Artificial muscle can power your Ipod

BOFFINS IN CALIFORNIA have developed a self-repairing artificial muscle that can generate enough electricity to charge an Ipod.

The top boffin in charge of the research, a scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, named Qibing Pei, told the Discovery Channel that the artificial muscle was made up of flexible carbon nanotubes, which acted as electrodes. This is quite an improvement on previous artificial muscle models which tended to be metal based and have frequent failure rates with reuse. Pei reckons: "We've made an artificial muscle that, when you apply electricity to it, expands more than 200 percent”.

The way it works, is that as the artificial muscle material contracts after expanding, the carbon nanotubes rearrange themselves, causing a small electric current to generate, which can then be captured and stored in a battery.

It is also robust. If any part of the carbon nanotube packs up, the area around it seals itself off by becoming non-conductive, thereby stopping the defect from affecting other areas. The clever muscle is also eco friendly and energy efficient, conserving up to 70 per cent of energy pumped into it. Some boffins have suggested that it could even be used to capture wind or wave energy in the future to charge electrical devices.

The research could also lead to the creation of moving robots, better prosthetics, and battery charging energy sources. A self-repairing Ipod would be nice.

Intel cheap laptops expanding to U.S., Europe

Intel Corp (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday sub-$300 laptops initially designed for poor children will soon be available to U.S. and European consumers in a move that could further push down computer prices.

PC makers in the United States and in Europe will sell a yet-to-be-unveiled, second-generation version of the Intel-designed Classmate PC for $250 to $350, said Lila Ibrahim, general manager of Intel's emerging market platform's group, in an interview with Reuters.

"This is a very big deal," said Laura Didio, an analyst with Yankee Group who follows the personal computer industry.

While the machines are intended for children, analysts said the launch will add momentum to the low-cost computing movement -- and will likely mean this year's bargain-basement laptops will have more power than in previous years.

"Particularly in a recession year, quality low-cost products are going to move well," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "But the key is for them to be quality."

He said while he hasn't yet seen the machines that will be on sale this Christmas, he suspects consumers will be able to get "a pretty decent" laptop for less than $600 and perhaps for less than $500.

Didio said retailers might throw in another $50 to $100 in rebates or other incentives.

Laptop prices have been under extra pressure since last year, when Taiwan's Asustek Computer Inc (2357.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) introduced the $399 Eee PC, which has flown off store shelves from Asia to North America

The machine runs on the Linux operating system, and people used to Microsoft's (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Windows and Apple's (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Mac OS X operating systems have had trouble adapting to the system, Enderle said.

The new, cheap laptops being developed from Intel's technology will likely run on Windows, he added.

The movement toward low-cost computing was also spurred by the XO laptop, the brainchild of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte and his One Laptop Per Child Foundation.

The foundation began producing a laptop running on Linux at a cost of $188 in November. They sold them in the United States and in Canada for $400 through a charity drive that also provided one machine to a poor child overseas.

The chipmaker has conducted pilot tests of the Classmate PC at schools in Texas, Oregon and California, along with some schools in Australia, said Intel spokeswoman Agnes Kwan.

Intel said manufacturers in India, Mexico and Indonesia already have begun selling Classmate PC laptops on the retail market.

To date, Intel has sold fewer than 100,000 of the Classmate PCs, but plans to ramp up production in 2008.

Intel declined to identify the PC makers or discuss the features of the second-generation machine, which has not yet been released in developing markets, at the request of the companies.

It has already begun work on a third model, the Classmate 3, said Ibrahim.

The second- and third-generation models of the Classmate PC design give manufacturers flexibility to build a range of laptops with different memory configurations, screen sizes and peripheral devices including cameras, Ibrahim said.

Inventor Mary Lou Jepsen, a scientist who developed the XO Laptop, resigned from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation at the end of last year and started her own company Pixel Qi with the goal of building a $75 laptop by 2010.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1933198020080320?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=10150

EMI aims to join Nokia's music offering

EMI said on Wednesday it was in talks with mobile handset maker Nokia to offer its songs as part of Nokia's new "Comes with Music" offering.

"We want to be part of it. I believe strongly that when it launches we will be there, with a full offering," Wemppa Koivumaki, head of EMI Finland, told a news conference.

Nokia is set to start selling phones under its "Comes With Music" brand in the second half of 2008, offering unlimited access to millions of songs.

The world's largest music label, Universal, signed up for the program last December.

NVIDIA Launches the Fastest Graphics Card on the Planet

The NVIDIA GeForce 9800GX2 is the latest graphics card to revolutionise your PC experience. GeForce 9800 GX2 gives the best gaming performance in the world, HybridPower means a quiet, low power and more environmentally friendly PC and PureVideo HD takes your PC to the cutting edge of High Definition.

Bar None the fastest Graphics Card on the Planet

The GeForce 9800GX2 is at the cutting edge of technology; with 256 screaming fast processor cores and a 1GB total framebuffer, all running through PCI Express 2.0, means the GeForce 9800GX2 is designed from the ground up for Gaming at Extreme HD resolutions.

NVIDIA Hybrid Power – gives you power when you need it most

Combining a GeForce 9800GX2 with one of the latest motherboards featuring NVIDIA’s nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset makes your system ready for Hybrid Power. Not all applications require a high end GeForce discrete GPU, for times such as these an integrated GeForce GPU can run these applications perfectly while saving power and therefore the environment. The intelligent Hybrid Power system can also combine the power of the GeForce 9800GX2 with the onboard graphics for maximum performance.

PureVideo HD – make your PC the centre of your digital home

PureVideo HD makes High Definition content come to life on your PC – whether video’s are downloaded, streamed, or on Blu-Ray – even the most demanding HD content plays back effortlessly thanks to the best HD engine available on the market. But it is not only the speed of HD rendering that is improved, with PureVideo HD films comes to life with dynamic Contrast Enhancement and automatic enhancements to Greens, Blues, & Skin Tones

The NVIDIA GeForce 9800GX2 Makes all of the above possible, for the very best graphics on the planet there is no other choice.

