Radical theory explains the origin, evolution, and nature of life, challenges conventional wisdom

Erik Andrulis, PhD, assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology, advanced his controversial framework in his manuscript "Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life," published in the peer-reviewed journal, Life. His theory explains not only the evolutionary emergence of life on earth and in the universe but also the structure and function of existing cells and biospheres.

In addition to resolving long-standing paradoxes and puzzles in chemistry and biology, Dr. Andrulis' theory unifies quantum and celestial mechanics. His unorthodox solution to this quintessential problem in physics differs from mainstream approaches, like string theory, as it is simple, non-mathematical, and experimentally and experientially verifiable. As such, the new portrait of quantum gravity is radical.

The basic idea of Dr. Andrulis' framework is that all physical reality can be modeled by a single geometric entity with life-like characteristics: the gyre. The so-called "gyromodel" depicts objects -- particles, atoms, chemicals, molecules, and cells -- as quantized packets of energy and matter that cycle between excited and ground states around a singularity, the gyromodel's center. A singularity is itself modeled as a gyre, wholly compatible with the thermodynamic and fractal nature of life. An example of this nested, self-similar organization is the Russian Matryoshka doll.

By fitting the gyromodel to facts accumulated over scientific history, Dr. Andrulis confirms the proposed existence of eight laws of nature. One of these, the natural law of unity, decrees that the living cell and any part of the visible universe are irreducible. This law formally establishes that there is one physical reality.

Another natural law dictates that the atomic and cosmic realms abide by identical organizational constraints. Simply put, atoms in the human body and solar systems in the universe move and behave in the exact same manner.

"Modern science lacks a unifying, interdisciplinary theory of life. In other words, current theories are unable to explain why life is the way it is and not any other way," Dr. Andrulis says. "This general paradigm furnishes a fresh perspective on the character and meaning of life, offers solutions to protracted problems, and strives to end divisive debates."

One debate swirls around the scientific merit of James Lovelock's popular Gaia hypothesis. By showing that Earth is theoretically synonymous with life, Dr. Andrulis' paradigm substantiates the Gaian premise that all organisms and their surroundings on earth are closely integrated to form a single self-regulating complex system.

Another legendary quarrel is that between biblical creationists and neo-Darwinian evolutionists. In demonstrating that the origin and evolution of life is a consequence of natural laws and physical forces, this theory synthesizes arguments and dispels assumptions from both sides of the creation-evolution debate.

To test his paradigm, Dr. Andrulis designed bidirectional flow diagrams that both depict and predict the dynamics of energy and matter. While such diagrams may be foreign to some scientists, they are standard reaction notation to chemists, biochemists, and biologists.

Dr. Andrulis has used his theory to successfully predict and identify a hidden signature of RNA biogenesis in his laboratory at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is now applying the gyromodel to unify and explain the evolution and development of human beings.

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TSMC returns fire over 28-nm process issues

LONDON – Foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. has hit back at analysts who have said it has yield problems with its 28-nm CMOS manufacturing processes.

Maria Marced, president of TSMC Europe, repeated what has been said before by herself and other TSMC executives before; that defect density reduction is on track for the 28-nm node and ahead of where TSMC was with 40/45-nm process technology at an equivalent stage in its roll out.

Marced did acknowledge that each process node roll out has problems but said TSMC engineers rise to the challenges. "Everything is getting more difficult. We have learned the lessons on 40-nm. We have put engineering teams on every tape-out to drive down defect density and drive up yields," she said. "It will be more difficult at 20-nm again, but still we see very good momentum."

Marced emphasized that momentum by saying that TSMC now has 36 ICs in production and 132 tape-outs in the pipeline. "The momentum on 28-nm is three times what it was on 40/45-nm," she said.

Wafer production on 28-nm contributed 2 percent of TSMC's revenues in the fourth quarter 0f 2011, corresponding to about $70 million in sales, Marced said. It is predicted to go up to 5 percent of TSMC's revenues in the first quarter of 2012 or about $170 million. And for all of 2012 TSMC expects 28-nm wafer production to contribute 10 percent to revenues.

For a process node – that some analysts have said has yield problems – to contribute $70 million going on $170 million worth of business per quarter, is "not bad" said Marced.


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TSMC returns fire over 28-nm process issues

TAG:Maria Marced TSMC production process manufacturing semiconductor EETimes

ST Micro chip controls auto car-door electronics

MANHASSET, NY -- STMicroelectronics has developed a digital control chip to replace the mechanical relay in car-door electronics.

ST’s door actuator driver redefines the established system topology, removing the need for mechanical relays in car-window control. This slashes component costs and eliminates expensive electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) countermeasures, associated with the existing solutions.

The L99DZ80 embeds an SPI-programmable slew-rate control IP that can drive 4 external MOSFETs in a half-bridge configuration dedicated to PWM (Pulse Width Mode)-driven electric-window applications.

Other features include six bridges for double door-lock control, mirror fold, and mirror-axis control, together with a high-side driver for mirror defroster, bulbs and LEDs. The device also integrates a control block with an external MOS transistor for charging and discharging of electrochromic (dimmable) mirror glasses.
ST Micro chip controls auto car-door electronics

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Printed electronics startup plans pilot production line

LONDON – PragmatIC Printing Ltd. (Cambridge, England), a developer of printed electronic technology, has announced plans to begin pilot-scale production the government-backed Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) in Redcar, Northern England.

