TECH-ALERT: NASA Planet Hunter to Search Out Other Earths

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5 March 2009   NASA Planet Hunter to Search Out Other Earths NASA’s first planet-hunting spacecraft, Kepler, is ready for its three-and-a-half-year journey in search of Earth-like planets outside our solar system. Kepler is the first space telescope capable of discovering such planets orbiting in a distant solar system’s habitable zone—the area in which liquid water, and possibly life, can exist. Why the Chevy Volt Doesn't Add Up The overall effect of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will, of course, depend on how many are built in coming years and just what their ranges will be. IEEE Spectrum’s David Schneider discussed this issue with Jeremy Michalek, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and public policy—who's not optimistic. New Technology to Trap Killer Sparks Fierce electrical explosions called arc flash—some having the energy of several sticks of dynamite—are a big cause of electrical injuries. At General Electric’s John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore, India, engineers have developed what they think is the best way yet to prevent dangerous arc-flash hazards. The device, called an arc-flash absorber, uses a plasma gun to transfer the open arc into a contained electrical system in less than 200 microseconds. Tech-Insider Webinar: Parallel Signal Processing Using MATLAB® and Star-P® 12 March 2009 2:00PM EST/11:00AM PST This webinar will demonstrate how signal processing applications can be adapted to run in parallel using very high level languages (VHLLs) such as MATLAB.  The presentation will include a brief overview of the Star-P parallel software platform followed by a demonstration of using Star-P and MATLAB to run signal processing applications on a cluster. Register Now! Game Developers See Promise in Cloud Computing, but Some Are Skeptical Amid all the noise at January’s Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, video-game developers heard the siren call of a new frontier. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the microprocessor maker, and graphics software maker Otoy announced what they claimed will be the world’s fastest graphics supercomputer: the AMD Fusion Render Cloud.  Video and Slideshow: Frankenstein's Laboratory At the cavernous lab of Lightning Technologies, in Pittsfield, Mass., you first hear a horn’s warning blast, then a huge kapow. That’s the sound that electrons make when 2.4 million volts send them burning a zigzag path through the air. Here’s a look at some of the “mad science” involved. View Video View Slideshow Spectrum Podcast: Stewart Craine, the Woeful Engineer One man who’s now battling to make his dream a reality is Stewart Craine, founder of a company called Barefoot Power. Craine sells cheap, ultraefficient lamps to villagers in Africa and the South Pacific who don’t have electricity. Spectrum’s Sandra Upson caught up with Craine in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.  Listen Now! The Risk Factor: Want Plans for President Obama's Helo? Just Surf the Internet News has arrived that the blueprints for the upgrade of Marine One, a line of specially equipped helicopters used by the American president, were being hosted on an Iranian IP address. We shouldn’t be surprised. Look for more security breaches of this sort in the future. Read more and comment. Tech Talk: Pop Culture and Nanotech: A Telling Barometer The latest assault on rational debate over nanotechnology comes from an American TV show. In the CBS series “Eleventh Hour,” a recent episode featured an epidemiologist discovering that a cluster of electrical accidents was caused by implanted nanofilaments. Thanks, Hollywood. That should set real research back years. Read more and comment. The Sandbox: Game Group Fights for Broadband Michael Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), tells Congress Daily that the game industry wants better, cheaper broadband access across the United States. Now the ESA is making the cause part of its 2009 lobbying efforts. Read more and comment. Automaton: IEEE TePRA 2009 Calls for Papers on Robotics The organizers of the IEEE Technologies for Practical Robotic Applications (TePRA) conference have issued a call for papers for the 2009 meeting to be held 9-10 November in Woburn, Mass. The conference theme this year will be the new technologies in robotics and automation and their practical applications. Read more and comment. Spectrum WhitePaper: SISO to MIMO: Moving Communications from Single-Input Single-Output to Multiple-Input Multiple-Output The change in commercial radio technology has been driven by both customer demand for more mobile services and the decreasing cost of the digital signal processing technology required to deploy high bandwidth broadband wireless systems; the technology can now be used in the variety of commercial communications devices: the phones, PDAs, and the laptops on which we have become so dependent. Learn more in this whitepaper. Download this whitepaper. Parallel Signal Processing Using MATLAB® and Star-P® (12 Mar 2009 2:00PM ET/11:00 AM PT) Sponsored by Interactive Supercomputing Long-Term Care Planning in a Recessionary Environment (19 Mar 2009 2:00PM ET/11:00 AM PT) Sponsored by Marsh Product Development Using Multi-Domain Modeling & Simulation Sponsored by Maplesoft (Feb 2009) Revolutionized Advanced DRC Checks and LVS Debug Sponsored by Mentor Graphics (Feb 2009)   Dream Jobs: Master Watchmaker Rocket History in Play Cooking With Mark Schimpf Move Kids Away From The Screen Holiday Geek Gifts Geeks Cooking: Michael Antonorsi Of Chuao Chocolatier Sun in a Bottle: Interview With Charles Seife The Innovator's Health Club Lampe-Onnerud: The Lady and the Li-ion The Continental Divide Janna Levin Q&A Do-It-Yourself Orchestration It’s All About the CO2 Tip: Go to iTunes to download Spectrum Podcasts to your iPod/MP3 player March 2009 Issue      Forward this e-mail to a friend or colleague! Search back issues of IEEE Spectrum Tech Alert. 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