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• Processor Cores
  
• 256 (128 per GPU)
  
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• Core Clock
  
• 600MHz
  
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• Shader Clock
  
• 1500MHz
  
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• Memory Clock
  
• 1000MHz
  
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• Memory
  
• 1GB GDDR3 (512MB per GPU)
  
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• Power Connector
  
• 8-pin + 6-pin
  
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• Board Power
  
• 197W
  
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• Thermal
  
• Patent Pending Integrated Cooling Solution
  
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• Outputs
  
• 2x DVI-DL + HDMI

AMD cuts 5% of its workforce

Sunnyvale (CA) – Business news from AMD rarely have been good news from AMD lately. We remember bad news cbeginning to come in just about when Intel pushed its Core 2 Duo into the market in Q3 of 2006 and there is no end in sight yet: With the first quarter winding down, TG Daily learned that AMD is reducing its workforce by another 5%.

Since AMD has not officially announced the layoffs yet, there is no official explanation why these layoffs are coming now. However, our sources indicate that AMD may be preparing the analyst community for another not-so-great quarter, in which especially CPU sales have tanked. The TLB bug (and the following PR disaster) hurt Opteron sales anyway and this week Intel senior vice president Pat Gelsinger was telling journalists that the Tigerton Xeon MP processor is gaining market share and will bring “the biggest market share swing in years”.

Sources are now telling us that AMD decided to silently wipe 5% from its workforce of 16,719 people. As a result, about 800 to 850 people are laid off, while some people at AMD believe that the total number of employees should come down even further and end up closer to 15,000.

Official financial details are coming with the release of the Q1 result.

Apple bans music applications for IPhone

FRUIT THEMED toymaker Apple has decided that it will ban any third party applications for its iPhone that feature music-playing capabilities.

When Apple announced that it would allow third-party applications for the Jesus phone there was much back slapping among Apple fanboys. "See," they smugly said. "It proves that Steve Jobs, peace be upon him, is not a control freak after all."

That, however, is looking wildly optimistic. In June, Apple will open AppStore, an update to iTunes that will enable users to buy and download these third-party applications much like they already do music and video. It is a fairly cool bit of software with a licence that is wide open in favour of those who sell the software.

However it means that Apple gets to decide which applications it will sell. And that means that Apple can decide to ban anything that hurts iTunes.

For example, will it allow a rival, such as Amazon, to run a third-party application that will deliver music to the iPhone? The same applies to eMusic.

What hints that Apple might be such a bastard? Well the new SDK beta does not allow developers to have access to any iTunes functionality.

This makes it impossible for plug-ins to be created for iLike, Last.fm, Qloud or OnTour to create iPhone-compatible widgets that might expand basic iTunes functions.

NPD: PS3, Xbox 360 sales still lag behind PS2

Market research group NPD released video game console sales figures for the month of February, and the units with the fastest processors look to be selling the slowest.

Video game console sales in February 2008, according to research group NPD, showed a 19% increase in units sold year-over-year, with Microsoft's Xbox 360 selling the fewest among what is still, more than two years after its introduction, called the "next gen" console market.

This distinction is necessary because the sixth-generation PlayStation 2 console is not only still selling, but is actually selling better than its successors. The eight-year old system was reported by NPD to have sold 351,800 units last month. The PS3 sold 280,800 units, and the 360 sold 254,600.

The only next-gen console which beat the PS2 in sales was Nintendo's Wii, which moved a reported 432,000 units. Some argue that the Wii is barely a "next gen" console itself. The recently released Super Smash Brothers Brawl, a fighting game featuring Nintendo's licensed characters, illustrates this perspective. The highly anticipated game has none of the Wii's trademark gestural control features, and relies heavily on the last-generation Gamecube controller.

Sony's PlayStation 2 retails for around $130, and Nintendo's Wii sells for around $250. A 40 GB PS3 typically retails for around $400, and the xbox 360 console usually goes for $350.

NPD's report that video game sales were up for the month, paired with the distant leads held by lower-priced consoles, raise the question of whether price, more so than any of a console's other qualities, dictates its ultimate stature in the market.

IBM dreams of optical chips with tiny light pulse device

White coats at IBM today said they have built the world's teeniest optical switch, measuring 100 times smaller than the cross section of a human hair.

Big Blue said its new nanophotonic switch device brings the company another step closer to creating computer chips that use light pulses instead of electrical signals on copper wires.

Once electrical signals are converted into pulses of lights, the tiny device ensures that optical messages are efficiently directed from one processing core to another.

IBM contends in a paper published in the journal Nature Photonics that the old wire way will become yesterday's news when on-chip optical interconnects are — cough — finally brought to light.



Specifically, the promise of optics will become more and more appealing as chip makers continue to increase processing cores at roughly the same speed that shaving supply companies add superfluous blades to their razors. Copper wires, they argue, could simply use up too much power and be incapable of transmitting the enormous amount of information between massively multi-core processors.

The researchers say each individual wavelength in an optical switch can transfer data at up to 40Gb/s. And because the switch is able to route different wavelength "colors" of light simultaneously, IBM claims aggregate bandwidth can exceed 1Tb/s. They envision using light will multiply the speed information is sent between cores by as much as 100 times, while using 10 times less energy.

The company said its tiny switch is ideally suited for on-chip applications because of the sheer lack of scale. Big Blue estimates that as many as 2,000 of the devices could fit side-by-side in an area of one square millimeter. (Which by the way means that if each device was mounted by an angel, a full 4,000 could dance on the head of a pin. Who says computer chips and ontology don't mix?)