PragmatIC is introducing a pilot production program there – called P4 – that can be used by licensees, processing equipment makers, complementary technology providers, systems integrators such as converters and labelers, and end users including major brand owners. The pilot line is intended to commence operation by the fourth quarter of 2012.

In 2010, PragmatIC acquired the printed electronics business of Nano ePrint Ltd. (Manchester, England), including its patented technology for planar nanoelectronic devices that can fabricated in a single semiconductor layer via a single-step imprint patterning. PragmatIC has extended process to enable device and circuit architectures to be printed in transparent, flexible semiconductors at micron and sub-micron scale.

"We welcome interest from all those in the industry who want to make printed electronics products a reality, and encourage collaborative participation in our P4 initiative," said Scott White, CEO of PragmatIC Printing, in a statement.



PragmatIC's pilot line will utilise CPI's cleanroom facilities.

Tom Taylor, CPI's director of printable electronics, added: "The P4 initiative is also highly complementary with other activities at CPI, in particular the Integrated Smart Systems line which is ideally suited to combine PragmatIC's imprinted logic with other printing and electronics technologies to deliver innovative finished products."


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Beyond adds development support for royalty-free 32-bit processors

LONDON – Trace32 debugger software development tools from Lauterbach GmbH (Hoehenkirchen-Sigertsbrunn, Germany) now support the BA22 Family of royalty-free microprocessor cores from processor IP licensor Beyond Semiconductor d.o.o. (Ljubljana, Slovenia).

Beyond was co-founded in 2005 by Damjan Lampret, who had previously founded the OpenCores organization and led the development of the OpenRISC 32-bit processor architecture.

Beyond reworked the OpenRISC architecture as BA1 and introduced the BA12 and BA14 cores. The BA2 architecture is a refinement of BA1 and is the basis of the BA22 processor core.

BA22 offers ARM9/ARM11 levels of performance at 1.36-DMIPS/MHz and has better than Thumb-2 code density, according to Beyond. In addition, Beyond offers a royalty-free business model so that customers pay a one-off license fee to use the design. The configurable processor IP family extends from deeply-embedded CPUs suitable for low-power SoC designs, up to high-performance application processor cores running operation systems such as Linux, the company said. The availability of a family of peripherals make the BA22 a suitable replacement for the 8-bit 8051, the company claims.

"Customers are building increasingly complex applications around our BA22 processors, and need more advanced software debug tools with operating system awareness. We are excited that they can now choose proven Lauterbach Trace32 tools to shorten their software development cycle, even to debug multiprocessor/multicore system with mixed Beyond and third party CPU cores," said Matjaz Breskvar, chief executive officer of Beyond Semiconductor, in a statement.

"Lauterbach is committed to continue bringing additional features and future extensions to customers using Beyond Semiconductor BA22 family of processors". said Norbert Weiss, international sales and marketing manager at Lauterbach, in the same statement.

Licensees of Beyond Semiconductor processers include: STMicroelectronics, Ericsson, Jennic Ltd., which is now part of NXP Semiconductor, Lattice Semiconductor and Omnivision.


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How to put iTunes music to Kindle Fire

Veteran iPod users know that Apple limits the ways iPods transfer music in an attempt to placate the DRM on its music and keep the music labels happy so that they’ll continue to hawk their artists on iTunes. Apple’s proprietary DRM software is called FairPlay and has drawn scrutiny of the EU as being anti-competitive. FairPlay is built into QuickTime and used by iPhone, iPod, iTunes, and iTunes Store. FairPlay protected song purchased from iTunes are digitally encrypted preventing them from being played on unauthorized computers.

So if you want to put the songs you purchased from itunes store onto Kindle Fire, you need to remove the drm protection first. There are ways to remove FairPlay so you can play your songs on devices other than your Mac and iPod(hot guide for mac user: transfer music from ipod to mac). You can burn your iTunes Store music to a CD, and then import the songs into your iTunes library, thereby creating FairPlay-free files. But it is too complex for computer beginners. In the below section of the article, I will show the easiest method to do that.

Related guide for your reference: how to transfer music from ipod to computer

Step1. Add iTunes Files

Run the installed program and add your iTunes music files into it. Batch conversion supported to save you time.

Step2. Select the Right Output Format

To successfully listen iTunes music on Kindle Fire, apart from remove DRM protection, you will also need to convert iTunes files to a format that Amazon Kindly Fire will accepts. Choose MP3 audio format from the “Audio Files to:” drop-down list. Also, if you wanna transfer videos from iTunes to Kindle Fire, just choose output video format from the “Video Files to:” area.

Step3. Start Removal and Conversion

Now you may hit on “Start” button and start to remove DRM from iTunes music files and convert them onto Kindle Fire compatible formats. Done!

How to put iTunes music to Kindle Fire

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SanDisk pauses fab expansion

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Flash memory maker SanDisk Corp., has said it will put a freeze on expanding one of its fabs after fourth quarter and fiscal year results came in below analyst expectations on Wednesday (Jan. 25). The firm also announced weak first quarter revenue guidance based on lower demand for flash memory in mobile.

"In the fourth quarter, certain of our mobile OEM customers lowered their NAND forecast to us due to lower demand for their products," said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra during an earnings call."We believe this will impact our revenue opportunity in the first half of 2012."

SanDisk reported a Q4 profit of $281.2 million, down 42 percent from $485.5 million in the same period of 2010. Total revenue for fiscal 2011 was $5.66 billion, an increase of 17 percent from $4.83 billion in fiscal 2010, however, those results were skewed by last year’s $203 million tax-provision benefit.

