Metamaterial Lens is Thinner than the Light It Bends and Focuses

Light-Warping Metamaterials Lens

A lens has been developed which seems to be thinner than the waves of light it tends to focus which has been made from light-warping metamaterials. It is expected that these lenses may one day replace the heavier glass lensed being utilised in everything from microscopes to phone cameras. A curved glass surface in normal lenses of a few millimetres or even centimetres thick tends to redirect the light rays to a common focal point.

To enhance the image, for instance to remove distortion or ensure different wavelengths of light, all seem to get focused appropriately and one will have to keep adding glass layers.This results in the cameras, telescopes and microscopes being limited in part by the size and weight of the lenses they may need. Reza Khorasaninejad, who has designed the new lens with team led by Federico Capasso of Harvard University, had commented that `virtual reality has the same problem and that they want to have high purpose imaging system but what they will end up having is heavy helmets’.

Metamaterials Bend Light – Common Point

In comparison, metamaterials tends to bend light towards a common point utilising structures which seems to be small or smaller than the wavelengths of the light waves itself. Khorasaninejad states that `the lens is flat though it is called virtual curvature. Utilising a beam of electrons, `nanofins’ had been carved by the team, 600 nanometre-tall blocks which together tend to resemble the worlds’ smallest Stonehenge, from a block of titanium dioxide.

They fixed that lens on a thin piece of glass which tends to provide a stiff backing depriving the focus of any light. Through the titanium oxide lens, the nanofins tend to rotate at various angles in order to capture the polarised light that enables them to pull light rays together. The three lenses were examined, tuned to red, green and violet light and each could focus light more harshly than a 55-millimetre thick Nikon microscope lens having same optical properties although the 600-nanometre-thick metamaterial lens has been 100,000 times thinner than the Nikon.

This design, unlike the earlier metamaterial lenses which seemed to handle visible wavelengths, did not lose much light in the procedure.

Entirely Novel Way of Constructing Lens

John Pendry of Imperial College, London had commented that `this is an entirely novel way of constructing a lens and still cannot compete with a glass lens in handling various colours at once, but several application could work with monochromatic light.

The team has plans in expansion of lens’s colour range. Khorasaninejad has mentioned that `the first step was to make a lens which at least could do a good job in the visible and the next step is to do colour correction’.

According to him the most exciting potential applications is in wearable optics like virtual reality and augmented reality. He further added that `any good imaging system present is heavy since the thick lenses need to be stacked on top of each other and no one desires to wear a heavy helmet for a couple of hours.

This technique could reduce weight and volume and shrink lenses thinner than a sheet of paper and imagine the possibilities of wearable optics, flexible contact lenses or telescopes in space’.

Prisoners’ Code Word Caught by Software That Eavesdrops on Calls

Reuters

Machine Learning System – Listen Hours of Recording

Recently a jail in the Midwest had utilised a machine learning system created by a London firm, Intelligent Voice, to listen on the thousands of hours of recording that had been generated each month. Search engines have been moving beyond the web and in the disordered real world and are finding odd things going on. Every call in or out of US prison tends to get recorded since it is important to know what has been said because some of the inmates tend to use phones for the purpose of illegal business with the outside world.

However the recordings tend to generate large amount of audio which seems to be prohibitively expensive to monitor with the human ears.None at the prison were aware of the code word till the software began stirring through the calls. The software saw phrase three-way coming up again and again in the calls and was one of the most common non-trivial words or phrases which had been used. The prison officials, at first were astonished by the devastating popularity of what they presumed seemed to be a sexual reference.

None Aware of Code

They then worked out that it was a code. The prisoners are only permitted to call a few earlier agreed contacts. Hence if a convict needed to speak to a person on a number that was not on their list, they would call their contacts or close relative asking for a `three-way’ with the person they intend to talk to, code for dialling a third party into the call. No one running the surveillance of the phone at the prison had been aware of the code till the software gave indication through the recordings.

 This explains the speed and scale of analysis which machine-learning processes tend to bring to the world. Initially, Intelligent Voice had developed the software to be used by UK banks which could record their call in complying with industry regulations. In the case of prisons, this seemed to generate a large amount of audio data which is hard to search through.

Nigel Cannings, the CEO of the company has stated that the breakthrough came when he decided to see what could have happened if he pointed a machine-learning system at the waveform of the voice data, its pattern of spikes as well as troughs instead of the direct audio recording.

