| New automated process simplifies alignment and splicing of multicore optical fibers Mar 12th 2013, 17:46 New multicore optical fibers have many times the signal-carrying capacity of traditional single-core fibers, but their use in telecommunications has been restricted because of the challenge in splicing them together. Now, a new technique offers an automated method for aligning and splicing multicore fibers, allowing engineers to take manual splicing out of the lab and into an automated production line. |  | Cloud-computing platform for robots launched Mar 11th 2013, 13:11 Researchers have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots. The platform allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers - the giant server farms behind the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon - for robotics tasks and robot learning. | | Improving electronics by solving nearly century-old problem Mar 7th 2013, 17:48 Scientists have solved an almost century-old problem that could further help downscale the size of electronic devices. The work focused on the low-frequency electronic 1/f noise, also known as pink noise and flicker noise. It is a signal or process with a power spectral density inversely proportional to the frequency. It was first discovered in vacuum tubes in 1925 and since then it has been found everywhere from fluctuations of the intensity in music recordings to human heart rates and electrical currents in materials and devices. | |
