Summer Can Be Tough on Cars

The dog days of summer can be tough on vehicles as high temperatures can destroy batteries and stress the cooling system and tires. As a precaution, these vehicle components should be checked periodically during summer to help avoid breakdowns and car problems, according to the Car Care Council.

Excessive heat and overcharging shorten the life of a battery. Heat causes battery fluid to evaporate, which then damages the internal structure of the battery. A malfunctioning component in the charging system, usually the voltage regulator, allows too high a charging rate, which will eventually destroy a battery.

To get the most life out of a battery, the council recommends having the electrical system checked to make sure it is charging at the correct rate. If your car’s battery is the type that needs to be topped off, check it often, especially in hot weather and add distilled water if necessary. Keep the top of the battery clean. Dirt can become a conductor, which drains battery power. If corrosion accumulates on battery terminals, it becomes an insulator and inhibits the current flow.

The cooling system also works harder during hot temperatures to prevent overheating of the engine. To keep the cooling system working effectively, the coolant and distilled water mixture for a vehicle’s radiator should be 50:50. As a reminder, never open a hot radiator cap when checking the coolant level in the reservoir. 

As a rule of thumb, the coolant should be changed annually on most vehicles. This will keep the cooling system fresh and clean inside, which helps prevent corrosion and assures that the coolant has the proper boiling point and protection. A pressure test, thermostat test, a cooling fan test and a visual inspection for leaks and corrosion should also be done annually. Hoses and drive belts should be checked for cracks, bulges or frayed edges.

The radiator should be kept clean by periodically using a garden hose and a soft brush to carefully remove bugs, dirt and debris.

Tires also need special care in warmer weather as high temperatures put added stress on them. To maximize tire life and safety, check the tire condition and inflation pressure monthly, and have the tires rotated every 6,000 miles. Summer heat will cause the pressure within a tire to rise, therefore, it’s important to check the pressure when tires are cold. The owner’s manual includes the recommended air pressure for your vehicle’s tires.

“It takes very little time and money to make sure your car runs properly during summer, and although breakdowns happen, they can definitely be minimized by taking a few extra preventive maintenance steps,” said Rich White, executive director, Car Care Council.

The council reminds motorists that the vehicle’s exterior also can be damaged by sunlight, UV radiation, acid rain, salt, dirt and air pollution. To protect the paint and finish, vehicles should be washed weekly and waxed every six months.

What will 'wonder material' graphene give us?

Silicon, that element which we’ve relied on so heavily to help power our computers for years, is on the way out. At least, in terms of its presence in processors it is.

A replacement is needed to keep up with demand for increasing speeds and ever greater computing power.

Introducing graphene – the so called “wonder material,” which is expected to provide the basis for future processors in place of silicon.

A major research project, led by Nobel Prize winning scientists Professor Andre Geim and Professor Kostya Novoselov, has made yet more progress into understanding graphene’s potential, uncovering additional details about its startling electronic properties.

Graphene is essentially a material made from a single layer of carbon atoms, in which electrons travel at incredible speeds. But what will it offer the world and why might we need it?

Daniel Elias, a University of Manchester researcher heavily involved in the graphene study, is a tad excited about the material.

We caught up with the research associate to learn about what graphene offers over silicon and how it could change the technological world.

Essentially graphene is just a silicon replacement, right?

Yes, at least that is what we suspect because silicon is too old and it is now reaching the limit for the manufacturing of the faster transistors. The problem is not the engineering on silicon but the silicon itself.

    I’m so impressed with graphene that I’m not even thinking about other materials.

We need a faster material that operates at room temperature. That material is graphene.

What actually is graphene? Where does it come from?

So graphite is basically layered material and every single atom layer of graphite is what we call graphene.

The first time researchers got a sample of graphene they basically used this Scotch tape technique. They took the tape and peeled a single layer of graphite off, which is basically graphene. That was the beginning.

Of course now people are trying different methods to get graphene to make it industry scale. The tape technique is a very academic way to produce it.

Why should we get excited about graphene?

The electrons in graphene are faster than in anything else. It’s extremely thin, it’s as thin as it’s possible to be for a material and it has extremely good connectivity.

