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A Force Field for No-Fly Zones
Imagine if on September 11, 2001, New York City was surrounded by a force field that prevented the planes from hitting the World Trade Center. This kind of virtual bubble around "forbidden zones" of airspace is the aim of the Soft Walls project.
Bricks, Mortar, and... Burlap?
An ingeniously simple and inexpensive building-reinforcement system developed
at Berkeley could dramatically reduce the death toll in major earthquakes
like those that recently rocked Turkey and India. The magic lies
in cheap and easily-obtainable materials used to reinforce the walls
of low-cost buildings.
Sharing A Vision
Nobody
wants to wait in line. This is especially true on the World Wide
Web, where myriad distractions are just a mouse-click away. Berkeley
researchers are tackling this problem with regard to telerobotic
webcams, Internet-connected video cameras that users currently
queue up to control. ShareCam, the researchers' collaboratively-operated
robotic webcam system, eliminates the wait.
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Solving the Hard Problems of Hard Disks
Moore's Law has been outpaced by the explosion in data storage.
The price/performance curve of hard drives is now steeper than that
of microprocessors. To help the industry continue on the fast track,
a Berkeley mechanical engineer is building microscopic actuators
and sensors that pack bits just nanometers apart.
1962: Opening of the UC Berkeley Microfabrication Laboratory, the
first university facility of its kind
 On
the go?
Introducing Lab Notes commuter version:
print the whole issue with one click.
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Lab Notes is published online by the Public Affairs Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking
research underway today at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.
Editor, Director of Public Affairs: Teresa Moore
Writer, Researcher: David Pescovitz
Designer: Robyn Altman
Subscribe or send comments to the Engineering Public Affairs Office: lab-notes@coe.berkeley.edu.
© 2003 UC Regents.
Updated 5/30/03.
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