For the first quarter of 2012, Sandisk served up a rather soft outlook of revenue between $1.3 billion to $1.35 billion, below the $1.46 billion expected by analysts. The company also expects its yearly revenue to fall in the region of $6.2 billion to $6.6 billion, compared with Wall Street’s predicted $6.66 billion.

While total revenue rose 19 percent, to $1.58 billion, gross margins narrowed to 42 percent from 43.4 percent.

Owing to softening consumer demand, Sandisk’s Chief Financial Officer Judy Bruner announced that the firm would be pausing its plans to expand its Fab 5 in Japan's Mie prefecture from the end of January until at least July. Production had originally been slated to restart in May.

Bruner said, however, that the firm remained optimistic the second half of 2012 would deliver better growth, and improved demand, especially in terms of the growing momentum around solid state drives.

"As the SSD business grows as a percentage of our mix, particularly in the enterprise segment, we believe seasonality will be less pronounced," she said.

Bruner also adjusted Sandisk’s expected gross margins to between 39 and 42 percent for the current period and full year, down from 44 percent in 2011.

The firm is also expected to spend some $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion in capital expenditure in 2012.
SanDisk pauses fab expansion

TAG:earnings financial sandisk

SanDisk pauses expansion of Fab 5, will restart no sooner than July

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Flash memory maker SanDisk Corp., has said it will put a freeze on expanding its Fab 5 Factory after fourth quarter and fiscal year results came in below analyst expectations on Wednesday (Jan. 25). The firm also announced weak first quarter revenue guidance based on lower demand for Flash memory in mobile.

"In the fourth quarter, certain of our mobile OEM customers lowered their NAND forecast to us due to lower demand for their products," said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra during an earnings call adding, "We believe this will impact our revenue opportunity in the first half of 2012."

SanDisk reported a Q4 profit of $281.2 million, down 42 percent from $485.5 million in 2010. Total revenue for fiscal 2011 was $5.66 billion, an increase of 17 percent from $4.83 billion in fiscal 2010, however, those results were skewed by last year’s $203 million tax-provision benefit.

For the first quarter of 2012, Sandisk served up a rather soft outlook of revenue between $1.3 billion to $1.35 billion, below the $1.46 billion expected by analysts. The company also expects its yearly revenue to fall in the region of $6.2 billion to $6.6 billion, compared with Wall Street’s predicted $6.66 billion.

While total revenue rose 19 percent, to $1.58 billion, gross margins narrowed to 42 percent from 43.4 percent.

Owing to softening consumer demand, Sandisk’s Chief Financial Officer Judy Bruner announced that the firm would be pausing its plans to expand its latest chip fabrication plant from the end of January until at least July. Production had originally been slated to restart in May.

Bruner said, however, that the firm remained optimistic the second half of 2012 would deliver better growth, and improved demand, especially in terms of the growing momentum around solid state drives.

"As the SSD business grows as a percentage of our mix, particularly in the enterprise segment, we believe seasonality will be less pronounced," she said.

Bruner also adjusted Sandisk’s yearly margins to between 39 and 42 percent for the current period and full year, down from 44 percent in 2011.

The firm is also expected to spend some $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion in capital expenditure in 2012.
SanDisk pauses expansion of Fab 5, will restart no sooner than July

TAG:earnings financial sandisk

Scientists create first atomic X-ray laser

The researchers, reporting in Nature, aimed SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at a capsule of neon gas, setting off an avalanche of X-ray emissions to create the world's first "atomic X-ray laser."

"X-rays give us a penetrating view into the world of atoms and molecules," said physicist Nina Rohringer, who led the research. A group leader at the Max Planck Society's Advanced Study Group in Hamburg, Germany, Rohringer collaborated with researchers from SLAC, DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Colorado State University.

"We envision researchers using this new type of laser for all sorts of interesting things, such as teasing out the details of chemical reactions or watching biological molecules at work," she added. "The shorter the pulses, the faster the changes we can capture. And the purer the light, the sharper the details we can see."

The new atomic X-ray laser fulfills a 1967 prediction that X-ray lasers could be made in the same manner as many visible-light lasers -- by inducing electrons to fall from higher to lower energy levels within atoms, releasing a single color of light in the process. But until 2009, when LCLS turned on, no X-ray source was powerful enough to create this type of laser.

To make the atom laser, LCLS's powerful X-ray pulses -- each a billion times brighter than any available before -- knocked electrons out of the inner shells of many of the neon atoms in the capsule. When other electrons fell in to fill the holes, about one in 50 atoms responded by emitting a photon in the X-ray range, which has a very short wavelength. Those X-rays then stimulated neighboring neon atoms to emit more X-rays, creating a domino effect that amplified the laser light 200 million times.

Although LCLS and the neon capsule are both lasers, they create light in different ways and emit light with different attributes. The LCLS passes high-energy electrons through alternating magnetic fields to trigger production of X-rays; its X-ray pulses are brighter and much more powerful. The atomic laser's pulses are only one-eighth as long and their color is much more pure, qualities that will enable it to illuminate and distinguish details of ultrafast reactions that had been impossible to see before.

"This achievement opens the door for a new realm of X-ray capabilities," said John Bozek, LCLS instrument scientist. "Scientists will surely want new facilities to take advantage of this new type of laser."

For example, researchers envision using both LCLS and atomic laser pulses in a synchronized one-two punch: The first laser triggers a change in a sample under study, and the second records with atomic-scale precision any changes that occurred within a few quadrillionths of a second.