IBM scientists assert that their optical switch is also rugged enough for the hardcore, heated world of semiconductors. The optical switch is capable of operating in an environment with changing "hot-spots" that move around depending on the processing function.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/18/ibm_nanophotonic_switch/

Toshiba's Dynabook SS RX1: world's first laptop with 128GB SSD

Your 64GB SSD getting you down? Right, you should be so lucky. Regardless, Toshiba just updated their 12.1-inch Dynabook SS RX1 in Japan with a new 128GB SSD option. Build RX1/TAE bundles 128GB of solid state disk with internal, KDDI EV-DO data module, 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo U7600 processor, 2GB of memory, Intel 945GMS Express graphics, a 1,280 x 800 pixel panel resolution, and choice of 6.2 hour or 12.5 hour batteries. How much? Try something like ¥400,000 or more than $4,000 when it pops for Japanese retail next month.

Researchers Chill Down Fan-Cooled PCs Even More

New heat dissipation technology can boost the performance of chip-cooling systems by up to 200 percent.

Researchers at Purdue University and Intel have developed heat dissipation technology that can boost the performance of chip-cooling systems by up to 200 percent.

The researchers are developing ionic wind engines, devices that work with current air-cooling technologies like fans and heat sinks. The devices pass an electrical current to stir up stationary air molecules, leading to better air flow and dissipation of heat.

"To date, we have demonstrated that the technology can enhance fan cooling by more than 200 percent," said Suresh Garimella, professor at Purdue University, who is also a researcher on the project.

Current air cooling technology is attractive because of its cost advantages and ease of implementation, Garimella said. However, fans and heat sinks can't manage all the heat generated by chips.

Ionic Wind Technology

Ionic wind engines can be placed on a chip or a laptop to complement the current air-cooling technology to better manage heat dissipation, avoiding the need to switch to alternative, costlier cooling approaches like liquid cooling, Garimella said.

"The ionic wind technology we are developing is designed to work in addition to conventional fan-driven methods, not necessarily as a replacement for current systems," Garimella said.

Ionic winds are generated when electrically charged atoms stir up air molecules, which normally are stationary. When a current flows from a negatively charged electrode to a positively charged electrode, it collides with air molecules, producing positively charged ions that move back toward the negatively charged electrodes, creating an ionic wind. When the ionic wind gets the air molecules moving, the air flow on the chip surface increases, leading to better heat transfer and dissipation.

The engines are small enough to be fabricated on a chip or laptop and can be selectively placed depending on air flow, Garimella said. The researchers are trying to miniaturize the millimeter-scale devices to micron-scale dimensions.

Size reduction is just one problem facing researchers in putting the engines to practical use. Portable platforms pose a challenge as there is limited space for cooling systems, he said. Moreover, as chips become faster the amount of heat that needs to be removed increases, which increases the challenge to cool down a laptop and its surfaces, Garimella said.

"We are currently dealing with challenges to demonstrate the viability of the technology at the micro scale, and these must be overcome before the technology can be brought to market, at least for the chip-cooling arena," he said.

Garimella couldn't comment on when the technology will reach chips, but he noted some inherent advantages over alternatives like liquid cooling.

"Although liquid cooling typically provides higher heat removal rates, air cooling technologies are cheaper to implement and by using ionic wind engines, their cooling capacity can be enhanced," Garimella said.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143524-pg,1/article.html

World's most expensive iPod goes on sale

The world's most expensive iPod has gone up for sale at a charity auction in London.

The popular music player was customised with hundreds of diamonds for a dazzling makeover.

Already a must-have item, the bejewelled version was the star of the auction, with an estimated value of £20,000.

The iDiamond shuffle is made of solid 18 karat white and pink gold and kitted out with 430 diamonds.

The one-off piece was created by jeweller, Thomas Heyerdahl, who says the process was painstaking and meticulous as there wouldn't ever be another one.

He said: "It's a special thing, making just one. If we had make this for commercial sale, it would be quite a different thing because then you have to take care of, much more things to make it work commercially."

A carbon-offset eco-holiday to a Himalayan retreat and a trip to a château in the Champagne region of France were also up for grabs at the auction.

After Verizon trial speeds up P2P, group eyes other tests of P4P technology

After achieving much faster than usual download and data delivery rates in a field trial with Verizon and Pando, the P4P Working Group is now looking at doing trials with other ISPs and P2P network providers, said Haiyong Xie, a working group member who is also a Ph.D. student at Yale.

In results unveiled today at DCIA's P2P Market Conference in New York City, the P4P technology was shown to enhance download rates by 205 percent over unmanaged P2P downloads, and to decrease the number of hops needed in ISP internal data delivery from 5.5 hops to 0.89 hops.

The trial made use of Xie's implementation of P4P networking principals, Pando's application plattform, and network topology data from Verizon.

Essentially, P4P is designed to speed up P2P downloads by localizing network traffic and reducing the numbers of routers and transfers needed for distributing data.

"Before doing this field trial, we'd conducted simulations. But results of the trial prove that P4P also works in the real world," said Laird Popkings of Pando Networks, co-chair of the P4P Working Group, speaking with BetaNews at the event in Manhattan.

A similar field trial is still under way with Pando -- a company which partners with NBC Direct, for example, on P2P content delivery -- and Spanish-based ISP Telefonica. Results from the Telefonica trial are expected over the next week or two.

"But different P2P networks have different properties, as do different ISPs," said Xie, during another interview with BetaNews at the event.

"We're also interested in seeing how the P4P technology works with other P2P networks and with other ISPs," according to the Yale researcher.

Sourse: http://www.betanews.com/article/After_Verizon_trial_speeds_up_P2P_group_eyes_other_tests_of_P4P_technology/1205535534

Apple Denying iPhone Developers In Droves

It appears that not anyone can sign up and become a registered developer for the iPhone. Apple is sending out rejection letters via e-mail. Twitterers are firing up their tweets in protest and anger.

According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, people interested in developing for the iPhone are being rejected by the thousands.

