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Science Daily — Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a phenomenon which allows measurement of the mechanical motion of nanostructures by using the AC Josephson effect. The findings, which may be used to identify and characterize structural and mechanical properties of nanoparticles, including materials of biological interest, appear online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The AC Josephson effect refers to work that Brian Josephson published in 1962 regarding the flow of an electrical current between superconductors. In this work, for which he shared a 1973 Nobel Prize, Josephson predicted that when a constant voltage difference is maintained across two weakly linked superconductors separated by a thin insulating barrier (an arrangement now known as a Josephson junction), an alternating electrical current would flow through the junction (imagine turning on a water faucet and having the water start flowing up as well as down once it leaves the spigot). The frequency of the current oscillations is directly related to the applied voltage.

These predictions were fully confirmed by an immense number of experiments, and the standard volt is now defined in terms of the frequency of the Josephson AC current. The Josephson effect has numerous applications in physics, computing and sensing technologies. It can be used for ultra high sensitive detection of electromagnetic radiation, extremely weak magnetic fields and in superconducting quantum computing bits.

Now, experimental physicist Alexei Marchenkov and theoretician Uzi Landman at Georgia Tech have discovered that the AC Josephson effect can be used to detect mechanical motion of atoms placed in the Josephson junction.

“We show here that in addition to being able to detect the effects of electromagnetic radiation on the AC Josephson current, one can also use it to probe mechanical motions of atoms or molecules placed in the junction,” said Landman, director of the Center for Computational Materials Science, Regents and Institute professor, and Callaway Chair of Physics at Georgia Tech. “The prospect of being able to explore, and perhaps utilize, atomic-scale phenomena using this effect is very exciting.”

In January 2007, Marchenkov and Landman published a paper in Physical Review Letters detailing their discovery that fluctuations in the conductance of ultra-thin niobium nanowires are caused by a pair of atoms, known as a dimer, shuttling back and forth between the bulk electrical leads.

In this latest research, Marchenkov and Landman, along with their collaborators Zhenting Dai, Brandon Donehoo and Robert Barnett, report that when a microfabricated junction assembly is held below its superconducting transition temperature, unusual features are found in traces of the electrical conductance measured as a function of the applied voltage.

“In our experiments, only nanowires - which we know now to contain a single dimer have consistently shown a series of additional peaks in the conductance versus voltage curves. Since a peak in such measurements signifies a resonance and knowing that we have intrinsic high-frequency Josephson current oscillations, we started looking into the possible physical mechanisms,” said Marchenkov, assistant professor in the School of Physics.

The team hypothesized that the new measured peaks likely originate from mechanical motions of the dimer, which causes enhancement of the electrical current at particular values of the applied voltage. At each of the peak voltages, the frequency of the AC Josephson current would resonate with the vibrational frequency of the nanostructure in the junction.

Subsequent first principles calculations by Landman’s team predicted that such peaks would occur at three different frequencies, or voltages, and their integer multiples. One corresponds to a back and forth vibration of the dimer suspended between the two niobium electrode tips, a second corresponds to motion in the direction perpendicular to the axis connecting the two tips, and the remaining corresponds to a wagging, or rocking, vibration of the dimer about the inter-tip axis.

Ensuing targeted experiments demonstrated that the resonance peaks disappear gradually as one approaches the superconducting transition temperature from below, while their positions do not change. These observations, exhaustive qualitative and quantitative agreement between experimental measurements and theoretical predictions confirm that vibrational motions of the nanowire atoms are indeed the cause for the newly observed conductance peaks.

Marchenkov and Landman plan to further explore vibrational effects in weak link junctions, using the information obtained through these studies for determining vibrational characteristics, atomic arrangements, and transport mechanisms in metallic, organic and biomolecular nanostructures.

“One of our aims is the development of devices and sensing methodologies that utilize the insights gained from our research,” said Landman.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Science Daily — A Baylor University researcher has created the first experimental observation of molecular chaos, providing evidence that a widely accepted, yet unproven, assumption is indeed accurate.

Molecular chaos is an assumption that the velocities of colliding particles are uncorrelated and independent of position. An example of molecular chaos is the air in any room. While the nitrogen and oxygen atoms are flying around with some average square speed because of the temperature in the room, they are not related, so the air does not spontaneously fly off in one direction of the room without some sort of external pressure change, like a window opening.

