A near-infrared light can detect lies as they form in the brain of volunteers. It may replace the often-inaccurate polygraph to detect lies told by spies, saboteurs and terrorists.
E-textiles are being developed that can sense tank movements, monitor homes for noxious chemicals, help firefighters maneuver in smoky buildings, and perhaps help stroke victims recover their function.
The red sea urchin can last for more than 200 years with few signs of age-related disease, researchers have found. This could help scientists uncover the secret of longevity and aging.
Nanotechnology could strengthen the nation’s shield against terrorist bombs, biological weapons or attacks on power plants and reservoirs, participants at the Nanotechnology and Homeland Security Forum said Monday.
But homeland security may not benefit from nanotechnology’s potential unless government funding lays the groundwork for the private businesses that could produce new defense products, most experts agreed.
Possible nanotech uses could include self-copying nanoparticles that could be spread in… read more
Ferroelectric materials, used in modern electronics devices, have been discovered to retain their properties when present in extraordinarily tiny amounts. This discovery implies that this and other materials with similar properties may be valuable at nanoscale in the production of small, smart communications devices, tiny diagnostic instruments and nano-robots.
A silicon nanowire sensor has the potential to detect diseases never before possible with conventional tests, according to researcher Charles M. Lieber, a professor of chemistry at Harvard.
An array of sensors could ultimately be configured to a handheld PDA-type device or small computer, allowing almost instant test results during a doctor’s visit or possibly even at home by a patient. It could potentially be used to screen for… read more
Futurists sometimes see Internet telephony as the death knell for traditional phone companies. But that’s not going to happen: those companies also own the last few miles of the old-fashioned copper and switches.
Which is why Verizon, AT&T, Quest and SBC have all announced they will begin to sell lower-priced (and lower quality) Internet telephone services next year, using VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol).
Service providers as well… read more
Researchers at an STMicroelectronics laboratory in France have developed a semiconductor memory technology that is immune to soft errors caused by background radiation, potentially eliminating an important barrier to shrinking the size of computer chips.
To defeat soft errors without adding additional circuitry (thus increasing the size of the chip), the STMicroelectronics researchers stacked a capacitor on top of a memory circuit, lowering the chances that a logic bit… read more
Americans logged onto the Internet to learn about the capture of Saddam Hussein because the news broke after most of the nation’s newspapers had “gone to bed.”
A generation of younger readers admits to getting their news from the Internet, not newspapers.
Internet competition is forcing newspapers — and their giant newsgathering forces — to publish more original reporting on their Web sites, a practice they have resisted… read more
A study of coral found that about 500 gene sequences out of 1300 had matches in gene databases.
Of these 500, 90% were present in humans, and about 10% were found in humans but not in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster or the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. This finding suggests that many genes thought to be vertebrate-specific may in fact have much older origins, and have been lost during the… read more
Some 175 countries have endorsed the first “constitution” for the information age at a meeting of the International Telecommunication Union.
The documents, although not legally binding, propose to ensure that more than half of the world has access to the web, telephones or some other form of electronic media by 2015.
The largest WiFi wireless networking deployment in the nation is planned for the entire city of Cerritos, California, providing broadband Interent access for 51,000 residents in the 8.6-square-mile area.
DSL and cable broadband access to the Internet is currently not available.
Foresight Chairman Dr. K. Eric Drexler submitted a letter to the New York Times editor protesting their framing of the Drexler-Smalley debate.
“The Times elected to edit the letter (and apparently omit Mike Treder’s separate letter), discarding a key quote from the article, and modifying the last sentence,” says Drexler.
The letter, to be published tomorrow (Dec. 16, 2003) in The New York Times, reads (omitted… read more
The new “digital detective” firms are developing technologies that can monitor everything from deciphering buying trends in retail outlets to identifying dangerous chemicals.
The companies include Imagen, which makes software that recognizes patterns and identifies faces or scans circuit boards for flaws; Alien, which makes RFID chips that can be embedded in thin plastic sheets that can be attached to almost any type of product to track it on… read more