A new reactor design could make nuclear power safer and cheaper, says John Gilleland.

Enriching the uranium for reactor fuel and opening the reactor periodically to refuel it are among the most cumbersome and expensive steps in running a nuclear plant. And after spent fuel is removed from the reactor, reprocessing it to recover usable materials has the same drawbacks, plus two more: the risks of nuclear-weapons proliferation and environmental pollution.

These problems are mostly accepted as a given, but not by a group of researcher­s at Intellectual Ventures, an invention and investment company in Bellevue, WA. The scientists there have come up with a preliminary design for a reactor that requires only a small amount of enriched fuel--that is, the kind whose atoms can easily be split in a chain reaction. It's called a traveling­-wave reactor. And while government researchers intermittently bring out new reactor designs, the traveling-wave reactor is noteworthy for having come from something that barely exists in the nuclear industry: a privately funded research company.

As it runs, the core in a traveling-­wave reactor gradually converts nonfissile material into the fuel it needs. Nuclear reactors based on such designs "theoretically could run for a couple of hundred years" without refueling, says John G­illeland, manager of nuclear programs at Intellectual Ventures.

Gilleland's aim is to run a nuclear reactor on what is now waste. ­Conventional reactors use uranium-235, which splits easily to carry on a chain reaction but is scarce and expensive; it must be separated from the more common, nonfissile uranium-238 in special enrichment plants. Every 18 to 24 months, the reactor must be opened, hundreds of fuel bundles removed, hundreds added, and the remainder reshuffled to supply all the fissile uranium needed for the next run. This raises proliferation concerns, since an enrichment plant designed to make low-enriched uranium for a power reactor differs trivially from one that makes highly enriched material for a bomb.

But the traveling-wave reactor needs only a thin layer of enriched U-235. Most of the core is U-238, millions of pounds of which are stockpiled around the world as leftovers from natural uranium after the U-235 has been scavenged. The design provides "the simplest possible fuel cycle," says Charles W. Forsberg, executive director of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Project at MIT, "and it requires only one uranium enrichment plant per planet."

TR10: Liquid Battery Donald Sadoway conceived of a novel battery that could allow cities to run on solar power at night.

Without a good way to store electricity on a large scale, solar power is useless at night. One promising storage option is a new kind of battery made with all-liquid active materials. Prototypes suggest that these liquid batteries will cost less than a third as much as today's best batteries and could last significantly longer.

The battery is unlike any other. The electrodes are molten metals, and the electrolyte that conducts current between them is a molten salt. This results in an unusually resilient device that can quickly absorb large amounts of electricity. The electrodes can operate at electrical currents "tens of times higher than any [battery] that's ever been measured," says Donald Sadow­ay, a materials chemistry professor at MIT and one of the battery's inventors. What's more, the materials are cheap, and the design allows for simple manufacturing.

The first prototype consists of a container surrounded by insulating material. The researchers add molten raw materials: antimony on the bottom, an electrolyte such as sodium sulfide in the middle, and magnesium at the top. Since each material has a different density, they naturally remain in distinct layers, which simplifies manufacturing. The container doubles as a current collector, delivering electrons from a power supply, such as solar panels, or carrying them away to the electrical grid to supply electricity to homes and businesses.

TR10: Biological Machines Michel Maharbiz's novel interfaces between machines and living systems could give rise to a new generation of cyborg device

A giant flower beetle flies about, veering up and down, left and right. But the insect isn't a pest, and it isn't steering its own path. An implanted receiver, microcontroller, microbattery, and six carefully placed electrodes--a payload smaller than a dime and weighing less than a stick of gum--allow an engineer to control the bug wirelessly. By remotely delivering jolts of electricity to its brain and wing muscles, the engineer can make the cyborg beetle take off, turn, or stop midflight.

