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The remote can be programmed to provide IR control of up to 18 A/V components of HP Laptop, the company said, using an intuitive, setup wizard that is displayed on the remote’s 2-inch TFT color LCD screen. The wizard includes built-in programming tips and step-by-step instructions with no software to install on Best india gps, and no PC or Internet connection is required.
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The medical spas los angeles employs URC’s onboard ProPerfectDatabase, up until now available only in the company’s professional-install products. The database contains thousands of pre-programmed control codes for a wide variety of components and brands, including iPod docks, URC said. It also includes a “learn” mode that copies functions and commands from any IR remote. In addition, code database updates via a built-in USB connection are also available from the company. The R50 features an ARM7 microprocessor with 32Mb of flash Web development memory that enable it to record unique favorite channel buttons with color logos and macros of up to 255 steps. Each device controlled can have up to eight pages of its own custom buttons, and each page can have up to six custom buttons, for a total of 48 buttons per device. URC’s SimpleSound feature provides volume control over all of the components in a system, even those without their own built-in volume control. A built-in sleep timer can turn off any and all components. The remote was ergonomically designed with button clusters engineered for comfort and usability, the company said. All buttons and the screen feature LED backlighting for use in dark rooms. It runs on four AA batteries, included, and has a number of power-saving features including a “Low Battery Warning; Sofa Mode,” which prevents accidental laptop batteries drain if a button is pressed for a prolonged period of time. “The URC Digital R50 delivers everything consumers desire in a do-it-yourself universal remote,” said Debra Sharker, party dresses for women consumer products sales director. “Its power lies in its simplicity. It’s a stylish, sophisticated device with excellent ergonomics and a beautiful, colorful interface at an affordable price. Even better, it doesn’t require a PC or an internet connection for setup.” The URC Digital R50 has a suggested retail of $149 and is available now. Balance Board Games Indian Call Center – Bluecallcentre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. N600, seo services manchester

Previously, each URC professional remote had its own programming language and editor, which, the company said, led many installers to get comfortable with a specific remote or two and use those remotes in every installation. URC believes the new CCP Live update, which allows all URC remotes and RF base stations to use the same programming language, will lead installers to take better advantage of the versatility and breadth of URC’s full line of controllers.

URC said CCP Live acts as a paradigm of a house, allowing the programmer to progress room-by-room, programming the entire house full of different remotes and base stations in one file. Drivers for all supported URC remotes are included, and CCP Live sorts URC products naturally, by the room in which each resides.

CCP Live provides installers new enhancements like undo/redo, mirror and copy features for making code portable across various remotes. It adds an LCD button editor, gallery views for drag-and-drop additions of devices and favorite channel logos, and the addition of all programming manuals to the help menu.

A company spokesman, ex chairman of comfortable cotton bras for a cups firm said the drag-and-drop two-way programming usually requires no more than a minute of setup.

CCP Live is backward-compatible with existing URC remotes. Any program that was created for a CCP-compatible remote using the older system can be opened in CCP with a single mouse click, the spokesman said.

Some of the added functionality to CCP Live includes: Web browsing for the MX-6000 two-way color touch screen; new two-way modules for the MX-5000 and the MX-6000 that support IP-controlled A/V receivers from Denon, Integra, Onkyo, B&K and Yamaha; and XM and Sirius modules that display all song, artist and title metadata.

The IR database has been updated to include new Marantz and Onkyo receivers. More than 300 new models have been added to CCP’s RS-232 serial database in customized bags which are really nice ones in Custom Software Development .

12:30 PM New York – The J. M. Smucker Company led gainers in the S&P 500 index with a rise of 4.6%. Dell plunged nearly 9% after it missed quarterly revenues and earnings estimates. The Dress Barn, Inc quarterly net rises. The Gap, Inc third quarter net up 25%. Intuit Inc quarterly loss increases. D.R. Horton, Inc fourth quarter loss narrows.

Of the stocks in S&P 500 index, 189 increased, 305 declined and 6 were unchanged.

Dell Inc led the decliners in the S&P 500 index with a loss of 8.5% followed by losses in D.R. Horton, Inc of 6.2%, in Pulte Homes, Inc of 2.9%, in Principal Financial Group, Inc of 2.5% and in Dominion Resources, Inc of 2.5%.

