Category Archives: STEM

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Obama Wins: How Chicago’s Data-Driven Campaign Triumphed

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For all the praise Obama’s team won in 2008 for its high-tech wizardry, its success masked a huge weakness: too many databases. Back then, volunteers making phone calls through the Obama website were working off lists that differed from the lists used by callers in the campaign office. Get-out-the-vote lists were never reconciled with fundraising lists.

via Obama Wins: How Chicago’s Data-Driven Campaign Triumphed | TIME.com.

The new megafile didn’t just tell the campaign how to find voters and get their attention; it also allowed the number crunchers to run tests predicting which types of people would be persuaded by certain kinds of appeals.

A Slower Speed of Light | MIT Game Lab

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A Slower Speed of Light is a first-person game prototype in which players navigate a 3D space while picking up orbs that reduce the speed of light in increments. Custom-built, open-source relativistic graphics code allows the speed of light in the game to approach the player’s own maximum walking speed. Visual effects of special relativity gradually become apparent to the player, increasing the challenge of gameplay. These effects, rendered in realtime to vertex accuracy, include the Doppler effect red- and blue-shifting of visible light, and the shifting of infrared and ultraviolet light into the visible spectrum; the searchlight effect increased brightness in the direction of travel; time dilation differences in the perceived passage of time from the player and the outside world; Lorentz transformation warping of space at near-light speeds; and the runtime effect the ability to see objects as they were in the past, due to the travel time of light. Players can choose to share their mastery and experience of the game through Twitter. A Slower Speed of Light combines accessible gameplay and a fantasy setting with theoretical and computational physics research to deliver an engaging and pedagogically rich experience

via A Slower Speed of Light | MIT Game Lab.

Smartphones to Use Half the Power as Researchers Claim to have solved Efficiency Problem

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Almost everyone who owns a smartphone would have noticed that whenever they stream videos or play games their device gets warm and starts to drain battery rapidly. Engineers claim that power amplifiers are to blame for this behavior and that these chips waste as much as 65 per cent of their energy. The professors Joel Dawson and David Perreault, through their startup Eta Devices claim to have solved this problem with a new power amplifier design.

via Smartphones to Use Half the Power as Researchers Claim to have solved Efficiency Problem – ParityNews.com: …Because Technology Matters.

The new technology, dubbed asymmetric multilevel outphasing [PDF], is basically a super fast electronic gearbox that would select the best possible voltage to send across the transistors that would minimize power consumption. This process is done as many as 20 million times per second.

Volcano power plan gets U.S. go-ahead

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The starting point for creating a new geothermal reservoir is a deep well into hot, dry rock. Well NWG 55-29, drilled by Davenport Newberry in 2008, is well suited as the foundation for a geothermal reservoir. It is 10,060 feet (3066 m) deep into hot rock with very low water permeability.

via Volcano power plan gets U.S. go-ahead.

On October 18 the pumping equipment was running and a water pressure of 1600 psi (10.9 MPa) was built up inside NWG 55-29. The diagnostics (pumping rate, microseismic detectors, etc.) indicated that hydroshearing and expansion of a network of cracks in the hot rock had begun. However, an unexpected night of freezing weather on October 20 damaged some of the auxiliary equipment, leading to a temporary shutdown of operations. AltaRock hopes to resume testing the stimulation process later this week. The following video gives a very good (if slightly lengthy) description of the project.

Optical conveyors: A class of active tractor beams

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A tractor beam is a traveling wave that can transport illuminated material along its length back to its source.

via Optical conveyors: A class of active tractor beams.

Abstract.

We experimentally demonstrate a class of tractor beams created by coherently superposing coaxial Bessel beams. These optical conveyors have periodic intensity variations along their axes that act as highly effective optical traps for micrometer-scale objects. Varying the Bessel beams’ relative phase shifts the traps axially thereby selectively transports trapped objects either downstream or upstream along the length of the beam. The same methods used to project a single optical conveyor can project arrays of independent optical conveyors, allowing bi-directional transport in three dimensions.

Texas college hacks drone in front of DHS

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Humphrey tells Fox News that for a few hundreds dollar his team was able to “spoof” the GPS system on board the drone, a technique that involves mimicking the actual signals sent to the global positioning device and then eventually tricking the target into following a new set of commands. And, for just $1,000, Humphreys says the spoofer his team assembled was the most advanced one ever built.

via Texas college hacks drone in front of DHS — RT.

“In five or ten years you have 30,000 drones in the airspace,” he tells Fox News. “Each one of these could be a potential missile used against us.”

The periodic table of tech

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But beyond the chemistry lab, most elements appear in everyday tech gear, too. We’ve researched each element to learn more about its properties and typical uses, and found common products that spawn from that element. From iPhones to microwave ovens, from alkaline batteries to camera lenses, and from hybrid-car fuel cells to plasma HDTVs, everything starts with elements. Here’s the breakdown.

via The periodic table of tech | TechHive.

Argonne’s Superstar Supercomputer

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Q. When do you expect Mira to be up and running?
A. Our hope is that we will receive the machine sometime in the third quarter of 2012 or early in 2013. Then it will take us three or four months to stand it up. It’s made up of 48 racks that weigh 2 tons each, so it takes a while to wheel it in, put it in place and wire it up.

via Science Connections: Argonne’s Superstar Supercomputer — Evanston news, photos and events — TribLocal.com.

Q. What are some cool projects being run on the supercomputer right now?
A. There is a current study on concrete that is pretty exciting. Concrete production is a $100 billion a year industry in the U.S. and generates a lot of carbon dioxide. A researcher from the National Institute of Standards and Technology is using the computer to figure out how to design better concrete that produces less out-gassing.

Recycled photons set fresh quantum computing record

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Laing’s team is also working towards that end. As part of the recycling technique, the researchers chained together two logic gates – a first for an optical quantum computer and an essential step in terms of hardware for building more complex devices. “To me, this achievement is more important than factoring 21, although to do so is an excellent demonstration of the technique’s power,” says Browne.

via Recycled photons set fresh quantum computing record – physics-math – 23 October 2012 – New Scientist.