You are browsing the archives of 2008 October.

The Chinese Academy of Science reports that scientists at its Institute of Microelectronics have successfully formed a zinc oxide nanorod field-effect transistor, the “first of its kind as a nano device.”

The ZnO nano materials, such as nanowires, nanorods, nanobands and nanorings, attract intense worldwide attention for their unique optical, semiconducting and piezoelectric properties. At present, Chinese scientists in this filed mainly focus their research on material growth and diode development. A research group headed by Prof. Zhang Haiying from IME came up with a unique “bottom-up” method for designing and developing nano devices. Through the regular contact photolithography technology, they employed ZnO nanorods as the channel material and fabricated a metal-oxide-semiconductor FET by combining gate oxide and back gate metal, which displayed satisfying results.

CAS says Zhang and her colleagues will next be working to create smaller diameter nanowires and improve the performance of the devices.

Testing took place at the Southwest Research Institute, an independent R&D facility in San Antonio, Texas. Here, paired with a lithium battery, AMI’s SOFC system gave life to a Packbot, proving that, “Lightweight, convenient and powered by globally-available propane, Adaptive Materials’ fuel cells improve the overall functionality and duration of a robot in mission-critical settings,” reports AMI’s chief business officer Michelle Crumm. Although the army currently utilizes unmanned automated systems to disarm explosive devices, Crumm explains that many more military uses for the robots could be found, if their operational time could be extended.  She says long-running robots could even be helpful in nonmilitary situations, such as searching potentially harmful debris for survivors in the aftermath of a disaster. Crumm says AMI’s goal is to develop a SOFC that can power a small ground robot for 12 hours or more. She disses competitive fuel-cell systems based on hydrogen or methanol, saying that AMI’s propane-based system offers greater potential for commercialization because propane is readily available around the world.

The AAAS’ latest Policy Alert alerted us to the following announcement that the IRS actually made Oct. 1:

Approximately four hundred U.S. colleges and universities will begin receiving compliance questionnaires from the Internal Revenue Service in the next few days as part of the agency’s focused effort to study key areas in the tax-exempt community.  The college and university questionnaire will focus on unrelated business income, endowments and executive compensation practices.  The questionnaires are being sent to a cross-section of small, mid-sized and large private and public four-year colleges and institutions. . . . Among other things, the questionnaire will gather information from the schools about how they report revenues and expenses from their trade or business activities, classify their activities as exempt or taxable activities, and calculate and report income or losses on taxable activities.  The questionnaire also will gather information regarding how the organization invests and uses its endowment funds and determines compensation of certain highly paid individuals. The IRS said it expects to receive most of the responses within the next several months, analyze the results of the compliance questionnaire and conduct examinations of a sample of the organizations.  The IRS said it expects to issue a report on the project in 2009.

They say the resolution for this electron microscope is like the Hubble telescope aimed at the atomic level:

“We are the first university in the world with a microscope of such a high caliber,” says Gianluigi Botton, director of the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy, professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and the project’s leader. “The resolution of the Titan 80-300 Cubed microscope is remarkable . . .  With this microscope we can now easily identify atoms, measure their chemical state and even probe the electrons that bind them together.”

The microscope is so sensitive that the act of breathing could disrupt its operation. This sensitivity requires that the equipment be housed in a special ultra-stable, isolated facility. Operators work in a remote room. The $15 million tool was build by Netherlands-based FEI, and the center hopes it will facilitate energy and other commercial research. According to a press release:

The microscope will be used to help produce more efficient lighting and better solar cells, study proteins and drug-delivery materials to target cancers. It will assess atmospheric particulates, and help create lighter and stronger automotive materials, more effective cosmetics, and higher density memory storage for faster electronic and telecommunication devices.

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One tradition of The American Ceramic Society’s annual meetings and the coinciding MS&T conferences is the student mug drop competition.

The purpose of the Ceramic Mug Drop contest is to promote spirited and collegial competition among students by demonstrating their prowess in manufacturing a ceramic mug possessing high strength, mechanical reliability, and aesthetics. Mugs are fabricated by student teams from ceramic raw materials and are judged on both aesthetics and breaking thresholds. The mugs are then dropped from successively higher levels until the breaking threshold is reached. The mug with this highest successful drop distance wins.

Certain rules apply, but in general, the mugs must be made entirely from ceramic or glass materials, and may not contain any metal, plastic, paint, organics, or non-ceramic materials. Each must have a serviceable handle, be able to hold at least 500 ml of liquid but not more than 625 ml, be usable for drinking purposes and must be fired or formed at a temperature of 300°C or higher.

Some of the mugs are quite beautiful (see below) and another award is given for the “Best Looking” mug.

… Adding that the contest is sponsored by Keramos, the national ceramic engineering fraternity, and that the winning team was from the University of Washington.