With the news that Twitter will be building its own managed data center, this article looks a bit more at the data center technology behind some of the top social sites and how they are applying innovative techniques, energy efficiency, and managing information.
Developing a Windows-based alternative to the iPad is a "job one urgency" at Microsoft, company chief Steve Ballmer said today during the annual Financial Analysts Meeting. He admitted that Microsoft was uncomfortable with how well iPads were selling and was tuning both its software and hardware partnerships to provide a competitive option.
As we worked on this years 15th Dream Machine, we couldn't help but think about how far we've come. From the original 200MHz, 8MB-of-RAM 1996 Dream Machine up to this years 12-core, 24-thread, 24-gigs-of-RAM version, the ultimate computer has grown exponentially more powerful. But that's not much of a shocker (we've all heard about Moore's Law).
The online edition of a Kmart flyer has revealed plans for what could be an unusual entry into competition against Apple in the still young tablet market.
Intel provided a peek at the future of processors today by revealing the first instance of a chip using complete photonics to send data. Four lasers in the prototype convert light into data at about 50Gbps, or "many" times faster than wired connections. The rate, about 6.25GB per second, would be enough to send an entire 720p movie in one second.
This is a ginormous 30-inch display built around a sexy S-IPS panel. S-IPS, or Super In-Plane Switching, is the Rolls Royce of display panels and almost always offers significantly better color reproduction and far wider viewing angles than the much more common (and cheaper to produce) Twisted Nematic (TN) panels.
A demonstration transmitted 1080p 3D video at a frame rate of 24FPS, and the company plans to market a system that uses two boxes to send such signals between 3D HDTVs and a 3D Blu-ray player. The only cables required are power cables and HDMI cables that connect the Blu-ray player to the transmitter box and the TV to the receiver box.
Research In Motion, which makes the popular BlackBerry devices, has had a traditional stronghold in sales to American companies. But that has been cracked open.
Two self-driving robot vans have started a three-month, 8,000-mile journey from Italy to China. What would Marco Polo say? Read this blog post by Tim Hornyak on Crave.
Samsung Mobile Display (SMD) is developing an AMOLED display that is crush-proof and can be bent while showing video without ill effects. The prototype display is sized at 2.8 inches and has a resolution of 166ppi.
We don't really like the Droid X as a phone, but that part barely matters now. You probably shouldn't buy the phone because doing so supports something very wrong?something anti-customer and anti-innovation?that Motorola is doing.
Quite simply, the Asus ARES is the fastest graphics card we have ever tested. The ARES' combination of dual-Radeon HD 5870 GPUs and 4GB (2GB per GPU) of fast GDDR5 frame buffer memory resulted in killer PC gaming performance across the board. It's freakin' fast with a capital F...
If you want to squeeze every last ounce of processing power out of your new computer or aging system, overclocking is a great—if slightly nerve-racking—option. Here are some simple guidelines for safely overclocking your CPU.
Asetek is a name synonymous with liquid a refrigerated cooling. Their latest prototype has the same profile as Apple's heralded iMac, being just 58mm thick. It's capable of handling a 2.66GHz Intel Core i7-920 processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M GPU...
LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment and VS have been secretly conspiring to kill HDMI. And today they set their plans into motion, introducing a brand new audiovisual standard, HDBaseT. While that name may sound confusing, before you slap your head, this will not likely introduce a new kind of cable to your house.
Graphene, a sheet of pure carbon, has been touted as a possible replacement for silicon-based semiconductors because of its useful electronic properties. Now, physicists have shown that graphene has another unique and amazing property that could make it even more suitable for future electronic devices. When contorted in a specific way it sprouts nanobubbles in which electrons behave as if they are moving in a strong magnetic field.
Researchers have cultivated many thousands of nanocrystals in what looks like a pinscreen or "pin art" on silicon, a step toward reliable mass production of semiconductor nanowires for millionths-of-a-meter-scale devices such as sensors and lasers.
Physicists are reporting new results from experiments on the perplexing class of materials that includes high-temperature superconductors. The team reports the unexpected discovery of a simple fractal form of electronic excitations in ultra-low-temperature quantum magnets at the border of magnetism.
Tougher than a bullet-proof vest yet synonymous with beauty and luxury, silks spun by worms and spiders are a masterpiece of nature whose properties have yet to be fully replicated in the laboratory. But scientists have begun to unravel the secrets of silk. Biomedical engineers report that silk-based materials have been transformed from commodity textile to a growing web of high tech applications.
