NewsFactor Archives

Nano Fabric May Make Computers Thinner
For tomorrow's computers, thin may be in, say researchers in Russia and England who claim they have discovered the world's first single-atom-thick fabric. The fabric may represent a new class of materials -- so thin they are only two-dimensional -- and may lead to computers made from a single molecule.

Nanotech Branches Out with New Discovery
Solar batteries , quantum computers, and ultra-small, super-fast transistors may be the brainy beneficiaries of a new class of nanoscale compounds -- structures with individually tunable branches.

Nano-Tech Researcher Seeks Electronic Eraser
Electronic paper may be the next killer app, but in all the excitement
one question has not been clearly answered: How do you erase it?
University of Arizona chemist Jeanne Pemberton presented an answer at
the recent 2004 American Chemical Society annual meeting.

Nano-Lightning May Cool Future Computers
Tiny bolts of lightning may create wind currents small enough to cool
computers of the future, say researchers at Purdue University who
have filed for a patent on the ingenious system.
"This is a groundbreaking idea," said Purdue mechanical
engineering professor Suresh Garimella.

Self-Made Nanochips Off the Old Block
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin's Materials Research Science
and Engineering Center (MRSEC) have demonstrated a technique they say
could one day allow electronic devices to assemble themselves.

Machines that Reproduce May be Reality
Can machines reproduce? More importantly, perhaps -- should they be
allowed to? In a recent issue of the journal Artificial Life, a group of Canadian
researchers says yes despite warnings to the contrary -- most notably
from author Michael Crichton in his new book "Prey," about
self-replicating nanobots run amok.

Nanotech May Give Lenses and Mirrors New Shine
Dynamic nanoparticles may apply new shine to an old craft, making
lenses and mirrors, say a scientist and an entrepreneur who find the
traditional method, ground and polished to static perfection,
hopelessly dull.

Nanowire Circuits Could Spur Computing Advances
Semiconducting nanometer-size wires "substantially exceed the
performance of conventional silicon integrated circuits" in
transistors, claims Harvard University chemistry professor Charles
Lieber. Lieber and his research team say they have developed a technology to
fabricate nanowires with diameters ranging from 2nm to 100nm from
single crystals of semiconductor materials, such as silicon, germanium
and gallium arsenide.

Nano-Diamonds Sparkle One Photon at a Time
Taking a page from the SPECTRE handbook, French scientists are using
diamonds to deliver light. But where James Bond had to disarm
SPECTRE's diamond-driven, photon-concentrating laser in "Diamonds Are
Forever," Philippe Grangier and his research team are using
ultra-small versions of the gem to dilute a light beam and deliver one
photon at a time.

Laser Light May Fuel Nanomotors
Forget fancy fuel cells -- laser light may be the fuel of the future
for nanotech robots and motorized tools so small they can manipulate
individual cells and molecules.

Nano-Clay May Shape Micro-Devices
Using a method that captures nano-size clay particles on a crystal,
U.S. and Belgian researchers claim they have created an ultra-thin
film that may yield new materials for medical, engineering and
electronic devices.

Pace-Setting Nanotubes May Power Micro-Devices
New measurements by an Indian physicist and his team support the idea that nanotubes -- cylindrical carbon rolls no thicker than an atom -- may make good batteries for tiny devices or even power pacemakers, dispensing with cumbersome power packs.

Researchers Announce World's Smallest Switch
Technology continues its incredible shrinking act with a new single-molecule switch that researchers in New York and British Columbia contend may be the smallest ever devised. Sandwiched between two gold surfaces, a single molecule of a sulfur-containing organic compound known as benzene-dithiolate (BDT) can morph from a stable "off" configuration that resists electrical current to a stable "on" configuration that conducts electrical current and allows it to pass.

Nanotech Scientists Build Super-Small Circuit
Nanosize devices may be getting their own ultra-small version of a component that few electronic gadgets can function without: the switch. "We have performed a theoretical analysis of a carbon nanotube-based nanoelectromechanical switch," Swedish researchers Tomas Nord, Susanne Viefers and Jari Kinaret revealed in a new paper. The publication provides the first-ever blueprint for a nanorelay made from microscopic carbon tubules -- a switching device that may one day prove critical to nanotechnology.

Nimble Nanoswitch May Win Info Relay Race
Nanosize devices may be getting their own ultra-small version of a component that few electronic gadgets can function without: the switch. "We have performed a theoretical analysis of a carbon nanotube-based nanoelectromechanical switch," Swedish researchers Tomas Nord, Susanne Viefers and Jari Kinaret revealed in a new paper.

Digital Evolution Continues with Xerox Glyphs
"Dataglyphs are essentially a barcode on steroids," says Xerox researcher Jeff Breidenbach. "In some ways they are simply more flexible -- much more aesthetically flexible, more resistant to certain types of environmental damage ... and more flexible in the quantity of data stored."

