Researchers at Massachussetts Institute of Technology and Virginia Commonwealth University reckon their supramolecular nanostamping printing technique could enable the mass production of nanodevices. The method uses DNA hybridization to replicate a pattern and has a resolution of less than 40 nm.
The key to getting robots to perform complex tasks may not be in making them smarter. Instead, it may be in getting a lot of dumb robots to act together.
That’s the idea behind a project being led by the University of Pennsylvania, funded by a $5 million grant from the Department of Defense. The purpose of the Scalable Swarms of Autonomous Robots and Sensors project is to create… read more
Next month, IBM is set to activate the most ambitious simulation of a human brain yet conceived. It’s a model they say is accurate down to the molecule.
No one claims the “Blue Brain” project will be self-aware. But this project, and others like it, uses electrical patterns in a silicon brain to simulate the electrical patterns in the human brain — patterns which are intimately linked to thought.… read more
Can actors be replaced with digital replicas?
“We’ve never been able to teach a computer to act,” George Lucas says. “It’s a talent, it’s a skill, it’s something you learn, it’s something you’re born with, and I don’t see in the foreseeable future that computers can become human enough in their artificial intelligence to have the same crazed psychology you need in order to relate to other people, so… read more
An Eddie Bauer store protest highlighted a growing movement aimed at probing the potential health risks of nanotechnology.
Virtual characters powered by advanced AI techniques, allowing them to change their emotional state in fairly complicated ways in response to the conversational English being typed in by the human player: this is the future of video games.
UC Irvine scientists have demonstrated for the first time that carbon nanotubes can route electrical signals on a chip faster than traditional copper or aluminum wires, at speeds of up to 10 GHz.
The research integrates high-speed nanotube-interconnect technology and high-speed nanotube-transistor technology into an ultra-high-speed all-nanotube electronic circuit that could be faster than any existing semiconductor technology.
People afflicted with multiple personalities reveal that the idea of the self is a fiction.
The illusion of self is merely a by-product of the brain’s organizational sophistication.
Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment in which he found that the brain activity began about half a second before the person was aware of deciding to act. The conscious decision came far too late to be the cause of the… read more
University of Arizona scientists have discovered how to use quantum mechanics to turn molecules into working transistors in the lab at room temperature, a breakthrough that might one day lead to high-powered computers the size of a postage stamp.
The proposed transistor is a ring-shaped molecule such as benzene. Attaching the two electrical leads to non-opposite sides of the ring allows the electrons to flow through the molecular ring… read more
According to HP, coding theory will be the key to building a “defect tolerant interface” for its nanoelectronic cross-bar architecture in future processors.
The method adds 50 percent more nanowires as an “insurance policy” to fabricate nano-electronic circuits with nearly perfect yields even though the probability of broken components will be high.
Atomic electromagnets made from coils of individual gold atoms could prove valuable for nanocircuits and machines.
Volume production of a write-once HD-DVD-R disc that can store 15GB of data will begin in the first half of next year, about the same time that HD-DVD recorders and PC drives will become available.
The write-once discs are expected to offer a cheaper alternative to HD-DVD-RW rewritable discs for customers who buy HD-DVD equipment.
Two computer scientists are trying to build an intelligent material that can replicate a physical 3-D facsimile of you from nothing more than a stream of video images.
If it works, all you’ll need to project yourself around the globe is an Internet connection and a pile of their “claytronics” self-organizing nanocomputers that can stick to each other and communicate with built-in wireless at the other end to assemble… read more
“MicroRNA” molecules – which differ from ordinary messenger RNA in not carrying information for making proteins – are emerging as key gene switches regulating embryo development and cell replication. Now, new evidence shows mis-regulation of microRNAs might trigger development of cancers.
The RepRap, a revolutionary machine that can copy itself and manufacture everyday objects quickly and cheaply, could transform industry in the developing world.
The machine could build items ranging in size from a few millimeters to around 30 centimeters, such as plates, dishes, combs and musical instruments.
The design of the RepRap will be available online and free to use.