What researchers might call "white graphene" may be the perfect sidekick for the real thing as a new era unfolds in nanoscale electronics. Researchers have figured out how to make sheets of h-BN, which could turn out to be the complementary apple to graphene's orange.
Researchers have developed a new, carbon-based nanoscale platform to electrically detect single DNA molecules. Using electric fields, the tiny DNA strands are pushed through nanoscale-sized thin pores in a graphene nanopore platform that ultimately may be important for fast electronic sequencing of the four chemical bases of DNA based on their unique electrical signature.
Research has revealed new clues on the microscopic processes by which resistance in certain materials is dramatically altered by the presence of magnetic fields. The discovery provides fundamental insights toward the development of radically new memory and switching devices.
Imagine building cheaper electronics on a variety of substrates -- materials like plastic, paper, or fabric. Researchers in Taiwan have made a discovery that opens this door, allowing them to build electronic components like diodes on many different substrates.
It?s been said that the typical mobile phone contains roughly half of all elements found on the Periodic Table. One of the most problematic substances used in phones and other electronics is lead. But making lead-free electronics has proved problematic ? until now. Researchers have now developed a method that enables the industrial production of a substance that can be used to replace lead in many electronic applications.
Researchers have shown that an advanced cooling technology being developed for high-power electronics in military and automotive systems is capable of handling roughly 10 times the heat generated by conventional computer chips.
Because of the electronic complexity of modern passenger vehicles, investigations into sudden, unintended acceleration should draw upon the expertise of a broad array of electrical, electronics and software engineers and computer professionals.
Scientists have managed for the first time to grow graphene ribbons that are just a few nanometers wide using a simple surface-based chemical method. Graphene ribbons are considered to be "hot candidates" for future electronics applications as their properties can be adjusted through width and edge shape.
Engineers have developed a novel direct-writing method for manufacturing metal interconnects that could shrink integrated circuits and expand microelectronics. The technique produces tiny pure metal wires much smaller in diameter than traditional wires and requiring two orders of magnitude less bonding area. This could enable more complex integrated functions in microelectronics.
NASA's Juno spacecraft will be forging ahead into a treacherous environment at Jupiter with more radiation than any other place NASA has ever sent a spacecraft, except the sun. In a specially filtered cleanroom in Denver, where Juno is being assembled, engineers recently added a unique protective shield around its sensitive electronics.
Newly published research focuses on miniature energy harvesting technologies that could potentially power wireless electronics, portable devices, stretchable electronics, and implantable biosensors.
Researchers have combined the scientific fields of transformation optics and plasmonics to demonstrate that with only moderate modifications of the dielectric component of a metamaterial, the physical space through which light travels can be altered with promising results, such as the creation of a 180 degree bend that won't alter the energy or properties of a light beam as it makes the U-turn, or a plasmonic version of a Luneburg lens.
Integrated circuits, which enable virtually every electronics gadget you use on a daily basis, are constantly being pushed by the semiconductor industry to become smaller, faster, and cheaper. As has happened many times in the past and will continue in the future, integrated circuit scaling is perpetually in danger of hitting a wall that must be maneuvered around. According to French researchers, in order to continue increasing the speed of integrated circuits, interconnect insulators will require an upgrade to porous, low-dielectric constant materials.
Since its discovery, graphene -- an unusual and versatile substance composed of a single-layer crystal lattice of carbon atoms -- has caused much excitement in the scientific community. Now, researchers have hit on a new way of making graphene, maximizing the material's enormous potential, particularly for use in high-speed electronic devices.
Old glass is not the same as new glass -- and the difference is not just due to manufacturing techniques. Unlike crystalline solids, glasses change as they age, increasing packing density and stability. Ideally, a glass should be cooled slowly, maybe over 10,000 years or so, but that is not usually practical. New research details the production of highly stable glass films of indomethacin by physical vapor deposition.
The tale begins with a feasibility study on the manufacture of colored fluorescing thin films for optical safety applications. A project on the development of novel gas sensors followed. In the meantime, researchers have successfully synthesized complex organic nanowires and managed to attach them together with electrically conducting links -- the first step towards the future production of electronic and optoelectronic components.
What could be better than diamond when it comes to a superhard material for electronics under extreme thermal and pressure conditions? Quite possibly BC5, a diamond-like material with an extremely high boron content that offers exceptional hardness and resistance to fracture, but unlike diamond, it is a superconductor rather than an insulator.
The remarkable ability of an electron to exist in two places at once has been controlled in the most common electronic material -- silicon -- for the first time. The research findings marks a significant step towards the making of an affordable "quantum computer."