The J. M. Smucker white dresses for women Company led gainers in the S&P 500 index with a rise of 4.6% followed by gains in E*TRADE Financial Corporation 3.6%, in Novell, Inc of 2.2% and in J. C. Penney Company, Inc of 2.2%.

Other Movers

ADC Telecommunications, Inc (ADCT) plunged 13.4% or 89 cents to $5.75 after the maker of equipment for telephone companies said first quarter fiscal 2010 net sales for corrupt pst are expected to be within the range of $250-275 million.

Aflac Incorporated (AFL) advanced 2.0% or 89 cents to $44.73 after the seller of supplemental health insurance was upgraded to “overweight” from “equal weight” at Morgan Stanley.

America’s Car-Mart, Inc (CRMT) added 3.7% or 86 cents to $24.00 an automotive retailer reported second quarter revenues rose 14.7% to $82.6 million from $72.0 million a year ago. Net income in the quarter rose 61.5% to $6.3 million or 53 cents per diluted share compared to net income of $3.9 million or 33 cents per share a year ago.

AnnTaylor Stores Corporation (ANN) rose 1.3% or 19 cents to $14.00 after the specialty retailer of women’s apparel reported third quarter sales fell 12.3% to $462.4 million from $527.2 million a year ago. Net income in the quarter was $2.1 million or 3 cents per diluted share compared to net loss of $13.4 million or 24 cents per share a year ago.

Aruba Networks, Inc (ARUN) declined 5.7% or 55 cents to $9.03 after the builder of wireless networks said first quarter revenues increased 10% to $57.6 million from $52.4 million a year ago.

The Dress Barn, Inc (DBRN) added 5.9% or $1.23 to $21.75 after the women’’s clothing retailer said first quarter sales rose 7.4% to $404.1 million from $376.4 million a year ago. Net income in the quarter rose 10% to $21.7 million or 33 cents per diluted share compared to net income of $19.7 million or 30 cents per share a year ago.

Dell Inc (DELL) plunged 8.9% or $1.43 to $14.44 after the maker of personal computers reported weaker than expected quarter sales and higher than estimated fall in earnings.

Dillard’’s, Inc (DDS) rose 7.4% or $1.06 to $15.34 after the department-store chain was upgraded to “buy” from “hold” at Deutsche Bank AG.

D.R. Horton, Inc (DHI) decreased 6.6% or 81 cents to $11.50 after the homebuilder reported fourth quarter revenues fell 42.3% to $1.01 billion from $1.75 billion a year ago. Net loss in the quarter was $231.9 million or 73 cents per diluted share compared to net loss of $799.9 million or $2.53 per share a year ago.

Foot Locker, Inc (FL) decreased 4.6% or 49 cents to $10.10 after the athletic shoes seller said third quarter sales fell 7.6% to $1.21 billion from $1.31 billion a year ago. Net loss in the quarter was $6 million or 4 cents per diluted share compared to net income of $24 million or 16 cents per share a year ago.

The Gap, Inc (GAP) dropped 1.1% or 26 cents to $21.60 after the apparel retailer said third quarter sales rose 0.8% to $3.59 billion from $3.56 billion a year ago. Net income in the quarter rose 25% to $307 million or 44 cents per diluted share compared to net income of $246 million or 35 cents per share a year ago.

Hibbett Sports, Inc (HIBB) surged 10.6% or $2.02 to $20.99 after the sporting goods retailer said third quarter sales rose 4% to $145.9 million from $140.1 million a year ago. Net income in the quarter rose 14.3% to $8.8 million or 30 cents per diluted share compared to net income of $7.7 million or 26 cents per share a year ago.

Intuit Inc (INTU) slipped 2.4% or 75 cents to $29.52 after the software maker said fiscal first quarter revenues rose 2.5% to $493 million from $481 million a year ago. Net loss in the quarter was $68 million or 21 cents per diluted share compared to net loss of $52 million or 16 cents per share a year ago.

The J. M. Smucker Company (SJM) increased 4.7% or $2.52 to $56.00 after the food company reported second quarter sales rose 52% to $1.28 billion from $843.1 million a year ago. Net income in the quarter rose 172% to $140.0 million or $1.18 per diluted share compared to net income of $51.5 million or 94 cents per share a year ago.