Brain Tissue May Make Computers Go Live
Could we be moving inexorably to the eerie reality of "Donovan's Brain," the 1942 sci-fi classic about a brain without a body that takes over another man's mind? Probably not, but a University of Florida (UF) scientist's recent demonstration might make some brains think so.

Researchers Cruise in Purdue Data Cave
High-performance computing and artificial intelligence software may blast through barriers in data management to create a so-called "data cave," like the one Tom Cruise uses to catch crooks in the movie "Minority Report".

Computers Can Argue, Researcher Claims
To resolve conflicts through negotiation, computers need artificial intelligence programs, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON researcher Nick Jennings says. "To improve their performance, we need to ensure they have the ability to overcome real-world problems such as conflict."

New Algorithm Foils Digital Forgers
Is seeing really believing?
Not in the era of digital imaging, says DARTMOUTH COLLEGE professor Hany Farid, who, with graduate student Alin Popescu, has developed a mathematical technique that can discern a "real" digital image from one that has been tampered with.

New Program Exterminates End-User Bugs
Exterminating bugs that infest spreadsheets and Internet calculators is the goal of an Oregon State University (OSU) project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Getting the bugs out should come as good news to the increasing millions who use online spreadsheets to calculate interest rates, amortizations, investment returns, and scores of other numerical values.

Clever Critter May Detect Hard-Drive Failures
Early detection is invaluable to prevent heart failure, and it may work for hard failure -- as in hard drive -- too, say Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers. They have designed a new heat-sensitive sensor to detect temperature variations that may signal an oncoming hard-drive disaster.

Big Blue Supercomputer to Analyze Big Bang
A supercomputer designed to handle explosions of data on Earth will be looking at data from the biggest explosion of all -- the Big Bang that created the universe billions of years ago.

Scientific Researchers Routinely Fudge Citations
Tomorrow's IT advances -- which usually start out in today's academic
journals -- may be the product of cheating, say two UCLA electrical engineering
professors. "We discovered that the majority of scientific citations are copied from the lists of references used in other papers," Simkin and Roychowdhury write in a
paper whose title admonishes, "Read Before You Cite!"

Pumps, Not Fans, May Cool Tomorrow's Computers
Computer sales may be cooling, but computer chips keep getting
hotter, and an innovative new way to cool them uses liquid forced
through micro-channels only three times the width of a human hair.

Computer Simulations May Unlock Nature's Secrets
To study how nature creates complex and beautiful designs from simple
ingredients, British researchers have put their petals to the metal by
"growing" snapdragons in a computer.

Supercomputer Cell Modeling Aims for Disease-Free Future
Virtual human cells -- computer-generated digital models -- may make
testing the effectiveness of a new drug or charting the course of a
perplexing disease as simple as typing on a keyboard.

Snaky Tape May Enliven Computer Interactions
In the marketplace for computer tools, the snake may devour the
mouse. Twisting, bending, pushing and pulling a flexible, snakelike
tool called the "ShapeTape," a University of Toronto research team is
generating two- and three-dimensional images without moving a mouse or
tapping a keyboard.

Digital Vaccine May Make Computer Networks Tolerant to a Fault
Sick computer networks may have strong medicine in a novel vaccine: the very faults that can corrupt, delay or destroy important data and critical communications. "Our method allows a software engineer to inject a fault into a network and monitor how the fault is handled," said student researcher Martin Mathis of the University of California at Irvine.

'C' Earns Top Score in Efficiency
"C" stands for efficiency, according to student researcher Alexandra "Sasha" Rahlin, who set out to determine which programming language -- BASIC, C, Java or Perl -- was most efficient in terms of execution time and virtual memory allocation.

More Trouble Ahead for Moore's Law?
Incremental impediments to semiconductor performance may add up to more trouble than Moore's Law can handle, threatening the famous conjecture by Intel founder Gordon Moore that semiconductor performance would double approximately every 18 months.

Chip Innovators Vow To Enforce Moore's Law
Limits looming large over semiconductor performance may be out to break Moore's Law. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore's famous conjecture about the periodic doubling of microprocessor capacity is now threatened, researchers say, by its own stunning success. Ironically, as companies attempt to innovate around these obstacles, their efforts may ultimately salvage Moore, whose law is conditioned on continual innovation.

Multimedia Programming Comes in New FLAVOR
Programmers and developers can kick up their multimedia projects a notch by adding a little FLAVOR (Formal Language for Audiovisual Object Representation) to their Java and C++ programming endeavors, says the programming language's inventor, Columbia University electrical engineering professor Alexandros Eleftheriadis.