Erica Sadun writes, "If you've applied for Apple's iPhone Developer program, check e-mail for your rejection letter. The twitterati are reporting widespread disappointment and anger as thousands of iPhone developer hopefuls have received a 'Thank you but no thank you' message in their in-box. The e-mails are arriving with the subject of 'iPhone Developer Program Enrollment Status'."

Have any of you received such notice? A number people have responded to Sadun's piece with comments. More than a few were among those rejected by Apple.

One commenter said, "Denied! That sucks!!! What is or was the criteria? Since the application did not ask you anything important like what are you planning on working on... Are people who are getting accepted top-level ADC members?"

So what does it take, Steve? Do you need to be an official company to develop applications for the iPhone? Do you need to already be an ADC member? Can individuals apply? What are the criteria which you are using to judge these developers? Are you too worried about hackers?

It might be fair to make those criteria public so people who won't qualify don't register in the first place. After all, over 100,000 people have downloaded the SDK.

As my colleague Mitch Wagner pointed out earlier this week, the SDK could indeed be the iPhone's Achilles' heel. The negative press generated by rejecting developers will only further tarnish Apple's image and anger developers even more than they already are.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/apple_denying_i.html

Wii Leads The Sales In Japan Too

It seems like Wii is unbeatable. Shortly after the NPD Group released its data about the gaming sales in US during February, Media Create revealed that Nintendo Wii is the champion in Japan too.

According to Media Create, in the week ending March 9, Nintendo sold 57,068 Wiis in Japan, which is almost double compared to 21,008 PS3s sold by Sony. As for Microsoft, its Xbox 360 continues to struggle and it has sold only 2891.

So far, Microsoft has failed to impress the Japanese gamers, who bought only 257,800 Xbox 360 consoles during 2007, according to the data released by Enterbrain. In comparison, Nintendo Wii sold 3.6 million units, while Sony managed to sell 1.2 million PS3s.

Though, it is very possible that during the next week Xbox 360’s sales will be higher, because on March 6, Microsoft started to sell its Xbox 360 Arcade in Japan for only 27,800 yen ($260) instead 34,800 yen.

Xbox Arcade was launched in the US last year in October and it is sold for $279.99. The package includes five family-friendly games, a wireless controller, a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) connection to enable high-definition output if desired and 256 MB of memory useful for storing games and entertainment content. Unlike the Core version, the Arcade doesn’t have a hard drive.

On the handheld market, Nintendo DS was outsold by Sony’s PSP. Sony sold 53,924 PSPs, while Nintendo DS ranked second with 48,658 units.

As for the United States, PS3 had a good February month, despite being outsold by Nintendo Wii almost 2 to 1. While Wii sold 432,000 units, Sony managed to sell 281,000 PS3s and Microsoft was lagging far behind with only 255,000 units.

According to the analysts, PS3 sales were boosted by the recent victory of BluRay, and it remains to be seen is Sony will manage to keep the rhythm.

Though, earlier this month iSuppli analyst Pamela Tufegdzic predicted that 2008 will be the turning year for Sony’s PlayStation 3. "2008 will be a turning year for the PS3," said Tufegdzic for Reuters. "Sony is offering a better forthcoming software pipeline with blockbuster titles like "Gran Turismo 5", which will boost PS3 sales this year."

Also, Sony announced June 12 as the official release date of its exclusive game, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots. It is believed that the new title will boost the sales of PS3, in the same manner as Halo 3 did for Xbox 360 during last year.

On the Xbox 360’s front, Microsoft is expecting the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar’s upcoming title, to boost the sales of its gaming console. Although, the game is not an Xbox 360 exclusive, GTA’s makers have promised some exclusive content to be available later this year.

So, after all it seems like the battle of the gaming consoles is still open.

Source: http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Wii_Leads_The_Sales_In_Japan_Too_15194.html

Intel to launch quad-core notebook CPU in 3Q08

Intel is planning to launch its first quad-core CPU for notebooks, the Core 2 Extreme QX9300, in the third quarter this year with pricing set at a new high of US$1,038 in thousand-unit tray quantities, according to sources at motherboard makers.

With the market demand for top-level notebooks still below average, Intel expects the quad-core notebook CPUs will not become standard in the performance/mainstream notebook market until the second half of 2009, and therefore should not impact the desktop PC market, noted the sources.

The Core 2 Extreme QX9300 will be manufactured at 45nm and have a core frequency of 2.53GHz. The CPU will come in a socket P package and support FSB speeds up to 1066MHz. The chip will include 12MB L2 cache and have a maximum TDP of 45W.

Asustek says two-thirds of Eee PCs will have Windows XP

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Asustek Computer (2357.TW: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's top maker of computer motherboards, said nearly two-thirds of its Eee PCs shipped this year will be Windows-based as consumers embrace the company's low-cost laptop models.

The Taiwan company's branded business last year launched a 7-inch child-friendly Linux-based personal computer priced as low as $200, and new models with Microsoft's (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Windows XP will be priced around $390 to $400.

"About 60 percent of them (Eee PCs) will have Windows XP operating system," Asustek Chairman Jonney Shih said at a news conference.

The Eee PC has won Asustek much recognition worldwide and Shih said his company was keeping its previous target of shipping 5 million units this year versus 300,000 units shipped in 2007.

Sales have been the strongest in Europe, followed by Asia Pacific and China, said Lillian Lin, Asustek's head of marketing.

"There is a huge untapped computer market out there, and we want to get into the next 10 billion consumer market (with these lower cost computers)," said Davis Tsai, President of Microsoft Taiwan.

Industry analysts said the move would be beneficial to the Taiwan company, and Windows' software prices on low-cost models should be cheaper than that of the operating systems used on mainstream notebooks.

"A Windows Eee PC is more attractive to buyers because people are just not used to using Linux-based computers," said Alvin Kwock, analyst at JP Morgan.