Kirkland’s, Inc (KIRK) rose 3.5% or 47 cents to $13.75 after the specialty retailer of home decor reported third quarter sales rose 7.6% to $92.4 million from $85.9 million a year ago. Net income in the quarter was $5.6 million or 27 cents per diluted share compared to net loss of $1.5 million or 7 cents per share a year ago.

Taleo Corporation (TLEO) the developer of human resources software fell 2.4% or 51 cents to $20.51.

S&P 500 futures fell 8.2 points to 1,086.10 and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 11 points to 1,759.20. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 71 points.

An analyst’s downgrade of semiconductor sectors of party dresses for women contributed to a broad retreat in U.S. equities on Thursday, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 93 points, the S&P 500 dropped 14 points and the Nasdaq Composite tumbled 36 points.

Yields on some Treasury bills maturing early next year fell slightly below zero, a sign of strong demand for safe securities.

Government bond yields in negative territory last happened in December, and before that, in 1929.

On Friday, the yield on two-year Treasury bonds fell 3 basis points to 0.68 percentage points and the yield on the 10-year fell 1 basis point to 3.33%. Yields move in the opposite direction to prices.

“It’s incredible that we have such low front-end yields at this stage of a recovery. It shows how fragile we are without the extraordinary intervention fiscally and monetary,” said Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank.

“We are being collectively forced into risk. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t do it but it’s more of a lesser of two evils rather than an outright positive choice.”

Gold futures fell close to $5 an ounce, and oil futures fell back below $77 a barrel.

The U.S. dollar index rose 0.5% to 75.71.

Though the earnings calendar wasn’t particularly crowded, results were on the negative side.

Dell (DELL) shares dropped 6% in pre-market trade after it said late Thursday that its profit dropped 54%, with the company hurt by light corporate spending on computers.

“We think investors had been preparing for a minor beat owing to recent strength in the PC market. We think Dell is missing out given its high enterprise exposure, while Apple and HP take incremental market share in PCs,” said analysts at J.P. Morgan.

Builder D.R. Horton (DHI) slipped over 2% after reporting a worse-than-forecast $231.9 million quarterly loss. Chairman Donald Horton said market conditions are still challenging.

The Gap (GPS) reported a 25% profit rise after controlling inventory to reduce discounts and improved demand at its Old Navy division.

Overseas, the Nikkei 225 closed 0.5% weaker in Tokyo, and the pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 fell 1%.

-By Steve Goldstein;44 2078 429 424; AskNewswires@dowjones.com

Among the companies whose shares are expected to actively trade in Friday’s session are Dell Inc. (DELL), ADC Telecommunications Inc. (ADCT) and Verigy Ltd. (VRGY).

Dell’s fiscal third-quarter profit fell 54% as the downturn led to a double-digit drop in revenue, but the computer giant said it is seeing improving demand. Shares fell 8% to $14.60 premarket as the results fell short of expectations.

ADC Telecommunications’ fiscal fourth-quarter loss–its fifth loss in a row–narrowed slightly. Even as the results topped expectations, shares sank 15% to $5.65 premarket as the telecom-equipment maker gave a weak first-quarter view.

Verigy’s fiscal fourth-quarter loss narrowed more than expected, as a drop in operating expenses and smaller charges more than offset lower revenue. Shares jumped 10% to $9.90 in premarket trading as the semiconductor-testing company also projected a narrower loss for the current quarter than current consensus estimates.

J.M. Smucker Co. (SJM), maker of jams, jellies and Jif peanut butter, reported fiscal second-quarter earnings that soared amid the addition of the Folgers coffee brand, while lower commodities prices boosted margins at its other businesses. Shares fell 5% premarket to $56.17.

Teen retailers Zumiez Inc. (ZUMZ) and Wet Seal (WTSLA) reported lower fiscal third-quarter earnings as the sector continues to be hurt by falling sales. But results topped expectations for Zumiez, while both it and Wet Seal gave a weaker-than-anticipated forecast for the current quarter. Wet Seal also warned sales have slumped so far this month. Zumiez shares fell 1.5% to $10.95 premarket while Wet Seal’s were recently flat premarket.