New Markup Language Challenges Rich-Media Leaders
A digital artist has created a Web-authoring tool that he thinks may reflect the spirit of artists everywhere. Inventor and Netomat chief scientist Maciej Wisniewski is becoming known as a rebel in the fold that includes HTML (hypertext markup language), Flash, XML (extensible markup language) and a host of techno-friendly languages that do not always speak to the artists who use them.

Computer Pings May Measure Light Speed
A centuries-old endeavor has leapt into the computer age with a novel new method to measure the speed of light proposed by physics educators at Youngstown State University.

Computer Signals Size Up Earth
Miles of fiber-optic cable -- recently the bane of troubled companies, such as Global Crossing -- may have a clever new use for high school and college science students struggling to answer a question first tackled by the ancient Greeks: How big is the Earth?

IT's Alive: Chips and Circuits That Mimic Cells
Computers that evolve as tasks grow increasingly complex and come alive with self-replicating chips and self-healing circuits may represent the future of information technology.

Intel's Itanium: Before Its Time or Just in Time?
As the latest 64-bit microprocessor to hit the market, Intel's Itanium 2 has been buffeted by rumors, hype and slower-than-expected adoption.... Semiconductor and microprocessing expert Bob Markunas of Ziptronix told NewsFactor that Intel's Itanium 2 is a "transition product" that will pave the way for a mainstream 64-bit chip market.

The Secret World of Triangle Rendering Technology
In a techno-economy in which the next "killer app" may be a sophisticated game called Doom 3, makers of graphics chips and video cards must stay several steps ahead of mouse-wielding, saber-bearing gamers bent on nothing less than total domination of perfectly rendered virtual worlds. In this special report, NewsFactor takes a look at the mind-bending technology of triangle rendering, vertex manipulation and pixel shading that turns PCs into dream machines.

New Search Tool Ranks I.T. Research Funding
Of the 15 most cited funding agencies, NSF had the highest number of acknowledgements -- 12,287 -- followed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with 4,712. "NSF funds established researchers as well as takes a chance on new researchers," says Penn State researcher C. Lee Giles.

Cyber Center Targets Internet Plagues
Researchers affiliated with the National Science Foundation have launched a "centers for disease control" that targets not bubonic but electronic plagues -- viruses, worms and other computer-transmitted infections that can cripple cyberspace as completely as the black plague brought Europe to its knees during the Middle Ages.

Light-Based Net May Mean Blazing Connections
If -- as Einstein proclaimed -- nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, then a supercharged Internet based entirely on light might be a great way to move mounting reams of digital data.
At least that's what Canadian researchers are saying in a newly published paper in the journal Nano Letters.

Researchers: Radio Tuning Knobs Could Dial Better Web Searches
Radio tuning buttons represent a "technology innovation that simplifies and improves multimedia searching," said Jim Jansen, Penn State University assistant professor of information sciences and technology. But Web users are not warming to the idea.

New Software Aims To Fight Pirates of the P2P
Recording artists everywhere may soon be able to raise a cheer: "We have no fear of peer-to-peer!"
A University of Tulsa (UT) research team has patented software designed to prevent illegal downloading of music over the Internet.

New Web Protocol May Leave DSL in the Dust
With the click of a BIC, speeding along the information superhighway
may begin to feel like zooming down Germany's no-holds-barred
Autobahn. BIC-TCP (binary increase congestion transmission control protocol) is
a new data-transfer protocol that "makes today's high-speed digital
subscriber line (DSL) connections seem lethargic," say computer
science researchers at North Carolina State University (NCSU).

Advice for Job Seekers: Google Yourself
Do you Google yourself? "Yes," say people -- millions, probably -- who
regularly look up their own names and other identifying features on the
popular search engine. So-called "self-Googling" may seem like vanity
in action, but a University at Buffalo communications professor says it is
a "shrewd form of personal brand management in the digital age."

Can Social Networking Stop Spam?
Who goes there? Friend or foe? That is the question a new spam-fighting
algorithm asks of incoming e-mail. Friends get in; spam gets canned.
"We routinely use our social networks to judge the trustworthiness of
outsiders ... to decide where to buy our next car, or where to find a
good mechanic," said UCLA electrical engineering professor Vwani
Roychowdhury, who developed the algorithm with fellow UCLA
professor P. Oscar Boykin.

E-Mailing Aromas May Be Next Multimedia Experience
Sending smells by e-mail may be possible within the next decade,
say researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada who
have invented an electronic nose that connects to a PC and can
detect several different odors.

New Search Algorithm Hears 'People's Voice'
"We hear you -- and we want the Internet to hear you too," say German
researchers who have created a new Internet search algorithm called
"Vox Populi" (Voice of the People), which assigns relative weights to
search words.

Research Suggests New Way To Can Spam
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should lower their monthly fees if
they permit spam to reach their paying customers, say researchers at
the University of Missouri in Columbia (UMC).