In future experiments, Rohringer says she will try to create even shorter-pulsed, higher-energy atomic X-ray lasers using oxygen, nitrogen or sulfur gas.

Additional authors included Richard London, Felicie Albert, James Dunn, Randal Hill and Stefan P. Hau-Riege from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); Duncan Ryan, Michael Purvis and Jorge J. Rocca from Colorado State University; and Christoph Bostedt from SLAC.

The work was supported by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program. Authors Roca, Purvis and Ryan were supported by the DOE Office of Science. LCLS is a national scientific user facility operated by SLAC and supported by DOE's Office of Science.

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Chemists synthesize artificial cell membrane

Neal Devaraj, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, and Itay Budin, a graduate student at Harvard University, report their success in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

"One of our long term, very ambitious goals is to try to make an artificial cell, a synthetic living unit from the bottom up -- to make a living organism from non-living molecules that have never been through or touched a living organism," Devaraj said. "Presumably this occurred at some point in the past. Otherwise life wouldn't exist."

By assembling an essential component of earthly life with no biological precursors, they hope to illuminate life's origins.

"We don't understand this really fundamental step in our existence, which is how non-living matter went to living matter," Devaraj said. "So this is a really ripe area to try to understand what knowledge we lack about how that transition might have occurred. That could teach us a lot -- even the basic chemical, biological principles that are necessary for life."

Molecules that make up cell membranes have heads that mix easily with water and tails that repel it. In water, they form a double layer with heads out and tails in, a barrier that sequesters the contents of the cell.

Devaraj and Budin created similar molecules with a novel reaction that joins two chains of lipids. Nature uses complex enzymes that are themselves embedded in membranes to accomplish this, making it hard to understand how the very first membranes came to be.

"In our system, we use a sort of primitive catalyst, a very simple metal ion," Devaraj said. "The reaction itself is completely artificial. There's no biological equivalent of this chemical reaction. This is how you could have a de novo formation of membranes."

They created the synthetic membranes from a watery emulsion of an oil and a detergent. Alone it's stable. Add copper ions and sturdy vesicles and tubules begin to bud off the oil droplets. After 24 hours, the oil droplets are gone, "consumed" by the self-assembling membranes.

Although other scientists recently announced the creation of a "synthetic cell," only its genome was artificial. The rest was a hijacked bacterial cell. Fully artificial life will require the union of both an information-carrying genome and a three-dimensional structure to house it.

The real value of this discovery might reside in its simplicity. From commercially available precursors, the scientists needed just one preparatory step to create each starting lipid chain.

"It's trivial and can be done in a day," Devaraj said. "New people who join the lab can make membranes from day one."

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering supported this work. UC San Diego has filed a patent application on this discovery.

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Lockheed Martin selects LynxOS for U.K. AWACS

MANHASSET, NY -- Real-time response using LynuxOS earned another notch in military-critical operations when LynuxWorks was recently chosen for the British Royal Air Force AWACS.

Military contractor Lockheed Martin has selected the LynxOS real-time operating system and the Luminosity integrated development environment for U.K.’s Airborne Warning and Control System.

The AWACS aircraft provide an airborne early warning capability by tracking aircraft at extended ranges and are central to airborne command and control for relaying vital information to commanders on the ground.

Royal Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS (Photo Courtesy of Arpingstone)

Lockheed Martin selects LynxOS for U.K. AWACS

TAG:Electronics Enginering Times Lockheed Martin LynxOS

'Speed gene' in modern racehorses originated from British mare 300 years ago, scientists claim

The origin of the 'speed gene' (C type myostatin gene variant) was revealed by analysing DNA from hundreds of horses, including DNA extracted from the skeletal remains of 12 celebrated Thoroughbred stallions born between 1764 and 1930.

"Changes in racing since the foundation of the Thoroughbred have shaped the distribution of 'speed gene' types over time and in different racing regions," explained Dr Emmeline Hill, the senior author of the study, and a genomics scientist at the School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin.

"But we have been able to identify that the original 'speed gene' variant entered the Thoroughbred from a single founder, which was most likely a British mare about 300 years ago, when local British horse types were the preeminent racing horses, prior to the formal foundation of the Thoroughbred racehorse."

The international scientific team led by scientists from University College Dublin (UCD), Equinome Ltd and the University of Cambridge, have traced all modern variants of the original 'speed gene' to the legendary Nearctic (1954-1973), and attribute the wider expansion of these variants to Northern Dancer (1961-1990),the son of Nearctic, and one of the most influential stallions of modern times.

"Having first identified the 'speed gene' in 2010, we decided to see if we could trace the origin of the gene variant using population genetics coupled with pedigree analysis. We wanted to understand where speed in the Thoroughbred came from.," said Dr Hill.

Dr Hill is also a co-founder of Equinome, a UCD spin-out company headquartered at NovaUCD, which has developed The Equinome Speed Gene Test. This test is currently being used by the global bloodstock and racing industry to identify the optimum racing distance for individual Thoroughbred horses.

"We traced the economically valuable gene variant by determining 'speed gene' type in almost 600 horses from 22 Eurasian and North American horse breeds, museum bone and tooth specimens from 12 legendary Thoroughbred stallions, 330 elite performing modern Thoroughbreds from 3 continents, 40 donkeys and two zebras.," added Dr Hill.