Scientists have moved a step closer to developing the means for a rapid diagnostic blood test that can scan for thousands of disease markers and other chemical indicators of health.
Batteries might gain a boost in power capacity as a result of a new finding. Researchers found that using carbon nanotubes for one of the battery's electrodes produced a significant increase -- up to tenfold -- in the amount of power it could deliver from a given weight of material, compared to a conventional lithium-ion battery. Such electrodes might find applications in small portable devices, and with further research might also lead to improved batteries for larger, more power-hungry applications.
Scientists have fabricated thin films patterned with large arrays of superconducting nanowires and loops with variable electrical resistance in an external magnetic field. Such superconducting nanowires and nano-loops might eventually be useful for new electronic devices.
Scientists have made a breakthrough toward creating nanocircuitry on graphene, widely regarded as the most promising candidate to replace silicon as the building block of transistors. They have devised a simple and quick one-step process for creating nanowires, tuning the electronic properties of reduced graphene oxide and thereby allowing it to switch from being an insulating material to a conducting material.
With controlled stretching of molecules, researchers have demonstrated that single-molecule devices can serve as powerful new tools for fundamental science experiments. Their work has resulted in detailed tests of long-existing theories on how electrons interact at the nanoscale.
Researchers have developed a potential new tool for medical diagnostics, testing food and water for contamination, and crime-scene forensics. The technique uses a combination of light and electric fields to position droplets and tiny particles, such as bacteria, viruses and DNA, which are contained inside the drops.
Researchers have discovered a new way to apply nanostructure coatings to make heat transfer far more efficient, with important potential applications to high-tech devices as well as the conventional heating and cooling industry.
Researchers have developed very sensitive integrated sensing elements for gas detection. The polymer-coated microbridges in high-density arrays can detect ppm-level concentrations of vapors using on-chip integrated read-out techniques.
A team of chemists has perfected a simple way to make tiny copper nanowires in quantity. The cheap conductors are small enough to be transparent, making them ideal for thin-film solar cells, flat-screen TVs and computers, and flexible displays.
The silicon transistors in your computer may be replaced in ten years by transistors based on carbon nanotubes. This is what scientists in Sweden are hoping: they have developed a method to control the nanotubes during production.
Analyzing trace atmospheric gases can now be considerably more precise with the help of a device that delivers stable and reliable power to the lasers used in gas sensors.
A silicon-based nanoscale system which aims to harness the 'spin' of electrons to boost the processing power of future computer systems is being developed.
Researchers have discovered thin films of nanotubes created with ink-jet printers offer a new way to make field-effect transistors, the basic element in integrated circuits.
Thanks to a new semiconductor manufacturing method, the future of solar energy just got brighter. Researchers have developed a more efficient, lower-cost method of manufacturing compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide for many electronic device applications, including solar cells. The group deposits multiple layers of the material on a single wafer, creating a layered stack of gallium arsenide thin films, then transfers one layer at a time to another substrate -- glass, plastic or silicon.
A relatively simple electronic gadget could speed up HIV/AIDS diagnostics and improve accuracy particularly in parts of the world with very limited access to health-care workers.
A major step toward being able to regulate nerve cells externally with the help of electronics has been taken by researchers in Sweden. The breakthrough is based on an ion transistor of plastic that can transport ions and charged biomolecules and thereby address and regulate cells.
Space satellites that detect nuclear events and environmental gasses face a data logjam because their increasingly powerful sensors produce more information than their bandwidth can easily transmit. Experiments at the International Space Station indicate that sending more complex computer chips into space to pre-reduce the large data stream sent Earthbound could be the answer. But how well would the latest, most sensitive computing electronics fare in the harsh environment of outer space?
Researchers have demonstrated that atomic scale moire patterns, an interference pattern that appears when two or more grids are overlaid slightly askew, can be used to measure how sheets of graphene are stacked and reveal areas of strain.
At the scale of the very small, physics can get peculiar. A biomedical engineering professor has discovered a new instance of such a nanoscale phenomenon -- one that could lead to faster, less expensive portable diagnostic devices and push back frontiers in building micro-mechanical and "lab-on-a-chip" devices.
The prospects look good that wheel hub motors will successfully become the accepted drive concept for electric vehicles. Researchers are now engineering these motors, which are integrated into the car's wheels.
A major current law has been rewritten thanks to the three-port transistor laser. Data the transistor laser generated did not fit neatly within established circuit laws governing electrical currents, so the pair created a new model to account for the transistor laser having both electrical and optical output.