Therminator May Squelch Net Attacks
Atlanta-based network intelligence company Lancope has teamed with
leading U.S. defense organizations to create a new way to terminate
malicious network attacks.

E-Mail Stress Disorder: New Tech-Age Plague?
A survey of 26,000 Yahoo! e-mail users has turned up evidence of a
disorder researchers are likening to post-traumatic stress disorder.
E-mail has "become an increasing burden on computer users," a
London-based research team concluded, "with the power to ruin their
personal lives."

Googling May Reach Breakneck Speeds
"Googling" may get up to five times faster with new techniques
developed by Stanford University computer-science researchers. Google
search engines presently use so-called Web-page ranking methods to
display results that users access by typing keywords into Google's
search field. Speeding up Google's search algorithm, the researchers
say, may make it possible to calculate page rankings personalized for
an individual's interests or customized to a particular topic.

Cascading Failures Could Crash the Global Internet
Could hackers ever shut down the entire Internet? Could terrorists ever cause a blackout so vast it would darken the entire continent? Yes, say scientists at Arizona State University. Cleverly targeted attacks on complex, real-world networks, such as the Internet and power grids, could lead to a virtual cascade of overload failures that would crash the entire system.

Accessibility Breakthroughs Broaden Web Horizons
Personability, adaptability, scalability, reliability, portability. A lot of Internet technology buzzwords have a common root -- "ability" -- that may seem ironic to one wave of Web surfers because of a glaring omission. People with disabilities advocate buzzword status for "accessibility," a routine concept in the world of brick-and-mortar that is still catching on online.

1s and 0s and the Order of Everything
All the world, William Shakespeare said, is a stage. To Notre Dame computer science researcher Albert Laszlo-Barabasi, however, all the world is a hard drive -- or millions of hard drives linked by thousands of hubs and nodes.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Web Sites
"Have it your way," long the mantra of fast-food giant Burger King, might be the key to better e-commerce, according to a computer science researcher at Virginia Tech.

Is HTML on Its Way Out?
A mere eight years ago, the "HT" in HTML stood as much for "hot" as it did for "hypertext." This language of the Internet was on everyone's lips, from bedroom coders to boardroom capitalists. Now, though, "X" is slowly starting to mark the hypertext spot as XML, XHTML and other, more sophisticated Internet languages nimbly supplement -- and in some cases supplant -- their older and stodgier cousin.

Massive Online Database May Boost Semi Research
Semiconductor scientists and electronics engineers who need fast,
accurate answers about the properties of various materials have a new
online database that may be the most complete resource of its kind.

Storage Company Builds a Better Warehouse
Framingham, Massachusetts-based Netezza Corporation has unveiled a
data warehouse for bio-information that company officials hope will
operate as efficiently as an Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) book order "at
half the cost of existing data-warehouse systems," explained Netezza
spokesperson Siobhan Gallagher.

IBM and UK Enlist Grid Computing in Cancer Fight
IBM Oxford University and the British government have teamed up to fight breast cancer using a Big Blue pill: a massive computer grid designed to enable early screening and diagnosis.

Sparks Fly in Server Microchip Race
In the race to build a better server microchip, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC),
Sun and IBM (NYSE: IBM) are the likely leaders of a pack that also
includes AMD (NYSE: AMD) , Fujitsu, MIPS and HP (NYSE: HPQ) .
"If you're looking at chips that have a robust future in server
designs, kick [HP's] Alpha [and] PA-RISC, and MIPS out of the race,"
Illuminata chip industry analyst Jonathan Eunice told NewsFactor.

Data Storage Leap Could Produce Film Library on a Disk
Souped-up magnetic fields that put the brakes on fleeing electrons soon may be corralled themselves to create computer disk drives that can store and accesat least 40 times more data than today's comparatively puny models. Prototypes with 10 times as much storage as the best commercial drives emerged from the work of Washington University experimental physics professor Stuart Solin and his team in the spring of 2002. Now the scientists say they have managed to quadruple that storage factor; they will report their findings early this year.

Supersize IT: From Megabytes to Petabytes
A deluge of digital data in life sciences and astronomy has scientists at Johns Hopkins University and Microsoft concluding that the titan of supersized data storage, the petabyte, may be as commonplace as the megabyte in less than a decade.

The Data Storage Universe in a Grain of SAN
In an unending quest to address the central conflict that drives storage technology evolution -- the need to fit more data into less space -- the industry is changing its focus from stand-alone products, such as hard disks and backup tapes, to networked solutions, known by such fancy names as network-attached storage (NAS) or storage area networks (SANs).

Spin is In, Semiconductor Researchers Say
Valve-like switches that integrate two emerging fields of technology -- organic semiconductor electronics and spin electronics, or spintronics -- may lead to faster, cheaper computers, say University of Utah physicists who have invented the first "organic spin valve."

