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A joint post doctoral position (12 months) is available at the Commissariat de l’Energie Atomique (IRAMIS laboratory, CEA, Saclay, France – Dr. Dimitris Sakellariou) and Laboratoire de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Paris (LCMCP – University P. et M. Curie, Paris, France – Pr. Christian Bonhomme).

START: september-october 2009

The title of the project is “NanoMACS” and deals with the study of nanomaterials [1] by the newly invented technique: “Magic Angle Coil Spinning” [2]. This project is funded by the CNano Ile de France consortium (see: http://www.cnanoidf.org/) and is a great challenge in terms of instrumentation / sensitivity in solid state NMR.

MACS is a straightforward approach to increase the NMR sensitivity and opens new opportunities for the study of small amount of samples (thin oxide films with nanometric thickness, small biosamples …). MACS will be developed at very high field (700 MHz), very fast MAS rotation (24 kHz), and for a large range of frequencies (1H, 31P, 27Al …). Double resonance experiments and homonuclear decoupling will be extended to MACS. Small samples containing expensive isotopes such as 43Ca, 29Si, 17O… will be studied by MACS.

All materials (including films) will be synthesized at the LCMCP (Paris), as well as the 700 MHz experiments. The instrumentation and experiments at 300 and 500 MHz will be performed at IRAMIS (Saclay).

[1] C. Bonhomme, C. Coelho, N. Baccile, C. Gervais, T. Azaïs, F. Babonneau, Accounts Chem. Res., 40 (2007) 738.

[2] D. Sakellariou, G. Le Goff, J. F. Jacquinot, Nature, 447 (2007) 694.

Contacts: dimitrios.sakellariou@cea.fr
christian.bonhomme@upmc.fr

<img style="  downhole, because they don't know it's there or don't know exactly where it is," said Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science

Other drilling techniques would then be used to recover the oil.

BP (british petroleum) says advancements in technology — including gas injection — will likely allow it to recover 60 percent of the oil at its massive Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska. The original estimate three decades ago was 40 percent.

The nanoreporters would provide more details on where to drill and where it is worthwhile to drill.

FURTHER READING

Enhanced oil recovery could help get an increase of 17 million barrels of oil per day in North America

Computer generated reservoir models can be an important part of accessing 218 billion barrels in old wells in america.

BlackLight Power (BLP) Inc. signed its sixth commercial license agreement and first with Akridge Energy, LLC.

Akridge Energy may use the technology to produce electric power up to a maximum continuous capacity of 400 megawatts (MW). To date, BLP has licensed the rights to produce approximately 8,000 megawatts of electrical power to five utilities, two of which are publicly traded companies, and one independent power producer.

There has been no further independent confirmation of energy generation or the release of a Blacklight Power generator for public testing.

Blacklight Power claims that they are developing an extraordinary new form of energy generation. They also claim extraordinary and controversial science.
Previous Deal and Information
BlackLight Power (BLP) Inc. today announced its first commercial license agreement with Estacado Energy Services, Inc. in New Mexico, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Roosevelt County Electric Cooperative, (Estacado). In a non-exclusive agreement, BLP has licensed Estacado to use the BlackLight Process and certain BLP energy technology for the production of thermal or electric power. Estacado may produce gross thermal power up to a maximum continuous capacity of 250 MW or convert this thermal power to corresponding electricity.

Background
- Blacklight Power has provided information and assistance to a blogger/chemistry professor looking to validate their process

- Venture Beat investigates Blacklight Power

- Rowan University study provides external confirmation of a substantial amount of extra heat from Blacklight Power materials.

- Blacklight Power Claims

The latest expected unit costs for the Blacklight power system compared to current energy technology:

Estacado is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Roosevelt County Electric Cooperative, (RCEC) in New Mexico. With over 2,757 miles of energized lines in east central New Mexico, RCEC serves Dora, Elida, Floyd, Arch, Rogers, Milnesand, Causey and Portales.