D.R. Horton Inc.’s (DHI) fiscal fourth-quarter loss narrowed sharply amid huge year-earlier write-downs as results were weaker than expected. But while orders at the No. 2 home builder in the U.S. jumped 26% on a unit basis, Chairman Donald R. Horton said that “market conditions in the homebuilding industry are still challenging” amid still-rising foreclosures and unemployment, high inventory levels and weak consumer confidence. Shares fell 7% to $11.40 premarket.

Kirkland’s Inc. (KIRK) swung to a fiscal third-quarter profit as the retailer saw increased sales and said it has “greater confidence” in its fourth-quarter performance, raising its full-year revenue forecast. The company now expects slight growth in sales, with pretax earnings “significantly above” last year. The company had projected no better than flat sales. Shares rose 2% premarket to $13.55.

Dress Barn Inc.’s (DBRN) fiscal first-quarter profit rose 9.9% and the women’s clothing chain raised its fiscal-year earnings target by 10 cents. Shares climbed 5.2% premarket to $21.59 as the results topped analysts’ expectations.

Aruba Networks Inc.’s (ARUN) fiscal first-quarter loss widened on a litigation charge, but sales and margins grew and the telecommunications-equipment maker’s results topped Wall Street’s expectations. Still, shares fell 9.1% to $8.71 premarket.

Watch List:

Alcoa Inc. (AA) said it will temporarily stop production at two aluminum smelters in Italy–cutting about 2,000 direct and indirect jobs–because of concerns about getting future power for the smelters at competitive rates after a European Commission decision.

Dole Food Co.’s (DOLE) third-quarter loss widened in its first quarterly report since going public.

Gap Inc.’s (GPS) fiscal third-quarter profit climbed 25% on strong sales at its long-struggling Old Navy chain, which posted an increase after five straight years of declines. The company also announced a $500 million stock buyback effort.

Hibbett Sports Inc.’s (HIBB) third-quarter earnings easily topped Wall Street expectations as revenue also came in above estimates. The company boosted its fiscal year guidance.

Intuit Inc.’s (INTU) fiscal first-quarter loss widened as higher costs, and expenses more than offset slightly higher revenue. The tax- and accounting-software company also projected earnings for the current quarter below Wall Street estimates.

SkillSoft PLC’s (SKIL) fiscal third-quarter profit jumped 63% on higher margins as results for the provider of Internet-based corporate training widely beat its expectations.

-By Dow Jones Newswires;

Paolo Lacovig, Monica Pozzo, Dario Alfè, Paolo Vilmercati, Alessandro Baraldi, and Silvano Lizzit at institutions in Italy, the UK and USA report their discovery in a paper appearing October 12 in the journal Physical Review Letters known as Best Investment.

The researchers’ spectroscopic study suggests that graphene grows in the form of tiny islands built of concentric rings of carbon atoms. The islands are strongly bonded to the iridium surface at their perimeters, but are not bonded to the iridium at their centers, which causes them to bulge upward in the middle to form minuscule geodesic domes. By adjusting the conditions as the carbon is deposited on the iridium, the researchers could vary the size of the carbon domes from a few nanometers to hundreds of nanometers across.

Investigating the formation of graphene nanodomes helps physicists to understand and control the production of graphene sheets. In combination with methods for adjusting the conductivity of graphene and related materials, physicists hope to replace electronics made of silicon and metal with tiny, efficient carbon-based chips.

Jorge Sofo and Renee Diehl (Penn State University) highlight the graphene nanodome research in a Viewpoint in the October 12 issue of Physics.

The robot—or, rather, the mobile robotic platform, or rover—is called CYCLOPS. It is the first such device to emulate what the blind can see with an implant, says Wolfgang Fink, a visiting associate in physics at Caltech and the Edward and Maria Keonjian Distinguished Professor in Microelectronics at the University of Arizona. Its development and potential uses are described in a paper recently published online in the journal Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine.

An artificial retina, also known as a retinal prosthesis, may use either an internal or external miniature camera to capture images. The captured images then are processed and passed along to the implanted silicon chip’s electrode array. (Ongoing work at Caltech’s Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory by Fink and Caltech visiting scientist Mark Tarbell has focused on the creation and refinement of these image-processing algorithms.) The chip directly stimulates the eye’s functional retinal ganglion cells, which carry the image information to the vision centers in the brain.

