Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, a leading space research center, recently conducted feasibility studies into junk-zapping lasers and garbage-collecting rockets.

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And in the current issue of Applied Physics Letters, a group led by Haroun Ahmed at the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory in Britain reports another vital step, a single-electron transistor that, for the first time, amplifies its input signal (though only by a factor of 3.7, several hundred times more weakly than a conventional transistor does).

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The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have partnered together on a successful trial for a brain-computer interface that allows a person to control a robotic arm using only their thoughts.

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Another student, named Yushi Wang, applied the principles of quantum physics to design a faster computer chip.

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"We've opened a whole new class of laser materials, " says Robert Byer, a professor in the applied physics department at Stanford.

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But the two researchers have already used them to make a simple, disposable memory circuit, which they will describe in a forthcoming issue of Applied Physics Letters.

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Mark Showalter is from the SETI Institute, and Hal Weaver is a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

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In a paper soon to be published in the Journal of Applied Physics, he describes how he and his student, Eric Wu, are employing the technique to help with the design of receivers for mobile telephones.

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Glen Fountain from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab says New Horizons will launch atop the speediest interplanetary rocket ever, a supercharged Atlas V.

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He has 12 honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982 and since 1979 has been at Cambridge University's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, where he is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics -- a post once held by Isaac Newton.

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