Daily Mail UK – Scientists have used a computer chip to restore cognitive function in a rat’s brain sparking hopes the technology could one day help humans. UPDATE: Picture of the cyborg rat (Ratcutus of Borg) with the computer chip cerebellum. The chip mimics the cerebellum, a small region of the brain which plays an …
A fairly common complaint about my deaths per terawatt hour article is that radiation has long term effects and air pollution also has long term effects so why put more emphasis and concern over air pollution versus radiation and fallout from Chernobyl ? Outdoor air pollution in cities causes 1.3 million deaths per year. Chernobyl …
CNET – Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has unveiled a $99 Wi-Fi only, no-button Kindle Touch e-reader and a $149 Kindle Touch 3G–both designed to rival the Nook Touch. He also showed off a redesigned basic, non-touch Kindle e-reader for $79. And the big news of the morning…the $199 Kindle Fire tablet. The 7-inch, 14.6-ounce tablet–Amazon’s …
Increased use of vaccines would save over 5.4 million lives each year. The vaccine business has become more profitable in recent years. Two factors have turned the industry around. One is an increasing demand for vaccines in developing countries. This is partly due to greater prosperity in the growing economies of China and India but …
A*Star Singapore – Advanced electronics beckon thanks to self-assembling templates that allow the creation of nanoscale features on silicon wafers Although other groups have developed similar self assembled nanopillars, Krishnamoorthy and co-workers are the first to develop a process that can pattern the entire surface of a silicon wafer with highly uniform nanostructures The ever-increasing …
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have a new method for carving diamond crystals. The method offers a precise way to engineer microscopic cuts in a diamond surface, yielding potential benefits in both measurement and technological fields. NIST semiconductor researchers have found a way to create unique features in diamond—potentially leading to improvements …
NY Times – A Georgia company says it has overcome a major roadblock in turning agricultural waste into vehicle fuel and other useful chemicals by experimenting with a technology that treats the waste with compressed water heated to very high temperatures. The goal is to accomplish something that has eluded a dozen companies in recent …
Researchers with the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have identified a potential new advanced biofuel that could replace today’s standard fuel for diesel engines but would be clean, green, renewable and produced in the United States. Using the tools of synthetic biology, a JBEI research team engineered strains of two microbes, …
Researchers from Northwestern University have developed a carbon-based material that could revolutionize the way solar power is harvested. The new solar cell material – a transparent conductor made of carbon nanotubes – provides an alternative to current technology, which is mechanically brittle and reliant on a relatively rare mineral. Advanced Energy Materials – Electronically Monodisperse …
Carnegie Mellon University’s Jeremy J. Michalek and co-authors report that plug-in vehicles with small battery packs and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) that don’t plug in can reduce life cycle impacts from air emissions and enhance oil security at low or no additional cost over a lifetime. But plug-in vehicles with large battery packs are more …
Techcrunch – On Wednesday morning in New York City, Amazon will unveil the Kindle Fire. It will be a 7-inch backlit display tablet that looks similar to the BlackBerry PlayBook. It will use a Texas Instrument dual-core OMAP chip. This is the same chip used inside many newer Android devices.The clockspeed will probably be 1.2 …