Laser Puts Record Data Rate Through Fiber BBC News (05/22/11)

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology researchers recently set a record
by transmitting 26 terabits of a data in one second using a single
laser. The researchers used a fast Fourier transform to separate
more than 300 distinct colors of light in a single laser beam with
very short pulses, each of which was encoded with its own string of
information. The Fourier transform is a mathematical trick that can
extract the different colors from an input beam based on the times
that the different parts of the beam arrive. The researchers
accomplished this optically by splitting the incoming beam into
different paths depending on when they arrived, and then recombining
them on a detector. The current design outperforms earlier
approaches by moving all the time delays further apart, and
Karlsruhe professor Wolfgang Freude says the technology could be
integrated onto a silicon chip. "Think of all the tremendous
progress in silicon photonics," Freude says. "Nobody could have
imagined 10 years ago that nowadays it would be so common to
integrate relatively complicated optical circuits on to a silicon
chip."

The Invisible iPhone Technology Review (05/23/11) Katie Greene

Hasso Plattner Institute researchers have developed a system that
enables iPhone users to perform actions on their devices without
actually holding the phone. To operate Hasso's imaginary iPhone
system, users tap their palm and the system interprets the movements
and relays them back to the iPhone. The system uses a depth-sensitive
camera to record the tapping and sliding motions, software to analyze
the movements, and a Wi-Fi radio to transmit the movements to the
device. The system "serves as a shortcut that frees users from the
necessity to retrieve the actual physical device," says Hasso
professor Patrick Baudisch, noting the camera works well in different
lighting conditions, including direct sunlight. During testing, the
researchers found that users could accurately recall the position of
about two-thirds of their applications with similar accuracy on their
palms. "It's possible that voice control could serve the same
purpose, but the imaginary approach would work in noisy locations and
is much more subtle than announcing, 'iPhone, open my email,'" says
the University of Waterloo's Daniel Vogel.