The molecular chaos assumption, which is part of the kinetic theory of gases, is widely thought to be true because everything else that arises and follows from that assumption works so well. However, it has been nearly impossible to prove the assumption, until now.

“It was very exciting when we first happened upon the observation,” said Dr. Jeffrey Olafsen, associate professor of physics at Baylor and a lead investigator on the project. “Prior observations have been made in computer simulations, but this is the first time it has been measured in an experimental system.”

“It was very exciting when we first happened upon the observation,” said Dr. Jeffrey Olafsen, associate professor of physics at Baylor and a lead investigator on the project. “Prior observations have been made in computer simulations, but this is the first time it has been measured in an experimental system.”

Olafsen, in collaboration with Dr. G. William Baxter, associate professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University – Erie, constructed two “gases,” or layers, of ball bearings. In the layer where molecular chaos held, researchers measured Maxwell Boltzmann statistics, like those that predict the mean square speed of particles in the air in the room. In the layer where the assumption of molecular chaos failed, the statistics did not obey Maxwell Boltzmann statistics. Perhaps the most interesting part, researchers said, is that the two “gases” were in contact with each other while simultaneously demonstrating their respective behavior.

“The two layers can be thought of as two gases simultaneously in thermal contact, and yet, one of the gases demonstrates molecular chaos while the other does not,” Olafsen said. “It means that the particulars of how energy is injected and distributed within the two gases is important to understanding when a system will demonstrate molecular chaos.”

Olafsen said the results also are beneficial to building a fundamental thermodynamics for systems driven far from equilibrium.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Baylor University.

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NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, N.J. Bionic limb replacements that look and work exactly like the real thing will likely remain a Hollywood fantasy, but fast advances in human-to-machine communication and miniaturization could bring the technology close within a decade.

That is the outlook of Rutgers biomedical engineer and inventor William Craelius, whose Dextra artificial hand is the first to let a person use existing nerve pathways to control individual computer-driven mechanical fingers. Craelius published an overview of bionics entitled “The Bionic Man - Restoring Mobility,” in the international journal “Science,” on Feb. 8.

Craelius believes “bionic technologies can be adapted for restoring some degree of almost any lost function,” and that if progress continues at its present pace, “human-machine communication could soon lose its distinction as the No. 1 obstacle to bionics.”

“Communication is key,” Craelius said, “and it is getting easier.”

As an example, he described a wireless implant the size of a grain of rice developed at UCLA by a team led by Dr. Gerald Loeb. This can be injected under the skin to provide independent communication between nerves and bionic devices. Craelius said while it may require more than 1,000 connections between the brain and bionic devices to communicate the data for a complex action like walking, it is probably achievable, even if most of the necessary computer processing is done outside the body.

Miniaturization of components will soon bring even that processing inside the body, Craelius said. “The number of transistors we can fit onto an integrated circuit doubles about every 18 months,” he said. “At this pace, within the decade, the processing for complex bionic activity will be implantable in the brain or elsewhere in the body.”

While scientists are eliminating obstacles to communication and miniaturization of bionics, they still need to devise ways to protect the tiny devices from electromagnetic interference and corrosion from bodily fluids, Craelius said. Battery capacity and recharging are also concerns as the devices handle an increasing number of tasks.

“Finally, users who subject themselves to brain implantation of hundreds of electrodes are not going to want bulky plastic sockets for their new bionic limbs,” he said. “Creating a more natural integration between the limb and existing bone is going to be vitally important. A human feel is a crucial part of bionic restoration.”

Human feel is an area Craelius is addressing in his own work with Dextra, an artificial hand he developed along with a team of Rutgers students and Nian-Crae, Inc. The prosthesis gives a person who has lost a hand natural control of up to five independent artificial fingers. Controlled by electrical signals generated by the user’s remaining muscles and tendons, Dextra has been demonstrated to permit such complex hand activities as typing and piano playing. It has a plastic socket that encases an amputee’s upper limb and some of the processing and communication is handled by a device worn outside the body.

“Right now we are miniaturizing the human-machine interface to help make Dextra feel more natural,” Craelius said.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Rutgers, The State University Of New Jersey.

