Tech-news: Latest from the world of gadgetry and technology
NASA, Intel, SGI plan to 'soup up' supercomputer
(May 8 2008)
NASA, Intel Corp., and SGI today announced the signing of an agreement establishing intentions to collaborate on significantly increasing the space agency's supercomputer performance and capacity. These organizations will work together on a project called Pleiades to develop a computational system with a capacity of one Petaflops peak performance (1,000 trillion operations per second) by 2009 and a system with a peak performance of 10 Petaflops (10,000 trillion operations per second) by 2012.
Details of an entirely new kind of electronic device, which could make chips smaller and far more efficient, have been outlined by scientists. The new components, described by scientists at Hewlett-Packard, are known as "memristors". The devices were proposed 40 years ago but have only recently been fabricated, the team wrote in the journal Nature.
Researchers have built the world's smallest transistor – one atom thick and 10 atoms wide – out of a material that could one day replace silicon. The transistor, essentially an on/off switch, has been made using graphene [see image], a two-dimensional material first discovered only four years ago. Graphene is a single layer of graphite, which is found in the humble pencil.
Powerful laser is 'brightest light in the universe'
(Apr 10, 2008)
Physicists have turned on the world's most powerful laser, whose pulses are more intense than any known light source in the universe. The incredible temperatures and pressures it generates when it hits a target will let scientists explore conditions found in exploding stars and the cores of giant planets.
Matrix-style virtual worlds 'a few years away'
(Apr 3, 2008)
Are supercomputers on the verge of creating Matrix-style simulated realities? Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, thinks so. He says that virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are just a few years away.
Normally fragile and brittle silicon chips have been made to bend and fold, paving the way for a new generation of flexible electronic devices. The stretchy circuits could be used to build advanced brain implants, health monitors or smart clothing. The complex devices consist of concertina-like folds of ultra-thin silicon bonded to sheets of rubber.
A tiny chemical "brain" which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented. The molecular device – just two billionths of a metre across – was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say it could also be used to boost the processing power of future computers.
A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers. The as-yet-unnamed material – a form of artificial rubber – is made from vegetable oil and a component of urine. The substance, described in the journal Nature, produces surfaces when cut that retain a strong chemical attraction to each other.
Gamers will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone. A neuro-headset which interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain will go on sale later this year. "It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer," said Tan Le, president of US/Australian firm Emotiv.
Scientists in the US have developed novel brush-like fibres that generate electrical energy from movement. Weaving them into a material could allow designers to create "smart" clothes which harness body movement to power portable electronic gadgets. Writing in the journal Nature, the team say that the materials could also be used in tents or other structures to harness wind energy.
Holograms could soon be helping monitor surgical procedures after a faster way to make the 3D images is discovered. The journal Nature reports the breakthrough by US researchers who developed a novel material in which holographs can be created in minutes. The images that the material can capture are almost as sharp as those broadcast on US television.
A British firm claims to have designed a hypersonic passenger plane that could one day fly between Europe and Australia in less than five hours. The A2 aeroplane, designed by Reaction Engines in Oxfordshire, would carry 300 passengers at a top speed of 4,000 mph. The company said the aircraft, which is still at the concept stage, could be operating within 25 years.
The "darkest ever" substance known to science has been made in a US laboratory. The material was created from carbon nanotubes – sheets of carbon just one atom thick rolled up into cylinders. Researchers say it is the closest thing yet to the ideal black material, which absorbs light perfectly at all angles and over all wavelengths.
Apple boss Steve Jobs has unveiled the world's thinnest laptop, called the MacBook Air. The computer, which is 0.76 inches (1.93cm) at its thickest point, was unveiled at an event in San Francisco. The Apple head also launched online film rentals for iTunes users in the US from almost every major film studio, including Disney and Fox.
The way people interact with computers is going to dramatically change in the next five years, Microsoft chief Bill Gates has told BBC News. He predicted that the keyboard and mouse would gradually give way to more intuitive and natural technologies. In particular, he said, touch, vision and speech interfaces would become increasingly important.
Researchers in Israel say they have succeeded in putting a version of the Bible on a chip smaller than a pinhead. Its 300,000 words in Hebrew were inscribed on a silicon surface at the Haifa Institute of Technology. Scientists say the aim of the project is to increase young people's interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Google has kicked off a project to create an authoritative store of information about any and every topic. The search giant has already started inviting people to write about the subject on which they are known to be an expert. Google said it would not act as editor for the project but will provide the tools and infrastructure for the pages.
Supercomputers may one day be the size of a laptop thanks to research by IBM. Scientists at IBM have completed work that may make it possible to do away with the copper wires used to couple processing cores to each other. The connector created by the team uses light to pass data between the computational cores that is faster and uses less power than copper wires.
A new scanner has been unveiled which can produce 3D body images of unprecedented clarity while reducing radiation by as much as 80%. The new 256-slice CT machine takes large numbers of X-ray pictures, and combines them using computer technology to produce the final detailed images. It also generates images in a fraction of the time of other scanners: a full body scan takes less than a minute.
Consumer demand for bandwidth could see the internet running out of capacity as early as 2010, a new study warns. US analyst firm Nemertes Research predicted a drastic slowdown as the network struggles to cope with the amount of data being carried on it. Such gridlock would drastically affect how people use the web and could mean the next Google or YouTube simply doesn't get off the ground, it said.
Scientists say they may be on the brink of translating into words the thoughts of a man who can no longer speak, after a pioneering experiment. Electrodes have been implanted in the brain of Eric Ramsay, who has been "locked in" - conscious but paralysed - since a car crash eight years ago. These have been recording pulses in areas of the brain involved in speech.
The chip industry's unrelenting quest to build smaller, faster microchips has taken another step forward. Chip-maker Intel has launched a range of processors, known as Penryn, which will power the next generation of PCs. The tiny chips contain a novel material and have features just 45 nanometres (billionths of a metre) wide.
