India’s new President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam called today for India to develop nanotechnology — including nanobots — because it will revolutionize warfare.
He called for scientists to develop “super strong, smart and intelligent structures in the field of material science and this in turn could lead new production of nano robots with new types of explosives and sensors for air, land and space systems.”
“This is… read more
An advanced, general-purpose molecular manufacturing technology could have a significant destabilizing effect and lead to an international arms race; even a nuclear power might not be able to deter a nano power, concludes a preliminary study by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.
Computer security experts warned yesterday of another new Internet threat that can steal the passwords and account information of people who bank online — the second such discovery in a week.
An electronic skin as sensitive to touch as our own is being developed for robots by scientists in Japan.
It consists of a sheet of rubbery polymer, impregnated with flakes of electrically conducting graphite. The electrical resistance of the sheet changes when it is squeezed, and this change is detected by an array of transistors beneath the rubber.
The skin could also find applications in sport, security and… read more
Nanowires that could be plugged into conventional computer circuits have been developed by Charles Lieber and colleagues at Harvard University.
The nanowires were made highly conductive by blending silicon and nickel together.
The researchers have also shown that the method can be used to create simple nanoscale electronic components, e.g., field-effect transistors. “By extending our approach to crossed nanowires it should become possible to assemble large and dense… read more
The speed of light may have been lower as recently as two billion years ago on Earth, based on measurements of the fine structure constant, or alpha, which dictates the strength of the electromagnetic force.
In the forthcoming film “I, Robot,” Actor Will Smith plays a police detective investigating a murder allegedly committed by a robot.
Q: I understand Proyas asked the entire cast to read Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines. What did you think of the book?
A: Actually, the Wachowski brothers turned me onto it first. Kurzweil has an interesting, kind of twisted look at the potentiality of the… read more
Some day machines could build themselves, which means they might not necessarily be designed to communicate with people. This could make interacting with machines difficult.
One solution is to give people a means of interpreting machines that’s similar to the way we read each other’s body language. A team of researchers has proposed a way to do so that combines fractals with algorithms that automatically cluster data.
The ultimate in video is a system that renders three-dimensional images in real-time and lets the viewer change viewpoints at will.
It takes a lot of network bandwidth to transmit that much information, however. A system that turns two-dimensional pixels from a camera array into a set of independent points in space promises to lighten the load.
Gadgets that let you control computers with a wave or a nod could offer an escape from keyboards and mice.
Gesture recognition technology aims to become this millennium’s remote control — a fluid, freeing means of interacting with all the digital stuff around us. Think Minority Report.
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The next generation of routers, with speeds approaching 100 terabits/second, will be the foundation for every last digital service we can imagine (and some that we can’t).
From tiny memory chips to fanless cooling systems, cutting-edge researchers are investigating new ways to make computing devices smaller, faster and cheaper.
From organic computer memory cells to super-nanocapacitors, many of the most promising lines of research involve molecular scale technology.
Privacy advocates are hindering development of sophisticated pattern-analysis and data mining tools for detecting terrorist networks, say some experts.
ZDNet is reporting that corporate web servers are infecting visitors’ PCs.
The combination of two unpatched IE security holes and hacked corporate websites is apparently distributing malware via several high-credibility sites. ZDNet says users have “few options” other than alternative browsers or platforms.”
A reader points out Microsoft’s What You Should Know page. Here’s the short version for avoiding this Critical severity attack: you must install add-on software,… read more
Embryonic stem cells aren’t the most promising source to find treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, researchers say. Other possibilities, such as treating buildups of protein in the brain, will likely reap rewards faster.