CYCLOPS fills a void in the process of testing visual prostheses, explains Fink. “How do you approximate what the blind can see with the implant so you can figure out how to make it better?” he asks.

One way is to test potential enhancements on a blind person who has been given an artificial retina. And, indeed, the retinal implant research team does this often, and extensively. But few people worldwide have been implanted with retinal prostheses, and there is only so much testing they can be asked to endure.

Another way is to give sighted people devices that downgrade their vision to what might be expected using artificial vision prostheses. And this, too, is often done. But it’s a less-than-ideal solution since the brain of a sighted person is adept at taking poor-quality images and processing them in various ways, adding detail as needed. This processing is what allows most people to see in dim light, for example, or through smoke or fog.

“A sighted person’s objectivity is impaired,” Fink says. “They may not be able to get to the level of what a blind person truly experiences.”

Enter one more possible solution: CYCLOPS. “We can use CYCLOPS in lieu of a blind person,” Fink explains. “We can equip it with a camera just like what a blind person would have with a retinal prosthesis, and that puts us in the unique position of being able to dictate what the robot receives as visual input.”

Now, if scientists want to see how much better the resolution is when a retinal prosthesis has an array of 50 pixels as opposed to 16 pixels, they can try both out on CYCLOPS. They might do this by asking the robot to follow a black line down a white-tiled hallway, or seeing if it can find—and enter—a darkened doorway.

“We’re not quite at that stage yet,” Fink cautions, referring to such independent maneuvering.

CYCLOPS’s camera is gimballed, which means it can emulate left-to-right and up-and-down head movements. The input from the camera runs through the onboard computing platform, which does real-time image processing. For now, however, the platform itself is moved around remotely, via a joystick. “The platform can be operated from anywhere in the world, through its wireless Internet connection,” says Tarbell.

“We have the image-processing algorithms running locally on the robot’s platform—but we have to get it to the point where it has complete control of its own responses,” Fink says.

Once that’s done, he adds, “we can run many, many tests without bothering the blind prosthesis carriers.”

Among the things they hope to learn from such testing is how to enhance a workplace or living environment to make it more accessible to a blind person with a particular vision implant. If CYCLOPS can use computer-enhanced images from a 50-pixel array to make its way safely through a room with a chair in one corner, a sofa along the wall, and a coffee table in the middle, then there is a good chance that a blind person with a 50-pixel retinal prosthesis would be able to do the same.

The results of tests on the CYCLOPS robot should also help researchers determine whether a particular version of a prosthesis, say, or its onboard image-processing software, are even worth testing in blind persons. “We’ll be coming in with a much more educated initial starting point, after which we’ll be able to see how blind people work with these implants,” Fink notes.

And the implants need to work well. After all, Fink points out, “Blind people using a cane or a canine unit can move around impressively well. For an implant to be useful, it has to have the implicit promise that it will surpass these tools. The ultimate promise—the hope—is that we instill in them such useful vision that they can attain independent mobility, can recognize people, and can go about their daily lives.”

The work done in the paper by Fink and Tarbell, “CYCLOPS: A mobile robotic platform for testing and validating image processing and autonomous navigation algorithms in support of artificial vision prostheses,” was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Fink and Tarbell have filed a provisional patent on the technology on behalf of Caltech.

The problem of : the manufacturing techniques required to make quantum devices have been equally exotic. That is, until now.

Researchers at Ohio State University have discovered a way to make quantum devices using technology common to the chip-making industry today.

This work might one day enable faster, low-power computer chips. It could also lead to high-resolution cameras for security and public safety, and cameras that provide clear vision through bad weather.

Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering and professor of physics at Ohio State University, and his colleagues report their findings in an upcoming issue of IEEE Electron Device Letters.

The team fabricated a device called a tunneling diode using the most common chip-making technique, called chemical vapor deposition.

“We wanted to do this using only the tools found in the typical chip-makers toolbox,” Berger said. “Here we have a technique that manufacturers could potentially use to fabricate quantum devices directly on a silicon chip, side-by-side with their regular circuits and switches.”

The quantum device in question is a resonant interband tunneling diode (RITD) — a device that enables large amounts of current to be regulated through a circuit, but at very low voltages. That means that such devices run on very little power.