FURTHER READING
Details of Blacklight Powers patent dispute in the UK.

In upholding both of the examiner’s objections, the Hearing Officer identified the question which he had to address to be whether the underlying theory of GUTCQM was true. In doing so, he identified three criteria which he had to consider in determining whether a scientific theory was true, namely whether:

the explanation of the theory is consistent with existing generally accepted theories. If it is not, it should provide a better explanation of physical phenomena then current theories and should be consistent with any accepted theories that it does not displace;

-the theory makes testable predictions, and the experimental evidence shows rival theories to be false and matches the predictions of the new theory, and whether
-the theory is accepted as a valid explanation of physical phenomena by the community of scientists who work in the relevant discipline.

Critically, the hearing officer went on to determine that he must satisfy himself that it was more probable than not that the theory was true. On this basis, the Hearing Officer found that he was not satisfied that the theory was true and therefore the claims in the applications which relied upon the theory were not patentable.

The appeal focused on whether the Hearing Officer had been right in considering the appropriate test to be whether the theory was true on the balance of probabilities. Blacklight contended that the test that should be applied is whether the theory is clearly contrary to well established physical laws. In considering this, the examiner should assess whether the applicant has a reasonable prospect of showing that his theory is a valid one should the patent be litigated in court. In making these arguments, Blacklight accepted that on the material before the Hearing Officer the theory was probably incorrect.

Examiner has an article on Blacklight Power

Very interesting, isn’t it? And I am not surprised! TSMC deserves to move up the top 20 semiconductor companies rankings!! It seems that AMD especially needs to really get its act together.

First, to the rankings. Recently, IC Insights released the list of the top 20 semiconductor sales leaders during Q2-09.Source: IC Insights.

In this list, there are four fabless semiconductor companies — Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek and Nvidia in the top 20, and one foundry — TSMC, perhaps, emphasizing the growing influence of TSMC as well as the fabless semiconductor companies.

AMD slips! Again?
I had written a couple of posts some time back on AMD and Intel, where the former had commented on the EC ruling on Intel, and also how both were at each other’s throats, and had asked the question — how will all of this help the market?

Well, one hopes that AMD will come back very much stronger in the next quarter, despite its uninspiring guidance for 3Q09, saying that it expects its sales to be “up slightly” from 2Q09.

TSMC, Hynix, MediaTek shine
Coming back to the table, the clear movers are TSMC, and no surprises there, as well as Hynix and MediaTek. In fact, with a little better Q3 performance, TSMC could well move up to the third position, overtaking both Texas Instruments and Toshiba.

Look at the last column — the 2Q09/1Q09 percentage change — TSMC has grown by a whopping 93 percent! The closest to TSMC in terms of growth are Hynix at 40 percent and Qualcomm at 36 percent. MediaTek, another impressive mover, grew by 20 percent. Of course, there is Samsung as well, with 29 percent growth.

ST, Micron, Nvidia and NXP have done well too! According to IC Insights, Nvidia replaced Fujitsu in the Q2-09 top 20 rankings. And that brings us to the shakers or those who fared poorly.

Fujitsu, AMD, Freescale slide!
I’ve already touched upon AMD. Fujitsu cited flash memory and automotive device sales to have suffered immensely this quarter. However, it hopes Q3 will be better and said that customer demand was picking up. So, it could well be back in the Top 20 during Q3.

Yet another slip was in store for Freescale. It slipped from 16th position in 2008 to 18th position during Q1-09, and slid further to 20th position in Q2-09. Perhaps, overdependance on automotives has been its undoing.

An interesting statistic from IC Insights — Fujitsu, with -9 percent and Freescale, with -2 percent growth, were the only two top-20 companies from Q1-09 to register a 2Q09/1Q09 sales decline!

Wonderful industry guidance
It is heartening to see 19 of the 20 companies registering positive growth this quarter. It won’t be improper here to commend IC Insights on its wonderful industry guidance!

