A new superconducting material fabricated by a Canadian-German team has been fabricated out of a silicon-hydrogen compound [after supercompression, 96-120GPa] and does not require cooling. They had to keep the material under pressure (100GPa) in order to get it to superconduct. CORRECTION: The press release talked about not using refrigerant and EEtimes said room temperature …
In a major step forward for computational protein design, University of Washington scientists have built from scratch a handful of enzymes that successfully catalyze a specific chemical reaction. These proteins have no naturally occurring counterparts, and the reaction–which breaks down a man-made chemical–has no natural catalyst. David Baker and his colleagues at the University of …
Researchers at MIT and Texas Instruments (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today unveiled a new chip design for portable electronics that can be up to ten times more energy-efficient than present technology. The design could lead to cell phones, implantable medical devices and sensors that last far longer when running from a battery in about five years …
DNA was used to build a three-dimensional structure out of 15 nanometer gold nanoparticles. The gold nanoparticles are the bricks and the DNA is scaffold and mortar. Three-dimensional nanoparticle arrays are likely to be the foundation of future optical and electronic materials. The novel part of the work is that the researchers use DNA to …
A report that I had missed before. The Yomiuri newspaper reported (May, 2007) that China plans to boost its nuclear power generation capacity to between 15 and 20 times its current level by the end of 2030. Yomiuri Shimbun. The National Development and Reform Commission, which administers China’s energy policy, plans to increase nuclear power …
Colony worlds is hosting Carnival of space #37 My contribution was my article on Boeing proposed space gas stations, which could reduce costs and increase payloads going beyond low earth orbit Darnell Clayton of Colonyworlds discusses using Mercury as a prison planet BadAstronomy discusses the start of a new 11 year sunspot cycle Centauri Dreams …
Kovio, sunnyvale startup, jas the world’s first all-printed silicon transistor capability. They will have roll to roll printing of computers. This is clearly a process that will get even better as the design rules shrink and as they use faster printing technology like Memjet This technology also has implications for better fabbers, rapid prototyping and …
Toshiba Corporation today announced important breakthroughs in key technologies for magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), a promising, next-generation semiconductor memory device. Cell Structure. A material with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, which is used for recording media and a type of cobalt-iron, is employed in the magnetic layer, with magnesium oxide in the insulating layer and cobalt-iron-boron …
A new type of inkjet printer has been developed that can precisely print dots of various materials just 250 nanometers in diameter, while regular inkjet printers have 25 micron dots. The inkjet printer could make it possible to rapidly synthesize complex nanoscale structures out of various materials. This is part of a wave of new …
What made North America any better than uninhabited parts of Europe ? People who left were able to start fresh. They were able to tap into a different resource base. We can think of the world as your parents house and the unfinished basement as the Gobi Desert. What makes moving out better than living …
Loss of only one of the genes, a gene encoding the protein PHA-4, negated the lifespan-enhancing effect of calorie-restriction in worms. And, when researchers undertook the opposite experiment—by overexpressing pha-4 in worms—the longevity effect was enhanced. “PHA-4 acts completely independent of insulin/IGF-1 signaling and turns out to be essential for CR-mediated longevity,” says Panowski. “We …