According to co-author Dr Mim Bower from the University of Cambridge, UK, "The findings point to a British mare as the most likely single founder of the original 'speed gene' because one of the lines of evidence from the research demonstrated that the prize stallions of the 17^th and 18^th centuries had two copies of the T type speed gene variant (T:T) which is linked to greater stamina."

"At this time in the history of horse racing, races were between two horses competed over multiple heats, at distances of between two to four miles, and repeated until a horse had won the event twice or 'distanced' the opponent. Horses did not race until they were five or six years old, and then only two or three times in their lives. This is consistent with these horses being T:T types.," said Dr Bower

An increased premium on speed and precocity developed as two-year-old races became popular during the last century, and in many regions of the world, these preferences remain to this day.

Dr Hill explained, "For example, in Australia, the myostatin 'speed gene' type (C:C), which is best suited to fast, short-distance, sprint races, is more common and there is a market driven demand for horses with at least one copy of the C type gene variant."

"This just goes to show the power breeders have to shape the genetic make-up of their horses. Decisions regarding the race pattern in each racing jurisdiction and the commercial demand for certain types will also rapidly influence the genetic make-up of the population."

To identify where the C type gene variant originated, the researchers analysed DNA samples from more than 20 horse breeds that included representatives of local British and Irish horses, from where female Thoroughbred lineages derive, and exotic eastern populations from where male Thoroughbred lineages derive.

The study identified the Shetland breed as having the highest frequency of the C type gene variant. The Shetland represents local British horse types, which were the preeminent racing horses prior to the formal foundation of the Thoroughbred.

By comparing the diversity of the chromosomes around the C and T type gene variants researchers found only a single C type compared to 11 different T type gene variants, meaning that the 'speed gene' entered the Thoroughbred just once.

"The results show that the 'speed gene' entered the Thoroughbred from a single founder, which was most likely a British mare about 300 years ago when local British horse types were the preeminent racing horses, prior to the formal foundation of the Thoroughbred racehorse.," said Dr Hill.

Collaborators in the study were scientists from Trinity College Dublin, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The research was supported by grants from The Horserace Betting Levy Board, Leverhulme Trust, Cambridge Overseas Trust and Science Foundation Ireland.

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Future Awards 2012

In a time of economic uncertainty, the team at Electronics News feels it is more important than ever before to recognise excellence within the industry, and the 8th year of our annual awards program will do just that. We are interested in hearing from you if you or your company have worked on an interesting and innovative project during the course of the past two years.

Both entrants and winners of Electronics News Future Awards will have an unparalleled opportunity to showcase their vision, design and development. The Australian electronics industry has long been lauded as one of great innovation and value-added ideas, and this is a great opportunity to be seen.

Winners will be able to use the Electronics News Future Awards logo in advertising, trade shows and product literature. Electronics News will be announcing finalists in the August 2012 issue, with the winners profiled in a special supplement alongside the October issue.

As with the 2011 iteration of the awards, the 2012 Electronics News Future Awards recognition ceremony will be held alongside a round table event,

The awards are open to all companies, irrespective of size, who have a design operation and/or manufacturing facility and/or testing presence in Australia and have been operating for at least two years.

The nomination may be submitted by anyone representing a company in Australia or New Zealand; however that person must be in a position to properly evaluate the submission.

The submission process is simple. Even the very busy can enter the awards, and you will be assisted by our nominations team. We can also comply with confidentiality arrangements and other requests.

Judging will be conducted by a panel of experts.

Categories:

• Automotive & Transport
• Communications & Networks
• Environment
• Industrial Electronics
• Students
• Wellness
• Best in Design

Entries close 1 July 2012.

Electronics News would like to thank the program sponsor element14 for its continued support of the awards. Other sponsorship opportunities remain open.

For more information, contact Isaac Leung on isaac.leung@reedbusiness.com.au or phone 02 9422 2956.

Future Awards 2012

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Altera, RFMD offer disappointing sales targets

SAN FRANCISCO—Programmable logic vendor Altera Corp. and radio frequency and compound semiconductor vendor RD Micro Devices Inc. (RFMD) each reported sales for the most recently concluded quarter that were in line with analysts' expectations but offered sales targets for the current quarter that disappointed Wall Street.

Altera (San Jose, Calif.) reported fourth quarter sales of $457.8 million, down 12 percent from the previous quarter and down 18 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010. The company reported a net income of $146.6 million for the quarter, or 45 cents per diluted share, down 21 percent from the previous quarter and down 37 percent compared with the year-ago quarter.

Sales for the quarter came in ahead of consensus analysts' expectations, which projected Altera's fourth quarter revenue at $447.5 million, according to Yahoo Finance.

For the full year, Altera reported revenue of $2.06 billion, up 6 percent from 2010. The company posted a net income of $770.7 million for the year, down 2 percent from 2010.

"While industry conditions led to sequential sales declines in the fourth quarter, Altera grew 6 percent in 2011—well ahead of most of the semiconductor industry," said John Daane, Altera's chairman, president and CEO, in a statement.

But Altera said it expects revenue for the first quarter of this year to decline 5 to 9 percent sequentially to between $416.6 million and $434.9 million, well below consensus analysts' expectations of $455.5 million, according to Yahoo Finance.

RFMD (Greensboro, N.C.) reported sales of $225.4 million for its fiscal third quarter, ended Dec. 31, down 7.5 percent compared with the previous quarter and down 19.2 percent compared with the year-ago quarter. The company reported a net loss of $9.4 million for the quarter, compared with net incomes in both the previous and year-ago quarters.