In an IC Insights study from late December 2008, it was very vocal in advising firms to adopt a quarterly outlook! It also forecast a significant rebound in the IC market beginning in the third quarter of the year!

IC Insights also stood out by pointing out in early July that H2-09 is likely to usher in strong seasonal strength for electronic system sales, a period of IC inventory replenishment, which began in 2Q09, and positive worldwide GDP growth.

IC Insights had marked 4Q08 as the beginning of the downturn/collapse and Q1-09 as the bottom of the cycle. This quarter (Q2) has largely been a replenishment phase for the inventories. Going by that count, Q3 could well see a true seasonal increase in demand. IC Insights also said that during Q4-09, market growth will mirror the health of the worldwide economy and electronic system sales.

There is light, after all, at the end of the tunnel! Wonder why are industry folks still telling each other — we still aren’t having a good time! Maybe, it is time for them to shed their pessimism and from holding back on investments and move on to show steely optimism and indulge in really aggressive buying and selling! After all, work and progress will happen ONLY if you work!!

DUBLIN, IRELAND: Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Research Report on the LED Industry of China and the World from 2009 to 2010″ report to its offering.

In the 1950s, RCA first found the infrared radiation of gallium arsenide in other semiconductor alloys. LED is a luminescence component made of semiconductor materials. The component has two electrode terminals. Voltage is applied between the terminals and electricity is switched on.

After the combination of electricity and hole, the remaining power is released in form of light. Different materials have different wavelengths and thus send out lights of various colors. This is the basic lighting theory of LED.

LED can only be applied in diodes that can send out visible light. The diodes that send out near-infrared radiation are called IRED. The diodes that can send out some ultraviolet radiation are called UVLED, and their emission peak wavelengths are near visible short wave length limits.

But generally, the above-mentioned three semiconductor diodes are collectively called LED. According to their different encapsulations, they can be divided into Lamp LED, Display LED and SMD LED. LAMP and DISPLAY belong to the mature market and their growing space is limited.

According to their different constituents, LED wafers can be divided into binary wafers (GaP, GaAS), ternary wafers (GaAlP, GaAsP), quaternary wafers (InGaAlP) and chloride wafers (GaN). Chloride wafers mainly include blue-ray, pure green-ray and white-ray wafers. They have different materials and manufacturing procedures. That LED can be so highly valued is also because of GaN materials.

The global LED industries are mainly concentrated in Japan, EU and Taiwan. EU is mainly dependent on PHILIPS and OSRAM. Japan has Nichia, Toshiba, Showa Denko, Sharp, Citizen and Toyota Gosei. Only Nichia produces mainly LED. But even Nichia, it has a high rate of phosphor business. America has CREE.

These areas have a very high industrial concentration of LED. The top three manufacturers account for over 80 percent, even 90 percent of the output values. The LED industry is comparatively scattered in Taiwan. But its top three manufacturers also account for nearly 40 percent of the output values.

Manufacturers in the mainland are most scattered and they are mainly concentrated in the Downstream. There are nearly 1,000 manufactures mainly doing the packing of LAMP with the lowest profits. Less than five manufacturers can do large-scale SMD packing and less than 10 manufacturers can produce large-scale outdoor LED displays.

There are less than 10 manufacturers producing in the upper course and most of them produce low-end binary red/green LED. The main packing enterprises are Xiamen Hualian, Foshan Guoxing, Jiangsu Wenrun, Huizhou Huagang, Shenzhen Guangliangzi, Ningbo Hepu, Jiangxi Lianchuang, Tianjin Tianxing, Lanfang Xingu, Shenzhen Ruifeng, Shenzhen Ledman and Zhuhai Leedfull (Hongke)

There are almost 10 scaled LED producers in Chinese mainland, among which there are five listed companies dealing with LED-related business. Only in Saman, Newmargin and Silan LED business accounts for over 10 percent.