The beetle's creator, Michel ­Maharbiz, hopes that his bugs will one day carry sensors or other devices to locations not easily accessible to humans or the terrestrial robots used in search-and-rescue missions. The devices are cheap: materials cost as little as five dollars, and the electronics are easy to build with mostly off-the-shelf components. "They can fly into tiny cracks and could be fitted with heat sensors designed to find injured survivors," says Maharbiz, an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "You cannot do that now with completely synthetic systems."

Maharbiz's specialty is designing interfaces between machines and living systems, from individual cells to entire organisms. His goal is to create novel "biological machines" that take advantage of living cells' capacity for extremely low-energy yet exquisitely precise movement, communication, and computation. Maharbi­z envisions devices that can collect, manipulate, store, and act on information from their environments. Tissue for replacing damaged organs might be an example, or tables that can repair themselves or reconfigure their shapes on the basis of environmental cues. In 100 years, Maharbiz says, "I bet this kind of machine will be everywhere, derived from cells but completely engineered."

TR10: Intelligent Software Assistant Adam Cheyer is leading the design of powerful software that acts as a personal aide.

Search is the gateway to the Internet for most people; for many of us, it has become second nature to distill a task into a set of keywords that will lead to the required tools and information. But Adam Cheyer, cofounder of Silicon Valley startup Siri, envisions a new way for people to interact with the services available on the Internet: a "do engine" rather than a search engine. Siri is working on virtual personal-assistant software, which would help users complete tasks rather than just collect information.

Cheyer, Siri's vice president of engineering, says that the software takes the user's context into account, making it highly useful and flexible. "In order to get a system that can act and reason, you need to get a system that can interact and understand," he says.

Siri traces its origins to a military-funded artificial-intelligence project called CALO, for "cognitive assistant that learns and organizes," that is based at the research institute SRI International. The project's leaders--including Cheyer--combined traditionally isolated approaches to artificial intelligence to try to create a personal-assistant program that improves by interacting with its user. Cheyer, while still at SRI, took a team of engineers aside and built a sample consumer version; colleagues finally persuaded him to start a company based on the prototype. Siri licenses its core technology from SRI.

Cheap, Plastic Memory for Flexible Devices A new type of flash could be used in e-readers.

Cheap and plastic aren't words often associated with cutting-edge technology. But researchers in Tokyo have created a new kind of plastic low-cost flash memory that could find its way into novel flexible electronics.
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Flash memory stores data electrically, in specially designed silicon transistors. Information can be recorded and read quickly and is retained even when the power is off. This makes flash ideal for MP3 players, cameras, memory cards, and USB drives. But the technology is still more expensive than conventional hard disks.

The prototype plastic flash memory cannot match silicon's storage density, long-term stability, or number of rewrite cycles. But its low cost could make it possible to integrate flash memory into more unconventional electronics. For example, cheap plastic memory devices might be incorporated into e-paper or disposable sensor tags.

"Organic materials offer the capability to significantly lower the price of memory," because they can be processed much more cheaply than silicon, says Yang Yang, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved with the work. The demonstration of plastic flash "is a very important milestone in organic memory," says Yang.

Complex Integrated Circuits Made of Carbon Nanotubes New circuits bring low-power nanotube computers closer

The first three-dimensional carbon nanotube circuits, made by researchers at Stanford University, could be an important step in making nanotube computers that could be faster and use less power than today's silicon chips. Such a computer is still at least 10 years off, but the Stanford work shows it is possible to make stacked circuits using carbon nanotubes. Stacked circuits cram more processing power in a given area, and also do a better job dissipating waste heat.

A recent IBM study showed that for a given total power consumption, a circuit made from carbon nanotubes is five times faster than a silicon circuit. "We can make silicon transistors smaller and smaller, but at extremely small dimensions they don't show the desired performance anymore," says Zhihong Chen, manager of carbon technology at the IBM Watson Research Center. "We are looking to alternative materials that can be scaled more aggressively but still maintain device performance."