Sales for the quarter were in line with consensus analysts' expectations, according to Yahoo Finance.

For the current quarter, RFMD said it expects sales to decline to about $185 million. The company said it expects a greater-than-seasonal decline in sales to cellular handset manufacturers in China, primarily as a result of the impact of lunar new year on order visibility and the projected impact of channel inventory.

Consensus analysts' expectations for the current quarter called for RFMD's sales to be about $204.4 million, according to Yahoo Finance.

Altera, RFMD offer disappointing sales targets

TAG:Altera RFMD Sales Analyst Quarter

Ancient dinosaur nursery: Oldest nesting site yet found

A new study led by University of Toronto Mississauga paleontologist Robert Reisz, with co-author, Professor David Evans of ecology and evolutionary biology and the Royal Ontario Museum, along with a group of international researchers, describes clutches of eggs, many with embryos, as well as tiny dinosaur footprints, providing the oldest known evidence that the hatchlings remained at the nesting site long enough to at least double in size.

At least 10 nests have been discovered at several levels at this site, each with up to 34 round eggs in tightly clustered clutches. The distribution of the nests in the sediments indicate that these early dinosaurs returned repeatedly to this site, a behaviour known as nesting fidelity, and likely assembled in groups to lay their eggs, (colonial nesting), the oldest known evidence of such behaviour in the fossil record. The large size of the mother, at six metres in length, the small size of the eggs, about six to seven centimetres in diameter, and the highly organized nature of the nest suggest that the mother may have arranged them carefully after she laid them.

"The eggs, embryos, and nests come from the rocks of a nearly vertical road cut only 25 metres long," said Reisz, a professor of biology at U of T Mississauga. "Even so, we found ten nests, suggesting that there are a lot more in the cliff, still covered by tons of rock. We predict that many more nests will be eroded out in time as natural weathering processes continue."

The fossils were found in sedimentary rocks from the Early Jurassic Period in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in South Africa. This site has previously yielded the oldest known embryos belonging to Massospondylus, a relative of the giant, long-necked sauropods of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

"Even though the fossil record of dinosaurs is extensive, we actually have very little fossil information about their reproductive biology, particularly for early dinosaurs," said Evans (pictured left, bottom, with Reisz, above), associate curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum. "This amazing series of 190 million year old nests gives us the first detailed look at dinosaur reproduction early in their evolutionary history, and documents the antiquity of nesting strategies that are only known much later in the dinosaur record."

The study, co-authored by Drs. Hans-Dieter Sues (Smithsonian Institute, U.S.), Eric Roberts (James Cook University, Australia), and Adam Yates (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa), is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

An exhibition currently on display at the Royal Ontario Museum until May 2012, Dinosaurs Eggs and Babies: Remarkable Fossils from South Africa, features the oldest fossilized dinosaur eggs with embryos ever found, as well as other impressive discoveries

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New material to remove radioactive gas from spent nuclear fuel

The Sandia researchers have used metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to capture and remove volatile radioactive gas from spent nuclear fuel. "This is one of the first attempts to use a MOF for iodine capture," said chemist Tina Nenoff of Sandia's Surface and Interface Sciences Department.

The discovery could be applied to nuclear fuel reprocessing or to clean up nuclear reactor accidents. A characteristic of nuclear energy is that used fuel can be reprocessed to recover fissile materials and provide fresh fuel for nuclear power plants. Countries such as France, Russia and India are reprocessing spent fuel.

The process also reduces the volume of high-level wastes, a key concern of the Sandia researchers. "The goal is to find a methodology for highly selective separations that result in less waste being interred," Nenoff said.

Part of the challenge of reprocessing is to separate and isolate radioactive components that can't be burned as fuel. The Sandia team focused on removing iodine, whose isotopes have a half-life of 16 million years, from spent fuel.

They studied known materials, including silver-loaded zeolite, a crystalline, porous mineral with regular pore openings, high surface area and high mechanical, thermal and chemical stability. Various zeolite frameworks can trap and remove iodine from a stream of spent nuclear fuel, but need added silver to work well.

"Silver attracts iodine to form silver iodide," Nenoff said. "The zeolite holds the silver in its pores and then reacts with iodine to trap silver iodide."

But silver is expensive and poses environmental problems, so the team set out to engineer materials without silver that would work like zeolites but have higher capacity for the gas molecules. They explored why and how zeolite absorbs iodine, and used the critical components discovered to find the best MOF, named ZIF-8.

"We investigated the structural properties on how they work and translated that into new and improved materials," Nenoff said.

MOFs are crystalline, porous materials in which a metal center is bound to organic molecules by mild self-assembly chemical synthesis. The choice of metal and organic result in a very specific final framework.

The trick was to find a MOF highly selective for iodine. The Sandia researchers took the best elements of the zeolite Mordenite -- its pores, high surface area, stability and chemical absorption -- and identified a MOF that can separate one molecule, in this case iodine, from a stream of molecules. The MOF and pore-trapped iodine gas can then be incorporated into glass waste for long-term storage.

The Sandia team also fabricated MOFs, made of commercially available products, into durable pellets. The as-made MOF is a white powder with a tendency to blow around. The pellets provide a stable form to use without loss of surface area, Nenoff said.

Sandia has applied for a patent on the pellet technology, which could have commercial applications.

The Sandia researchers are part of the Off-Gas Sigma Team, which is led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and studies waste-form capture of volatile gasses associated with nuclear fuel reprocessing. Other team members -- Pacific Northwest, Argonne and Idaho national laboratories -- are studying other volatile gases such as krypton, tritium and carbon.

