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Research Summaries
UCLA Materials Scientists Invent Plastic High-speed Digital Memory Device
The polymer or plastic memory device developed by
Professor Yang Yang. |
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A team of scientists in the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science successfully invented a non-volatile plastic digital memory device. In a paper that appeared in the journal Nature Materials, the researchers outlined how they designed a new type of polymer, or plastic, memory device.
The group, led by materials science professor Yang Yang, demonstrated a high-performance plastic memory device made from a polystyrene film containing gold nanoparticles, with promise for low-cost, high-density memory storage.
“There is a lot of talk about nanotechnology, but our device is a nanoparticle-induced phenomenon. It is the nano size of the gold particles that allows them to store the charge and function as a
memory device,” said Yang. “It’s a
revolutionary technology that combines traditional material - polystyrene - and a high-tech material.”
The new material has a wide range of potential uses, including digital memory chips for computers, digital cameras and cell phones, to name a few applications.
In laboratory tests, the polymer memory device has shown it can meet nearly all of the performance requirements. The team is working to extend its lifetime, so that it can write and erase for a million cycles and store the data for at least 10 years.
Aluminum Microfoams: Lightweight Materials for Energy Savings
A metallic foam developed by Professor Laurent Pilon. |
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Metal and polystyrene solid closed-cell microfoams - foams with tiny bubbles surrounded by solid walls - have a remarkable strength-to-weight ratio and resistance to impact. The presence of the bubbles reduces thermal conductivity, allowing the foams to act as good insulators and better resist thermal shock. They also are good acoustic insulators.
These properties have led researchers
to pursue possible applications in
transportation and aerospace. Auto manufacturers are testing aluminum foams in vehicle chassis and frames to reduce the vehicle’s weight, as well as to reduce noise coming from outside the vehicle, resulting in improved passenger comfort.
Despite their potential, metallic foams face several barriers, primarily in production. UCLA mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Laurent Pilon is studying new ways to produce aluminum microfoams. Explained Pilon, “I’m trying to look at the process, to make these foams in a newer, cheaper and scalable way.”
To make the foams, Pilon and his
student, Samuel Prim, inject varying amounts of an oxygen-inert gas mixture into liquid metal, and then the oxygen stabilizes the bubbles’ walls through
oxidation. The mixture is then spun at more than 6,000 rpm in a specially designed beaker with baffles that obstruct the flow. When the waves strike the baffles, they break the bubbles into smaller bubbles.
“Our ultimate objective,” said Pilon” is to make safer cars through better shock absorbers, and lighter transportation
systems which would be more energy efficient. It’s a good combination in these times of high oil prices.”
Adapted from the UC Energy Institute’s Energy Notes newsletter.
Keck Foundation Grant to Support UCLA Vision Research
UCLA computer scientists, statisticians, mathematicians and psychologists are devising creative ways of looking at the world in the new W. M. Keck Foundation Lab in Vision and Image Sciences at UCLA. With a $670,000 grant from the Keck Foundation, UCLA will establish a central location for researchers in the UCLA Collective on Vision and Image Sciences, formed in 2002.
The Keck Foundation grant will equip a state-of-the-art facility at UCLA for measuring the visual environment,
creating computer vision models, and testing vision with virtual reality. The new lab will have high-end scanners, motion capture cameras and systems, a geodesic light dome, and a computer cluster for vision models. The set-up will allow researchers to identify the properties of images that support
recognition by machines and humans, offering insights into the brain and
artificial intelligence.
Led by statistics professor Alan Yuille, the UCLA researchers hope to pave the way for advances in understanding human vision and creating machine vision by studying the visual world. The interdisciplinary team is developing systems that register and interpret images in much the same way as human eyes and minds.
“The best visual system we have is the human eye and brain,” noted computer science professor Stefano Soatto. “But it’s incredibly complicated - you use half of your brain to process visual information. We want to build an artificial visual system that operates as effectively, and the Keck Lab will offer us many new exciting opportunities to address this challenge.”
Improved Encryption Algorithm
The encryption set-up. |
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The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption algorithm is considered the industry standard, but an unprotected version of the algorithm can be easily broken with off-the-shelf devices. This flaw in the system is critical as the AES method is used to protect sensitive information in many consumer devices such as PDAs and ATM networks.
One type of side channel attack - the differential power analysis - tracks variations in the power consumption of the device to break the encryption. Countermeasures have been proposed, although no single solution or combination of solutions has been proven thus far to be effective or practical against all attacks. Until now.
A team of graduate students in Ingrid Verbauwhede’s Embedded Security Group has developed a way to counteract this type of side-channel attack by hiding the encryption key through a
circuit style that keeps the power
consumption profile independent of the data being processed.
The system developed by Kris Tiri, David Hwang, Alireza Hodjat, Bo-Cheng Lai, Shenglin Yang, Patrick Schaumont and Ingrid Verbauwhede employs logic cells with a single switching event and a place and route approach that balances the interconnect capacitances.
The team has developed an integrated circuit that has both an insecure version of the AES and a secure version that employs their techniques. Thus far, they have demonstrated that the secure
version thwarts a power attack; the secret key cannot be found. The team has three patents pending for the techniques.
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