Researchers have had great success in making single nanotube transistors in the lab, but scaling them up to make complex circuits has been difficult because it's impossible to control the quality of every single nanotube. The Stanford circuit designs, which were presented last week at the International Electron Devices Meeting in Baltimore, make it possible to create more complex nanotube circuits in spite of the material's limitations.

"When we deal with a large number of nanoscale components, we can't demand everything to be perfect," says H.-S. Philip Wong, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford. When the Stanford researchers grow arrays of nanotubes to make circuits, they get a mix of semiconducting nanotubes and metallic nanotubes that will cause electrical shorts if they're not eliminated. Some of the nanotubes grow in straight lines, but some are squiggly, and these must also be worked around. While chemists work on methods for growing straight, pure nanotubes, the Stanford researchers' question, Wong says, is, "How do we mitigate that and make sure the system still works?"

The answer is to account for materials limitations in the circuit designs. "We have to find a way to build with the metallic nanotubes so that they don't make trouble," says Subhasish Mitra, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford. The Stanford group first makes what Mitra calls a "dumb" layout. Using a stamp, researchers transfer a flat-lying, aligned array of carbon nanotubes grown on a quartz substrate to a silicon wafer. They then top the nanotubes with metal electrodes. At the surface of the wafer, between the silicon and the nanotubes, is an insulating layer that acts as a back gate, allowing the researchers to switch the semiconducting nanotubes off before using the metal electrodes to burn out the metallic nanotubes with a blast of electricity. A top gate is added that's patterned in such a way that it won't connect with any misaligned tubes. The circuits are then etched to remove metal electrodes that aren't needed for the final circuit design.

Using Printed Nanocircuits to Sense Hormones Novel device could aid the treatment of infertility.

Just as glucose meters have revolutionized the treatment of diabetes, researchers at a startup called Aneeve Nanotechnologies believe they're building hormone sensors that could revolutionize the understanding and treatment of infertility, menopause, and other conditions related to hormone fluctuation.
Aneeve is part of a new technology incubator program at the University of California at Los Angeles. The company is working to create low-cost sensors that can be made with off-the-shelf ink-jet printers and carbon-nanotube ink. The printers lay down nanotube circuits that, upon binding to the estrogen protein estradiol, undergo a change to their resistance and optical properties and transmit that change via radio waves to another device. The company's chief operating officer, Kosmas Galatsis says he hopes the result will be a system as convenient as glucose meters.

Microscopic Solar Cells Could See More Sunlight The new cells promise to be cheaper, more efficient, and even printable.

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have shrunk silicon solar cells down to the micro scale, opening new possibilities for improved efficiency.

Multi-crystalline silicon, currently the gold standard for solar-cell efficiency, is expensive and produces cells that are heavy and brittle. Sandia's microscopic silicon solar cells use 100 times less material while operating with the same efficiency.

In addition to lower materials costs, the smaller scale of these cells means they could be incorporated into compact optical systems for cheaper light-tracking and concentration. Researchers might even suspend them in inks that could be printed onto plastic to make efficient, flexible silicon-solar modules.

"In microsystems, you're looking for things that become cheaper, perform better, and gain new functionalities," says Gregory Nielson, head scientist on the project.

So far, the Sandia researchers have assembled and tested a single micro solar cell as proof of principle. But they have begun testing functioning solar modules made from multiple tiny cells and are developing techniques for assembling them efficiently.

Sandia's cells are between 0.25 and one millimeter in diameter. The main benefit of manufacturing such small cells would be lower materials costs, since the tiny cells can be made about 10 times thinner than conventional ones. Ordinarily, solar cells must be 100 micrometers thick to support their surface area--typically about 15 centimeters square.

Tracking a Superbug with Whole-Genome Sequencing

By sequencing the entire genome of numerous samples of the notorious MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria--a drug-resistant strain of staph responsible for thousands of deaths in the United States each year--researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the United Kingdom have gained clues as to how the superbug travels both around the globe and in local hospitals. Scientists say the approach will shed light on the epidemiology of the troublesome bacteria and help public health programs target their prevention efforts most effectively.

