Unlike the vacuum plasma method, this nozzle is able to operate at regular atmospheric pressure. This is a major improvement over requiring a vacuum, but it introduces the problem of potential contaminants in the coating. This is what the researchers had to overcome for this technology to be possible. Fortunately they did though because this method has many advantages going for it, such as the ability to be incorporated into production lines.

The plasma nozzle itself is about the same size as a spray can, which allows it to be easily integrated into production systems, and even be automated by a robot. This should enable it to be much more cheaply used than the current system in place, which should allow more devices to have special coatings.

Bulk metallic glasses (BMG) maintain the strength and durability of their crystal counterparts, but can be considerably more malleable. For example, heating up a BMG can make it behave like a plastic and they can be machined to a smaller size than is possible with regular metals. Normal metals have grains to them, which results from being a crystal. This limits the detail of a material like tool steel to 10 micrometers. Thanks to the chaos within a BMG though, details smaller than 100 nm can be machined in.

The researchers see this as a possible way to mass produce, very cheaply, plastic components with exact details molded into them. Potentially BMG molds could be used to create lab-on-a-chip devices, because the surface features of the molds are on the same scale as the smallest viruses and human cells. This could also lead to a new kind of data storage, provided they can optimize the technology to reach down to the tens of nanometers. If they do achieve this, the memory could be considerably cheaper than current technologies because of the mass production capabilities BMG molds offer.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is not that concerned with the ITC judge's remarks and is confident the ITC will rule in its favor. Microsoft says it hopes Motorola will have to make its patents available on "fair and reasonable terms," and that it does not expect any problems when the ITC concludes its investigation on August 23rd.

Some cellphone networks employ a middlebox firewall to secure data sequences. Information sent on the network is not sent in one big piece, but multiple small packets. These packets are numbered, so the receiver knows where to put each one in the larger sequence. A middlebox firewall checks these sequence numbers to make sure only packets with correct numbers get through. The researchers realized this can be used to redirect a phones data flow and found that 32% of the 150 networks tested across the globe are susceptible to the kind of attack they devised.

The attack works by sending packets with different sequence numbers. Those outside of the range of what the middlebox is accepting will be blocked, but any within that range will get through. Using a binary search, a hacker can be guaranteed a valid sequence number in just 32 steps, which takes seconds to achieve. Once a data packet gets through, a piece of malware already installed on the smartphone by the user, can then be activated and respond to the hacker, indicating a packet got through. At this point the hacker will have the ability to redirect the smartphone's traffic to a spoof site, such as Facebook or Twitter, where an unwitting user will type their username and password into a field for the hacker.

Worth noting is that this attack method circumvents the practice of sandboxing applications. It does not require one app does anything to another on the phone. The researchers have actually made an Android app to test if your Android smartphone is vulnerable to this attack, but at the time of my writing this, the app's page is down. (Perhaps this is because the app is considered malware by Google.)

Instead of having the transmitting node just identify the nearest node at the time, and hoping the closest node will still be in range when transmission starts, the algorithm determines which node will be closest when the transmission starts. The algorithm also determines how quickly the information should be transmitted. If the transmission is too fast, the data can be corrupted, and if the transmission is too slow, there is a loss of efficiency.

Current infrared sensors are based on a semiconducting alloy made of mercury, cadmium, and telluride, and rely on liquid nitrogen or electric cooling to keep the alloy's heat from interfering with the sensor. What the researchers developed is a carbon nanotube infrared detector. Carbon nanotubes react very strongly to infrared radiation, making them ideal for the infrared sensors, but they have another characteristic that makes their use truly beneficial. Nanotubes conduct heat very well, so even when they normally would heat up during use, the temperature speeds away and the signal remains clear.

This discovery could advance devices used in the military, optical communications, and science, to name a few. There are likely other uses not yet thought of too, because of how limiting the need for extra cooling equipment has been in the past.

A tiny site decided to drum up some completely insane rumor, call it fact, and then it gets picked up by other sites in order to bring in traffic. Not exactly the best tactic in the world, but some people think resorting to it will help. The thing is, there is no evidence NVIDIA will ever issue a recall on the Kepler GPUs and you can be sure a "source" at TSMC would never leak something so substantial. OverclockersClub will always talk to NVIDIA anytime rumors start to make sure they are just that, but other sites do not always seem to follow our lead. It does not take long to place a phone call or email the NVIDIA reps, so why not try to clarify these rumors directly at the source? This is how lies and falsehoods get spread, people, so check your facts before posting some insane story!

NVIDIA has no problems with the Kepler GPUs aside from keeping the cards in stock. The GTX 670s and 680s sell like hotcakes as soon as stock comes in, but you can head to Newegg right now to find several GTX 670s available to buy. The Kepler cards are some of the most powerful ones around, and considering any one of them puts a hurting on AMD, you would be hard pressed to find an issue with them.

So, moral of the story is to check your facts and make sure what you are saying actually has some basis. Do not just come up with some bullshit to bring in traffic, when talking to NVIDIA or any company will go a long way to clear things up. Being proactive goes a long way to making sure your facts are actually straight!

The inexact method the researchers have developed is called loop perforation. Loops are pretty common constructs in a program that simply repeat an operation until some condition is met. By perforating or skipping some of the iterations in the loop. This, like other inexact methods, works very well with nondeterministic operations, which means they do not need to produce a single, specific answer. Basically, if the output itself does not have to be exactly the same every time, like the order of the top items in a search, you can be inexact without really sacrificing anything, but gaining a great deal of performance.

To get developers to accept this strategy, the researchers are using verification to prove it works. Verification just means that a program or piece of hardware does exactly what it is supposed to do. Traditionally this has only been used in academia, hardware design, and the development of critical software, because it is very labor intensive. Automated tools for verifying software are becoming more common and more powerful though, so some commercial companies are starting to use them on their products. What the researchers intend to do is use verification methods to demonstrate that inexact methods can be used without fear of compromising a system. The verification process can be used to ensure the errors are kept within a certain distance of the exact answer, or to show that one value can be inexact without compromising other, more important values. Returning to the search engine example above, the order of the found items can be inexact without allowing erroneous entries to appear in the list.

Ultimately, the choice to use inexact methods of any kind comes down to the developers. The MIT researchers are just trying to show you can be inexact without having critical errors, while also offering a new way to be inexact.