We could be alone in the Universe after all. Martin Beer of the University of Leicester, UK, and co-workers argue that our Solar System may be highly unusual, compared with the planetary systems of other stars.
They suggest that other planets (which are detected from the wobble that they induce in their own sun’s motion) were not formed by the same kind of process that produced our Solar System… read more
You can see why Google was a natural to put it all together. Google already searched the entire Web. Google already had a distributed framework with thousands of independent machines. Google already looked for the links between pages, the way they fit together, in order to build its index. Google’s search engine solved equations with millions of variables. Semantic Web content, in RDF, was just another search problem, another set… read more
Research teams from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and from Kyoto University have succeeded in making practical photonic crystal chips.
The techniques could be used to make smaller, more efficient communications devices; create optical memory and quantum computing and communications devices; develop new types of lasers and biological and chemical sensors; and could ultimately lead to all-optical computer processors.
Researchers from the National Microelectronics Research Centre (NMRC) in Ireland have used electric fields to direct arrays of gallium arsenide light-emitting diodes to assemble onto silicon chips.
The researchers’ self-assembly device contains an array of electrodes on a silicon surface that allows them to put electric fields of specific configurations on the surface of the chip. The fields can be configured to attract electric charges at a particular spot… read more
Princeton University researchers have shown that photocurable nanoimprint lithography (P-NIL) can produce lines of polymer resist just 7 nm wide with a pitch (or pattern repeat) of only 14 nm. The technique also produced reliable results over the whole area of a 4 inch wafer.
“This work really pushes the limit down to a few molecules in size,” said Stephen Chou of Princeton.
This is a 20-fold reduction… read more
Cars that report your every false move to local law authorities. Huge databases with detailed information on every citizen. Companies that only honor privacy guidelines when it’s profitable for them to do so.
These were some of the winners of Privacy International’s sixth annual U.K. Big Brother Awards.
Scientists have made an artificial prion that can, by itself, produce a deadly infectious disease in mice and may help explain the roots of mad cow disease.
The findings are strong evidence for the “protein-only hypothesis,” the controversial idea that a protein, acting alone without the help of DNA or RNA, can cause certain kinds of infectious diseases.
Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Type 2 diabetes and at least… read more
The UK’s Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering today released their long-awaited report on the potential risks and benefits of nanotechnology. The report proposes:
NASA has chosen Silicon Graphics Inc. to assemble a 500-terabyte supercomputer based on more than 10,000 Intel Itanium chips. The configuration, for applications in space exploration, global warming research, and aerospace engineering, will be one of the world’s largest Linux-based supercomputers.
Genetically engineered crops do not pose health risks that cannot also arise from crops created by other techniques, including conventional breeding, the National Academy of Sciences said in a report issued yesterday.
The report suggests that in some cases, surveillance might be needed after a food gets to the market to check for possible health effects, something not done now. It also calls for some information on the composition… read more
He wanted to play God, so he cracked the human genome. Now he wants to play Darwin and collect the DNA of everything on the planet.
A sound system that creates immersive, three-dimensional audio for everyone in a room has been developed by one of the creators of the MP3 audio format.
It uses a principle known as “wave field synthesis” to create complex audio illusions for everyone within a defined space. Computers are used to predict the way multiple sound waves will interact with each other within a space. Then, a multitude of small… read more
IBM has won a contract to build the U.S. military’s fastest supercomputer. It will run at 20 teraflops–about three times faster than any current system in use by the Department of Defense.
It will improve weather forecasting, missile design, and oceanographic-mapping capabilities. The system is scheduled to begin operating by September.
Will machines make humans smarter or just more dependent on our calculators, car navigators, and kitchen conveniences? Dr. Ken Ford of the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition reclassifies several key problems in developing smarter machines into a category called “Amplified Intelligence.”
His Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Human & Machine Cognition is involved in “building cognitive prostheses, computational systems that leverage and extend human intellectual capacities, just… read more
Transplants of human fetal stem-cells may help repair stroke-induced brain damage.
Fetal stem cells have advantages over adult and embryonic alternatives. Adult stem cells do exist in the brain, but they are difficult to obtain, survive less well after transplantation and may be less versatile than their younger counterparts.
Another approach would be to add a gene to the stem cells that boosts growth and prevents the formation… read more