The research, which would have been impossible just two years ago, was enabled by fast and inexpensive sequencing technology from Illumina, a genomics company based in San Diego. "The work demonstrates the value of applying high-resolution sequencing technology to public health problems," said Caroline Ash, a senior editor at the journal Science, where the research was published, at a press conference on Wednesday. "Potentially the technology could pinpoint the origin of the outbreak and the origin of its spread."

About 30 percent of people carry Staphylococcus aureus bacteria on their skin, often harmlessly. But for some people, the microbes can cause severe problems, including serious skin infections, sepsis, and death. Antibiotic-resistant strains of the virus emerged in the 1960s, and these now account for more than half of all hospital-acquired infections in the U.S.

China's High-Speed-Rail Revolution

China has begun operating what is, by several measures, the world's fastest rail line: a dedicated 968-kilometer line linking Wuhan, in the heart of central China, to Guangzhou, on the southeastern coast. In trials, the "WuGuang" line trains (locally built variants of Japan's Shinkansen and Germany's InterCity Express high-speed trains) clocked peak speeds of up to 394 kilometers per hour (or 245 miles per hour). They have also recorded an average speed of 312 kph in nonstop runs four times daily since the WuGuang's December 26 launch, slashing travel time from Wuhan to Guangzhou from 10.5 hours to less than three.

WuGuang's speed blows away the reigning champion: France's TGV, which runs from Lorraine to Champagne and averages 272 kph. It also bests China's first high-speed train, the Beijing-to-Tianjin trains that average 230 kph, as well as Shanghai's magnetically levitated airport shuttle trains that can hit 430 kph but average less than 251 kph.

Rail experts say the builders of the new WuGuang line deserve more bragging rights than the trains' European and Japanese designers

Tesla to Use High-Energy Batteries from Panasonic

Tesla Motors, the maker of high-performance electric vehicles, is working with Panasonic, the battery and consumer electronics giant, to develop its next generation of batteries. The partnership is intended to help Tesla lower the cost of its batteries and improve the range of its vehicles.

Last month Panasonic announced two high-energy batteries for electric vehicles. These new batteries store as much as 30 percent more energy than its previous lithium-ion batteries, and this increased storage could, in theory, increase a vehicle's range by a similar amount, thereby addressing one of the main problems with electric cars. Tesla's Roadster currently has a range of 244 miles and takes three and a half hours to charge with a special charger.

The other major challenge with electric vehicles is the cost of the battery packs. Tesla isn't announcing the potential cost savings with future batteries, but JB Straubel, Tesla Motor's chief technology officer, says battery costs have been steadily declining at about 8 percent a year.

Climate Change Authority Admits Mistake The use of news reports as sources calls a key finding into question

One of the most alarming conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a widely respected organization established by the United Nations, is that glaciers in the Himalayas could be gone 25 years from now, eliminating a primary source of water for hundreds of millions of people. But a number of glaciologists have argued that this conclusion is wrong, and now the IPCC admits that the conclusion is largely unsubstantiated, based on news reports rather than published, peer-reviewed scientific studies.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the IPCC admitted that the Working Group II report, "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability," published in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), contains a claim that "refers to poorly substantiated estimates. " The statement also said "the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedure, were not applied properly." The statement did not quote the error, but it did cite the section of the report that refers to Himalayan glaciers. Christopher Field, director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, who is now in charge of Working Group II, confirms that the error was related to the claim that the glaciers could disappear by 2035.

The disappearance of the glaciers would require temperatures far higher than those predicted in even the most dire global warming scenarios, says Georg Kaser, professor at the Institut für Geographie der Universität, Innsbruck. The Himalayas would have to heat up by 18 degrees Celsius and stay there for the highest glaciers to melt--most climate change scenarios expect only a few degrees of warming over the next century.

Technology Overview: Media Moves Online

Technology has torn down the walls between different communications media. Magazines produce video clips, while television news stations post written articles online. The technologies that are driving this media convergence are network connections, powerful mobile devices, clever interfaces, and easy-to-use software.

