1. Japan has been developing a virus that could track down the source of a cyber attack and neutralise its programme. The weapon is the culmination of a 179 million yen (USD 2.3 million) three-year project entrusted by the government to technology maker Fujitsu Ltd to develop a virus and equipment to monitor and analyse …
Glia cells also regulate learning and memory, new Tel Aviv University (TAU) research finds. Glia cells, named for the Greek word for “glue,” hold the brain’s neurons together and protect the cells that determine our thoughts and behaviors, but scientists have long puzzled over their prominence in the activities of the brain dedicated to learning …
China will allow commercial use of IPV6 internet in 2015 IPV6 can have speeds up to 10 gigabytes per second and have a trillion times more internet addresses for new types of applications. Clarification (H/T to commenters) – The next-generation IPV6 network is faster because of the underlying physical infrastructure, wires/fibers and hardware. The speed …
Researchers have created a new type of optical device small enough to fit millions on a computer chip that could lead to faster, more powerful information processing and supercomputers. The “passive optical diode” is made from two tiny silicon rings measuring 10 microns in diameter, or about one-tenth the width of a human hair. Unlike …
Ultrafast laser pulses are used to create features and surface textures in metals, ceramics and other materials for applications including the manufacture of solar cells and biosensors. The lasers pulse at durations of 100 femtoseconds, or quadrillionths of a second, and cause electrons to reach temperatures greater than 60,000 degrees Celsius during the pulse duration. …
New research has investigated if nerve growth factor (NGF) gene therapy can prevent diabetic heart failure and small vascular disease in mice. The team investigated whether increasing the myocardial level of NGF by using adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors could prevent the diabetic heart from failure. AAVs are small non-enveloped, single-stranded DNA viruses that can potentially …
US-Japan Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion 2011 Workshop presentations Joel Rogers presented simulations of a p-11B Polywell power reactor that would reach breakeven at diameter 13 meter. (15 pages) Last year Joel Rogers had an inferior design simulated that had a breakeven diameter of 300 meters. Some of the improvements are described in Joel Rogers 2010 …
Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and their collaborators found that tweaking a gene known as PGC-1, which is also found in human DNA, in the intestinal stem cells of fruit flies delayed the aging of their intestine and extended their lifespan by as much as 50 percent. “Fruit flies and humans have …
Researchers from Aneeve Nanotechnologies, a startup company at UCLA’s on-campus technology incubator at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), have used low-cost ink-jet printing to fabricate the first circuits composed of fully printed back-gated and top-gated carbon nanotube–based electronics for use with OLED displays. The team made carbon nanotube thin-film transistors with high mobility and a …
1. Stanford researchers studying how biodiesel can be generated using E. coli as a catalyst have determined the bacteria have what it takes to produce high volumes of the fuel. Now they need to figure out how to tweak its cellular controls in order to kick it into high gear. “The good news is that …
Michael Pettis (professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management and a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) agrees with Arvind Subramanian (Peterson Institute) that China should use current events to play a bigger and more decisive role in global finance, and I certainly agree that as a surplus nation it is …