Frequency can be measured quite accurately in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, where pulsations can be counted directly by electronic circuits. The "frequency comb" approach, introduced a few years ago, has revolutionized spectroscopy by allowing more accurate measurements of frequencies characteristic of infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. The trick is to convert higher-frequency light into the lower radio frequency range, where the waves can be subjected to detailed measurement.
These modular meeting rooms built right on the show floor let you conduct meetings without the usual distractions of the traditional exhibit space buzz or set up a controlled product display area on the show floor.
The only thing more important than registering for CES is booking hotel and flight accommodations for CES. We do our best to get you there and around town at reasonable rates, so take advantage by making reservations right away.
The International CES conference program annually unites the CE industry?s most respected experts to address the latest trends, strategies and profit opportunities.
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)® today announced the launch of the Connected Home Appliances TechZone at the 2011 International CES, the world?s largest consumer technology tradeshow.
The New York City location and important mid-year timing are ideal for NYC-area media looking to experience the latest technology products to feature in summer vacation, back to school and holiday gift-giving previews.
Attend manufacturer line shows for media and dealers, press conferences with key industry analysts and an innovation-focused conference program chaired by CBS/CNET correspondent Natali Del Conte.
themed areas featuring hot products, technologies and solutions such green technologies, social media, mobile applications, iPhone, iPod and Mac-specific products, 3D displays, NetBooks, eBooks and other emerging technologies.
If you are flying Delta, Frontier, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, or US Airways, Bags to Go is a convenient service that has been implemented at The Venetian, the Luxor hotel and the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC).
International CES Twitter followers are invited to meet the CEA Social Media Team and other members of our online community at the Official CES Tweetup, hosted by the Las Vegas Hilton.
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) has presented the Emmy (r) Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering /Technical Development since 1948. For the fourth year, the Awards will be presented at the International CES.
CES, the world's largest consumer technology tradeshow, will showcase the latest in-vehicle technology, including an opening keynote by Ford president and chief executive officer, Alan Mulally, with the 2010 Ford Taurus as the show's official car.
The 2010 International CES is rolling out an expanded lineup of entertainment technology attractions to address growing demand from Hollywood and the content community for exhibits, conference sessions and more.
Bistro CES provides an excellent opportunity for uninterrupted, face-to-face time with your customers and business colleagues coupled with a private, well-catered dining experience right on the show floor.
The Susainable Planet CE Spotlight at the upcoming 2010 CES serves as the premier location for world-changing technologies, whether benefiting the environment, utilizing new forms of sustainable energy and renewing our resources.
As part of the contract, it will help the companies mutually aim to optimise SoC based on ARM processors and cover a range of process nodes extended down to 20 nm.
Sanyo Semiconductor customers will have access to front-end mixed-signal and analogue manufacturing, and ultra high volume back-end facilities of ON Semiconductor.
In other nanomaterial-related projects, AECOM environmental scientists and engineers are pilot testing the use of nZVI for remediating sites with contaminated groundwater.
Contemporary electronic equipment is increasingly becoming more "intelligent". As the market moves away from manually operated and controlled equipment, electronics has grown to be more autonomous and can deal with a myriad of tasks.
iBiquity Digital certification parameters include sensitivity, acquisition time, audio quality verification, functional check and bit error rate testing.
According to IDC, strong double-digit PC semiconductor revenue growth in 2010 will help achieve a healthy CAGR of 12.2 per cent for the Computing Industry segment.
The company said its engineers have achieved the results using its Smart Light 50 femtosecond pulse laser integrated into a Rofin StarCut Tube workstation.
Learn how to get your consumer electronics products into these markets and expand your global sales in this free webcast on July 21, brought to you by the U.S. Commercial Service International Buyer Program.
See why exhibiting at the 2011 International CES is one of the most cost-effective, profitable, forward-thinking marketing choices you can make right now.
Sales associates interviewed report roughly 50 percent of shoppers have an overall positive response to 3D technologies while only two percent respond negatively.
Utilizing Earth911's Recycling Directory, with more than 120,000 listings for hundreds of products, CEA will develop a new iPhone application to educate consumers on how, why and where to recycle electronics.
Interest in 3D gaming is strongest among early adopters and gaming enthusiasts, but a new study from CEA shows that interest in 3D gaming extends to the casual video game player as well.
Sony shows its new line of BRAVIA 3D televisions for the first time in NYC and demonstrates its dominance of the new technology from the lens to the living room.