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From Science Daily

The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), the leading physical medicine and rehabilitation hospital in the country, has introduced Claudia Mitchell, the first woman to be successfully fit with RIC’s original Bionic Arm technology. The most advanced prosthesis of its kind, the RIC neuro-controlled Bionic Arm allows an amputee to move his or her prosthetic arm as if it is a real limb simply by thinking. The arm also empowers patients with more natural movement, greater range of motion and restores lost function.

The technology was developed by Todd Kuiken, M.D., Ph.D., director of RIC’s Neural Engineering Center for Bionic Medicine, and a team of leading rehabilitation experts with the support of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“It is so rewarding for me as a physician and a scientist to lead research with the potential to positively impact the lives of amputees, including our U.S. service men and women,” said Dr. Kuiken. “On behalf of RIC, my team and I consider it a great honor to be able to serve our country and the individuals with disabilities around the world in this way.”

To provide the neuro-controlled movement of RIC’s Bionic Arm technology, nerves located in the amputee’s shoulder, which once went to the amputated arm, are re-routed and connected to healthy muscle in the chest. This surgical process is called targeted muscle reinnervation. The muscle reinnervation procedure allows the re-routed nerves to grow into the chest muscle and direct the signals they once sent to the amputated arm instead to the robotic arm via surface electrodes. Then, when the patient thinks about moving his or her arm, the action is carried out as voluntarily as it would be in a healthy arm allowing for smoother and easier movement of the prosthetic.

In other words, the sensation nerves to the hand have been re-routed to a patch of skin on her chest. Now when Ms. Mitchell is touched on this skin, she feels that her hand is being touched. This will eventually let her ‘feel’ what she is touching with an artificial hand, as if she were touching it with her own hand.

Currently available artificial arms have only up to three motors. RIC’s revolutionary Bionic Arm technology includes a six-motor arm developed in collaboration with researchers around the world. With a six-motor arm, patients have greater motion in the shoulder and forearm and are able to use several parts of the prosthesis simultaneously to produce the more natural arm movements. Using key learnings from the first successful Bionic Arm recipient, former power lineman and double amputee from Tennessee, Jesse Sullivan, Dr. Kuiken and his team also have made significant advancements in the area of sensory feedback so that the patient can actually feel if they are touching hot or cold objects.

Ms. Mitchell, of Ellicott City, Maryland, is a former U.S. Marine Corps officer whose left arm was severed at the scene of a motorcycle accident in 2004. After reading about Mr. Sullivan in a magazine, Ms. Mitchell undertook her own research and was put in touch with Dr. Kuiken. After an evaluation by Dr. Kuiken and his staff, she was found to be a strong candidate and successfully underwent the surgery in 2005.

“RIC is proud to play such a significant role in changing the face of research and advancing technology to improve the lives of individuals with disabilities throughout the world,” said Joanne C. Smith, M.D., interim president and CEO of RIC.

Because of the Bionic Arm, Ms. Mitchell has been able to live a more functional and fulfilling life. She is able to give to her passion, the U.S. Marine Corps, through mentoring junior officers and making regular visits to veterans in the amputee units at the National Naval Medical Center and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Through her volunteer efforts, she shares her message of personal gratitude and hope to troops who have returned from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Before the surgery, I doubted that I would ever be able to get my life back,” said Ms. Mitchell. “But this arm and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago have allowed me to return to a life that is more rewarding and active than I ever could have imagined. I am happy, confident and independent. As a military veteran, I am also hopeful that the Bionic Arm technology may provide benefits to amputees returning from war.”

To date, more than 400 amputee patients who have served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been treated in Army hospitals. RIC’s Bionic Arm technology has the potential to benefit these amputees returning from war.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Rehabilitation Institute Of Chicago.

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SEATTLE, July 30 (UPI) — A new surgical procedure being implemented by Seattle surgeon Doug Smith is focused on offering prosthetic arms controlled by the mind.

The process involves the use of a mechanical hand controlled by a microprocessor and attaching a patient’s median nerve to the muscles attached to the new appendage, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Monday.

By attaching the muscles to the median nerve, that transmits signals from the brain, Smith is able to allow patients to directly control their new appendages with their minds, the newspaper said

Smith said he learned of the procedure from Dr. Todd Kuiken at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and has since completed such a surgery.

