First millimeter-scale computer has processor, memory, battery, solar cell and radio…

Click here for the complete MSNBC report. You may have to scroll down a bit to see it.

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Smaller and more energy-efficient electronic chips could be made using molybdenite. In an article appearing online January 30 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, EPFL’s Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) publishes a study showing that this material has distinct advantages over traditional silicon or graphene for use in electronics applications.

A discovery made at EPFL could play an important role in electronics, allowing us to make transistors that are smaller and more energy efficient. Research carried out in the Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) has revealed that molybdenite, or MoS2, is a very effective semiconductor. This mineral, which is abundant in nature, is often used as an element in steel alloys or as an additive in lubricants. But it had not yet been extensively studied for use in electronics.

via New transistors: An alternative to silicon and better than graphene.

Researchers make transistors out of a material that’s better than silicon…

Click here to read the entire article found on MIT’s Technology Review website.

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The aim is to reduce computers’ energy use, rather than just to shrink them…

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Professor Zhipeng Wu at the University of Manchester has developed a novel radiofrequency scanner to be used for real-time breast tumor detection. Unlike traditional mammography, which relies on the varying X-ray attenuation properties of tissues to produce image contrast, the portable scanner uses radiofrequency waves to perform complex permittivity mapping of tissue. Benign and malignant breast tumors have (complex) permittivity characteristics that differ from surrounding tissue, and although the scanner is not able to differentiate between benign and malignant structures, it could prove to be a sensitive and inexpensive screening tool. Such a device could potentially improve breast cancer detection in women under 50 and would be very welcome in the developing world.

via Portable RF Breast Scanner Shows Tumors in Real-time.

Using just the power of thought to control onscreen computer activity, subjects in a recent study led by neurosurgery professor Itzhak Fried, M.D., Ph.D have managed to choose to bring one of two merged images into sharp focus while making the other disappear. Not only were only a few brain cells found to be used when selecting one picture over another, but each cell appeared to have its own image preference.

In the study, 12 epileptic subjects had fine wires implanted in their brains to record seizure activity. The researchers concentrated their efforts on the area of the brain known for memory and the ability to recognize complex images, the medial temporal lobe. With the brain recordings being monitored by computer equipment, the subjects were asked to look at two superimposed pictures of familiar objects, places, animals or people and to concentrate on just one of the images, to try and make it fully visible and the other image faded away. Every one-tenth of one second, the display screen was refreshed with input from the brain.

via Study demonstrates mind control of computer screen images.

The computer, known as Tianhe-1A, has 1.4 times the horsepower of the current top computer…

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g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

It revolutionized the way we watch movies, and now, it’s revolutionizing the way doctors treat illnesses. Three-dimension is the new frontier of medicine, according to physicians at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

The new technology called CAVE, which is short for ‘Cave Automatic Virtual Environment’, is essentially a three-dimensional virtual reality room. It projects images on four walls to allow researchers to voyage inside the molecular structure of cells and parts of the human body.

This way, physicians can interact with the data and actually see the cells in their true, 3-D state, which was not possible before.

New Technology Allows Doctors to Take 3-D Tour of Body – FoxNews.com.

A startup called Recorded Future has developed a tool that scrapes real-time data from the Internet to find hints of what will happen in the future. The company’s search tool spits out results on a timeline that stretches into the future as well as the past.

via Technology Review: See the Future with a Search.

A new platform for analyzing when, where, and how smart-phone apps are used will soon be available to thousands of mobile developers.

Appcelerator–a software development platform that lets Web programmers create apps that run natively on both iPhone and Android devices–will release the new mobile analytics platform within the next three months. The platform was developed by Appcelerator and FortiusOne, a company that specializes in visualizing location information.

Accurate geolocation analytics data will help companies improve their software and make money from location-targeted advertising.

Appcelerator has around 72,000 users, including developers from large businesses such as NBC and Budweiser. It has proven popular because it lets developers create apps without requiring the technical expertise needed to build them from scratch.

via Technology Review: Now Your App Knows Where You Are.

Touch screens are ubiquitous today. But a common complaint is that the smooth surface just doesn’t feel as good to use as a physical keypad. While some touch-screen devices use mechanical vibrations to enhance users’ experiences of virtual keypads, the approach isn’t widely used, mainly because mechanical vibrations are difficult to implement well, and they often make the entire device buzz in your hand, instead of just a particular spot on the screen.

via Technology Review: A Touch Screen with Texture.

Bacteria can grow nanowires that resemble electrically conducting hairs to share energy, take a collective breath and perhaps even communicate, a new experiment reveals.

The Shewanella oneidensis bacteria were seen in action as living biological circuits for the first time by researchers, who tested the ability of the microbes to close a circuit between microscopic electrodes.

When the nanowires, which are made mostly out of proteins (much like our hair), linked up across two electrodes and closed the circuit, they created a flow of measurable current. Cutting the nanowires stopped the current flow.

via Bacteria Connect Over Nanowires for Survival | Bacteria Become Living Biological Circuits in Experiment | LiveScience.

Almost 100 years after Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes found that mercury has an electrical resistance of zero when cooled in liquid helium, superconductors are finally being rolled out for use in national electricity grids.

Superconductive wiring carries about ten times as much power as the same volume of conventional copper wiring. Although some of that power is lost and liquid nitrogen must be used to keep the superconducting cables cool, such cables are still more efficient than copper wiring, which loses 7-10% of the power it carries as heat. Because of this, countries such as South Korea that wish to ‘green’ their electricity networks and build more efficient and robust ‘smart grids’ are interested in the technology.

via Superconductors come of age : Nature News.

Researchers from University of New South Wales (Australia), University of Melbourne (Australia), and Aalto University (Finland) have succeeded in demonstrating a high-fidelity detection scheme for the magnetic state of a single electron, that is, the spin. The research results have just been published in Nature.

via Single electron reader opens path for quantum computing.