The youngest staff member in history, Jared Cohen will speak on topics related to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's commitment to a free and open Internet.
Home technology is poised to move from niche market to mainstream, but the path to broader adoption faces many challenges, including decline in housing starts, tepid interest from builders, and pricey and proprietary systems.
It's cheaper than a press tour, free to enter, and we'll show you off more than a proud mother. Check out our top 10 list, then enter your product today.
Industry and government leaders from around the world will speak at the 2010 SINOCES, including former United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab, who will deliver remarks at the SINOCES opening dinner ceremony on July 7.
All webcast participants will receive a free whitepaper on improving the consumer experience to reduce customer support costs and returns. One lucky attendee will win a free iPad! Register today.
The event brings to life the business plans, creativity and convergence shaping successful tech ventures. Finalists receive three minutes to pitch to an audience of angel investors, electronics leaders and press eager to find the next big thing.
Digital America is CEA's comprehensive source of information on the CE industry, including eight product categories ranging from audio to wireless, and the latest CEA market forecasts and trends.
Hundreds of Washington-area viewers are watching TV wherever they go, on specially modified Samsung mobile phones and Dell netbooks that are part of a consumer showcase of the new technology.
Channel: Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
Our tireless This Week in the Future artist, Baarbarian, he who prognosticates so vividly with his pen here each Friday, is taking a well-deserved week off. It's a fine time to enjoy the magnificent weekly drawings he's been doing here for close to a year now.
So behold, 39 expert distillations of a week's futuristic news:
Click to launch the photo gallery
No contest this time--everyone who's won in recent weeks, you're prize is being processed.
Thanks as always for reading and have a great weekend, all.
The Population Reference Bureau has projected that in 2011, the planet Earth will be home to more than seven billion living humans. At current growth rates, we'll top 9 billion in 2050. By that year, the population of Africa is expected to double, and that of Asia to grow by 1.3 billion.
The world's population is growing unevenly too, the projection states. In a continuing trend, economically developing countries are growing faster, while the populations of developed nations are aging, and their workforces diminishing relative to their elderly populations.
Pollution Creates Soot Emissions from power plants can contribute to soot formation. via Flickr/ akeg
The quickest way to slow the melting of Arctic sea ice is through reducing soot emissions, according to a new study of soot's climate effects. Eliminating soot entirely could undo nearly a century of global warming, the study says.
Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson is the latest in a line of scientists to suggest reducing soot to slow global warming. He says it is second only to carbon dioxide in its ability to warm the climate -- it's even more powerful than methane, according to his models.
He found the combination of both types of soot is the second leading cause of global warming, and that if it disappeared tomorrow, the Earth would immediately start to cool off. Average global temperatures would drop within 15 years by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, he found.
Jacobson's latest models, honed over 20 years, included the effects of black and brown soot particles that absorb solar radiation. He analyzed the impacts of soot from fossil fuels and from solid biofuels, including wood, dung and other solid biomass used in home heating and cooking in the developing world.
It wouldn't be hard to reduce soot -- particle traps on vehicles and industrial equipment would be a quick fix, Jacobson says. His work is published this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres). Still, the debate is unsettled over soot's global warming potential -- a key metric for climate models.
In June, researchers from Princeton University published a study in PNAS that also assessed the climate effects of soot, and found that nations must take aggressive action to reduce it if they are to meet international climate policy goals.
But a different report in May by scientists at Georgia Tech, Caltech and Carnegie Mellon University found that soot can have both warming and cooling effects.
Soot consists of myriad particles, but its two main components are black carbon and organic carbon. Black carbon is dark and thus absorbs radiation, which warms the atmosphere and the Earth's surface when it falls on snow. This is especially problematic in the Arctic. On the other hand, organic carbon is lighter and reflective, so it has a cooling effect. Both types of carbonaceous aerosols can affect cloud formation, and that can have a cooling effect, too.
Jacobson's model is the first global model to use mathematical equations to describe the interactions of soot particles in cloud droplets. He says the net effect is that of warming.
The debate about soot's climate role has raged since at least 2003, when a NASA simulation claimed soot was responsible for 25 percent of the past century's observed warming.
Last year, a study in Nature Geoscience suggested that soot was to blame for almost half of a 3.4-degree Fahrenheit rise in average Arctic temperatures since 1890, Wired notes.
Wired's science blog quotes NASA climatologist James Hansen, one of the first scientists to study soot's climate role, who says reducing soot could help retain existing Arctic sea ice. But it's only a stopgap measure, Hansen says.