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RITDs have been difficult to manufacture because they contain dopants — chemical elements — that don’t easily fit within a silicon crystal.

Atoms of the RITD dopants antimony or phosphorus, for example, are large compared to atoms of silicon. Because they don’t fit into the natural openings inside a silicon crystal, the dopants tend to collect on the surface of a chip.

“It’s like when you’re playing Tetris and you have a big block raining down, and only a small square to fit it in. The block has to sit on top,” Berger said. “When you’re building up layers of silicon, these dopants don’t readily fit in. Eventually, they clump together on top of the chip.”

In the past, researchers have tried adding the dopants while growing the silicon wafer one crystal layer at a time — using a slow and expensive process called molecular beam epitaxy, a method which is challenging for high-volume manufacturing. That process also creates too many defects within the silicon.

Berger discovered that RITD dopants could be added during chemical vapor deposition, in which a gas carries the chemical elements to the surface of a wafer many layers at a time. The key was determining the right reactor conditions to deliver the dopants to the silicon, he found.

“One key is hydrogen,” he said. “It binds to the silicon surface and keeps the dopants from clumping. So you don’t have to grow chips at 320 degrees Celsius [approximately 600 degrees Fahrenheit] like you do when using molecular beam epitaxy. You can actually grow them at a higher temperature like 600 degrees Celsius [more than 1100 degrees Fahrenheit] at a lower cost, and with fewer crystal defects.”

Tunneling diodes are so named because they exploit a quantum mechanical effect known as tunneling, which lets electrons pass through thin barriers unhindered.

In theory, interband tunneling diodes could form very dense, very efficient micro-circuits in computer chips. A large amount of data could be stored in a small area on a chip with very little energy required.

Researchers judge the usefulness of tunneling diodes by the abrupt change in the current densities they carry, a characteristic known as “peak-to-valley ratio.” Different ratios are appropriate for different kinds of devices. Logic circuits such as those on a computer chip are best suited by a ratio of about 2.

The RITDs that Berger’s team fabricated had a ratio of 1.85.

“We’re close, and I’m sure we can do better,” he said.

He envisions his RITDs being used for ultra-low-power computer chips operating with small voltages and producing less wasted heat.

“Chip makers today are having a great difficulty boosting performance in each generation, so they pack chips with more and more circuitry, and end up generating a lot of heat,” Berger said. “That’s why a laptop computer is often too hot to actually sit atop your lap. Soon, their heat output will rival that of a nuclear reactor per unit volume.”

“That’s why moving to quantum devices will be a game-changer.”

RITDs could form high-resolution detectors for imaging devices called focal plane arrays. These arrays operate at wavelengths beyond the human eye and can permit detection of concealed weapons and improvised explosive devices. They can also provide vision through rain, snow, fog, and even mild dust storms, for improved airplane and automobile safety, Berger said. Medical imaging of cancerous tumors is another potential application.

His coauthors on the paper included Si-Young Park, and R. Anisha, both doctoral students in electrical engineering at Ohio State; and Roger Loo, Ngoc Duy Nguyen, Shotaro Takeuchi, and Matty Caymax, all of IMEC, an industrial research center in Belgium.

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation.

Managed by the University of Tennessee (UT) for lazer hair removal los angeles the National Science Foundation (NSF), the system came online Oct. 5 with a peak performance of 1.03 petaflops. It features more than 16,000 six-core 2.6-GHz AMD Istanbul processors with nearly 100,000 compute cores.

In addition, an upgrade to 129 terabytes of memory (the equivalent of more than 13 thousand movies on DVD) effectively doubles the size of Kraken for researchers running some of the world’s most sophisticated 3-D scientific computing applications. Simulation has become a key tool for researchers in a number of fields, from climate change to materials.

“At over a petaflop of peak computing power, and the ability to routinely run full machine jobs, Kraken will dominate large-scale NSF computing in the near future,” said NICS Project Director Phil Andrews. “Its unprecedented computational capability and total available memory will allow academic users to treat problems that were previously inaccessible.”

For example, understanding the mechanism behind the explosion of core-collapse supernovas will reveal much about our universe (these cataclysmic events are responsible for more than half the elements in the universe). Essentially three phenomena are being simulated to explore these explosions: hydrodynamics, nuclear burning or fusion, and neutrino transport, said UT astrophysicist Bronson Messer.

