For innovative research on semiconductor devices, NJIT Professor Durgamadhab (Durga) Misra, the associate chair for graduate programs in the Newark College of Engineering (NCE) Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will receive two Division Awards next May, the 2013 Electronic and Photonic Division Award and the 2013 Thomas D. Collinan Award from the Dielectric Science and Technology Division of the Electrochemical Society (ECS). Misra is an ECS Fellow. The research interests of this former director of NJIT's Microelectronics Research Center and visiting Bell Laboratories professor include nanoelectronic/optoelectronic devices and circuits, high-k gate dielectrics for low power nanoscale CMOS devices, photovoltaic and resistive RAM devices technology. Misra's research for the last 25 years has contributed much to semiconductor devices. His work…

University of British Columbia and Berkeley researchers have used a sophisticated new computer system to quickly reconstruct protolanguages – the rudimentary ancient tongues from which modern languages evolved. The results, which are 85 per cent accurate when compared to the painstaking manual reconstructions performed by linguists, will be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We’re hopeful our tool will revolutionize historical linguistics much the same way that statistical analysis and computer power revolutionized the study of evolutionary biology,” says UBC Assistant Prof. of Statistics Alexandre Bouchard-Côté, lead author of the study. “And while our system won’t replace the nuanced work of skilled linguists, it could prove valuable by enabling them to increase the number…