The debate is far from over. Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules for soot-forming emissions from power plants, and the agency is embarking on its own soot study soon.
Rabbit Joints Regenerated Using a scaffold inside a living rabbit, researchers were able to stimulate the rabbit's own stem cells to regrow injured joints. via Technology Review
Though artificial-joint tech is pretty advanced these days, with titanium hips and knees built to last a decade or more, they won't last forever -- and aging patients will have to go back under the knife for upgrades. Naturally re-growing their own bones would be a nice alternative.
For the first time, researchers have proven this can work, by stimulating the body's own stem cells to re-grow joint tissue around an implantable scaffold. In a study published this week in the journal Lancet, scientists report the technique successfully regenerated joints in living rabbits, even as the joints were being used.
Columbia University researchers, funded by the National Institutes of Health, removed forelimb thigh joints from 10 rabbits and made 3-D models of them. They added criss-crossed microchannels to serve as a scaffold, Technology Review reports.
They added a growth factor protein to the scaffolds and implanted them in the rabbits' forelegs, following the same surgical procedure used to implant titanium replacement joints. The growth protein drew the rabbits' own stem cells to the location of the missing joint, where they regenerated bone and cartilage.
Within four weeks, the rabbits were able to walk around normally, the researchers say.
The work simply proves the concept, and much more work needs to be done before this technique could be tried in humans, according to Columbia scientist Jeremy Mao, who led the research. Two-legged creatures place much more pressure on their leg joints, and people in need of joint replacement may have other medical issues that could affect joint regeneration.
Still, as Tech Review notes, the finding is promising. Re-growing cartilage and bone even while the joints are in use could mean a simpler and longer-lasting solution for joint replacement.
Graphene Nanobubble Graphene nanobubbles can create strong pseudo-magnetic fields, a new study says. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Putting the right kind of strain on a patch of graphene can make super-strong pseudo-magnetic fields, a new study says. The finding sheds new light on the properties of electromagnetism, not to mention the odd properties of graphene, according to researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. When graphene is stretched to form "nanobubbles," the stress causes electrons to behave as if they were subject to huge magnetic fields, the size of which have never been seen in a lab before. The study is published today in the journal Science.
Michael Crommie, a senior scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at Berkeley Lab and a physics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, says this is a completely new effect that has no counterpart in any other condensed matter system.
Since scientists began studying magnetic fields more than 100 years ago, no one has been able to sustain big magnetic fields for very long. The record is 85 tesla -- a measurement of electromagnetism named for Nikola Tesla -- and it only lasted a few thousandths of a second. Make it stronger than that, and the magnets blow themselves apart.
But in Crommie's study, electrons inside carbon atoms behaved as if they were subjected to 300 tesla. It has to do with the way graphene is constructed, which leaves one out of every four valence electrons free to hop around. The other three electrons form tight hexagonal chains. When graphene sheets are strained -- for instance, when they're rolled up into carbon nanotubes or stretched into nanobubbles -- the bond lengths between atoms change, and electrons hop differently.
The effect is so strong that it works at room temperature. Berkeley Lab's news site has a more detailed description here.
The finding could lead to better electronic and magnetic devices, Crommie says. Controlling where electrons exist and how they move is an essential feature of all electronic devices, he notes.
"New types of control allow us to create new devices, and so our demonstration of strain engineering in graphene provides an entirely new way for mechanically controlling electronic structure in graphene," he says.
Call it a new form of rapture of the deep. Chemicals from sea snail saliva can be made into pain pills that work as well as morphine, but without the risk of addiction, a new study says.
Researchers have already used the saliva of marine cone snails as a potent painkiller, but it has to be injected into the spinal cord with a special implanted pump, which limits its use. Researchers led by David J. Craik of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland in Australia figured out how to make the peptide orally active, so patients could simply pop snail-saliva pills.
Snails' saliva contains conotoxins, which are peptide toxins that interrupt various biological functions. Snails inject it into their prey using needle-like teeth that shoot from their mouths like harpoons, according to a report on the findings by the American Chemical Society.
Although peptides can be very potent drugs, they're difficult to use as pharmaceuticals because they are unstable and not typically available orally. But Craik's group found that "cyclizing" larger peptides -- basically tying them into loops -- can make them functional in pill form.
The research is reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, published by the German Chemical Society.
Craik's team used a string of six amino acids to tie the peptide together, because the amino acids don't interfere with the peptide's function. When the team tested it in rats, they found even a tiny dose was as potent as gabapentin, the most popular drug for neuropathic pain.
