Boost for Glasgow nanotech industry

Four new nanotechnology businesses have emerged from the 20 research projects Glasgow University had funded in partnership with industry over the past year, writes The Herald Scotland.

One of the start-ups, Gold Standard Simulations, aims to save the semiconductor industry billions from silicon chip failure by predicting how performance will be affected in future generations of mini transistors.

Another start-up aims to commercialise high precision measuring technology to deliver much improved performance in scientific and industrial equipment at a fraction of the cost of existing systems. Nanoparticles have been known for centuries, but the equipment capable of manipulating them has only recently become available.

Looking like an overgrown iPad, a touch-screen tablet has been developed to allow the disabled to control devices such as a television and an MP3 player and possibly most importantly, a push of a few buttons on the screen enables a robotic voice to speak for them, says The LA Times.

This technology is creating new opportunities for countless people with disabilities, and many of the latest gadgets were on display last week at a Schaumburg trade show, where the Pruntys were browsing for educational software.

The show, put on by the Chicago-based Assistive Technology Industry Association, included music players that can also tell you the colour of your shirt, devices that translate Web pages into Braille and computers that are controlled by eye movement.

In August, NASA planned to solicit proposals for future air and space research and now its amended plans for that programme, called Aeronautics 2010, with scope for further proposals on hypersonic travel, reveals Fast Company.

Those earlier moves by NASA's chief technologist to fund research into 'innovative, fast and new' air and space technologies generated a lot of interest. It gave us insight into how NASA thinks space and air travel may evolve in the future, and hinted at a closer integration with commercial space industries. Now we know they are bullish on hypersonic travel, too--which is potentially good news for the airline industry.

Hypersonic aircraft would fly much faster than previous ones; at above Mach five, or five times the speed of sound. That's fast enough for a hypersonic vehicle to get you from New York to Sydney in about two and a half hours.