Worth around $8.5 billion, Asustek separated this year its branded business from its contract manufacturing operations, which make laptops for Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Dell Inc (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Lenovo (0992.HK: Quote, Profile, Research).

Separately, Shih said Asustek was considering moving some of the firm's contract manufacturing facilities to Vietnam, following other larger contract manufacturers like Compal Electronics (2324.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) and Hon Hai Precision Industry (2317.TW: Quote, Profile, Research).

He did not give a specific time frame or investment figure.

Asustek's shares fell 2.66 percent on Thursday, in line with the drop on the benchmark TAIEX index .

Asustek competes with Acer Inc (2353.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) in own-brand laptops and with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co and Quanta Computer (2382.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) in its contract manufacturing operations.

Domestic telecom carrier Far Eastone (4904.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) also said on Thursday it was looking to invest in local telecom operators in Vietnam to support Taiwan businesses that were moving their facilities there.

Larger rival Chunghwa Telecom (2412.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) (CHT.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the island's largest telecommunications carrier, said earlier this week that it plans to step up its investment into Southeast Asia as the telecoms market in Taiwan becomes saturated.

Tablet PCs will replace textbooks and other predictions from Bill Gates

Microsoft chairman predicts natural interfaces that will deploy speech and camera recognition and reshape computing. Print will be past tense.

WASHINGTON - Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates today outlined a future of computing akin to a Whole Earth Catalog for technology. The computing systems of the future will be more natural, responsive and capable of easily recognizing objects and people. They will also be completely customizable, he said.

Television, for instance, will be based on the Internet and it "will be an utterly different thing," that's customizable and interactive, Gates said during a talk before the Northern Virginia Technology Council, an industry group gathered at a hotel located just steps from the White House.

Gates appeared Wednesday before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology to talk about policy issues, including education, basic research funding as well as to argue for the need for better access to foreign workers through the H-1B visa and other programs. But today he was back to more familiar themes.

One of those themes was building technology based on a concept he calls natural user interface. Building these interfaces is one of the "biggest challenges" ahead, Gates said, and one that is also "greatly underestimated." But it will deliver "new ways of interacting with these computing devices," he said.

This mode of interaction goes well beyond the mouse and keyboard. One example is the tablet computer, which Gates said is beginning to move into the mainstream.

Gates said his daughter goes to a school where she has a tablet PC, "no textbooks at all."

Tablet devices, with video and collaboration capabilities, are "far superior then what used to be done in print," Gates said.

Natural user interfaces will include voice recognition software so advanced that recorded content will be easily searchable. Gates also sees cameras giving computers vision.

"In the future, instead of having the computer on your desk, you will have the computer in your desk," Gates said, and that desktop will have the ability to recognize what the user is doing, as well as the objects and papers placed on it.

In the home, "intelligent surfaces" will be pervasive, he said, to help organize a trip, photos or just about anything. "It can be done without the hardware being significantly more expensive," he said.

Data centers will be automated with little human intervention, and software development will use models that involve less code, the Microsoft chairman said. Software is "much larger than the simple English description of what that business is up to." Software is expensive and hard to fix, and "we want there to be less lines of code," he said.

"These kinds of big breakthroughs are coming because the industry is investing in research and development," said Gates, who noted that R&D has become the most important part of his company.

In the audience were people from companies that are heavily involved in the government market, where they sell services that use Microsoft products. It was a friendly audience, but there were still tough questions.

Pointing out that security is "essentially an afterthought," in technology, Mark Boltz, a senior solutions architect at Stonesoft Corp., a network security provider, said Gates had spent "maybe 10, 20 seconds" of his talk on security.

Referring to new technologies, such as Microsoft's Surface, which uses tabletop-like surfaces to interact with people, Boltz wanted to know how they would be secured. Pointing to one consumer product, a digital photo frame that came preloaded with a Trojan program, he asked how something placed on an interactive coffee table might transmit a virus that would spread to other "smart" devices, such as a refrigerator. The audience laughed at that last point.

iPhone software 2.0 allegedly unlocked

Apple's not-yet available iPhone 2.0 software has already been cracked -- before it even has shipped. At least that's what a renegade group of developers claimed Tuesday.

The iPhone Dev Team claims to have cracked the software, meaning yet more pressure on Apple Inc. in the cat and mouse game between software developers and the owners of a million unlocked iPhones and the company and its network partners.

The developers claim to have decrypted and have jailbroken the new iPhone software, and have published a series of screenshots of third-party applications running on the device.

The jailbreak currently only works with hacked activation, meaning it won't work with AT&T iPhones yet.

Apple executives have characterized the buoyant global market in unlocked iPhones as a positive thing, suggesting strong pent-up demand for the product, which is as yet available in just four markets: U.S., U.K., Germany and France.

AMD starts shipping triple-core Phenom processors

The chips are presently being shipped in volume to PC makers only, and Dell and HP have hinted at using Phenom in desktop PCs



AMD said on Wednesday it has started shipping triple-core Phenom processors, bringing desktops with the chip closer to release.

The triple-core processors are shipping in volume to PC makers only right now, AMD officials said. It declined further comment on chip availability and specifications.

Many major vendors, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have hinted at including the Phenom triple-core processors in desktops.

Dell has listed plans to use the chip in its OptiPlex 740 business desktop systems, with 1.5MB of L2 cache and 2MB of shared L3 cache, in an online brochure. Dell will ship the triple-core OptiPlex in the second quarter, a company spokeswoman said, declining further comment.

Hewlett-Packard has also listed a desktop on its Bulgarian-language Web site with AMD's Phenom Triple-Core 8600B processor that runs at 2.3GHz, with 1.5MB of L2 cache. HP officials were not available for comment.

Mesh Computer, a PC vendor in the U.K., has already started offering two desktops with the triple-core Phenom. The company is including an AMD Phenom 8400 Triple-Core processor, which runs at 2.1GHz, in the Matrix XXX Plus desktop. It is using AMD's Phenom 8600 Triple-Core, which runs at 2.3GHz, in the Matrix XXX Pro desktop.