Other work on peptide painkillers includes manipulating scorpion venom to numb specific kinds of pain.
Craik has worked on naturally occurring cyclized peptides, which he calls cyclotides, since the 1990s, ACS says. They exist in several examples in nature, but the cyclized snail saliva peptide marks a new step in bioengineering drugs.
The next step is to start testing the use of saliva pills as a drug, Craik says.
Scanning Tunneling Electron MicroscopeSacha De'Angeli
Imagine being able to examine anything you want, at the atomic level, in your living room. If Sacha De'Angeli gets his way, a scanning tunneling electron microscope -- currently just the domain of research labs -- will be something you can order off the Web, as an easy-to-assemble, open-source kit, for about $1000.
Scanning tunneling electron microscopes -- or STMs, for short -- are sophisticated imaging tools used in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The heart of the device is a conductive tip, which is guided over the surface to be observed, at a very tiny distance. An applied voltage means that a current flows between the tip and the surface, and the variation of the current reveals clues about the structure of the surface. A computer hooked to the STM processes the data, generating an image of the sample.
De'Angeli, a 34-year-old tinkerer living in Chicago who runs a website called Chemhacker, came up with the idea for the open-source STM while experimenting with creating nanoparticles in his house. He began building the STM in October, at his home and at a nearby hack space called Pumping Station: One, with the assistance of his friends Jordan Bunker and Tim Saylor. "I was trying to make a ferrofluid, and I sort of built a cool recipe to do it, but I wasn't exactly sure if I made the actual nanoparticles," De'Angeli says. "You can't tell what they look like without an electron microscope. Obviously a $30,000 machine isn't something I can afford for a hobby. I found these projects where people had built scanning tunneling electron microscopes for really not very much money. I started this project I found, that dates back to 2003 by John Alexander, and I started to modernize it a bit."
Several homegrown recipes abound for building scanning tunneling electron microscopes. One such project, from a research group at the University of Muenster in Germany, is called the SXM; through their website, you can buy a construction kit for 985 euros. But many of these projects, designed by academics, rely on pricey external hardware -- like signal generators and oscilloscopes -- that the average person might not have. They also don't always use the most up-to-date technology, and while some have released schematics, none of them are open source. De'Angeli's project is designed to stand alone, and it is entirely open source, relying on the Arduino, the popular open-source microcontroller board, which is in active use for thousands of projects around the globe. A Python script takes the raw data and pulls it into an image file. D'Angeli's hope is that average folks -- people not affiliated with science departments at all -- will start making and using their own STMs at home.
De'Angeli is presenting his project this week at the Open Science Summit in Berkeley. He is careful to note that the open-source STM is still a work in progress, and its first images should be forthcoming within the next few months. "There's probably some big scary problem that I haven't been able to think about yet, that's probably going to come up and bite me," he says. Considering his tremendous progress so far, it should be finished any time now. "I don't know the limits of it," he says. "It's kind of exciting to see what people will make with it."
Even a great camera won't take memorable shots if it's so big that you tend to leave it at home. So companies are creating models that aim for a happy medium between pocketable point-and-shoots and higher-quality SLRs. This new breed can change lenses to suit a shot, like an SLR does, but ditches the optical viewfinder and the bulky mirror that sends it light. That means compromise: Autofocus isn't SLR-fast, there are fewer lenses, and point-and-shoots are still smaller. We tested which interchangeable-lens compacts (ILCs) hit the sweet spot.
