Had Vin Diesel & Co. not put out Fast Five earlier this year, we may have never heard new Look Mexico songs. Once again taking song titles from quotes in Diesel flicks, these noodly indie rockers (now based in Austin, Texas) explore a few more corners of their sound on the 14-minute, five-track Real Americans Spear It. Opener ?You Hungry? Good. ?Cause You?re Sayin? Grace? is an admirable attempt at Vampire Weekend-esque world pop, only with more effects pedals. ?Arrest? I Don?t Feel Like I?m Under Arrest? is as straightforward a pop song as this band have ever written, with an instantly memorable chorus. ?Running Ain?t Freedom (You Should Know That)? is the best of the bunch, though, with tambourine and piano flourishes perfectly accenting the driving rock song.
In terms of being the most disliked player in the NBA, LeBron James can't keep up with a Kardashian ex-husband.
New Jersey Nets forward Kris Humphries -- also known for his 2 1/2 -month marriage to reality star Kim Kardashian -- beat out James for the dubious distinction, according to a survey conducted by Nielsen and E-Poll Market Research that appeared on Forbes.com.
Humphries took in a 50 percent dislike percentage, topping James' 48 percent.
Players must have a minimum 10 percent public awareness level to have been considered, according to Forbes.com.
Kobe Bryant, Tony Parker, Metta World Peace, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, Paul Pierce, Dwyane Wade and Lamar Odom completed the top 10.
'Nanoantennas' show promise in optical innovationsPublic release date: 22-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Emil Venere venere@purdue.edu 765-494-4709 Purdue University
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Researchers have shown how arrays of tiny "plasmonic nanoantennas" are able to precisely manipulate light in new ways that could make possible a range of optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers.
The researchers at Purdue University used the nanoantennas to abruptly change a property of light called its phase. Light is transmitted as waves analogous to waves of water, which have high and low points. The phase defines these high and low points of light.
"By abruptly changing the phase we can dramatically modify how light propagates, and that opens up the possibility of many potential applications," said Vladimir Shalaev, scientific director of nanophotonics at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center and a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Findings are described in a paper to be published online Thursday (Dec. 22) in the journal Science.
The new work at Purdue extends findings by researchers led by Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In that work, described in an October Science paper, Harvard researchers modified Snell's law, a long-held formula used to describe how light reflects and refracts, or bends, while passing from one material into another.
"What they pointed out was revolutionary," Shalaev said.
Until now, Snell's law has implied that when light passes from one material to another there are no abrupt phase changes along the interface between the materials. Harvard researchers, however, conducted experiments showing that the phase of light and the propagation direction can be changed dramatically by using new types of structures called metamaterials, which in this case were based on an array of antennas.
The Purdue researchers took the work a step further, creating arrays of nanoantennas and changing the phase and propagation direction of light over a broad range of near-infrared light. The paper was written by doctoral students Xingjie Ni and Naresh K. Emani, principal research scientist Alexander V. Kildishev, assistant professor Alexandra Boltasseva, and Shalaev.
The wavelength size manipulated by the antennas in the Purdue experiment ranges from 1 to 1.9 microns.
"The near infrared, specifically a wavelength of 1.5 microns, is essential for telecommunications," Shalaev said. "Information is transmitted across optical fibers using this wavelength, which makes this innovation potentially practical for advances in telecommunications."
The Harvard researchers predicted how to modify Snell's law and demonstrated the principle at one wavelength.
"We have extended the Harvard team's applications to the near infrared, which is important, and we also showed that it's not a single frequency effect, it's a very broadband effect," Shalaev said. "Having a broadband effect potentially offers a range of technological applications."
The innovation could bring technologies for steering and shaping laser beams for military and communications applications, nanocircuits for computers that use light to process information, and new types of powerful lenses for microscopes.
Critical to the advance is the ability to alter light so that it exhibits "anomalous" behavior: notably, it bends in ways not possible using conventional materials by radically altering its refraction, a process that occurs as electromagnetic waves, including light, bend when passing from one material into another.