Researchers Create Super-Fast Quantum Computer Simulator
Using a classical computer to manipulate Shor's algorithm -- a
centerpiece of quantum-computer science -- Japanese researchers hope they can
shore up the shaky marriage of quantum mechanics and computing that
scientists hope will someday produce offspring of super-fast HAL-9000
style machines.

Quantum MP3 May Soon Be Reality
"Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became
operational at the H.A.L. lab in Urbana, Illinois, on the 12th of
January." When the intrepid astronauts of Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space
Odyssey" heard those ominous words from their future nemesis, they
could have been hearing the voice of a quantum computer, though
Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick might not have envisioned such
technology at the time.

Chilly Future May Await Tomorrow's Computers
A digital "deep freeze" may be the only way to save computers of the
future from sizzling speeds that could burn out even the most robust
microchips and hard drives. Rapid-fire calculations literally might
set fire to computers based on quantum-mechanical principals -- which
are the likely successors to today's electronic machines, say
scientists who study quantum computing's potential for error. Couple
excess heat with excessively rapid calculations and quantum computers
may generate so many errors that they burn out in calculato.

Quantum Bits Need To Catch a Virtual Bus
A "virtual bus" that shuttles bits of information may be a cornerstone of quantum computer architecture, say scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This critical building block, however, has yet to be designed and is missing from most quantum computer proposals, the scientists claim.

Fiber Optics Could Spur Quantum Computing Leap
There may be good news for computer scientists hoping to make a quantum leap sooner rather than later: A new paper by European researchers suggests that present-day fiber-optic technology is advanced enough to facilitate light-speed information processing in quantum computers.

Quantum Leaps May Solve Impossible Problems
Alan Turing might be considered the "John Forbes Nash of computer science" -- a troubled young Princeton genius who achieved prominence in the 1950s. Turing published one of the top 10 papers in all of 20th-century science -- "On the Computability of Numbers." He killed himself over a conviction for homosexuality at the height of his genius, but since his death, his definition of "computability" has stood untouched and unchanged. Now, however, Australian mathematician Tien Kieu has made a discovery that could turn the last century of mathematics and all of computer science on its head: Problems that used to be considered "unsolvable" or "incomputable" may be solved using the almost mystical properties of quantum mechanics.

Quantum Transistor May Put a New Spin on Spintronics
The ubiquitous transistor may go from common to quantum sooner than later if physicists in China and Canada succeed with a design that puts a whole new spin on spintronics -- the burgeoning application of an electron's spin to chips, circuits and, eventually, a revolutionary line of consumer electronics.

Computer Wizards Tackle Quantum Quandary
By corralling a dynamic trio of electrons on a semiconductor, a scientist named Merlin and his team of research wizards may have solved a quantum computational quandary -- how to create and control more than just a pair of so-called "entangled particles" used to construct quantum bits, or "qubits.".

Wordspotter Searches Historical Documents
In the age of Google, searching through most documents is as easy as clicking a mouse. But what about documents that mice like to munch -- in attics, basements, and stuffy storage rooms -- handwritten documents from the past, such as Einstein's original Theory of Relativity; the Bill of Rights; or the Emancipation Proclamation?

Transistor Laser May Light Up Telecom
Scientists at the University of Illinois have developed a transistor that emits laser light. The technology could facilitate faster signal processing, higher-speed devices and large-capacity seamless communications, the researchers say.

New Lubricant May Smooth Hard-Drive Performance
Gears everywhere need good lubrication to perform -- even gears in computer hard drives.
The answer to lubricating tomorrow's hard drives may lie with an inexpensive and abundant polyester that University of Illinois (UI) Ph.D. candidate Wei Xiao developed into a new lubricant.

Popeye Power May Energize Tomorrow's Electronics
The Popeye Principle may one day power cell phones and laptops, say researchers at MIT, who have used spinach -- the superhero sailor's fave food -- to power a tiny electronic circuit.

Housing for High-Tech Equipment
Über investor Warren Buffett -- famous for shying away from tech stocks because he "can't understand them" or because they're "too glamorous" -- may want to take a look at Purcell Systems, a decidedly unglamorous tech company that makes an easy-to-understand product -- cabinets.

Researcher Gets Bigger Reception with Smaller Antenna
Thinking big at his small home, University of Rhode Island (URI) physics researcher Rob Vincent may have found the Holy Grail of antenna technology -- a small antenna with high efficiency and wide bandwidth that may improve reception in WiFi and other wireless communication applications.

Sponge Mouse May Revolutionize Point-Click
Taking a cue from Sponge Bob, Iowa State University researchers have invented
a "sponge mouse" they hope will be "the light at the end of the carpal tunnel."