The procedure can be costly as the mechanical arm costs $90,000 and any patients who undergo the surgery must spend many hours learning how to operate the device.

Yet Smith said that the procedure offers a technologically advanced solution for an age-old problem.

“We’re taking a surgery designed in the early 20th century, Smith told the Post-Intelligencer, “and using it for 21st-century artificial-limb technology.”

Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

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By Miriam Olsson

Story last modified Wed Apr 11 05:06:16 PDT 2007

It clanked. It whooshed. But most important, it walked, without falling down.

“It” is Dexter, an upright, humanoid robot taking shape and getting exercise at Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up Anybots, which wants to make robots more human. At the moment, that apparently means skeletal and a bit shaky on its feet, but baby steps are always the beginning.

Dexter is notable in several ways. First, it’s designed as a humanoid at a time when most robots, at least in the U.S. and Europe, are anything but. Just consider machines like Roomba, the disc-shaped vacuum cleaner from iRobot, or the salamander robot that emerged recently from the labs of a Swiss university.

Second, Dexter makes extensive use of pneumatic technology–that is, Anybots uses air cylinders to drive the arms and legs. That goes against the grain of current trends in the robotics industry.

“The main objection in robotics textbooks is that, compared to electric motors, pneumatics are hard to control precisely,” said Trevor Blackwell, who started the Anybots project six years ago. “This is true. Like muscles, pneumatics are soft and imprecise. But with a big brain controlling them, muscles work pretty well, and I found that with the right software I could also get good results with pneumatics.”

Third, and most ambitiously, Anybots wants its creations to be all-purpose, not specialized à la Roomba. The goal is nothing less than to create a robot that can be taught to do all the things humans can do. To date, humanoids like Honda’s Asimo–which, among other things, can push a wheeled serving tray and jog a little–have been very much works in progress.

“Most of the robots on the market today are fairly special-purpose, and they do one job very well. A humanoid with legs probably won’t do any particular job better, but it can go more places and do more jobs than any particular robot,” Blackwell said.

The biggest push for humanoid robots is in Asia, and especially Japan. The Japanese government has even set deadlines for helper robots in human environments. By next year, robots are expected to be able to straighten up rooms, by 2013 to make beds, and by 2016 to lift and carry the infirm. The humanoid HRP-2 from Kawada Industries, meanwhile, has learned to pour tea.

For now, there’s still much work to be done. Dexter is remotely controlled by a human operator and has learning software that allows small adjustments and refinements. Anybots has been showing off Dexter and fellow robot Monty in a limited fashion (including a video on the company’s Web site), but Blackwell thinks it’ll take another two to three years to get past the prototype stage.

For now, there’s still much work to be done. Dexter is remotely controlled by a human operator and has learning software that allows small adjustments and refinements. Anybots has been showing off Dexter and fellow robot Monty in a limited fashion (including a video on the company’s Web site), but Blackwell thinks it’ll take another two to three years to get past the prototype stage.

Others are also in the early stages of crafting humanoid helpers. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, researchers are developing a humanoid called Domo that can grasp objects and place them on shelves or counters.

“The real potential of robots in the future is going to be realized when they can do many types of manual tasks,” Aaron Edsinger, an MIT researcher who has been working on Domo for the last three years, said in a statement this week.

As the tinkering progresses, so too does work on the business side of things.

The Anybots project is being funded by capital that Blackwell got from being a principal in start-up Viaweb, which created a point-and-click Internet storefront system and then in 1998 was acquired by Yahoo. He took on two employees along the way, and the company is now seeking external venture capital.

“We need to scale up and have people working on a bunch of different parts,” said Blackwell.

Eventually, Anybots wants to sell its software and partner with manufacturers that can produce different parts of the robot, to lower overall costs.

Right now, the price tag can be daunting. The Anybots team expects that the robot can stay at $100,000. “It’s really no more complex than a car, so it shouldn’t cost more than a car,” said mechanical engineer Scott Wiley, who joined the company three and a half years ago.more>>>

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By Reuters
http://news.com.com/Walking+robot+offers+clues+to+human+movement/2100-11394_3-6196727.html

Story last modified Mon Jul 16 07:39:02 PDT 2007

A walking robot that adapts to different terrain is helping scientists understand how humans move and could one day lead to improved treatment for spinal cord and other injuries, German researchers said on Friday.