Olympus E-PL1
BODY SIZE: 4.5 x 2.8 x 1.6 in. THE FEATURES: The E-PL1 is one of the most compact cameras to use a format called Micro Four Thirds, which started the slimming ILC trend in late 2008. Its image sensor is smaller than most digital SLRs-about 7/10 the size-yet about nine times that of a point-and-shoot. THE PICTURES: The small sensor still snaps outstandingly crisp, sharp photos. But it does generate a lot of image noise-grainy spots most apparent in low-light pics. In the end, the E-PL1 is mainly for users who put a premium on petite. GET IT:$600 (with lens); olympusamerica.com
Samsung NX10
BODY SIZE: 4.8 x 3.4 x 1.6 in. THE FEATURES: Samsung's first ILC uses the same size sensor as an SLR, outmeasuring the Olympus. Unfortunately, the camera is also larger, partly because it builds in an electronic viewfinder (a tiny LCD eyepiece to mimic an SLR's window) that, sadly, blurs when it moves quickly. THE PICTURES: The larger sensor does the trick for eliminating grainy image noise. The NX10's overall image quality is on par with a similarly priced SLR. On the other hand, it's not much smaller, and its autofocus is slower. GET IT: $700 (with lens); samsung.com
Editor's Pick: Sony NEX-5
BODY SIZE: 4.4 x 2.4 x 1.6 in. THE FEATURES: The Sony combines the Olympus's small body with the Samsung's sensor size and adds some tricks. It takes 1080i high-def videos (the others do 720p) and autofocuses while filming. It fires seven shots per second, and its high-dynamic-range mode catches detail in bright scenes. THE PICTURES: The photo quality is about the same as the Samsung's, and although the autofocus speed still lags behind an SLR's, it's close. That, plus its near-pocketability and fun features, makes it an exceptional camera-and the best of the bunch. GET IT: From $650 (with lens); sony.com
Also see our guide to using vintage Leica lenses with the current generation of interchangeable lens digitals.
Japan's IKAROS spacecraft is still solar sailing its way across the solar system in a proof of concept experiment that has gone, by all outward appearances, extremely well thus far. Marking another milestone for the mission, JAXA (Japan's space agency) announced earlier this week the completion of another successful experiment as IKAROS executed attitude control using thin LCD panel devices built into the edges of its membrane-like solar sail.
One thing that may go unnoticed when you look at static images of IKAROS is that the sail rotates as the spacecraft glides along, collecting photons from sunlight as it goes to keep its forward momentum. IKAROS usually corrects its attitude via onboard thrusters attached to its main body, but if long-term space sailing is to become reality mission handlers need a way to create a disparity between the thrust on one part of the sail's surface versus the rest of the sail.
To do this, JAXA researchers built eight blocks of thin liquid crystal panels into the edges of the solar sail, two on each edge. The panels are designed to be operated independently, so the LCDs can be activated on any part of the sail while on other parts they remain off. When activated, the LCDs reflect the incoming photons straight back, producing increased forward thrust; when deactivated, the incoming light is diffused, decreasing pressure on that portion of the sail.
In this way, mission controllers can keep sunlight pressure on a certain fixed spot by activating and deactivating LCDs even as the sail spins, causing a gradual shift in the craft's attitude. The experiment continues, but for now it seems that JAXA engineers have figured out how to control the direction of a solar sailing spacecraft without using up precious propellant. That brings us one step closer to serious deep space travel beyond the boundaries imposed on conventional spacecraft by their limited fuel capacities.
Snake-like robots are nothing new -- for instance, Virginia Tech has developed some pretty amazing pole-climbing snakebots, and the Israeli military has a weaponized recon 'bot in the works -- but the U.S. Army Research Lab is taking military snakebots to a new level. Its Robotic Tentacle Manipulator is using snakebot tech to develop a scalable system in which several robots work in unison to manipulate objects.
Like many of its counterparts, the individual RTM snake can slither into tight spaces, climb impassible obstacles, or swim where soldiers cannot, all the while beaming back images to the soldier controlling it by remote. Each snake is equipped with a sensor array, not least of which is a LIDAR scanner that lets it render 3-D depictions of objects, landscapes, or faces.
But the snakes also work in groups, acting more like fingers or the tentacles of an octopus. Arranging several of them on a circular base creates an array that can gingerly pick up, rotate, and inspect an IED or possibly even open a door -- a seemingly simple task that falls outside the capabilities of most robotic platforms. Its touch sensitivity allows it to do delicate work -- you don't want to squeeze a live munition, for instance -- yet in tandem the snakes could be reasonably strong.
The developmental hardware that the RTM program is currently working with spun out of research into snakebots conducted in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute and consists of three 9.5-inch tentacles and a large screen laptop for the operator. The master program runs advanced algorithms that are able to manipulate the motors in each link of the snakes to work in concert as though they belong to single organism. But the system is completely scalable, so a small custom array could be designed to give the Army's Warrior robot system a more dexterous "hand," while larger tentacle arrays could be fitted to larger vehicles or robots.
An electronic component is a basic electronic element usually packaged in a discrete form with two or more connecting leads or metallic pads. Components are intended to be connected together, usually by soldering to a printed circuit board, to create an electronic circuit with a particular function (for example an amplifier, radio receiver, or oscillator). Components may be packaged singly (resistor, capacitor, transistor, diode etc.) or in more or less complex groups as integrated circuits (operational amplifier, resistor array, logic gate etc.)
