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Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London, say that an exciting new field of research called ‘organic spintronics’ has helped them improve their understanding of the inner workings of computers and mp3 players.

Dr Alan Drew from Queen Mary’s Department of Physics and the University of Freiburg, Switzerland, who worked in collaboration with researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, has for the first time measured how the magnetic polarisation is lost in a device similar to a hard drive ‘read-head’, which is found in every computer produced in the last decade.

Unlike most electronic components in which the electron’s intrinsic electric field or charge is used to carry a signal, magnetic read-heads use the electron’s intrinsic magnetic field - known as their ’spin’ - to carry information.

Spin-valves are made up of at least three layers, two magnetic layers separated by a non-magnetic layer.

Dr. Drew revealed that he and his colleagues wanted to see how spins travel across the middle of the three layers, as any such information could help improve future generations of data storage.

He believes that the findings of his team may contribute significantly to the understanding of spintronic devices, and will allow new concepts to develop and aid in the discovery of novel devices and applications.

“Spintronics promise low-power circuits, possibly at the quantum level, and the possibility of combining communication, memory and logic on the same chip. The efficient transfer of spin in these devices remains one of the most difficult challenges facing physicists. One way of improving the efficiency of these devices could be to change the materials they are made from, but currently we are unable to predict what effects the different materials will have,” Nature Materials quoted him as saying.

What makes this research even more interesting is the fact that it involved the use of a new combination of materials to make the device.

Dr. Drew says: “When devices are made from organic materials, which have low manufacturing costs and are very flexible, the magnetic information can be preserved for extremely long times - over a million times longer than many materials used in today’s technology. These new materials have the potential to create an entirely new generation of spin-enabled devices.”

In their study report, the researchers describe how their team used muons, elementary particles that act like tiny magnets, to measure the magnetic field within the device.

Dr. Morenzoni, from PSI, says: “The muons have a high energy and must be slowed down before they can be used in the experiment and the equipment we used to do this is unique - PSI is the only source of ’slow’ muons in the world, and the only equipment that can measure depth resolved magnetism.”

The researchers think that further studies may, in the long run, help understand the fundamental operation of spintronics and hard drive read-heads, something that can be helpful in optimising the heads and improving computer storage.

Lawmakers in Indonesia’s remote province of Papua have thrown their support behind a controversial bill requiring some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips part of extreme efforts to monitor the disease. Health workers and rights activists sharply criticized the plan Monday.

But legislator John Manangsang said by implanting small computer chips beneath the skin of “sexually aggressive” patients, authorities would be in a better position to identify, track and ultimately punish those who deliberately infect others with up to six months in jail or a $5,000 fine. The technical and practical details still need to be hammered out, but the proposed legislation has received full backing from the provincial parliament and, if it gets a majority vote as expected, will be enacted next month, he and others said.

Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and has one of Asia’s fastest growing HIV rates, with up to 290,000 infections out of 235 million people, fueled mainly by intravenous drug users and prostitution. But Papua, the country’s easternmost and poorest province with a population of about 2 million, has been hardest hit.

Its case rate of almost 61 per 100,000 is 15 times the national average, according to internationally funded research, which blames lack of knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases. “The health situation is extraordinary, so we have to take extraordinary action,” said another lawmaker, Weynand Watari, who envisions radio frequency identification tags like those used to track everything from cattle to luggage.

A committee would be created to decide who should be fitted with chips and to monitor patients’ behavior, but it remains unclear who would be on it and how they would carry out their work, lawmakers said Monday. Since the plan was initially proposed, the government has narrowed its scope, saying the chips would only be implanted in those who are “sexually aggressive,” but it has not said how it would determine who fits that group.

It also was not clear how many people it might include. Nancy Fee, the UNAIDS country coordinator, said the global body was not aware of any laws or initiatives elsewhere involving HIV/AIDS patients and microchips.

