Month: October 2017

Enlarge / Hexagonal boron nitride, one of the materials used here. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Modern computers are, in many ways, limited by their energy consumption and cooling requirements. Some of that comes from the process of performing calculations. But often, the majority of energy use comes from simply getting data to the point where calculations are ready to be performed. Memory, storage, data transfer systems, and more all create power draws that, collectively, typically end up using more power than the processor itself.

Light-based communications offers the possibility of dropping power consumption while boosting the speed of connections. In most cases, designs have focused on situations where a single external laser supplies the light, which is divided and sent to the parts of the system that need it. But a new paper in Nature Nanotechnology suggests an alternate possibility: individual light sources on the chip itself. To demonstrate this possibility, the team put together an LED just two atoms thick and integrated it with a silicon chip. Better still, the same material can act as a photodetector, providing a way of building all the needed hardware using a single process.

Atomic

The work relied on two different atomically thin materials. These materials consist of a planar sheet of atoms chemically linked to each other. While their study was pioneered using graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms, they developed a variety of other materials with similar structures. The materials being used here are molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe₂), a semiconductor, and hexagonal boron nitride.

Enlarge / FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly listens during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, June 20, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Republican members of the Federal Communications Commission initially remained silent about President Trump's call to challenge and possibly revoke licenses that allow NBC and other networks to remain on the air.

But Republican Commissioner Michael O'Rielly has now said that "politics" should not interfere with FCC decision-making, and that the agency should remain independent. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today also said that licenses can't be revoked because of news coverage.

Still, O'Rielly defended Trump's attacks on the media, saying the president has been treated poorly by journalists.

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Former astronaut Scott Kelly spent most of 2015 and a bit of 2016 in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station, functioning as a human guinea pig to test the effects of long-duration exposure to microgravity. He’s currently on a tour promoting the book he wrote about the experience, and as part of that tour he stopped by the Condé Nast offices in New York to do some press stuff.

We were able to squeeze in a quick video shoot and ask some questions of the seasoned space traveler, though we had to keep it short due to time constraints.