Smallest computer found - 26-10-2007 - 11:24

An electrical and computing engineering student has won a $25,000 (£12,100) prize for proving the simplest possible machine that can perform any computation.

Alex Smith, a 20-year-old Birmingham University student, won the prize after proving that a Turing machine made up of a two-state, three-colour cellular automaton was the simplest computer.

A Turing machine is a theoretical abstraction of a computer in which each subsequent state is defined by a set of rules and its current state. While a universal Turing machine can carry out any computation, it is not practically useful.

Mathematician Stephen Wolfram originally defined the computer five years ago and offered the money to anybody who could prove or disprove that the simple machine could carry out any computation possible, including those carried out by vastly more complex computers.

Smith, who started using computers at the age of six and is reportedly familiar with about 20 programming languages, had his 40-page proof accepted.

He said: "I saw the prize problem primarily as a puzzle. At first, I didn't think the Turing machine would be universal. But then I found a way to show that it is."

Scientists print gold ink electronics - 26-10-2007 - 11:24

Scientists in Switzerland have discovered a method to print microelectronics using nano-particles of gold.

Working with the mechanical engineering department of the University of California at Berkeley, the ETH Zurich scientist published a paper on printing a field effect transistor.

The team has used an ink that contains nano-particles of gold to print the electronic structures.

Using an inkjet or a small pipette the scientists print an ink with gold nano-particles - which melt at 150 degrees C instead of 1,063 degrees C that gold melts at - onto an organic substrate.

An argon ion laser is then used to make the gold solid, to sinter it, to write accurately defined structures.

The team used their technique to produce a field-effect transistor, though it is equally suitable for applications such as radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, thin-film photovoltaics or flexible sensors, the researchers told Nanotechnology journal.

"We have yet to run the tests over the long term (years), but the laser-sintered devices were as good as the lithographically processed electronics over a period of several months," Seung Ko from UC Berkeley's department of mechanical engineering, told nanotechweb.org.

Tiny wires come under control - 22-10-2007 - 11:07

Engineers have developed a system for controlling wires so thin that they could lead to the development of minute microchips.

The team of engineers at Edinburgh University made a program which can predict the behaviour of wires 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Wires which are measured on a nanoscale - in millionths of a millimetre - behave very differently to larger wires.

Dr Michael Zaiser, of Edinburgh's school of engineering and electronics, told the Herald newspaper: "We looked at what would happen if we deformed a very small wire. When we made the wires smaller and smaller they started to behave in a funny way."

Instead of coiling into rings they take on unpredictable shapes, complicating attempts to manipulate the tiny filaments for use in microchips.

But the engineers, who worked with colleagues at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and the University of Rome developed a program that allows engineers to predict when problems could occur.

With this knowledge smaller microchips could be developed, which could lead to smaller computers, mobile phones and medical advances.

Dyson's wind hits the catwalk - 11-10-2007 - 17:22

British engineer and designer James Dyson stepped away from the world of home appliances and into the heady world of fashion.

Dyson, best known for his bagless vacuum cleaner, designed the set and runway for the Issey Miyake show at Paris Fashion Week earlier this month.

He was invited to participate because the Japanese designer had taken his inspiration from the Dyson vacuum cleaner parts.

Although surprised, the designer and engineer told the Gazette and Herald newspaper that the collaboration was not as strange as it first appeared to be.

"It's not so odd when you consider that our approach is actually very similar," he said.

"It's about the latest technology, experimentation, testing and truly inventive design."

He added that the collaboration was a good way of showing the world that design and engineering can be exciting.

Dyson, who will be designing a special handheld vacuum cleaner dedicated to the fashion brand, recently saw his bid for a piece of land on which to build a £25 million engineering and design school in Bath turned down, might get a second chance after the winning bidder - Bath Spa University - pulled out.

Mobile phone engineers awarded - 09-10-2007 - 11:07

Engineers whose work resulted in the first mobile phone prototype are to have their endeavours recognised with the 2007 GlobalSpec Great Moments in Engineering award.

On the 35th anniversary of their success, the Applied Research team at the former Communications Division of Motorola, will be honoured for their transformation of the telecommunications industry.

Now there are mobile phones in all shapes and sizes, but it started with the team's work on a 3-D model of a hand held telephone as well as component parts small enough to fit it.

The portable DynaTAC, which was shown to the world in April 1973, was the end result of their three months' work.

Chairman and chief executive officer of specialist search engine GlobalSpec Jeffrey Killeen said: "Thirty-five years ago, this talented and ingenious team of engineering professionals embarked on a project that would lead to an innovation so commonplace today that we rarely pause to reflect upon the extraordinary creativity it took to design and build it."

He added: "The development of the DynaTAC, the world's first hand-held, portable telephone, was really about creative innovation and the engineering ingenuity."

Engineers working on LED streetlights - 03-10-2007 - 15:30

The school of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester is to assist a North Yorkshire firm to develop light emitting diode (LED)-based streetlamps.

Dialite Lumidrives has received a £175,000 grant from the Department of Trade and Industry - which it matched - to conduct applied research to use highpowered LEDs in streetlights.

Working with the University of Manchester, the firm is studying how to pack groups of the LEDs so they generate 12,000 lumens.

The firms managing director, Gordon Routledge, studied at the university and said that once it has figured out how to pack the LEDs together, the future of streetlights could be LEDs.

He said: "Although many companies have made demonstrators of LED lighting in existing lighting applications, very little work has been completed into the associated technologies beyond LEDs at the component level.

"Significant improvements in cost, efficiency and reliability are therefore essential."