If you take the first paper on graphene in 2006 when they first described it, they found the velocity of electrons in the material was something like 1,000 times faster than silicon.

What we’ve found now is that it's 3,000 times faster, so it can be three times bigger than what we had expected.

IBM is already investing in efforts to make a commercial graphene device, but they didn’t manage to get good enough quality samples.

But, of course, the industry will move really fast. If they want to use good quality graphene, they will find the velocity is three times faster than we thought and therefore extremely profitable for those enterprises.

Are there any alternatives to graphene?

I’m so impressed with graphene that I’m not even thinking about other materials.

Now it’s also possible to combine graphene with a different material called boron nitride. Boron nitride is an insulator and graphene is a conductor - basically a transistor has to be made with an insulator and a conductor, because an insulator will control electrons in a conductor. With the two materials we now have a very thin material for a conductor and a very thin material for an insulator. It’s really, really great.

Another possibility for replacing silicon would be to use light instead of electrons, but for this to work a computer would need to be as big as a room.

Graphene is so far the most reliable material to replace silicon.

Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning and welcome to the Cypress Semiconductor Second Quarter 2011 Earnings Release Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect your lines at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. T.J. Rodgers, President and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor. Sir, you may begin.

T. Rodgers

Good morning. We're here to report second quarter of 2011. I will start out with our CFO, Brad Buss, with the numbers.

Brad Buss

Thanks, T.J. Thanks everybody for attending. Just a couple of quick housekeeping things. As you know, these are preliminary, unaudited results. We obviously encourage you to go through our 10-Q in excruciating detail when it's filed in August. And as usual, everything is forward-looking. There's a ton of risk factors. We encouraged you to look through that, and we don't have a duty to update them.

And I also just want to say today is a historic day at Cypress, in that we actually paid our first dividend. It was $0.09 per common share outstanding, and we just gave $15.3 million to you. So we encourage you to spend it on a lot of Cypress touch products in the U.S. or enjoy a holiday in Greece and help everybody out.

I'll go through Q2 results, and then I'll take a look at the items. So we have really good revenue in Q2. We came in at the top end of the range at $255 million. That was a 9% sequential increase. It was actually 14% sequential -- or 13%, I should say, sequential increase, if you strip out the Image Sensor business that was partially in Q1 that we sold. So obviously, a very strong growth rate for us and probably one of the best that you'll see, I'm sure, in our semiconductor peers.

Our handset revenue grew 32% sequentially, and we also had a really big increase in tablet revenues. We saw increases in our wireless- and consumer-end markets, and we saw a slight decreases as though -- as expected in wireline and our computation-end market. We really don't see any end market being in trouble at all, and -- however, we continue to monitor the macro and inventory positions, and Chris can talk further on that later.

If you look at it by division, our MPD decreased 5% as expected, due to the Image Sensor business sale that I talked about. If you adjusted Image Sensor out of MPD, they actually increased 4% sequentially, slightly better than our normal seasonal expectations. And then, we saw growth in SRAM and in our auto business actually. In DCD, we saw a 4% revenue decrease, really driven by our legacy com business and West Bridge.

CCD had record revenue in Q1. They increased 22% sequentially. Obviously, TrueTouch hit another new revenue record, and they grew a whopping 52% sequentially and over 350% year-on-year. Again, due to handset growth at Tier 1 customers and significantly higher revenues in tablets. Just a side note, CCD is now our largest division by revenue, and they crossed the 50% mark for the first time and ended up at 51%. And just to put in perspective, that's up from 39% in 2010. TrueTouch is also our largest individual product family. It surpassed our synchronous SRAM business unit, and we have a bunch of ton of great design wins, which I'm sure Chris and Norm will talk on further.

If you look at handsets as an end market, which again, in early 2008, we really didn't even participate to any degree, it grew 32% sequentially, almost 200% year-on-year. And handsets are now our largest end market, and that accounted for 29% of our revenue.

So just winding back to TrueTouch real quick. Our guidance for 2011 has to more than double versus 2010. So that yielded an implied revenue range of around $180 million to $200 million. So based on our strong first half results, a very strong design pipeline and obviously, some increased tablet revenues, I was really glad to see that Chris and Norm are ponying up even higher revenue. And we're going to increase the guidance by $50 million and now expect a range of $230 million to $250 million for fiscal 2011.