Though she has yet to see a copy of the bill, she said she had “grave concerns” about the effect it would have on human rights and public health. “No one should be subject to unlawful or unnecessary interference of privacy,” Fee said, adding that while other countries have been known to be oppressive in trying to tackle AIDS, such policies don’t work.

They make people afraid and push the problem further underground, she said. Local health workers and AIDS activists called the plan “abhorrent.

” “People with AIDS aren’t animals; we have to respect their rights,” said Tahi Ganyang Butarbutar, a prominent Papuan activist. He said the best way to tackle the epidemic was through increased spending on sexual education and condom use.

____ Associated Press Writer Irwan Firdaus contributed to this report.

Technology executives told a conference this week they learned lessons in the dot.com crash that wiped $5 trillion off tech stocks at the start of the century that would help them through current difficulties.

Queuing up to make investment cases for their companies, executives said the experience had left them in better shape to survive a coming recession than other sectors that had not suffered in a similar way.

“We had a telecoms crisis in 2001, and I think a couple of learnings that we had at Ericsson are important and valid to keep in mind,” Chief Financial Officer Hans Vestberg told Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media and Telecoms conference.

“Focus on cost, regardless of what’s happening … That we learned from 2001, and we keep that in our minds,” he said. “You saw that in the last 12 months we have been very focused on cash generation … That, we will continue.”

The themes of generating cash, cutting costs, diversifying customer bases and increasing the proportion of recurring revenues were echoed by companies in businesses ranging from software to telecoms to IT services.

Leo Apotheker, co-chief executive of business software giant SAP pointed to the company’s 40 percent of sales that come from steady sources such as maintenance and services today — double the proportion it had in 1998.

SAP finally showed the scars of global economic pressure in the third quarter, warning last week that sales had fallen off dramatically in the last two weeks of September.

UK-based Autonomy, whose software helps companies comply with financial regulations, also raised its recurring revenues to 50 percent of sales from 25 percent in 2002.

But by the time Ericsson’s presentation came on day two, some investors had heard enough of the same old story.

“Most companies looking to the next 12-18 months are going to be focused on costs, and they’re going to be focused on cash,” said one.

“So are there any specific other examples you would give about your lessons from last time that would make you much better positioned?”

STARK CONTRAST

Autonomy, whose meaning-based search software helps companies mine documents sometimes stored in multiple formats and thousands of different depositories, said it was positively profiting from the global economic crisis.

“Financial services turmoil is very good for us. Financial services customers are having to buy a lot of software to become compliant,” Chief Executive Mike Lynch said. “We’re not seeing the kind of effects that SAP reported in the quarter.”

Among telecoms companies, both smaller players like Sweden’s Tele2 and giants like Telefonica said they would emerge winners.

“When you’re thinking of reducing your phone bill, we’re supposed to be the first place to come to. We’re lowest priced,” said Tele2 Chief Executive Harri Koponen.

Telefonica Chief Financial Officer Santiago Fernandez Valbuena argued incumbents and market leaders would turn out to be winners in times of trouble by being more flexible on costs and capital spending.

INFORMATION AGE RECESSION

Andy Green, CEO of British IT services company Logica, also argued that size mattered, but precisely because this recession would be nothing like that of 2002.

“Fundamentally there was something very different about the 2002/03 recession to all the others, and that was that it was a tech-led recession,” he said.

“We were all sitting in our boardrooms and thinking: ‘Bloody hell, this dot.com, ecommerce stuff, which we all understood nothing about … and thinking, ‘Can we afford not to?’, and we were spending money.”

“And there were certainly enough people in every boardroom who thought it was a bunch of tosh. As soon as things blew up, people went for the hatchet and really cut back very hard.”

Today, customers of IT firms know better what they want.

“Being a small niche player with great ideas was a super business in 2002. In today’s market … larger players like ourselves are definitely favoured,” he argued, adding that scale for global procurement and recruitment was also crucial.

Today’s faster communications might, however, spell a swifter end when the end comes, he said, as the world acts in a more coordinated way. “This is the first global recession of the information age,” Green said. “That means you’re probably going to go steeply in and hopefully steeply out.”