Previously, RunBot’s inventors said the nearly 1-foot-tall machine could only walk forward on flat surfaces and would topple over when encountering a slope.

But using an infrared eye, the robot can now detect an incline in its path and adjust its gait after four or five attempts to navigate up the slope, researchers said.

Credit: Bernstein Center for
Computational Neuroscience,
Goettingen

The machine, which simply falls over until it learns to walk uphill, takes 3-4 stride lengths per second, a touch faster than the normal human gait of about 1.5 to 2.5 stride lengths per second.

“It is trial-and-error learning,” said Florentin Woergoetter, a researcher at the University of Goettingen who helped design RunBot.

“It needs about four or five falls to learn this.”

Woergoetter, who published his findings in the journal Computational Biology, compared the process with the way a child learns to walk. He said just like humans, RunBot leans forward slightly and uses shorter steps to navigate uphill.

A key is the robot’s “brain”–in this case the infrared eye connected to the control circuits–which directs the machine to change its gait when needed.

Previous research suggests the motor control system in humans consists of a hierarchy of levels where interactions between muscles and the spinal cord work largely on their own until a higher level of control–the brain–is needed.

This relationship can help explain how some paraplegics are able to use their legs on a treadmill while suspended in a harness, and was key to the research, Woergoetter said.

Studying a robot to gain a better understanding of how different parts of the body work when walking could have practical applications to improve health care for humans, he added.

This could include designing better prosthetics for amputees or helping therapists work with patients with spinal cord and other severe injuries with a goal of getting them mobile again.

“The robot is essentially a model of the human biped walking and can be used to improve understanding and for better treatment methods,” Woergoetter said.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright ©1995-2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

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By Reuters
Published: July 25, 2007, 5:07 PM PDT

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday said the rising number of cosmetics, drugs and other products made using nanotechnology do not require special regulations or labeling.

The recommendations come as the agency looks at the oversight of products that employ the design and use of particles as small as one-billionth of a meter. There are fears by consumer groups and others that these tiny particles are unpredictable, could be toxic and therefore have unforeseen health impacts.

A task force within the FDA concluded that although nano-sized materials may have completely different properties than their bigger counterparts, there is no evidence that they pose any major safety risks at this time.

“We believe we do not have scientific evidence about nano-sized materials posing safety questions that merit being mentioned on the label,” said Dr. Randall Lutter, FDA’s associate commissioner for policy and planning, during a briefing with reporters.

As least 300 consumer products, including sunscreen, toothpaste and shampoo are now made using nanotechnology, according to a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars report.

The technology is also being used in medicine, where scientists are developing tiny sensors that detect disease markers in the body, and in the food industry, which is using it to extend shelf life in food packaging.

The FDA now treats products made with nanotechnology the same way it handles all products–requiring companies to prove safety and efficacy before their product can come to market.

But some product categories, such as cosmetics, foods and dietary supplements are not subject to FDA oversight before they are sold, which already worries some advocates. Producing them with nanotechnology adds another layer of concern.

The International Center for Technology Assessment, a nonprofit policy group that is suing the FDA calling for more oversight over the technology, said the recommendations lack teeth.
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“Nano means more than just tiny. It means these materials can be fundamentally different, exhibiting chemical and physical properties that are drastically different,” said George Kimbrell, staff attorney at the group. “The consumer is being made the guinea pig.”

The group sites studies showing certain types of the particles can cause inflammatory and immune system responses in animals as an example of possible dangers.

The FDA said it will soon issue guidance documents for industries using nanotechnology, which include pharmaceutical companies, medical device makers and consumer products firms.

Lutter said the task force concluded that nanotechnology is not substantially different from earlier emerging technologies such as biotechnology or irradiation.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright ©1995-2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

http://news.com.com/FDA+says+no+new+labeling+for+nanotech+products/2100-1008_3-6198878.html

Story last modified Wed Jul 25 17:18:11 PDT 2007

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By Salvador Pániker
Translation by Karen Phillips
[7.4.07]

Salvador Pániker is a Spanish philosopher and writer.