Metaphysical Lens May Refocus Electronics
The creation of an unusual flat lens may finally resolve a
long-running controversy about the existence of materials that have almost metaphysical qualities -- so-called "metamaterials" that transcend the laws of nature.

FrogPad: One Small Leap for Mankind's Keyboards?
If he were alive today, instead of writing about the "Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," Mark Twain might be tapping away
about the celebrated typing frog of Harris County, Texas, where
Houston-based FrogPad hopes to single-handedly revolutionize the
two-handed keyboard.

Intel Leads Search for Perfect Electronics Package
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is getting into the business of intelligent
packaging. With the Electronic Packaging Laboratory at the University
at Buffalo (UB) School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the
semiconductor giant is developing the next generation of packaging for
its Pentium processor.

New Xerox Printing Tech May Thwart Forgers
Armed with a new technology dubbed "Glossmark," scientists at Xerox
(NYSE: XRX) want to rob terrorists and other criminals of several
important weapons in their arsenal -- forged drivers' licenses, phony
passports, fake birth certificates, and similar documents of dubious
origin.

New Bulb May Power Electronics
A new type of tungsten filament -- the world's most widely used light
source -- may emit enough energy to power electric cars, generators,
and consumer electronics, say researchers at Sandia National
Laboratories.

Diehard Diode May Solve Computer Gridlock
Untangling computer chips that are "worse than the Los Angeles
freeway, with wires running back and forth clogging the path of
propagating signals," is the goal of Ohio State University electrical
engineering and physics professor Paul Berger.

Metaphysical Lens May Refocus Electronics
The creation of an unusual flat lens may finally resolve a
long-running controversy about the existence of materials that have
metaphysical qualities -- so-called "metamaterials" -- that transcend
the laws of nature.

Bio-Batteries Could Lead Consumer Electronics Charge
Shaken martinis may juice up both James Bond and his gadgets -- say
chemists who envision the fictional spy downing his signature drink
and then topping off his cell phone battery with the last few drops.
To help 007 mix martinis and mayhem, however, gadget guru Q will have
to replace the batteries in Her Majesty's devious devices with
so-called "biofuel cells."

Paperless Office: A Storage-Space Odyssey
The fastest-growing county in Illinois has summoned the will to go
paperless. In order to minimize storage space, cut costs and improve
efficiency, employees of Will County have installed a new software
application called "ViewWise" to manage and store their now-electronic
records.

Optical Chips May Emerge from Quantum Canyons
A hybrid plastic that produces light at fiber optic-friendly
wavelengths may be a future cornerstone of optical computer chips,
according to University of Toronto engineers and chemists. The
researchers hybridized the new plastic with quantum dots -- crystals
just five-billionths of a meter in diameter that convert electrons
into photons.

Tera Tech: The Final Frontier?
Using a palm-size device implanted with a semiconducting
nanostructure, scientists at the University of Delaware claim they can
harness the power of formerly inaccessible terahertz waves that are
1,000 times higher in frequency than microwaves. The device is
implanted with a so-called silicon-germanium semiconductor.

Tiny Battery May Power Next-Gen Gadgets
A radical new design that promises to revamp and rewire a decades-old staple of electronics -- the battery -- may also be the elusive blueprint for powering so-called "micro-electromechanical systems," or MEMS, futuristic devices no wider than a human hair.

Student Designs Ionic Knife To Etch Transistors
If the dreams of one young researcher ultimately come true, renowned physicist Leon Lederman will be remembered not only for winning the Nobel Prize, but also for inspiring the creation of a patented device that uses ion beams to painstakingly etch transistors, one at a time, on silicon chips.

Electronics Gives Chaos a Good Name
Chaos may improve a critical component of electronics manufacturing -- specifically in spray-applied coatings that enhance heat resistance and electrical conductivity. Scientists in Mexico have discovered in aerosols the same chaotic order that characterizes wispy clouds, rugged mountains and falling snow.

Voice Mouse Turns Silent Computer Screens into 'Talkies'
Seventy-odd years after the world's first mouse with a voice made his debut on the silver screen, an Israeli-American firm has introduced the world's first "voice mouse." The Commodio QPointer HandsFree lets users employ voice commands to perform functions that parallel those of the traditional mouse.

Sounds Could Make Smart Devices Smarter
Drawing on the expertise of the blind, a University of Toronto professor claims he is "teaching" electronic devices how to navigate using surrounding sounds.

Tiny Silicon Spies To Sniff Terror
Bunker bombs, battleships, and B-2 bombers step aside -- the next hero in the war on terror may soon be a brain that is smaller than the grains of desert sand in Afghanistan. Smart, covert "silicon dust chips" can detect the tools of terror before they have a chance to ply the deeds of evildoers.