At the terascale, or trillions of calculations per second, Messer and his team were forced to simulate the star in 1-D as a perfect sphere and with unrealistic fusion physics. “Now, however, we are getting closer to physical reality,” said Messer. “With petascale capability, we can simulate all three phenomena simultaneously with significant realism. This brings us closer to understanding the explosion mechanism and being able to make meaningful predictions.”

From the physical makeup of the universe to the causes of global warming to the roles of proteins in disease, Kraken’s increased computing muscle will reach far and wide.

As the main computational resource for NICS, the new system is linked to the NSF-supported TeraGrid, a network of supercomputers across the country that is the world’s largest computational platform for open scientific research.

The system and the resulting NICS organization are the result of an NSF Track 2 award of $65 million to the University of Tennessee and its partners to provide for next-generation high-performance computing (HPC). The award was won in an open competition among HPC institutions vying to guarantee America’s continued competitiveness through the next generation of supercomputers (systems greater than 10 teraflops and into the petascale).

“While reaching the petascale is a remarkable achievement in itself, the real strides will be made in the new science that petascale computing will enable,” said Thomas Zacharia, NICS principal investigator, professor in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Tennessee and deputy director for science and technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “Kraken is a game changer for research.”

Half of the $1.4 million prize went to Charles K. Kao for insights in the mid-1960s about how to get light to travel long distances through glass strands, leading to a revolution in fiber optic cables and custom bags. The other half of the prize was shared by two researchers at Bell Labs, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, for inventing the semiconductor sensor known as a charge-coupled device, or CCD. CCDs now fill digital cameras by the millions.

In recent years, the physics prize has veered between perplexing, esoteric discoveries and more comprehensible technology developments. Last year, the academy honored “broken symmetry,” a crucial but esoteric concept in the description of elementary particles. This year’s prize was more akin to the awards in 2007, which honored a discovery that led to smaller, higher-capacity hard disks in laptops in customized bags and MP3 devices, and 2000, which honored developments in integrated circuits that underpin modern electronics.

In announcing the winners Tuesday morning, Gunnar Oquist, the academy’s secretary general, said the scientific work honored by this year’s prize “has built the foundation to our modern information society.”

All three of the winning scientists hold American citizenship. Dr. Kao, 75, was born in Shanghai and is also a British citizen, and Dr. Boyle, 85, is also a Canadian citizen.

Dr. Smith, 79, said he was planning to celebrate later in the day. “I’m hoping for an early cocktail hour today,” he said. “Once the photographers and phone calls and reporters thin out.”

Dr. Boyle, contacted by telephone to address a news conference held by the Nobel committee in Stockholm, sounded stunned. “I have not had my morning cup of coffee yet, so I am feeling a little bit not quite with it all,” he said.

The awards ceremony will be held in Stockholm on Dec. 10.

Fiber optic cables and lasers capable of sending pulses of light down them already existed when Dr. Kao started working on fiber optics. But at that time, the light pulses could travel only about 20 meters through the glass fibers before 99 percent of the light had dissipated. His goal was to extend the 20 meters to a kilometer. At the time, many researchers thought tiny imperfections, like holes or cracks in the fibers, were scattering the light.

In January 1966, Dr. Kao, then working at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in England, presented his findings. It was not the manufacturing of the fiber that was at fault, but rather that the ingredient for the fiber — the glass — was not pure enough. A purer glass made of fused quartz would be more transparent, allowing the light to pass more easily. In 1970, researchers at Corning Glass Works were able to produce an ultrapure optical fiber more than a half-mile long.

A news release from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where Dr. Kao worked as a professor and later a vice chancellor, quoted Dr. Kao’s reaction: “This is very, very unexpected. Fiber optics has changed the world of information so much in these last 40 years. It certainly is due to the fiber optical networks that the news has traveled so fast.”

According to the academy in its prize announcement, the optical cables in use today, if unraveled, would equal a fiber more than 600 million miles long.

In September 1969, Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith, working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., sketched out an idea on a blackboard in Dr. Boyle’s office. “He had a bigger office than me,” Dr. Smith recalled in a telephone interview. “The two of us frequently got together just to kick ideas around.”