AMD last year added the triple-core processor to its chip lineup and said it would be available in the first quarter of 2008. It is positioning the chip as a better choice than dual-core chips with the third core providing additional processing power to carry out computing tasks like antivirus scanning.

Free-electron laser benefits from "seed" light

Researchers in France and Japan have developed a technique that not only reduces the size of a free electron laser (FEL) but also generates coherent light at X-ray wavelengths down to 32 nm for the first time. The technique, which involves seeding the laser with another light source, could be refined to produce fully-coherent pulses with wavelengths of 2–4 nm, opening up the “water window” crucial for studying biological samples.

Conventional lasers work by amplifying the radiation emitted when electrons move between certain energy levels in atoms or molecules. Things are different in an FEL: a beam of electrons is accelerated in a wavy, sinusoidal trajectory along a series of magnets collectively called an undulator. As the beam approaches the speed of light, the electrons emit spontaneous radiation known as synchrotron radiation.

The electrons are never fully detached from this synchrotron radiation — they interact and amplify it to produce self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) at a variety of wavelengths. The FEL can be tuned by changing the energy of the electrons and the position of the undulator’s magnets. However, this configuration presents a problem in that “spikes”, or fluctuating light pulses, appear at short wavelengths in the SASE temporal and spatial profiles. These spikes make it difficult to perform time-resolved experiments, which are important for many applications.

An external source

One solution to this problem is to seed the FEL with a coherent, external source. “The FEL properties are significantly improved because they reflect the coherent properties of the seed source,” team member Guillaume Lambert told physicsworld.com.

The method, which the researchers developed during experiments at the SPring-8 Compact SASE Source (SCSS) test accelerator in Japan, involves focusing intense infrared light from a titanium–sapphire laser onto a cell containing xenon gas. The “higher-order harmonic generation” (HHG) beam produced — the seed — is then refocused onto the FEL to produce light that is coherent in both space and time. This particular technique leads to a much more compact FEL source for generating light with wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet to X-rays: the undulator length is reduced from nine metres in a normal SASE configuration to just four metres (Nature Phys. doi:10.1038/nphys889).


“Compared to conventional synchrotron sources, FELs provide a high degree of temporal coherence, pulses that last just tens or hundreds of femtoseconds [10–13–10–14 s] and a ten-billion times higher peak brightness,” explains Toru Hara of the Japanese team. Synchrotron radiation is widely used in biology for determining the structure of proteins, whereas fourth-generation light sources, like this FEL, will allow protein function within cells to be observed. This is because the light produced is not absorbed by water, which allows cells to be observed.

At 160 nm, the seed has the shortest wavelength ever produced in such experiments — and non-linear harmonics are produced down to 32 nm. Moreover, the technique is the first demonstration of seeding an FEL device with HHG. Earlier seeding in FELs has been performed with conventional lasers at 10.6 µm (far infrared), 800 nm (infrared) and 266 nm (ultraviolet). The researchers are now planning to measure the wavefront of the light produced with a view to investigating its spatial properties, and later this year will try to seed at 50–60 nm.

The HHG seeding technique will be implemented shortly on the SPARC and FLASH FEL facilities in Italy and Germany, respectively.

Xbox 360 could get Blu-ray - Sony

A senior Sony executive has claimed Microsoft is in talks about bringing Blu-ray technology to Xbox 360 - but Microsoft says it has no plans to do so.

According to the Financial Times it all started when Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics US, made a speech at a "media dinner". He said Microsoft and Apple are both having a chat with Sony about how they can incorporate Blu-ray tech into their products.

The news comes two weeks after Microsoft's corporate vice president of Live, Software and Services, John Schappert, told Eurogamer that the HD-DVD add-on's poor attach rate - just 3 percent - might dissuade Microsoft from releasing another high-definition disc drive add-on.

We love teh gaymes iz not tru, said Microsoft in a statement. Or more specifically: "We have made no such announcement. Games are what are driving consumers to purchase game consoles and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster games available." That clears everything up then.

Later in his speech Glasgow said he's not worried about digital downloads overtaking Blu-ray, what with bandwidth limitations and the fact consumers like having discs anyway. "Downloading will build over time, but this will be over a period of years," he observed. He also predicted the cost of Blu-ray players will drop to USD 299 before the end of the year, falling to USD 200 by 2010.

Wi-Fi hotspots to disappear?

Hi-Fi hotspots will become as ill-used as the telephone box. That's the claim levied by mobile broadband advocate Ericsson yesterday.

Chief marketing officer Johan Bergendahl was speaking at the European Computer Audit, Control and Security Conference in Stockholm, where he claimed hotspots will no longer be needed. "Hot spots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era," said Bergendahl.

Mobile broadband growing fast

He added that mobile broadband is growing faster than either mobile or fixed line telephony ever has. And that's being helped by some pretty aggressive pricing here in the UK - £10 a month for 3 on-the-go broadband is pretty impressive. Mind you, he clearly hasn't thought too much about the restrictions of HSDPA broadband.

Data allowances still mean that replacing your fixed line connection is some way off, while roaming charges and coverage are two more challenges. Indeed, Bergendahl urged providers to work together better.

However, this isn't to harpoon Bergendahl's comments: "In a few years, [mobile broadband] will be as common as Wi-Fi is today," he said in his keynote at the conference. Laptop manufacturers certainly wouldn't agree - they're falling over themselves to provide the capability in their notebooks despite Intel chucking integrated HSDPA out of the Centrino spec.

Instead, Intel is putting all its eggs into one WiMAX. It already has a lot to do to catch up with telcos eager to make good on their 3G investment.