The project began six years ago and the Sigma Team was formalized in 2009. It is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy.

Sandia's iodine and MOFs research was featured in two recent articles in the Journal of the American Chemical Society authored by Nenoff and team members Dorina Sava, Mark Rodriguez, Jeffery Greathouse, Paul Crozier, Terry Garino, David Rademacher, Ben Cipiti, Haiqing Liu, Greg Halder, Peter Chupas, and Karena Chapman. Chupas, Halder and Chapman are from Argonne.

"The most important thing we did was introduce a new class of materials to nuclear waste remediation," said Sava, postdoctoral appointee on the project.

Nenoff said another recent paper in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research shows a one-step process that incorporates MOFs with iodine in a low-temperature, glass waste form. "We have a volatile off-gas capture using a MOF and we have a durable waste form," Nenoff said.

Nenoff and her colleagues are continuing their research into new and optimized MOFs for enhanced volatile gas separation and capture.

"We've shown that MOFs have the capacity to capture and, more importantly, retain many times more iodine than current materials technologies," said Argonne's Chapman.

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Scientists discover new clue to chemical origins of life

A team led by Dr Paul Clarke in the Department of Chemistry at York has re-created a process which could have occurred in the prebiotic world.

Working with colleagues at the University of Nottingham, they have made the first step towards showing how simple sugars -- threose and erythrose -- developed. The research is published in Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry.

All biological molecules have an ability to exist as left-handed forms or right-handed forms. All sugars in biology are made up of the right-handed form of molecules and yet all the amino acids that make up the peptides and proteins are made up of the left-handed form.

The researchers found using simple left-handed amino acids to catalyse the formation of sugars resulted in the production of predominately right-handed form of sugars. It could explain how carbohydrates originated and why the right-handed form dominates in nature.

Dr Clarke said: "There are a lot of fundamental questions about the origins of life and many people think they are questions about biology. But for life to have evolved, you have to have a moment when non-living things become living -- everything up to that point is chemistry.

"We are trying to understand the chemical origins of life. One of the interesting questions is where carbohydrates come from because they are the building blocks of DNA and RNA. What we have achieved is the first step on that pathway to show how simple sugars -- threose and erythrose -- originated. We generated these sugars from a very simple set of materials that most scientists believe were around at the time that life began."

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ST-Ericsson outlook bleak as large customer cuts orders

LONDON – Financial results for the fourth quarter at troubled mobile chip joint venture ST-Ericsson NV were bleak with sales down, losses up and the outlook bad due to a loss of orders with a large customer. ST-Ericsson reports its own financial numbers, but they are also reported within those of parent STMicroelectronics, which was weighed down by the losses and a difficult outlook.

In its outlook for 1Q12 ST-Ericsson said it expected "a very significant decline in net sales, resulting from a combination of higher inventory at some of our customers, further weakening of legacy product sales, the effect of first quarter seasonality as well as the reduction, in the short term, of new product sales with one of our largest customers."

For the fourth quarter ST-Ericsson (Geneva, Switzerland) reported a net loss of $231 million on sales revenue of $409 million. This compares to a third quarter for which the company reported a net loss of $211 million on sales revenue of $412 million. At the end of the year the company owed its parent companies $800 million and listed just $2 million in cash and short-term deposits on hand.

In a note in the tabulated results ST-Ericsson said "Our shareholders will continue to support funding our transitional financial needs."

Didier Lamouche, who was appointed president and CEO during the fourth quarter replacing Gilles Delfassy, said: "From a financial perspective, it is clear that both sales and operating results will continue to be challenging over the coming quarters, due to the reduction in the short term of new product sales with one of our largest customers. That is why our immediate priority is to build a strong roadmap to profitability based on enhancing execution, delivering in volume our leading products and lowering the break-even point."


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How to eat more super slim

Meeting in order to continue to the end of dieting, deprivation way to keep fit, generally not so easy. After all, whether it is family gatherings, friends, colleagues or company dinner, involving a large group of people with eating scenes are beyond our control. And others chatting chatting, accidentally eat more, gather more than a few times, it will be fat, oh! So, do not reduce the amount of food, and to change the way instead of eating, super slim pomegranate can be said is now the most intelligent the diet.

First, try to eat chicken breast

And ultimately the general meals of meat (except vegetarian gathering friends). The face of so much meat on the desktop, you have to live Oh Hold, as we choose to eat the skin of the chicken breast. Chicken breast in the chest in the side of meat, shaped like hats. Meat is tender, taste delicious, nutrient-rich, nourishing self-cultivation. But it only contain shrimp, crabs and other very fat. Do not have to worry about is leaving the body fat of animals only hurt the meat. To a more low-calorie chicken breast skin, almost any food will not make people be fat food. And the super slim is easy to make you feel full quickly eat too many other things matter, and thus indirectly control the intake of too much fat.

Second, the appropriate spicy food

If spicy food, try to eat at a fancy meal in the process a little bit. The capsaicin in peppers can speed up the decomposition of fat, weight loss effect. Meal with a teaspoon of black pepper or red chili powder (or mustard) to increase metabolism, burn fat. Of course, do not eat too much, after all, who can make things spicy appetizers, so you want to eat more things, which runs counter to the original intention with the subtraction.

Third, the slowly

Many people eat when they were devoured, monosodium glutamate and food passing by, only Qingting point of contact with water, a camel,meizitang food and tasteless. This way of eating with delicious meals and enjoy the fun of greatly reduced, more importantly, eating too fast can cause lose guard accidentally eat too much.