Genetics Meets Graphics in Futuristic Document Creation
Ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration is the stuff of genius, Thomas Edison famously said, and certainly of graphic artistry -- the often-tedious pursuit of just the right look for that perfect brochure, newsletter or glossy corporate first impression. While eyestrain, furrowed brows and mumbled obscenities accompany many document-layout sessions, a new computer algorithm based on human genetics may allow inspiration to take a more prominent role in the artistic equation, claims Lisa Purvis, a computer scientist at Xerox.

'Bell Telegraph' May Enable Cosmic Communications
The future of telecommunications may hinge on a clever new version of a device from its past, physicists claim. What the Bell telephone is to communication across town or overseas, the Bell telegraph -- named for British physicist J.S. Bell -- may become to communication across the solar system or even the Milky Way.

Diamond Dust May Make Televisions Thin
Wild, Wild West villain Morgan Midas knew it -- diamonds are a lot more than just a girl's best friend.
Midas, TV trivia fans will remember, stole the world's finest diamonds, ground them into dust and melted the sparkling powder into a special elixir that allowed him to move at nearly the speed of light -- and speed is a thief's best friend. Now, a hundred years later (40 years in television time), British researchers say diamond dust could make bulky TV screens as much a thing of the past as the golden oldies they used to broadcast.

Mini Transistors May Give Microprocessors a Maxi Boost
Tiny transistors could speed cell phones and computers in a big way, says a computer-science researcher at University of California, Irvine (UCI). UCI's Peter Burke has shown for the first time that transistors made from single-walled carbon tubes only a few nanometers wide operate at extremely fast microwave frequencies.

Magnetic Switching Slower Than Expected
The speed at which magnets switch polarity is 1,000 times slower than researchers previously expected, if new experimental results are correct.

Laser-Cooled Chips on Horizon
U.S. Air Force scientists think they may be close to perfecting a
process that defies intuition: using lasers not to shoot down incoming
missiles with superheated rays, but to cool things, specifically
semiconductors.

Alcohol Loosens up Micro Machines, Researchers Say
From Tin Man to tiny machine, moving metal parts need lubrication.
Tiny moving parts -- motors that operate mirrors in fiber-optic
communication systems or nozzles that disperse ink in ink-jet
rinters -- pose a lubrication dilemma that Penn State University
researchers have tackled with an unusual new approach.

Research May Crystallize Future of Optical Microchips
A new class of microscopic crystal structures developed at the
University of Toronto (UT), may bring high-bandwidth optical
microchips one step closer to efficient, large-scale fabrication -- a goal that has eluded researchers for nearly two decades.

Strain Changes Semiconductors, Researchers Claim
The song of the semiconductor might sound like David Bowie's
"Changes," except that where Bowie sings about "strange changes,"
researchers are saying that strain changes the optical, electrical and
mechanical properties of semiconductor material.

Next Stop for Semis: Solar Power
Solar-power companies one day might overtake chip manufacturers as the
primary consumers of semiconductors , especially if solar-powered
cars -- such as those recently featured in the cross-country American
Solar Challenge race -- ever become consumer realities.

Have Diamonds Become Tech's Best Friend?
A French researcher says that diamonds may be the semiconductor
industry's best hope for superior performance in the face of
exponentially increasing IT demands.

Solar-Powered Robot: Chile Today, Mars Tomorrow
A solar-powered robot designed to find life on Mars will first land in
Chile's stark Atacama Desert, researchers at NASA and Carnegie Mellon
University (CMU) told NewsFactor. The researchers will use the Atacama, described as one of the most arid regions on Earth, as a Martian analog.

Good Conduct Keeps Semis Cool
To think clearly, computers -- like people -- need to stay cool, so computer scientists at two institutions have birthed an exotic breed of silicon that helps take the heat off busy semiconductors

Fractal Magnets May Fracture Old Technologies
Scientists have announced a precocious new offspring of magnets and plastic -- conveniently embedded in every card with a magnetic strip -- that could reinvent smart card technology and yield a dazzling new array of high-tech gadgets.

Carbon Chip Breakthrough May Crush Silicon
Xerox (NYSE: XRX) researchers in Canada claim they have stabilized polythiophene, a normally unstable, yet highly flexible, semiconducting polymer that can be etched with electronic circuits in place of rigid silicon chips, promising newspaper-thin computer monitors and televisions you can pin to your wall.

Microchips Have Macro Environmental Impact
Small microchips may pose big environmental problems, according to a new study to be published by the American Chemical Society (ACS) in the December 15th edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Software May Speed Emergency Response
City governments may soon have a new software tool that assesses and improves emergency responses. The Emergency Response Time Assessment System (ERTAS) is applicable to any city, say the University at Buffalo (UB) geography researchers who created it.

New Software May Enliven Digital Images
GIFs and JPGs of faces and fabrics may get new renditions worthy of
Michelangelo with an experimental software that adds complex,
real-life textures to hopelessly flat digital images.