Their idea takes advantage of the photoelectric effect, which was explained by Albert Einstein and won him the Nobel in 1921. When light hits a piece of silicon, it knocks out electrons. The brighter the light, the more electrons are knocked out.

The two were initially brainstorming how to make a new type of electronic memory. “But in my first notebook entry,” Dr. Smith said, “I fully described how we would use it as an imaging device as well.”

In a CCD, the knocked-out electrons are gathered in small wells, where they are counted — essentially one pixel of an image. The data from an array of CCDs can then be reconstructed as an image. The technology was intended for a picture phone but the project was canceled, and Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith moved on to other research topics even as CCDs began to spread around the planet.

“We are the ones, I guess, that started this profusion of little small cameras working all over the world,” Dr. Boyle said. A 10-megapixel camera contains 10 million CCDs.

Besides consumer cameras, CCDs also made possible the cosmic panoramas from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Martian postcards taken by NASA landers.

The director, Regina E. Dugan, who was appointed in July to lead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, made visits last week to the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; the University of California, Nursing Los Angeles; and the California Institute of Technology, LVN jobs orange county. She had previously visited Virginia Tech and Texas A&M.

She replaced Anthony J. Tether, a Bush administration appointee who had pushed the agency toward more classified research and who had embarked on several controversial research projects, including the Total Information Awareness system proposed by the former national security adviser, John M. Poindexter.

Under Dr. Tether, the agency’s relationship with some of the nation’s leading technology universities had become decidedly chilly as basic research financing declined of nursing jobs orange county. In 2005, Darpa officials revealed that financing for university researchers fell to $123 million from $214 million, in a relatively steady budget for computer science research that rose from $546 million in 2001 to $583 million in 2005. The agency has not released data on university financing since that time.

During the Bush administration, Darpa’s guidelines for financing basic research changed markedly, said Peter Harsha, the director of governmental affairs for the Computing Research Association, a Washington organization that represents academic institutions.

The agency shortened the period of research financing and tied it to one year “go, no-go” decisions, undercutting longer-term projects. It enforced classification of research or prepublication review on scientific papers, and it established strict United States citizenship requirements for some financing, Mr. Harsha said.

“It sounds like a lot of that is changing now,” he said. “She is attempting to empower her program managers more than under the previous regime, and that makes it more enticing for members of the academic community to engage with the agency.”

In her conversations with researchers, Dr. Dugan noted the criticism of the shortened time horizon for Darpa financing and acknowledged that increasing classification of research had lessened the impact of the agency’s technology on both civilian and military infrastructure, according to several people who participated in the discussions.

“University-based research is an important component of Darpa’s future activities,” Dr. Dugan said in a statement. “It is our goal to strengthen this partnership, enabling some of the best minds to serve with and in the government in the best interests of the nation and the U.S. Department of Defense.”

Dr. Tether, who is now a fellow at the Council on Competitiveness, a Washington-based policy group, said that he had focused some Darpa basic research spending on a series of artificial intelligence challenges and that overall Darpa spending had increased significantly in the eight years that he ran the agency.

“There were individuals at these universities that had done great work, and they had been funded handsomely,” Dr. Tether said. “Basically what happened is that as we began funding these other ideas, which were different, they kind of expected to continue to be funded. I think that was the problem.”

On her visit to California institutions last week, Dr. Dugan, a mechanical engineer who has done fundamental development work in chemical sensing technologies that can be used to detect explosives, spoke to small groups of faculty members from different departments in both the sciences and engineering.

“She came by Berkeley on Wednesday and had a frank chat about the past and the future, and I’m pretty encouraged,” said David Patterson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “She seems to genuinely value academic input into the defense research enterprise and really wants to re-engage the research community in the Darpa mission.”

One challenge for the new director may be a potential cut in Darpa’s budget in an appropriation bill now before Congress. The Obama administration has been trying to raise the agency’s budget, but some Congressional opponents have proposed a $500 million cut and there is language in a Senate version of the defense appropriations bill that would prohibit the agency from starting new projects.

“I also want to urge Congress to fully fund the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency because since its creation it has been the source of cutting-edge breakthroughs from that early Internet to stealth technology,” said Thomas A. Kalil, the deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.