Scientists measure this bending of radiation by its "index of refraction." Refraction causes the bent-stick-in-water effect, which occurs when a stick placed in a glass of water appears bent when viewed from the outside. Each material has its own refraction index, which describes how much light will bend in that particular material. All natural materials, such as glass, air and water, have positive refractive indices.
However, the nanoantenna arrays can cause light to bend in a wide range of angles including negative angles of refraction.
"Importantly, such dramatic deviation from the conventional Snell's law governing reflection and refraction occurs when light passes through structures that are actually much thinner than the width of the light's wavelengths, which is not possible using natural materials," Shalaev said. "Also, not only the bending effect, refraction, but also the reflection of light can be dramatically modified by the antenna arrays on the interface, as the experiments showed."
The nanoantennas are V-shaped structures made of gold and formed on top of a silicon layer. They are an example of metamaterials, which typically include so-called plasmonic structures that conduct clouds of electrons called plasmons. The antennas themselves have a width of 40 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and researchers have demonstrated they are able to transmit light through an ultrathin "plasmonic nanoantenna layer" about 50 times smaller than the wavelength of light it is transmitting.
"This ultrathin layer of plasmonic nanoantennas makes the phase of light change strongly and abruptly, causing light to change its propagation direction, as required by the momentum conservation for light passing through the interface between materials," Shalaev said.
###
The work has been funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research.
Related website:
Vladimir Shalaev: http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~shalaev
The image in the upper left shows a schematic for an array of gold "plasmonic nanoantennas" able to precisely manipulate light in new ways, a technology that could make possible a range of optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers. At upper right is a scanning electron microscope image of the structures. The figure below shows the experimentally measured refraction angle versus incidence angle for light, demonstrating how the nanoantennas alter the refraction. (Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center image)
A publication-quality image is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2011/shalaev-nanoantenna.jpg
Abstract on the research in this release can be found at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2011/111222ShalaevNanoantenna.html
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
'Nanoantennas' show promise in optical innovationsPublic release date: 22-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Emil Venere venere@purdue.edu 765-494-4709 Purdue University
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Researchers have shown how arrays of tiny "plasmonic nanoantennas" are able to precisely manipulate light in new ways that could make possible a range of optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers.
The researchers at Purdue University used the nanoantennas to abruptly change a property of light called its phase. Light is transmitted as waves analogous to waves of water, which have high and low points. The phase defines these high and low points of light.
"By abruptly changing the phase we can dramatically modify how light propagates, and that opens up the possibility of many potential applications," said Vladimir Shalaev, scientific director of nanophotonics at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center and a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Findings are described in a paper to be published online Thursday (Dec. 22) in the journal Science.
The new work at Purdue extends findings by researchers led by Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In that work, described in an October Science paper, Harvard researchers modified Snell's law, a long-held formula used to describe how light reflects and refracts, or bends, while passing from one material into another.
"What they pointed out was revolutionary," Shalaev said.
Until now, Snell's law has implied that when light passes from one material to another there are no abrupt phase changes along the interface between the materials. Harvard researchers, however, conducted experiments showing that the phase of light and the propagation direction can be changed dramatically by using new types of structures called metamaterials, which in this case were based on an array of antennas.
The Purdue researchers took the work a step further, creating arrays of nanoantennas and changing the phase and propagation direction of light over a broad range of near-infrared light. The paper was written by doctoral students Xingjie Ni and Naresh K. Emani, principal research scientist Alexander V. Kildishev, assistant professor Alexandra Boltasseva, and Shalaev.
The wavelength size manipulated by the antennas in the Purdue experiment ranges from 1 to 1.9 microns.
"The near infrared, specifically a wavelength of 1.5 microns, is essential for telecommunications," Shalaev said. "Information is transmitted across optical fibers using this wavelength, which makes this innovation potentially practical for advances in telecommunications."
The Harvard researchers predicted how to modify Snell's law and demonstrated the principle at one wavelength.
