MaNEP e-Newsletter for members - Published monthly Issue Nr. 7 - March 2006 / page 5

Reading tips
MaNEP partner / SwissNeutronics in local Swiss newspaper


MaNEP's industrial partner SwissNeutronics has a long and interesting article in the local Swiss-German newspaper "Die Botschaft" (Zurzacher 		Volksblatt) issued on February 11th. You will find out everything about the firm that was founded by 5 PSI researchers 7 years ago.
For the PDF : [ click here ]
Prof. Albert Furrer is a former member of MaNEP and a cofounder of SwissNeutronics

[ read an ITW here ]
Good to know / A selection of science news and sources
Excellent movie on nanotechnology and STM on Athenaweb

In this film we will find out what tools scientists have developed to explore this new reality, opening up an apparently infinite field of research and practical applications.

Initiated and supported by the European Community , AthenaWeb provides a video portal for European scientists and researchers. The ultimate goal is to add value to scientific audiovisual programs produced in Europe and encourage distribution to scientific professionals.
[ View the video ]
N.B. You need QuickTime to view the video

Google online conferences on scientific and technical issues
Google provides many filmed educational conferences . These concern a broad panel of scientific and technical subjects, from robotics, meteorites, internet security to climate change and more.[ link to the conferences ]		 New Wrinkle in the Mystery of High-Tc Superconductors









The latest wrinkle uncovered by Tonica Valla’s group (U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory) concerns a material that is not a superconductor. The material is a special form of a compound made of lanthanum, barium, copper, and oxygen, where there is exactly one barium atom for every eight copper atoms. With less or more barium, the material acts as a high-Tc superconductor (in fact, this was the very first high-Tc superconductor discovered). But at the 1:8 ratio, the material momentarily loses its superconductivity.
[ More on Physicsorg ]

Implementing a Quantum Computation by Free Falling

SCIENCE, Volume 311, Issue 5764, February 24 - 2006 Perspectives

 Quantum computers may become more powerful than conventional computers, especially at solving hard problems. Finding efficient ways to tackle such problems turns out to resemble understanding the path taken by a falling object.
[ PDF of full text on sciencemag.org ]
Demonstration of First Superconductor Power Transformer in Chinese Energy Distribution Grid

American Superconductor Corporation , a leading energy technologies company, and China's Institute of Electrical Engineering (IEE) announced that IEE has successfully demonstrated a prototype superconductor-based power transformer for the first time in a power grid in China. The transformer was fabricated by IEE in collaboration with TBEA Industrial Transformer Group, the largest transformer manufacturer in China, utilizing high temperature superconductor (HTS) wire (...) The HTS transformer has operated since November 21, 2005 in a power grid in the city of Changji, Xinjiang Province.
[ Full press release on Biz.yahoo.com ]
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