The true “sacred texts” of the western tradition have been for centuries, those of the great authors. Plato and Aristotle, Dante and Shakespeare. But also Victoria, Bach, Handel, Beethoven. And Giotto, Fra Angelico, Rembrandt. And Archimedes, Pascal, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Heisenberg. And Paul Celan and Bela Bartok. Etcetera. All of them are “sacred authors.” Canonical. Quantum physics is no less-inspired a monument than the Bible. Nor less ambiguous. more>>>

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GAINESVILLE, Fla., July 19 (UPI) — A U.S. scientist is using an $855,000 National Science Foundation grant to create a method of predicting, among other things, how fast plants will grow.

Rongling Wu, a University of Florida statistical genetics professor, said he’s developing a technique that will not only help farmers but will also speed the process of creating lifesaving drugs.

Using massive amounts of statistical data, he’s built a computer modeling technique that helps predict how a plant or animal’s bodily functions and growth are affected by complex genetic interactions.

Wu’s technique, called functional mapping, produces a computer model that uses gene interactions along with expected environmental conditions.

In May, he and colleagues published the first major analysis of functional mapping models of human drug responses in the journal Bioinformatics. The work examined how different genes affected heart rate when exposed to the drug Dobutamine.

He is now constructing a user-friendly model for anyone pursing pharmacogenetic research.

“I am excited that we can help bring this process to more people at a time where we are able to collect enough information to make it useful,” Wu said. “Hopefully, this will become used all over the world.”

Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

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IRVINE, Calif., July 25 (UPI) — U.S. neuroscientists report a breakthrough study that links learning to a specific chemical process in brain cells, allowing the visualization of a memory.

The University of California-Irvine researchers captured first-time images of the changes in brain cell connections following a common form of learning.

The scientists, co-led by Professor Gary Lynch, discovered synaptic connections in a region of rats’ brains critical to learning change shape when the rodents learn to navigate a new, complex environment. In turn, when drugs are administered that block the changes, the rats don’t learn, confirming the role the shape change plays in producing stable memory.

“This is the first time anyone has seen the physical substrate, the ‘face,’ of newly encoded memory,” said Lynch, who led one of the two research teams involved in the study. “We have cleared a hurdle that once seemed insurmountable.”

The scientists said the findings open the way for one of the great objectives of the life sciences: mapping memory distribution across brain regions.

The study — which included Vadim Fedulov, Christopher Rex, Danielle Simmons and Christine Gall of the University of California-Irvine and Linda Palmer of Carnegie Mellon University — appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

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By Reuters
Published: July 25, 2007, 12:27 PM PDT

Suspended in laser light, thousands of atoms pair up and dance, each moving in perfect counterpoint to its partner.

They are the building blocks of what may one day become an enormously powerful quantum computer capable of solving in seconds problems that take today’s fastest machines years to crack, U.S. physicists said on Wednesday.

“You can do the equivalent of multiple classical calculations at the same time in the quantum world,” said Trey Porto, a researcher with the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST, whose work appears in the journal Nature.

Porto and colleagues have coaxed pairs of super-cold rubidium atoms to repeatedly swap positions, a feat that could make them useful for storing and processing data in quantum computers.

In today’s computers, the smallest unit of storage is a binary digit or bit, which can only have two values–zero or one. These form the basis of information storage in digital computing. When combined into groups of eight on a typical PC, these bits become bytes.

“In the quantum world, instead of just the possibilities of zeros and ones, you have a range of possibilities,” Porto said in a telephone interview.

Quantum bits, or qubits, can also oscillate between the zero and one positions, like a half-flipped light switch. This flexibility could allow for many calculations to be carried out simultaneously, Porto said.

Porto’s team isolated pairs of atoms in a lattice of light formed by six laser beams all fixed on one point, suspending the atoms in a uniform pattern. “There is no container. It is levitated by the laser beams.”

They trapped these pairs in wells or dips formed by ripples in the light. When forced together in tight spaces, the atom pairs began to oscillate between zero and one, passing in and out of a state of entanglement.
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Porto describes it in terms of two magic coins spinning in the air. “While they are spinning, these coins are correlated so that if one is heads up, the other is always heads down,” he said.

