The 2011 International Electron Device Meeting is held annually to describe the state of the art in transistors and switching circuits. This year’s Washington meeting is exploring a variety of options for continuing Moore’s law for as long as is feasible. The keynote speaker, Intel Senior Fellow Mark Bohr, noted that traditional scaling ran out …
Carnival of Space 226 is up at Dear Astronomer Nicole Gugliucci at Discovery News writes about how Astronomers can make very precise measurements of a black hole’s mass and size, using an array of techniques that span the electromagnetic spectrum. A group led by Jerome Orosz of San Diego State University used data from optical …
Memjet Technologies was awarded the prestigious 2011 “Best of What’s New” Award in the Computing category by Popular Science magazine. One of the top technology innovations of 2011. They have partnered with Lenova and other printer makers. The Memjet reference color office printer honored by Popular Science means incredibly fast color productivity, cost efficiency, and …
Lead author Andreas Schmittner from Oregon State University, US, explained that by looking at surface temperatures during the most recent ice age – 21,000 years ago – when humans were having no impact on global temperatures, he, and his colleagues show that this period was not as cold as previous estimates suggest. The new models …
It was not too long ago that basic science lectures began with the three forms of matter: gases, liquids and solids–and somewhere along the line plasmas were occasionally added to the list. But to be precise, a plasma is an ionized gas; thus, a subset of the big three. But this subset has coexisted with …
System combining gene therapy with tissue engineering could avoid the need for frequent injections of recombinant drugs Patients who rely on recombinant, protein-based drugs must often endure frequent injections, often several times a week, or intravenous therapy. Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston demonstrate the possibility that blood vessels, made from genetically engineered cells, could secrete …
Economist (Larry) Lang Xianping had for a long time the most popular talkshow on TV in Shanghai until he was sacked because his mandarin did not meet the official standards. Lang was popular because he told his audience the truth about finance, corruption and the people who were involved, a unique take in Chinese TV. …
Stem cells taken from a patient’s own heart have, for the first time, been used to repair damaged heart tissue, researchers claim. The preliminary trial was on patients with heart failure who were having heart bypass surgery. During the operation, a piece of heart tissue, from the right atrial appendage, was taken. While the patient …
Aging bodies become increasingly burdened over time with dysfunctional cells resistant to apoptotic or other clearance. The most well-known of these are so-called “senescent” cells, originally characterized by Leonard Hayflick as mitotic cells that reached growth arrest after a limited replicative lifespan (later associated with telomere attrition) under unphysiological conditions in culture. Later research has …
Technology Review – Researchers at Northeastern University have developed a virtual nurse and exercise coach that are surprisingly likable and effective Patients who interacted with a virtual nurse named Elizabeth said they preferred the computer simulation to an actual doctor or nurse because they didn’t feel rushed or talked down to. A recent clinical trial …
MIT Energy Initiative has a five-part series of articles that takes a broad view of the likely scalable energy candidates. The article on wind talked about the economics, the intermittent nature of wind power and prospects for scaling. The MIT article on nuclear power stated Nuclear power is often thought of as zero-emissions, Prinn points …