Fourth, to avoid cold

Do not let yourself eat something too cold, which is to treat each woman one of their own performance. Temperature is too cold food will lower metabolism even more slowly. Dinner time, those salad or something, let the man who solved it. Eat warm, can be more rewarding, but also the indirect control of the healthy diet.

Fifth, to divert attention

Do not reimbursing Guzhe hard to eat fruta planta, so the image is not only bad, believe also eat a lot. Attention as possible to friends and relatives in the chat on it, chat too happy to speak more than one, not so much time to eat. And finished, because the same conversation that there is a great pleasure and satisfaction.

6, do not go to dinner fasting

Do not hold those “eat less to lose” mentality, so deliberately hungry before dinner. In fact, all together, nothing more than to happy, so I do not care about the class of those substances. At home, eat a little and then go out together, and the “Preparation may quicken the work,” it is quite reasonable. Not so hungry before you eat, it will not be too forward to this meal at the formal process of eating will not eat too much.

Seven, the meal break

The meal to a rest, just rest time may be only the beginning of thirty seconds, but slowly over time the one minute, two minutes, the final goal is three minutes stop time, can be used to recall that he had just eaten those foods, and then calmly decide how much to eat. This habit can make your stomach a little eased, while helping you eat less.

Eight-point pai you guo instead of rice

Go out to eat, ordering more, stores often send rice. In fact, the beauty of the MM should be smart to choose the fullness of other coarse grains as food. Brown rice, corn, sorghum, rice and other whole grains instead of refined white rice, so that a greater intake of nutrients and dietary fiber, thus preventing constipation, colorectal cancer, cardiovascular diseases. Meanwhile, whole grains contain more calories than the same amount of calories contained in rice is much lower, it is suitable for women to lose weight in food.

Nine, to white water instead of wine or beverage

Whitewater does not contain calories. Usually a standard glass of water is 250 ml. You can be estimated, we drink three saliva is roughly equivalent to 50 ml. We can also use the dilution method: drink and soft drink in a glass filled with ice (this can be reduced by half at least) two days will be able to reduce the intake of 200 calories. If you are gradually getting used to drink white water a day can reduce the intake of 400 calories. 10-18 kg a year can be thin.

X. soup before meals

Banquet on the general soup,meizitang botanical slimming remember to drink before meals. If after a meal before drinking, the stomach has been filled with food, plus a bowl of hot soup, it is easy to make people eat too much, and the soup will dilute the gastric juice, affecting the normal digestion of food. So, you want to lose weight, preferably before meals, drink in a small bowl of soup or a cup of boiling water pad bottom, thus reducing food intake to achieve weight loss goals.

How to eat more super slim

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Ten technologies that will shake the CE World

C​h​a​n​g​e​,​ ​o​f​ ​c​o​u​r​s​e​,​ ​i​s​ ​a​ c​o​n​s​t​a​n​t​ ​i​n​ ​e​l​e​c​t​r​o​n​i​c​s​,​ ​a​n​d​ ​a​t​ ​t​h​e​ ​I​n​t​e​r​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​ ​C​o​n​s​u​m​e​r​ ​E​l​e​c​t​r​o​n​i​c​s​ ​S​h​o​w​ ​i​n​ ​L​a​s​ ​V​e​g​a​s​,​ ​o​u​r​ ​e​d​i​t​o​r​s​ ​f​o​u​n​d​ ​e​v​i​d​e​n​c​e​ ​a​p​l​e​n​t​y​ ​o​f​ ​t​h​e​ ​s​h​i​f​t​s​ ​u​n​d​e​r​ ​w​a​y​ ​i​n​ ​C​E​.​ ​H​e​r​e​ ​a​r​e​ ​1​0​ ​t​e​c​h​n​o​l​o​g​i​e​s​ ​t​h​a​t​ ​w​e​’​r​e​ ​b​e​t​t​i​n​g​ ​w​i​l​l​ ​a​l​t​e​r​ ​t​h​e​ ​c​o​n​s​u​m​e​r​.

Motion processing
Motion processors harness microelectromechanical system sensors to ascertain not only the orientation of a device, but also its heading and absolute location in three-dimensional space. Fusing the data streams from accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers (compasses) and altimeters (barometric pressure sensors) allows almost anything to be tracked. Gestures thus can control hardware (from game consoles to vehicle navigation systems) or inform software (from security protocols to location-based services, or LBS).

Once the domain of suitcase-sized, spinning gimbaled tops like those used to keep spacecraft and naval vessels on-course, MEMS inertial sensors are now small enough, inexpensive enough and low-power enough for deployment in even the tiniest mobile devices.

Almost overnight, MEMS inertial sensors have become standard issue for everything from drop detection (to lock up a hard drive before it impacts the floor, for example) to gesture recognition (such to activate Siri by merely bringing the iPhone 4S to your ear). Smart TVs are also upgrading to MEMS-laden remotes that more accurately control on-screen cursors by virtue of motion-processing algorithms licensed from Hillcrest Labs and Movea.



In 2012, mobile device makers will begin integrating complete inertial navigation units housing pre-calibrated accelerometers, gyros and magnetometers. Invensense recently announced a complete INU in a single, 4-mm-square package, enabling almost any mobile device to offer LBS, augmented reality and asset tracking. — R. Colin Johnson
Ten technologies that will shake the CE World

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