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From Technology Review RSS Feeds: Epic Games Finds New Customers

The graphics software used to create 3-D game environments is being adapted to create better, cheaper training tools and simulations.

Software frameworks known as game engines are opening up new markets for game designers and making high-quality simulations available to companies that otherwise couldn’t afford them. With help from software based on the technology used to create the immersive virtual worlds of video games, paramedics and firefighters are finding ways to train more effectively and inexpensively, and architectural firms are showing designs to clients at an unprecedented level of detail.




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From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Physicists Demonstrate Working Quantum Router, a Step Toward a Quantum Internet

Quantum Computer Chip Wikimedia Commons

As much as we love our silicon semiconductors, quantum computers are very much a technology of the future. Instead of the usual string of 1s and 0s, they’ll be able to send both types of information at the same time, dwarfing their traditional counterparts. But one major problem is that they can only move through one optical fibre. To push more information through, they need a router, and Chinese physicists have unveiled the first one.

In a quantum computer, photons ferry information to other sources. It’s possible to send the photons directly through one fibre, but routing comes in when another fibre is needed. Like the router you probably own, a control signal reads the data then sends it to its destination. But dealing with unruly quantum particles is a little more complicated; when a signal is read it’s also destroyed. So even though the data can be transferred with traditional methods, that doesn’t offer the kind of data-transferring power quantum computing offers.

This new quantum router proves it’s possible to truly guide a quantum signal. The information used is encoded in two different types of polarized photons (like 1s and 0s). Scientists then create a single photon that acts as both (the combined 1s and 0s). That photon is then broken down into two photons that share the combined state. The router picks up one to determine the route, then the other photon is used to transfer the information. A simple series of half mirrors guides the photons along the correct route.

Does this mean we’re now well on our way to a globally connected, super-fast stream of information? No. The scientists say it’s just a proof of concept–we know it’s at least theoretically possible to send quantum information through a router, but it’s still a limited way of doing it. In other words, when this sort of technology is usable (and it will be), it won’t look like this.

[Technology Review via Gizmodo]

 

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

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From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Russian Robotic Spacecraft Completes First Same-Day Docking at ISS, Just Six Hours After Launch

Progress 48 on Approach to the ISS Just Hours After Launching NASA TV

Russia just set a speed record for a sprint that took place a long way from London. An unmanned Russian Progress cargo ship launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan yesterday and docked with the International Space Station just six hours later, marking the first same-day docking ever performed at the ISS.

Launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, the robotic Progress 48 performed additional firings of its own onboard engines early in the mission to boost it toward the ISS in a shorter period of time. This isn’t a completely novel maneuver–back in the Gemini days NASA docked spacecraft together on obit on the same day they were launched, and Russia has done the same. But it does require more precise calculations and a tighter margin of error.

Spacecraft usually spend two days catching up to the ISS in orbit, making the approach much slower (and safer). For same-day docking, spaceflight engineers have to execute that famous “striking a speeding bullet with a speeding bullet” math and physics. But it does come with unique benefits, especially if the maneuver is extended to manned Soyuz capsule missions as it is expected to be.

With manned missions, docking at the station within hours reduces the amount of food and water that must be packed aboard a spacecraft and provides for far greater crew comfort (spacious the Soyuz capsule is not). And of course, while no one is saying it out loud, it also could prove an important capability if something should go wrong aboard the station. Though there’s really no such thing as an emergency space launch–it takes time to fuel up a rocket and place a mission on a launchpad–the ability to shave two days off the arrival time of people or supplies at the ISS could make a difference should things ever get hairy up there.

[SPACE]

 

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

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From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: India Will Launch Probe to Mars Next Year

India’s PSLV-C12 India’s space program successfully launched the PSLV-C12 satellite in 2009. EPA/ISRO/HO

While we in the U.S. wait with bated breath for Mars Rover Curiosity‘s August 5 landing on the red planet, India’s space program, the Indian Space Research Organisation, has confirmed that it plans to send an orbiter to Mars in 2013. It’s one small step in a program that’s been making giant leaps in recent years, including multiple satellite launch missions.

The total price tag for the project could wind up between $70 and $90 million, a source told AFP, which would go toward a 320-ton rocket carrying the orbiter. Once in place, it would study the planet’s climate and geology. That would already be a pretty big success for the program, but the ISRO is trying to go even further, planning to launch a fully manned mission by 2016.

India’s space program has been in place since the ’60s, but it’s in more recent years that its gained notoriety. In 2009, the country successfully launched seven satellites on a single rocket and it has been providing a cost efficient means of transporting satellites into space, but it was the Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe that brought the program global attention. Officials took criticism for spending on the space program, which intensified when the ISRO lunar probe lost radio contact with the probe after ten months. But Chandrayaan-1 was deemed a major success when it discovered water and a protective magnetic field on the moon.

Of course, a mission to Mars is a whole new beast, and they’ll be up against a lot of rough history when it launches.

[AFP]

 

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

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From Engadget: SLIPS liquid repeller is inspired by carnivorous plants, enemy to insects and graffiti artists alike

SLIPS synthetic liquid repeller is inspired by carnivorous, enemy to insects and graffiti artists alike

When a team of Harvard researchers wanted to create the ultimate liquid- and solid-repelling surface, they looked toward the Nepenthes pitcher plant, where curious insects check in and never check out, thanks to slippery walls that lead to their tiny, horrific fate. The tropical plant inspired the creation of SLIPS (Self-healing, Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surface), a synthetic material that utilizes nano/ microstructured substrates, capable of repelling just about anything you can throw at it. During a visit to the hallowed Crimson halls, the team was kindly enough to show off the material through a series of messy, messy demos, dropping water, motor oil, liquid asphalt and newly-mixed concrete on aluminum and glass. The team even went crazy with a can of black spray paint, comparing the results to a Teflon surface. The outcome was the same in all case — an amazingly repellent material.

The team has published a number of papers on the stuff, including ones that demonstrate its ice- and bacteria-repelling properties. Oh, and like its natural inspiration, SLIPS does a great jobs keeping bugs off its surface. You can check out our demos and one unhappy ant filmed by the SLIPS team. No insects were harmed in the making of our video, at least — and the lab assures us that ant had a good life before learning the hard way why it shouldn’t mess with Harvard scientists.

 

from Engadget

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From Engadget: Samsung demos its take on LTE Broadcast, edges closer to TV over 4G

Samsung demos its take on LTE Broadcast, edges closer to 4G TV

There must be a resurgence of mobile TV in the works at Samsung. Just hours after it brought out the TV-equipped Galaxy S Lightray 4G, the company has confirmed (through partner Anritsu) that it’s successfully testing LTE Broadcast technology. As the name implies, the standard and its evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) pipe software-independent services like TV over a 4G network’s ample bandwidth rather than requiring dedicated networks and the costs that come with them — we all know how that last strategy panned out in the US. Unsurprisingly, Samsung isn’t saying what its long-term plans might be at this early stage, although we’d note that it isn’t alone. Qualcomm was showing LTE Broadcast back at Mobile World Congress, for example. While it’s far too soon to tell if there will be any American revival, Samsung’s help puts the writing on the wall for conventional mobile TV formats like T-DMB.

 

from Engadget