"We have extended the Harvard team's applications to the near infrared, which is important, and we also showed that it's not a single frequency effect, it's a very broadband effect," Shalaev said. "Having a broadband effect potentially offers a range of technological applications."
The innovation could bring technologies for steering and shaping laser beams for military and communications applications, nanocircuits for computers that use light to process information, and new types of powerful lenses for microscopes.
Critical to the advance is the ability to alter light so that it exhibits "anomalous" behavior: notably, it bends in ways not possible using conventional materials by radically altering its refraction, a process that occurs as electromagnetic waves, including light, bend when passing from one material into another.
Scientists measure this bending of radiation by its "index of refraction." Refraction causes the bent-stick-in-water effect, which occurs when a stick placed in a glass of water appears bent when viewed from the outside. Each material has its own refraction index, which describes how much light will bend in that particular material. All natural materials, such as glass, air and water, have positive refractive indices.
However, the nanoantenna arrays can cause light to bend in a wide range of angles including negative angles of refraction.
"Importantly, such dramatic deviation from the conventional Snell's law governing reflection and refraction occurs when light passes through structures that are actually much thinner than the width of the light's wavelengths, which is not possible using natural materials," Shalaev said. "Also, not only the bending effect, refraction, but also the reflection of light can be dramatically modified by the antenna arrays on the interface, as the experiments showed."
The nanoantennas are V-shaped structures made of gold and formed on top of a silicon layer. They are an example of metamaterials, which typically include so-called plasmonic structures that conduct clouds of electrons called plasmons. The antennas themselves have a width of 40 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and researchers have demonstrated they are able to transmit light through an ultrathin "plasmonic nanoantenna layer" about 50 times smaller than the wavelength of light it is transmitting.
"This ultrathin layer of plasmonic nanoantennas makes the phase of light change strongly and abruptly, causing light to change its propagation direction, as required by the momentum conservation for light passing through the interface between materials," Shalaev said.
###
The work has been funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research.
Related website:
Vladimir Shalaev: http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~shalaev
The image in the upper left shows a schematic for an array of gold "plasmonic nanoantennas" able to precisely manipulate light in new ways, a technology that could make possible a range of optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers. At upper right is a scanning electron microscope image of the structures. The figure below shows the experimentally measured refraction angle versus incidence angle for light, demonstrating how the nanoantennas alter the refraction. (Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center image)
A publication-quality image is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2011/shalaev-nanoantenna.jpg
Abstract on the research in this release can be found at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2011/111222ShalaevNanoantenna.html
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Social media users had no shortage of things to discuss in 2011 as big news -- good or bad -- got even bigger online. Hot topics that revolved around major tech companies or products such as Netflix, Xbox 360 or Kindle Fire incited a flurry of online reactions.
[More from Mashable: 6 Crazy Tech Predictions for 2012]
In the infographic below, Klout lists the most-buzzed about companies, tech products, locations, people and music genres of the year, and many of the topics are in line with what got Mashable readers fired up.
"When people talked about these topics, they got tons of RTs, @mentions, shares, comments, likes and more," Klout?s marketing manager Megan Berry told Mashable Thursday. "These are the topics their audiences loved to discuss, share, and, in some cases, hate."
[More from Mashable: Amazon, Apple and Google Offer Discounted Albums as Low as $4.99]
For example, Apple secured five of the 11 spots on tech products list, with the iPhone leading the charge.
But why does looking at these hot topics matter? "As social media increasingly shapes and reflects the prevailing opinions on brands and events, it's more important than ever to understand what people want to share and why for everyone from brands to individuals," Berry explains.
SEE ALSO: Facebook Reveals 2011?s Most-Popular Status Trends | YouTube's Top Videos of 2011
Klout, which measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Foursquare on a scale of 0 to 100, has made a major push this year to highlight (with new features) and pinpoint (by adding more popular social networks to its scoring model) the topics individual users are experts on. In September, Klout unveiled Topic Pages that let users gain insights on top influencers and +K recipients for specific content areas. This month, Klout unwrapped sashes, a visual update to that Topics feature. Despite those efforts, some critics say Klout is flawed partly because some users try to game its system, or because its scoring model doesn't take into account the offline influence of experts who also have online presences but don't create much content.