One of the most visible manifestations of the new technology is the rise of "we media," or citizen journalism, which enables all kinds of people to post anything they want online (see "Mainstream News Taps Into Citizen Journalism"). Several companies, including TypePad, WordPress, and Vox, offer blog platforms that can be used as is or customized with plug-in software to support sophisticated media sites. Sites like YouTube and Blip.tv similarly make it easy to share video content.

Book publishers, meanwhile, are seeing a boom in electronic readers, thanks in large part to the display technology made by E Ink of Cambridge, MA (see "Companies to Watch"). Its electronic ink is used in all the major e-readers, including Amazon's Kindle and the Sony Reader. Though they are using similar display technologies, e-book makers are looking to distinguish their products by adding new features: support for audio books or other types of media, for example, or digital rights management that allows users to loan e-books to friends. These dedicated e-readers are expected to face more competition from new smart phones, which offer touch-screen interfaces and large catalogues of third-party applications.

Experts Break Mobile Phone Security A researcher has shown that attacks on a long-standing mobile phone standard are possible.

The algorithm used to protect the security of communications on 80 percent of cell phones in the world can be relatively easily cracked to intercept calls, according to cryptographers at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress, a computer conference in Berlin. A German researcher presented an attack on the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM)--showing it's possible to eavesdrop on cell phone calls and intercept SMS messages. Mobile phones worldwide use GSM, though in the United States many carriers, including Verizon and Sprint PCS, use a competing standard.

Karsten Nohl, who has a PhD in computer science from the University of Virginia, says he demonstrated the GSM attack to encourage people to develop a more sophisticated means of protection. GSM encryption was introduced in 1987, and first showed cracks in the 1990s. Nohl points to a series of academic papers illustrating problems with A5/1, which is used to protect GSM calls.

Nohl says that despite these concerns, people trust GSM with ever more sensitive data. In particular, there have been recent moves to use the standard for mobile banking, payments, and authentication.

Working with a group of hackers, Nohl generated and published a "rainbow table" for A5/1. This table is an optimized set of codes that would allow an attacker to quickly find the key protecting a given phone conversation. The group also cracked another algorithm that protects conversations by shifting communications between mobile phones and base stations to a variety of different frequencies during a call.

Next Generation Cell Networks New systems could improve service for those with old and new smart phones.

As cell phones take on more and more features, wireless carriers are struggling to keep up with data demands.

Whether wireless customers are watching videos on YouTube or uploading puppy pictures to Facebook, they want reliable speed. Upgrading the network is essential to meeting the needs of these customers, and each wireless carrier has its own plan of attack. Some are upgrading their existing third generation (3G) networks with better software before moving on to next generation networks. Others already have fourth generation (4G) networks up and running. In addition to transmitting high-definition video, these networks could alleviate traffic problems on existing networks, making service better for everyone--even folks who don't plan on buying a new 4G-enabled device.

According to AT&T spokesperson Seth Bloom, wireless data traffic grew nearly 7,000 percent between the third quarter of 2006 and the third quarter of 2009. "We've been working tirelessly to support this growth," Bloom says.

In 2008 and the first three quarters of 2009, AT&T invested approximately $19 billion on its wireless network. "We know there is work to be done, especially in New York and San Francisco. We have a plan to improve the experience; we are implementing the plan, and we are confident that it will work."

Bringing Color to E-Readers Several models capable of playing video are just around the corner.

One of the hot topics at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week in Las Vegas is color e-readers, with several companies showcasing new products. While E Ink has been a leader in e-reader display technology, the company has yet to produce a color display capable of showing video, and the next generation of devices could threaten E Ink's dominance.

E Ink's monochrome screens are made up of microcapsules full of positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles. Applying a negative charge causes a pixel containing the particles to appear white, while a positive charge results in a black appearance. Color versions use the same basic technology, but with colored filters added. Unfortunately, these filters tend to reduce the brightness of the display, leading to a washed out appearance.