On a GAAP basis, we had net income of almost $41 million. We had a $17 million tax benefit, and that was -- yielded us $0.21 per share, and that was more than double from the prior year. Our non-GAAP net income was $63 million. That yielded fully diluted EPS of $0.32, and that was at the higher end of our guidance and again, was at the highest level since 2000. This is a EPS growth of 33% year-on-year at a rate that's 2.3x faster than the sales growth. We enjoyed 100% fall-through of the incremental GP dollars, and we also generated lower OpEx, which gave us that big increase. If you strip out the Emerging Tech business and just look at the core business, it yielded $0.36 in EPS, PBT of $70 million in -- on a PBT percent of 29%. So we continue to execute very well in both of our core and our Emerging Tech areas.

The non-GAAP gross margin was 57.2% went down from 58.1%, mostly due to standard product and customer mix. We had some higher depreciation from our assay fab expansion that we talked about and then a couple of odds and ends in inventory and cost. Our core semiconductor gross margin, without Emerging Tech, was 58.2%. Our average utilization in our one fab in Minnesota was 89%, up from the high 70s in Q1, and I would expect to see utilization remain relatively stable in Q3. Wafers from our foundry partners were almost 50%, and again, I'd expect that to increase into 2012. Our average corporate ASPs remained healthy, and they increased slightly to $1.49.

The non-GAAP OpEx was down as I expected, and it actually was a little lower than my guidance. We came in at $83 million, and again, remember Q1 was slightly elevated due to some litigation expense with wrapping up the SRAM. We had a worldwide sales conference for the first time in many moons and the standard seasonally higher payroll taxes. Headcount remained relatively flat, even after we made substantial additions in our PSoC and TrueTouch business groups, and we're extremely focused on OpEx, continuing to look to drive our model. And I think you'll see us out probably the lowest OpEx percent of revenue in over a decade, which we're quite proud of.

Berkeley Lab Researchers Study Dirac Cones in Graphene

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) of U.S. Department of Energy have performed research to study how undoped graphene functions close to the "Dirac point”,which is present only in graphene. David Siegel, the key author of a paper reporting the team's research findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) stated that graphene is not an insulator, semiconductor or a metal but a unique kind of semimetal with interesting electronic properties.

Using the ALS beamline 12.0.1, Siegel and his co-workers inspected a sample of graphene prepared with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to determine how graphene which does not have any charge carriers behaves close to the “Dirac point”. The “Dirac point is a special feature of the band structure of graphene.

Graphene has no energy gap between the vacant conduction band and the electron-filled valence band. These bands are symbolized by Dirac cones whose points come in contact, and intersect linearly at the Dirac point. Graphene exhibits a set of unique properties when the conduction band is vacant and the valence band of graphene is filled.

An ARPES experiment measures a portion in between the cones by plotting directly the angle of electrons and kinetic energy obtained from the graphene sample when the ALS emits an X-ray on the sample to cause excitation. When the emitted electrons come in contact with the detector screen, a spectrum is formed and slowly develops into a cone.

Electrons interact in a unique way in undoped graphene when compared to a metal. The sides of the cone form an inward curvature, showing that electronic interactions can take place even at distances up to 790Å apart and contribute to higher electron velocities. These are extraordinary properties arising due to a common phenomenon known as "renormalization."

So Siegel and his coworkers conducted studies on “quasi-freestanding” graphene, with a silicon carbide substrate. At high temperatures, the silicon is pushed out of the silicon carbide and carbon collects as a thick layer of graphite on the surface. But successive graphene layers present in the thick sample of graphite are rotated in such a way that an each layer acts like an individual isolated layer in the stack. He added that undoped graphene is very much different from a normal Fermi liquid, and their results are in-line with theoretical computations.

Siegel stated that unscreened, long-range interactions take place in graphene, which alters the behavior of graphene in a basic way.

Wall Covering May Prevent Mesothelioma

A British company has developed a way to help protect construction workers and building occupants from the threat of mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos.  Birmingham, England-based Datatecnics has released the world’s first asbestos-sensing film.  When walls containing asbestos are papered with the polymer, an alarm will sound if the film is breached.

