessly connect devices is with dongles. At an Intel Developer Forum in Taiwan on Monday, a contract manufacturer called Gemtech introduced a Certified Wireless USB dongle using chips from Intel and Alereon. In this scenario, a Wireless USB connection could be established by plugging a Gemtech dongle into a printer, and one into a PC, and then associating the two dongles.
This isn't the most elegant setup, however. By next year, Alereon hopes companies will start incorporating its chips into expansion cards that can plug into an ExpressCard slot similar to how many notebook users were introduced to Wi-Fi, Broockman said. Further down the road, Alereon and Intel say they believe PC companies will start incorporating the chips directly onto their motherboards.
One potential hurdle is making sure the technology is easy to use, Fidler said. Early implementations of Bluetooth were notoriously difficult for people who weren't tech-savvy, although things have improved quite a bit. USB cables, however, couldn't be much easier to use.
"The goal is to get (wireless USB technology) easy to use but at the same time we need to maintain security," he said. This will require additional authentication steps to ensure that only authorized devices can associate with a host device.
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Mono upgrade targets Linux desktop 09 November 2006
Novell Inc. has announced an upgrade to its Mono software that should make it easier for developers to port .Net desktop applications to Linux.
Mono is an open-source implementation of Microsoft Corp.'s .Net development software. It aims to let developers take advantage of Microsoft's .Net programming tools to create applications that will run on Linux and other non-Microsoft OSes. The software was conceived as a way to bring .Net applications to the Linux desktop, but initial versions supported primarily server applications because that side of the development work turned out to be faster and simpler, said Miguel de Icaza, leader of the Mono project and a vice president at Novell, which acquired Mono in 2003 through its purchase of Ximian Inc. The new version of Mono released on Thursday, version 1.2, adds support for Windows Forms, the graphical user interface APIs (application programming interfaces) in .Net. That will make it easier for developers to port client applications of .Net to Linux & other OSes, De Icaza said. Version 1.2 also adds support for applications written in C# 2.0, the current version of the .Net programming language. Other enhancements include significant improvements in Mono's performance and memory management, de Icaza said. The update is available now and is compatible with prior versions. Like the prior version, it will also allow .Net applications to run on Mac OS X, Solaris and other flavors of Unix. Its release comes after Microsoft and Novell announced a broad agreement intended to make life easier for customers running Windows and Novell's SuSE Linux operating system. Mono is a tricky proposition for Microsoft. It can benefit its customers by making it easier for developers familiar with Microsoft's tools to create applications for Linux. But Microsoft would also be reluctant to wholeheartedly support a technology that makes it easier for customers to switch to Linux. Still, the Mono team has a good relationship with Microsoft developers and plans further products based around the company's software. De Icaza has contacted Microsoft about doing an implementation of its WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) technology, which lets graphics created for Windows Vista applications run on other OSes and on the Web. He also wants to do a version of CardSpace (formerly InfoCard), a new authentication technology planned for Vista. Mono's development lags behind that of .Net. While it has yet to fully support .Net 2.0, Microsoft has already released .Net 3.0 to developers. And the version of Windows Forms supported today is version 1.1, which is already about a year old. De Icaza expects to release a technical preview of Mono 2.0, which should offer full compatibility with .Net 2.0, in March, with the final software likely to ship before the end of 2007. That would put Mono about 15 months behind Microsoft's development of .Net, de Icaza said. "I'd like to narrow [the gap], but it's not too bad because it still takes a long time before people actually adopt new technologies after they are released," he said.
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IT News
Genius Launches New VoIP Mouse 07 December 2006
Taiwan-based Genius has announced the Genius Navigator 380, its latest VoIP Mouse. The Navigator 380 is a chic mouse exhibiting a commendable integration of mouse and Internet phone functions. This VoIP mouse software can support up to six Instant Messengers (Skype, MSN, Yahoo!, GoogleTalk, QQ, and AIM) and combine these IMs into one window. Besides, there are seven buttons in Navigator 380 especially for the phone functions - Phone on/off, List up/down, Volume up/down, and OK for IM window. According to company sources, Genius Navigator 380 can be carried along with your notebook anytime, anywhere. If you are in a coffee shop, and you are using the Navigator 380 featuring a 1200 dpi optical engine, you can handle your paper work or browse the Internet, and the LED on the Navigator 380 blinks to tell you that your friend just gave you a call through Instant Messenger. And if the PC speaker is on, the ringing will also alert you for the incoming phone call. So one just needs to pick up the mouse, and open it up like a clamshell mobile phone to talk to a friend via Navigator 380.
Sandeep Ramani, Country Manager of KYE Systems, said, "With the unveiling of this futuristic product, Genius Navigator 380, I hope Genius, will go a long way to mark an era of innovative products, and will accentuate particularly on next-gen products in future as well. In a nut shell, this revolutionary device is an absolute necessity for a frequent traveler to reduce his/her burden and increase work efficiency."
The key features of the product are its use as an optical mouse or Internet phone (flips open like a clamshell mobile phone), LED lights, and ringing (setup with IM software) for incoming calls, Seven phone button On/Off , Volume up/down, List up/down, OK (for IM window), Mini and portable design which is a good alternative to NB touchpad, LED light for incoming calls, Left button Right button Middle button with wheel List, up/down, Phone off/Phone on, Volume up/down, and OK for IM window.
Navigator 380 is priced at a MRP of Rs 1,850. Genius products are available with Transtek Infoways, and Tirupati Enterprises, the authorized distributors for Genius in India.
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IT News
Linksys Unveils WAP4400N Wireless-N Access Point 18 December 2006
The new Linksys Wireless-N Access Point (802.11n)
(WAP4400N) with Power Over Ethernet capability is designed and
developed specifically for the small business environment, which
provide high-speed wireless access for existing networks.
The Wireless-N Access Point is built based on the 802.11n draft specification. By overlaying the signals of multiple radios, the MIMO (multi-in, multi-out) technology multiplies the effective data rate. Unlike ordinary wireless networking technologies that are confused by signal reflections, MIMO actually uses these reflections to increase the range and reduce 'dead spots' in the wireless coverage area.
The WAP4400N connects Wireless-N (802.11n), Wireless-G (802.11g) or Wireless-B (802.11b) devices to a wired network so as to allow addition of PCs to the network with no cabling hassle.
Power Over Ethernet support makes it easy to install, allowing it to be mounted anywhere, even without ready access to a power plug. In addition, the integrated QoS features provide consistent voice and video quality on both the wired and wireless networks, enabling the deployment of business quality VoIP and video applications.
To protect data and privacy, the Linksys Wireless-N Access Point supports both Wired Equivalent
Privacy (WEP) and the industrial-strength wireless security of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), encoding all wireless transmissions with powerful encryption.
The WAP4400N is available immediately through Linksys' channel partner network in India for an estimated street price of Rs 9,900 ($225.00 usd).
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