Seeing terahertz with megapixel CCD devices

As IEEE Spectrum’s Alexander Hellemans recently pointed out, terahertz waves are difficult to create and detect. Indeed, this frequency band is squeezed in between the far infrared and very short wave radio frequency region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Nevertheless, a SwissFEL laser team led by Christoph Hauri at the Paul Scherrer Institute near Zurich used a common megapixel CCD device to capture images produced by terahertz waves. More specifically, the team leveraged a silicon CCD of 1360 x 1024 pixels to obtain images of THz beams with a resolution 25 times higher than currently available bolometer-based terahertz imaging systems – and at a fraction of the cost.

Understanding sensor data and context

Toby McClean recently noted on LinkedIn Pulse that the value of sensor data is lost when each and every device maker or IoT system defines a new model of observation or measurement.

“The value is decreased because third-parties are not able to build reusable algorithms, analytics and visualizations,” he opined. “It is difficult to have reusability when there is no common model for sensor data; for example if every thermometer manufacturer had a different model for temperature.”

Memory Interface Chipset From Rambus Meets Growing Demands Of Data Centers

After more than 25 years in those trenches, and in the memory business in particular, California’s Rambus, Inc. today finds itself in a better position than ever to demonstrate to the public sphere its longtime role as a memory innovator with a lot of experience in the industry. Though its existence, Rambus has played an undeniably central, and certainly very tumultuous, role in shaping the modern memory industry as it stands both in technical and business terms.

Connected vehicles are still vulnerable to hacks

Junko Yoshida, Chief International Correspondent at UBM Electronics, recently reported that the automotive industry is still “ill equipped” to protect connected from hackers. Indeed, according to a survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute, only 41 percent of developers agreed secure software was a priority for their companies, while 28 percent disagreed.

Perovskite memristor is just 5 nanometers thick

Professors Jennifer Rupp and Markus Kubicek of ETH Zurich have built a memristor based on a slice of perovskite measuring just 5 nanometers thick.

According to Science Daily, the component features three stable resistive states. Essentially, this means the device is capable of storing the 0 or 1 of a standard bit, and can also be used for information encoded by three states: the 0, 1 and 2 of a “trit.”

Searching for life on Mars with spider silk sensors

Did you know that optical sensors made with spider silk could one day help scientists search for trace gases such as ammonia produced by biological processes on Mars?

“The scientists hunting for life on Mars would like to be able to test for small amounts of ammonia,” reports Neil Savage of IEE Spectrum. “[These] might be emitted by the metabolism of microbes, so they need a sensor that can detect that while remaining insensitive to the large amounts of carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere.”