New Software May Vanquish Rural Telecom Headaches
Small, rural communities may finally have access to affordable cell
phones, say researchers who have tested software that can replace a
cellular tower's room full of communications hardware with a single
desktop computer. The new product -- called Vanu Software Radio T --
also can run emergency communications.

Open-Source Software Debate Reaches Ivory Towers
The near-absolute democracy of open-source software is tantamount to
academic peer review, the process by which important research passes
the scrutiny of expert critics to get published in major journals,
argues a Stanford University researcher.

Build IT and They May Not Come, Penn State Researchers Say
If you build it, will they come? Not necessarily, say Pennsylvania State University (PSU) researchers, especially if the "IT" stands for information technology. "Some people have the naive view that if a region gets fiber optic cables, computers and a university, then companies will come and a knowledge economy will flourish," said Eileen Trauth, PSU professor of information sciences and technology.

Digital Dolphins May Improve Telecom
Call it the Flipper Flash.
Multi-rate, ultra-short laser pulses -- with wavelets shaped like the sonar image of a dolphin's chirp -- are faster than lightning and zip through clouds, fog and adverse weather conditions, carrying huge amounts of digital information.

I.T. Goes Under the Sea With New Oceanography Project
Fiber-optic lines running under water may soon bring telecommunications from the sea, say researchers at the world's pre-eminent oceanography research center, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

I.T. May Help Clean a Polluted Sea, Say Researchers
  If an article in this week's journal Science is on target, air pollution fouls not only our skies but our oceans as well.
  The seven seas are absorbing 48 percent of fossil-fuel related carbon dioxide emissions, reports NOAA oceanographer Christopher Sabine in Seattle, Washington.
  To clear the air -- and the water -- a host of hardware probably comes to mind: smokestack scrubbers, pollutant filters, clean-burning fuels and clean-running cars.
  But software and information technology may play an equally important role, claim the authors of a study published in a recent special issue of the journal Management of Environmental Quality, which is devoted to "information technologies in environmental engineering."

Researchers Question I.T. Subculture Values
Like an insidious computer virus , Murphy's Law infects information-technology projects at an alarming rate, say researchers at Syracuse University. The "Murphy.exe virus" is so widespread that upwards of 75 percent of information-technology projects fail, claims Jeffrey Stanton, an assistant professor of industrial and organizational psychology who studies the use of technology in the workplace.

Chill Pill May Cool Cell Phones
University of Wisconsin researchers say they have developed a "chill
pill" to help cool down overheated cell phones and improve signal
quality while using less battery power.

Researchers Look into Laser's Heart
In a quest for more powerful and efficient fiber-optic lasers,
University of Toronto researchers say they have gone to the heart of the matter
by observing -- for the first time -- the "beating heart" of a laser.

Data Blasts Across Atlantic in Super-Speed Test
Just as the super-fast Concord transatlantic jetliner retires,
researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have set a
new speed milestone -- this time for data transmission.

Quantum ComSat May Send Mail Faster Than Light Speed
When crises strike, far-flung intergalactic Federation ambassadors
need to relay information back and forth as fast as their diplomatic
counterparts on Earth. But Earthbound data moves at the speed of
light -- about 300,000 km/s -- not nearly fast enough to satisfy
critical negotiations between impatient, hyper-intelligent beings from
planets 30 light years apart.

Speeding Up Broadband
Reaching the outer limits of Internet speed is a daunting challenge for a rapidly evolving medium that already has surpassed velocities... Ultralink "serves the higher-bandwidth needs of consumers who have set up home networks, send or receive very large files, such as when downloading software, or enjoy other bandwidth-intensive applications," Karl Ossentjuk, vice president of Internet services at AT&T Broadband, told NewsFactor.

New Tech Taps Solar Power To Deliver Broadband
Broad strokes of sunlight are bringing broadband to remote areas without electricity. University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers have established solar-power stations that allow broadband microwave antennas to penetrate otherwise unreachable rural locations.

Scientists Examine IT's 'Human Factor'
The most critical networks in any organization are not the
technologies that carry Internet traffic, researchers claim, but the
social networks among persons and groups who use the technology -- and
define an organization's knowledge flow in the process.

IT: More About People Than Technology
The critical role of information technology may not lie so much with
the technology, but with the people who use it, a new study reports.
The impact of information technology on organizational performance is
more clearly illustrated by actual IT usage than by traditional
measures, according to University of Notre Dame researchers.

Small Clips Compete at Cell Phone Film Festival
Celluloid is going cellular, and creators of the new content offerings
are demonstrating their offerings at the World's Smallest Film
Festival. This year's CTIA conference is the home of the event, the
brainchild of Big Digit founders Beau Buck and Tim Scannell, longtime
tech mavericks.