Harness Powerful Prevailing Techniques

This system seemed to work amazingly. Preparing his system on this visual demonstration enabled him to harness powerful prevailing techniques created for image classification. He commented that he built this dialect classification system centred on pictures of the human voice. The trick enabled his system to develop its own models in recognizing speech patterns as well as accents which seemed as good as the best hand-coded one prevailing, models that were built by dialect and computer experts.

 Neil Glackin, developer of Intelligent Voice had stated that `in their first run they were getting something like 88% accuracy. The software thereafter trains itself to transcribe speech utilising recordings of US congressional hearings, corresponding to the audio with the transcripts.

The power of machine which tends to listen and watch is not what they can perform better than human eyes or ears but tend to perform still worse when challenged with data from the real world. Similar to all applications of computation, their power tends to lie in scale, speed and relative cheapness of processing.

New Graphene Based Transistor Will Increase the Clock Speed of Processors

New Kind of Graphene Based Transistor – Ultralow Power Consumption

A new kind of Graphene based transistor has been developed by scientists and utilising modelling has demonstrated that it has extremelylow power consumption when compared to the other related transistor devices. The most essential effect in reducing power consumption is that it permits the speed of the processors of the clock to increase. As per calculations, the upsurge could be as high as two orders of magnitude. The results had been published in a paper in the journal Scientific Reports. The fact is not much on saving electricity, we tend to have plenty of electrical energy.

According to the corresponding author of the study, the head of MIPT’s Laboratory of Optoelectronics and Two-Dimensional Materials, Dmitry Svintsov, electronic components tend to heat less at a lower power, which means that they are capable of operating at higher clock speed and not one gigahertz, though ten for instance, or also one hundred. Building transistors which tend to be capable of switching at low voltages could be one of the highest challenges of modern electronics. The most promising candidate in solving this problem is tunnel transistors.

Electrons Filters through Barrier – Effect of Quantum Tunnelling

Contrasting from the conventional transistors, where the electrons seems to jump through the barrier of energy, in the case of tunnel transistors, the electrons filters through the barrier owing to the effect of quantum tunnelling. But in the case of most of the semiconductors, the tunnelling current seems to be very minor which tends to stop transistors which are based on these materials from being utilised in real circuits.

The scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology – MIPT, the Institute of Physics and Technology RAS and Tohoku University – Japan, the authors of the article had proposed a new design for a tunnel transistor centred on bilayer graphene and on utilising modelling, had proved that this material seemed to be an appropriate platform for low-voltage electronics. Graphene, created by MIPT graduates Sir Andre Geim and Sir Konstantin Novoselov, is said to be a sheet of carbon which is one iota thick.

Bilayer Graphene – Two Sheets of Graphene

Since it has two dimensions, the properties of graphene inclusive of its electronic properties tend to be radically different to three –dimensional carbon-graphite.Svintsov has stated that `bilayer graphene is said to be two sheets of graphene which are connected to one another with ordinary covalent bonds. However, owing to unique structure of electronic bands, it tends to be extremely favourable material for low voltage tunnelling switches’.

Bands of bilayer graphene, for instance, the permissible energy levels of an electron at a particular significance of momentum tends to be in the shape of a Mexican hat, It seems that the density of electrons which can occupy spaces close to the edges of the Mexican hat seems to infinity which is known as van Hove singularity. On the application of a only a very small voltage to the gate of a transistor, a large number of electrons begin to tunnel at the same time at the edges of the Mexican hat which causes a sharp change in current from the application of small voltage. This is the reason of low voltage for the record low power consumption.

Gadget That Can Fold Your Laundry Perfectly with Robot Arms and Even Steam out Creases

A Robo-Helper – Automatically Folds Laundry

A San Francisco start-up has revealed a robo-helper which tends to automatically fold the laundry. Known as `Your laundry folding friend’ FoldiMate tends to use a conveyor belt, many robotic arms together with an adjustable tray that tends to push our skilfully folded clothing in less than a minute. FoldiMate had mentioned on its website that `FoldiMate is a robotic clothes and laundry folding machine and the only way it knows to fold, is like an expert’

It is 32 inches tall and 28 inches wide, weighing only 65 pounds and fits in most laundry rooms and can be moved about easily in different rooms FoldiMate Family, the home targeted robotic laundry folder, will quickly become `a must have’ in every household around the world.