So far, all the pairs are dancing the same tango. To be useful in a quantum computer, he and his team will need to figure out how to get different pairs to dance and spin independent of the neighboring atom pairs.

Porto’s team is one of several around the globe working to develop a system that could support quantum computing.

“We’re just demonstrating the most fundamental, basic unit of what you would need,” he said.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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Original article link:
http://news.com.com/Dancing+atoms+hold+prospect+of+superfast+computing/2100-1008_3-6198811.html

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By Michael Kanellos
http://news.com.com/Intel+readies+massive+multicore+processors/2100-1008_3-6190856.html

Story last modified Thu Jun 14 10:40:47 PDT 2007

Ants and beetles have exoskeletons–and chips with 60 and 80 cores are going to need them as well.

Researchers at Intel are working on ways to mask the intricate functionality of massive multicore chips to make it easier for computer makers and software developers to adapt to them, said Jerry Bautista, co-director of Intel’s Tera-scale Computing Research Program.

These multicore chips, he added, will also likely contain both x86 processing cores, similar to the brains inside the vast majority of Intel’s server and PC chips today, as well as other types of cores. A 64-core chip, for instance, might contain 42 x86 cores, 18 accelerators and four embedded graphics cores.

Some labs and companies such as ClearSpeed Technology, Azul Systems and Riken have developed chips with large numbers of cores–ClearSpeed has one with 96 cores–but the cores are capable of performing certain types of operations.

Last year, Intel showed off a prototype chip with 80 computing cores. While the semiconductor world took note of the achievement, the practical questions immediately arose: Will the company come out with a multicore chip with x86 cores? (The prototype doesn’t have them.) Will these chips run existing software and operating systems? How do you solve data traffic, heat and latency problems?

Intel’s answer essentially is, yes, and we’re working on it.

One idea, proposed in a paper released this month at the Programming Language Design and Implementation Conference in San Diego, involves cloaking all of the cores in a heterogeneous multicore chip in a metaphorical exoskeleton so that all of the cores look like a series of conventional x86 cores, or even just one big core.

“It will look like a pool of resources that the run time will use as it sees fit,” Bautista said. “It is for ease of programming.”

A paper at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, also in San Diego, details a hardware scheduler that will split up computing jobs among various cores on a chip. With the scheduler, certain computing tasks can be completed in less time, Bautista noted. It also can prevent the emergence of “hot spots”–if a single processor core starts to get warm because it’s been performing nonstop, the scheduler can shift computing jobs to a neighbor.

Intel is also tinkering with ways to let multicore chips share caches, pools of memory embedded in processors for rapid data access. Cores on many dual- and quad-core chips on the market today share caches, but it’s a somewhat manageable problem.

“When you get to eight and 16 cores, it can get pretty complicated,” Bautista said.

The technology would prioritize operations. Early indications show that improved cache management could improve overall chip performance by 10 percent to 20 percent, according to Intel.

Like the look and feel of technology for heterogeneous chips, programmers won’t, ideally, have to understand or deliberately accommodate the cache-sharing or hardware-scheduling technologies. These operations will largely be handled by the chip itself and be obscured from view.

Heat is another issue that will need to be contained. Right now, I/O (input-output) systems need about 10 watts of power to shuttle data at 1 terabit per second. An Intel lab has developed a low-power I/O system that can transfer 5 gigabits per second at 14 milliwatts–which is less than 14 percent of the power used by current 5Gbps systems today–and 15Gbps at 75 milliwatts, according to Intel. A paper outlining the issue was released at the VLSI Circuits Symposium in Japan this month.

Low-power I/O systems will be needed for core-to-core communication as well as chip-to-chip contacts.

“Without better power efficiency, this just won’t happen,” said Randy Mooney, an Intel fellow and director of I/O research.

Intel executives have said they would like to see massive multicore chips coming out in about five years. But a lot of work remains. Right now, for instance, Intel doesn’t even have a massive multicore chip based around x86 cores, a company spokeswoman said.

The massive multicore chips from the company will likely rely on technology called Through Silicon Vias (TSVs), other executives have said. TSVs connect external memory chips to processors through thousands of microscopic wires rather than one large connection on the side. This increases bandwidth.

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