Which topics are you surprised to see make or be excluded from Klout's infographic? Chime in.
LONDON ? Royal officials say Prince Harry showed up at a London police station to help a friend who had been mugged.
Harry's Clarence House office says the 27-year-old prince went to support a friend who was reporting a robbery.
British media say Thomas van Straubenzee was robbed in a south London street while on the phone with Harry, who raced across the city to help. When he could not find Van Straubenzee, Harry went to the local police station, where he gave a witness statement.
Police said a mobile phone was recovered after the Nov. 30 robbery. A suspect has been arrested and bailed.
Harry, an army helicopter pilot, recently returned from a two-month training exercise in the United States.
FILE - In this Sept. 11, 2011 file photo, Mike Love of the Beach Boys sings for a crowd of thousands during the Colorado Remembers 911 event at Civic Center Park in Denver. The founding members of the classic rock group; Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine, announced Friday, Dec. 16, they were getting back together to celebrate their 50th anniversary. (AP Photo/Barry Gutierrez, file)
FILE - In this Sept. 11, 2011 file photo, Mike Love of the Beach Boys sings for a crowd of thousands during the Colorado Remembers 911 event at Civic Center Park in Denver. The founding members of the classic rock group; Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine, announced Friday, Dec. 16, they were getting back together to celebrate their 50th anniversary. (AP Photo/Barry Gutierrez, file)
NEW YORK (AP) ? It's almost winter, but get ready for some surf and sun: The Beach Boys are reuniting.
The founding members of the classic rock group ? Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine ? announced Friday they are getting back together to celebrate their 50th anniversary. They're working on a new album and also plan a 50-date tour that will take them around the world.
"This anniversary is special to me because I miss the boys, and it will be a thrill for me to make a new record and be on stage with them again," Wilson said in a statement.
The group also includes Bruce Johnston and David Marks, both of whom have been with the band for decades.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers gave birth to the California rock sound. Back then, the band members were Love, Jardine, Wilson and his two brothers ? Carl and Dennis Wilson, who have since died. With songs like "Good Vibrations," ''I Get Around" and "California Girls," the quintet embodied the fantasy of West Coast beach life. Their albums, particularly "Pet Sounds," influenced rockers of their generation and beyond.
But Wilson suffered mental problems that caused him to withdraw from the band, and there were years of animosity between Love and Wilson, who are cousins, as well as lawsuits among members of the band. Still, they have gotten back together over the years, including for their 40th anniversary in the last decade.
Love remarked in the statement Friday on how he and Wilson were getting along well, sharing compliments together in the studio.
"Music has been the unifying and harmonizing fact of life in our family since childhood," he said.?"It has been a huge blessing that we have been able to share with the world." Referring to a Beach Boy hit, he added: "Wouldn't It Be Nice to Do It Again??Absolutely!"
The group was supposed to announce their reunion as a surprise during the Recording Academy's live nominations special for the Grammys last month, but those plans fell through.
However, Jardine said the group planned to appear at the Feb. 12 Grammy telecast in Los Angeles.
"There will be a surprise at the Grammys," he told Rolling Stone. "We will do something really exciting. There's a lot of interest in it, which is nice. It's going to be a very big operation."
The Beach Boys first concert is scheduled for April 27 at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Wedbush Securities has raised the price target on Allot Communications (NASDAQ: ALLT) from $17 to $20 and maintains its Outperform.
When it comes to investing, you cannot settle for anything less than the fastest and most efficient news feed. That is why we created Benzinga Pro. Sign up for a free trial today!
(c) 2011 Benzinga.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published in its entirety or redistributed without the approval of Benzinga.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vHkyfVJm206eBARx9PZVkc2YpnlrbjO7FDbpAWFYJjlLif7072L8FmTlOaTrRmZDbHFRed_bdU_SO55b5xzDQBk5hHNuKjQHNCUoQoIaY=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 22-Dec-2011
Share ]