The device is said to be designed to be placed on top of the washer, dryer or a strong table. The firm provides a wheeled table which can be moved where you can fold normally. One can just clip the laundered garment to the integrated rack placed on the outside of FoldiMate and using the available buttons, you can select what type of clothing it is, like a pair of pants or shirt.

FoldiMate Senses Fabric, Once Pulled in the Machine

FoldiMate tends to sense the fabric, size, thickness and if it is a long-sleeved or short sleeved and adjust according to those characteristics, once it is pulled inside the machine. Sensing the kind of garment and with a series of robot arms, it folds the garment into place. Besides taking over folding duties, the device also diminishes wrinkles with a built-in steamer.

It de-wrinkles the clothing by steaming them as they tend to exit the machine. It takes about 10 seconds to fold most of the items and an extra 20 to 30 to steam out the wrinkles from the garment. Towards the end of the process, the garments are released from the machine in a well-ordered pile. The rack tends to hold around 15 to 20 pieces at a time.

But there are some items which cannot be folded with the machine and it is unable to handle everything in the laundry basket such as undergarments, socks and towels. Though the concept is easy, FoldiMate has been developing the machine for years with the help of a team of experienced roboticists.

Developed Patented Robotic System to Fold Clothes

Since 2014, the machine had been available commercially though the firm has been working on a family friendly style that is likely to hit the market in 2017. Presently, on the site, FoldiMate is accepting pre-orders which are predicted to run around $700 to $850. Over 11,000 people have already registered on the company’s website.

However, the company is providing a 10% discount to those who tend to make a down payment of $10 or more for the unit. FoldiMate has explained that they had developed a patented robotic system to fold clothes which could decrease the size of the machine by one third or less while at the same time keep the target price which would be affordable to the consumers as well as business – less than one fifth of their direct competitors’ price.

FoldiMate seems to have competitorsin the laundry folding field and a group of Japanese companies had unveiled in October last year `The Laundroid’ that tends to wash, dry as well as fold clothes.

The Sticker That Can Free You from Power Cables and Give Any Gadget Wireless Charging

Energysquare – Wireless charging Sticker

Though some of the gadgets tend to provide wireless charging, several of the products of Apple do not do so. However, there is a new smart sticker known as energysquare which tends to use wireless charging sticker that sticks towards the back of a smartphone, charging numerous devices on a single charging pad. The device, developed by a French company tends to charge various phone of any make simultaneously and at the same speed like a traditional wall charger.

The adhesive and thin stickers have been designed with two conductive dots which tend to directly connect to the battery carrying two conductive electrodes together with a connector that can be plugged in the charging socket of the devices needed to be charged. The charging pad comprise of conductive square which are controlled independently by the unique embedded system of the company.

When the users place their smartphone on the pad, the conductive dots of the stickers connect with two different conductive squares on the pad and the charging tends to start once the physical contact is sensed.The complete charging system is said to be water resistant and does not emit electromagnetic waves, which is compatible with most of the smartphones, inclusive of tablets. It is designed to resist the daily use by being smash proof.

Two Sizes – Square One/Square Two

The charging pads are made available in two sizes, namely Square One and Square Two, featuring `smart sleep mode’ in order to overcome any power waste when not in use. The company on its Kickstarter campaign had stated that `energysquare is a new generation of wireless chargers which will enable you to charge various devices at the same speed as classic chargers by just placing it on an ultra-tin pad.

No induction, or electromagnetic waves, we are using our own patented conductive charging technology’. Energysquare is on the lookout for $33,630 through the online campaign where $73,539 has been raised from 758 backers with 20 days remaining for the campaign. Consumers would be receiving one charging pad together with five stickers with a $44 pledge and the retails price is said to be $91 to $106.

No Loss of Energy

It is said the energysquare can charge any type of smartphone having a micro-USB, USB kind C or lightning connector. The energysquare team have stated that unlike the induction charging, there is no loss of energy and several of the devices can be charged on wide surfaces at the same time’. If one prefers to keep utilising a classic charger, you could just unplug the sticker temporally and then plug it back when done with. The energysquare has stated that the charging smartphones as well as the tablets is said to be only the beginning, and the more compatible objects tend to exist, the more value for you.

It adds that as their objective was to enable any connected device be energysquare compatible, they had created an open source standard which permitted any device manufacturer or technology enthusiastic to make energysquare compatible products. The project is said to be in its pre-industrialization stage where many working beta prototypes have been dispersed to real people, offices and families.