Researchers Show Off Laser-Guided Robot

The El-E robot looks like something you'd see in a Hollywood sci-fi flick: It's got two lenses spaced together just like eyes and a slender 5 1/2-foot-tall body. It spurts out wacky catch phrases when it accomplishes its goals.

But unlike android movie stars, the El-E isn't designed to behave like a human. Rather, its focus is interacting with us. It simply grabs stuff you point at with a laser.

"The entire world becomes a point and click interface. Objects become buttons. And if you point at one, the robot comes to grab it," said Charlie Kemp, the director of Georgia Tech's Center for Healthcare Robotics and the robot's designer. "It creates a clickable world."

The robot, which was unveiled Wednesday at an Amsterdam conference, will be tested this summer in a real-world setting involving patients with a degenerative disease. Its creators - from Georgia Tech and Emory universities - won't disclose the robot's cost, but there's hope it could be cheaper than service animals such as dogs or monkeys.

To command the El-E, the user points a laser at something for a few seconds. The robot responds with a beep and then zeros in on the target. Once there, it lifts a mechanical arm and grabs the object. It begins the return trip when the laser is pointed at the user's feet, and it looks for a human face before handing over what it grabbed.

Kemp said engineers are often too focused on making robots behave like people, ignoring other ways they can interact.

"How can you make robots that are actually useful? That was bugging me," he said. "And it's a hard question to answer - that's why I'm happy with this. We made technical contributions as well as something that actually helps users."

The robot successfully fetches its target objects off the floor 90 percent of the time, researchers said.

This summer's test will involve patients with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, which shuts down nerve cells responsible for movement.

"It will give these folks at least a level of independence," said Dr. Jonathan Glass, director of the Emory ALS Center and a part of the team developing the robot. "You don't have to feed it, and you can train it to do anything you want to do."

Other scientists have taken notice.

"It's very impressive work," said Oliver Brock, an assistant computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "It's a serious and successful attempt to build a robot that can actually coexist with humans and successfully perform a task."

El-E works by using dozens of sensors, lasers and cameras that help it find its target item and judge the grip needed to retrieve it. A mechanical crane that can grab items from the floor or shelves dominates its slender body. It rolls around on three wheels, and it's all powered by a lone Mac mini, which sits in its base.

Researchers hope the laser-directed robot could someday open doors, switch light panels and guide patients, but it still has a way to go.

The robot's arm can only carry objects up to 1.2 pounds, and it has yet to be tested with sick patients. And when it does malfunction, it can be a bit disarming.

On a recent trial run, the El-E took a winding path on its mission to pick up a coffee mug, halting several times during its short journey. When Kemp and his students finally figured out the problem was a low battery, it moved smoothly again, stuttering only a bit as it tightened its grip on the cup. It wheeled around and paused for a few seconds before detecting the user's face and delivering the mug.

"Bob's your uncle," it blurted out.

Mission accomplished.

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news124554019.html

IBM, Hitachi team up to shrink chips

Companies say the key to their two-year effort is to miniaturize the transistor

IBM and Hitachi Ltd. today announced plans to join forces in an effort to shrink processors.

The companies jointly said they have signed a two-year research agreement. They're trying to speed the pace of developing 32nm and 22nm devices and manufacturing processes. According to an IBM release, they will be focusing on miniaturizing transistors, which are the building blocks of processors, acting like a switch.

"By combining individual research strength and intellectual property, we reduce the significant costs associated with research needed to advance the next generation of chip technology," said Bernie Meyerson, chief technology officer for IBM's Systems & Technology Group.

Intel Corp. moved from a 65nm manufacturing process to 45nm late last year with the introduction of its Penryn family of chips. With the new process and a new transistor design, Intel was able to fit 820 million transistors onto a single chip.

In comparison, when Intel launched its first microprocessor -- the 4004 -- in 1971, it held a little more than 2,000 transistors.

This past December marked the 60th anniversary of the transistor, which some analysts have called the most important invention of the 20th century.

Engineers working on the joint IBM and Hitachi project will conduct their research at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering's Albany NanoTech Complex.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9067678&intsrc=news_ts_head

Notebooks based on Intel's Atom to cost between $250 and $300

More than 25 low-cost notebooks based on Intel Corp.'s upcoming Atom processor are in the works, including models from multinational PC vendors, according to the chip maker's top executive in Asia.

These Atom-based notebooks will be available in the middle of this year for about $250 to $300, said Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel's Asia-Pacific operations, in an interview. "We'll see some slightly richer configurations that get up to $350," he said.

The Atom processor, formerly called Diamondville, is a small, low-power chip designed for inexpensive notebooks, a class of device that Intel and others refer to as netbooks. These machines are intended for first-time computer buyers in emerging markets, as well as users in mature markets who are willing to trade performance for a low-cost notebook that complements their existing computers -- a market that until now has been largely dominated by Asustek Computer Inc.'s Eee PC.

Atom will offer lower performance than Intel's Core 2 Duo processors for mainstream notebooks, but its performance will be good enough for browsing the Internet and sending e-mails, Shenoy said.

Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner was more specific about the processor's capabilities last month, telling reporters that a related chip, called Silverthorne, offers performance similar to Banias, the first version of Intel's Pentium M processor released in 2003. Silverthorne is designed for small, handheld computers that Intel calls Mobile Internet Devices, and will be available as part of the Centrino Atom chip package set for release during the second quarter.

The introduction of the Atom and the rush of vendors to build the chip into low-cost notebooks could mark the emergence of a new type of device, expanding on the early success of Asustek's Eee PC. But not everyone is convinced that there is much demand for low-cost notebooks, either as a secondary computing device or a substitute for a more capable, and more expensive, notebook PC.

Bryan Ma, director of personal systems research at IDC Asia-Pacific, is a self-described skeptic and doubts that low-cost notebooks will have more than a limited impact on the market for portable computing devices as long as performance and features are traded for lower prices. "I was never convinced that price was the best way to sell these products," he said.