Companies such as Pixel Qi, Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Liquavista, and Kent Displays all have new ideas about the best way to make a good color screen for an e-reader, and they are eager to get in the game.

This morning at the CES, Pixel Qi demonstrated its new display technology, targeted for use in netbooks, e-readers, and tablets. In high-power mode, the 10.1-inch display acts like a traditional LCD screen: a backlight provides light that is filtered by red, green, and blue sub-pixels to create desired colors. However, the display also has a low-power mode. In this mode the backlight is turned off, and reflective, mirror-like, elements--placed alongside the red, green, and, blue subpixels--take over the job of displaying the image, now in black and white. (How these elements are operated and distributed across the screen is being kept secret by Pixel Qi.)

China Details Homemade Supercomputer Plans

It's official: China's next supercomputer, the petascale Dawning 6000, will be constructed exclusively with home-grown microprocessors. Weiwu Hu, chief architect of the Loongson (also known as "Godson") family of CPUs at the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also confirms that the supercomputer will run Linux. This is a sharp departure from China's last supercomputer, the Dawning 5000a, which debuted at number 11 on the list of the world's fastest supercomputers in 2008, and was built with AMD chips and ran Windows HPC Server.

Plastic Logic Device Showcases Organic Transistors

Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Plastic Logic announced the details of the first consumer product based on organic transistors, a technology that's been limited to the lab for the past 20 years. The company's thin, lightweight e-reader, called the Que, uses organic transistors to power a black and white, touch-sensitive display made by E Ink, an electronic paper company. Such transistors can be built on lightweight plastic backings.

Logical reader: The long-awaited Que is the first consumer product to feature Plastic Logic's organic transistor technology.
Credit: Plastic Logic

Samsung B5310 CorbyPRO review: Type and go

The S3650 Corby was just the beginning of a lineup that appears to have no visible end. There is a Corby for the touchscreen addicts, a Corby for the music buffs, Corby for the heavy texters, Corby for the young, and one for their parents. That’s pretty much everyone, don’t you think? We guess there should even be a Corby for the bored-with-the-Corby.

The founding member of the Corby wasn’t announced so long ago, but so much has been changed. Well, if you put the S3650 Corby and the recently announced B5310 CorbyPRO side by side you'll notice one thing that hasn't changed at all: design. But on the inside they are very different, indeed

The Samsung CorbyPRO is meant for a different range of users altogether. It combines great texting and the intuitive touchscreen control tops that up with a nice connectivity package (such as HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and a 3.5mm audio jack) and all that is delivered at a bargain price

Nokia announces 5235 Comes With Music touchscreen smartphone

Nokia has launched the 5235 Comes With Music, a S60 5th Edition touchscreen smartphone with Nokia's music subscription service. The device features a 3.2-inch touchscreen display (640 x 360 pixels), which should vividly show shots taken with the phone's 2.0 megapixel camera.

Users can download as much legal music as they want for 12 to 18 months and listen to it with the 5235's 3.5mm audio jack or with Bluetooth 2.0 stereo headphones. Users can also store music on microSD cards. The device's 1320mAh battery promises 33 hours of music playback or 18 days standby time. Of course, the 5235 also includes support for Ovi services like Store, Contacts, Share, and Maps.

Samsung outs S5350 Shark candybar phone

Today Samsung announced the candybar S5350 Shark phone, one of three new devices in its "Shark" family.

Samsung's Shark portfolio of phones focuses on delivering multimedia content and one-click access to social networks including Bebo, Facebook, and MySpace. Those systems can be accessed on the Shark's 2.2-inch QVGA resolution display.

The Shark measures a pocketable 115.2mm x 46.7mm x 11.9mm (4.5in x 1.8in x .46in) in size, and also comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera, an FM radio, Bluetooth 2.1 support, and 100MB of internal memory that can be expanded using the device's microSD card slot.