In an interview with Electronics Weekly, Datatecnics CEO Mohammed Zulfiquar explains, “Asbestos is in a lot of public buildings. The Government estimates that 70 percent of UK schools contain it and the guidance from the Health and Safety Executive is to manage most of it, not remove it.”

Asbestos has long been linked to mesothelioma, a malignancy affecting the membranous tissue encasing internal organs.  Asbestos was once commonly used as an insulator and building material.  If left intact and undisturbed, the material usually does not usually pose a health threat.  But as it disintegrates over time or is disrupted, such as during a repair or renovation project or even when a nail is put into a wall, fibers can become airborne.  Inhalation of these fibers is the number one trigger for mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is a major threat to construction workers as well as to people such as teachers, who work daily in older buildings that contain asbestos. The new polymer, called an ‘asbestos disturbance automated alert system’ (ADAAS) is made with a fine web of micro sensoring tracks that detect any breaches through connection to a central control panel.  The system sounds a warning for any disturbance that could potentially release asbestos fibers.

Although the World Health Organization estimates that more than 100,000 people worldwide die each year of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases, monitoring and/or removing asbestos from all buildings that contain it is impractical and time consuming. In some cases, removing asbestos can itself release enough airborne fibers to put those involved at risk for mesothelioma.

Datatecnics says the ADAAS wall covering can eliminate the need to carry out manual asbestos inspections and monitoring, saving time and money and potentially preventing cases of mesothelioma. ADAAS can be painted or papered over.  The company is now looking for investors to help it bring the material to market.

Topological Insulators: Getting defects under control

The study of how charge flows through two-dimensional surfaces has been one of the fastest growing areas of research in physics over the past decade. More recently, however, scientists have begun to focus on charge flow through the two-dimensional surfaces of three-dimensional objects called topological insulators. The surfaces of topological insulators exhibit unique electrical and magnetic properties that are not found in the bulk of the object.

A key challenge in topological insulator research is the large density of bulk states, which makes observing surface states difficult. Bismuth-based topological insulators, for example, have a high density of bulk electron donors. Researchers have succeeded in compensating for these donors by adding electron-accepting donor atoms like calcium or tin, but the heavy doping concentrations employed leads to charge scattering and low charge mobility. Qi-Kun Xue and colleagues from Tsinghua University and the Institute of Physics in China and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US have now succeeded in controlling charge densities in bismuth-based topological insulators without the use of any external doping.

The researchers achieved this in thin films of the topological insulator Bi2Te3 by controlling film growth. They began with a standard fabrication approach called molecular beam epitaxy, in which they exposed a substrate to molecular beams containing bismuth and tellurium. By carefully tuning the ratio of the beam flux and the substrate temperature, they were able to control the density of defects in the growing film's crystal structure. Because defects can also act as charge donors and acceptors, this provided fine control over the film's charge density, which could be tuned from n-type (dominated by negative carriers), to insulating and p-type (dominated by positive carriers).

Critically, this control was possible with a defect concentration that was much lower than the concentration of extrinsic dopants (like added calcium atoms) that would be necessary to achieve the same effect. As a result, the work should enable researchers to observe the exotic physics associated with pure surface states in relatively pristine topological insulator materials. "If we can achieve bulk-insulating thin films or heterostructures by control of defects," says Xue, "we may eventually observe the quantum Hall effect and other novel topological phenomena."

MonolithIC 3D Inc. Introduces New Monolithic 3D DRAM Technology

“The DRAM industry faces several difficult challenges today with scaling and, in particular, with lithography,” said Zvi Or-Bach, president and CEO of MonolithIC 3D, in a release. “Companies using our monolithic 3D DRAM technology can reduce their lithography risk and get a much better return-on-investment for their fab equipment.”

The monolithic 3D DRAM technology has been designed using the prevalent “ion-cut to stack high-quality single crystal silicon layers at low thermal budgets” process. Ion-cut has been employed for more than a decade in the production of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers for logic technologies. The technology presents other avenues for exploitation in the form of solar usage, which is being explored by companies such as Silicon Genesis and Twin (News - Alert) Creeks Technologies.

The Monolithic 3D DRAM technology was introduced with an invited presentation at the American Vacuum Society 3D Workshop in San Jose by Dr. Deepak Sekar, chief scientist of MonolithIC 3D Inc. and presenter at the workshop. Dr. Deepak Sekar commented that “We use a 3D stacked architecture and share lithography steps among multiple memory layers. The NAND flash memory industry has been pursuing 3D technology with shared lithography steps with polysilicon transistors for some time now. At MonolithIC 3D Inc., we use single crystal silicon transistors, and that allowed us to apply these concepts to DRAM.”

The company introduced its logic technologies at the recently conducted CMOS Emerging Technologies Workshop at Whistler, Canada and at a 3D workshop held at the International Conference on Technology & Instrumentation in Particle Physics in Chicago.

Couple building first straw-bale home in Linn Co

If the Big Bad Wolf drops by, Don Andrews isn't worried about him huffing and puffing on his new straw house. "No more than a person who builds a stick house," Andrews joked, nodding at the more traditional homes on School Avenue. "'Cause he blew that down, too."

Andrews, director of the nonprofit community service group Sharing Hands, and his partner, Cheryl Haworth, who retires this year from the FACT program at Greater Albany Public Schools, are building Linn County's first straw-bale house — at least as far as they and the county building department know.

The couple broke ground on their new home last fall. By the end of May, the foundation, wood framing and roof, along with part of the plumbing and part of the electrical work, had been completed. The hope is to be finished and moved in by Christmas, Andrews said.

Much of the work and materials is being done locally. The bales of wheat straw — some 325 of them — were purchased from Brownsville farmer Leroy Spurlin. Their plasterer, Geary Frost, lives just down the block.

The work of putting the bales together to make walls, however, was an international effort. About 20 volunteers from all over the United States and Canada converged on the Andrews-Haworth project May 30-June 4 for the work, part of a weeklong class organized through Strawbale.com.

Andrew Morrison of Ashland runs the web-based business and puts on workshops all over the world. Class participants pay to learn how to build the homes and put in a week's worth of work on a construction project. The project owners receive the labor in exchange for providing meals and a place to camp.

Haworth and Andrews joined one of Morrison's classes last fall and did a week's work on a home in Junction City, Calif.

Haworth, however, was sold on the idea of straw bale homes at least two decades before. Living in the heart of the nation's grass seed supply, she said, "I thought, how perfect! We should all be building straw houses."

A rich history

From reed huts to thatched roofs, humans have long used straw in construction. At that time in the mid-valley, however, little was known about its particulars. Haworth began reading, researching and visiting straw-built projects and convinced Andrews to sign on.

They liked what they learned. Morrison's work has indicated straw bale homes have roughly three times the insulation value of commercial framing and cost owners about 75 percent less to heat and cool. The compact bales are extremely resistant to fire, too: Picture trying to light a phone book as compared to a crumpled piece of paper, Morrison said.

A triple coating of lime-based plaster keeps the straw walls from exposure to mold or pests. Best of all, Morrison said, straw bale homes are made with a renewable resource, use less wood overall and make a place for what would otherwise be a waste product.

Haworth said she particularly appreciates the soundproofing qualities of the thick bales, which provide a sense of peace every time she enters.

"They just feel really quiet," she said. "It just has this cozy feel of enveloping you like a down comforter."

Up-front expenses

As for cons, a well-built straw bale home should save its owner money over time, but will likely cost more up front, Morrison said.

Andrews figures the overall cost of the three bedroom, 2,300-square-foot home will be close to $300,000, not including the land, which they already owned. Prices will vary greatly depending on the size and specifications of the structure and the amount of labor involved, not the materials, he said.

The bales take several days to install, compared with a traditional insulator who might be done spraying in an afternoon. For that reason, the couple chose to use bale walls for only the living portion of the home, not the garage; and only the first floor, not the second. Installing bales on multiple floors is possible, but requires a lot more time and labor.

In some areas, finding the necessary know-how among architects, contractors, building and planning departments and insurance agencies can be difficult, Morrison said.

"People say, 'Wait, you want to do what?'" he said. "It's a lack of understanding of what the process is."