But the marketing clout of Intel and top-tier PC vendors could alter this equation by creating additional demand among customers in both emerging markets and developing countries. "Intel pushing this gives it more legs," Ma said.

"There's going to be some experimentation," Shenoy said.

Most Atom-based notebooks will have screens ranging in size from 7 in. up to 10 in., Shenoy said, adding that some models will be equipped with screens that can swivel and lay flat against the keyboard, turning the device into a tablet computer. Devices will ship with either hard disks or solid-state drives that use flash memory and offer battery life ranging from three to five hours, he said.

"Some will be really sleek and thin; some will be a bit more ruggedized," Shenoy said, adding that Wi-Fi will likely be a common feature.

On the software side, Atom-based notebooks will ship with either Windows XP or some version of Linux. "I don't think you'll see a lot of Vista in this space for cost reasons," Shenoy said.

The availability of Windows XP on low-cost notebooks set to arrive during the middle of the year is noteworthy because Microsoft Corp. has stated that Windows XP licenses will not be sold after June 30. Microsoft officials in Singapore reaffirmed the June 30 deadline in a statement released through the company's public relations agency. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Windows XP will completely disappear after June 30.

"There are probably going to be certain exceptions here and there," IDC's Ma said.

New Eee PC will use Intel's new Atom

Asus' head honcho has spilt more beans on details of the version two Eee PC model. It will use Intel's recently-branded Atom processor designed for sub-notebook machines just like the Eee and its growing band of rivals.

In an interview with Laptopmag.com, Jerry Shen said later versions of the Eee PC may even come with a built-in hard drive as opposed to solid state. New versions of the machine were announced at last week's CeBIT show for launch in the summer.

A Windows XP version will be available - the 8GB Eee PC 900, while storage now tops out at 12GB for the high-end model with Linux on board. That'll replace the current Eee PC 701 model.

The new machines will feature the 'Diamondville' derivative of the 45nm Atom processor. The chip is a 1.6GHz low voltage, single-core variant with a 512KB cache. A dual-core version seems likely to follow.

New colours also planned

What's more, the Eee will ship in other colours. Shen said there would be "a very new colour design" introduced in the early summer.

The new 900 will cost €399 and will boast an 8.9-inch screen. Asus said the model was on the way during its press conference at CES in January, when it also announced it was working with Intel to provide WiMAX support on the machine.

This won't be in available until later in the summer it seems, but will instead be in the third-generation machine late this year - also depending on partnerships with WiMAX or cellular providers.

Asus is quoting quite staggering sales figures for the machine. Some 350,000 have been sold since launch with a projected 3 to 5 million units to be sold this year. The diminutive lappy is certainly creating a lot of interest.

Any hard drive-based Eee won't appear until far later in the year, said Shen.

Source: http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/mobile-computing/notebooks-and-tablet-pcs/news/new-eee-pc-will-use-intels-new-atom?articleid=326404251

Intel to beef up solid state drives to 160GB

Intel is planning to release high capacity solid state drives (SSDs) next quarter that could reach a capacity of 160GB. That's according to numerous reports, which claim that the new models will come in 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch formats.

They'll compete with existing flash memory drives from Samsung, which has promised a 128GB version of its 1.8-inch solid state drive later this year.

Price fall coming

"When Intel launches its products, you'll see that not all SSDs are created equal," Intel's NAND product chief Troy Winslow said. "The way the SSDs are architected, the way the controller and firmware operates makes a huge difference."

Pricing, which has been a major concern for most customers for quite some time, may not be such a huge barrier going forward. Winslow pointed out that "price declines are historically 40 per cent per year. And in 2009, a 50 per cent reduction, then again in 2010."

Solid state drives are quickly becoming popular; with the cost to consumers dropping and the gigabyte count rising, look for them in more products soon.

Source: http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/upgrades-and-peripherals/storage/hard-disk-drives-hdd/news/intel-to-beef-up-solid-state-drives-to-160gb?articleid=488998083

A 16-bit parallel processing in a molecular assembly

Anirban Bandyopadhyay and Somobrata Acharya

International Center for Young Scientists, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan

Edited by Mark A. Ratner, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, and approved January 15, 2008 (received for review April 4, 2007)

Abstract

A machine assembly consisting of 17 identical molecules of 2,3,5,6-tetramethyl-1–4-benzoquinone (DRQ) executes 16 instructions at a time. A single DRQ is positioned at the center of a circular ring formed by 16 other DRQs, controlling their operation in parallel through hydrogen-bond channels. Each molecule is a logic machine and generates four instructions by rotating its alkyl groups. A single instruction executed by a scanning tunneling microscope tip on the central molecule can change decisions of 16 machines simultaneously, in four billion (4^16) ways. This parallel communication represents a significant conceptual advance relative to today's fastest processors, which execute only one instruction at a time

Source: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0703105105v1

Britain makes camera that "sees" under clothes

A British company has developed a camera that can detect weapons, drugs or explosives hidden under people's clothes from up to 25 meters away in what could be a breakthrough for the security industry. ADVERTISEMENT

The T5000 camera, created by a company called ThruVision, uses what it calls "passive imaging technology" to identify objects by the natural electromagnetic rays -- known as Terahertz or T-rays -- that they emit.

The high-powered camera can detect hidden objects from up to 80 feet away and is effective even when people are moving. It does not reveal physical body details and the screening is harmless, the company says.

The technology, which has military and civilian applications and could be used in crowded airports, shopping malls or sporting events, will be unveiled at a scientific development exhibition sponsored by Britain's Home Office on March 12-13.

"Acts of terrorism have shaken the world in recent years and security precautions have been tightened globally," said Clive Beattie, the chief executive of ThruVision.

"The ability to see both metallic and non-metallic items on people out to 25 meters is certainly a key capability that will enhance any comprehensive security system."

While the technology may enhance detection, it may also increase concerns that Britain is becoming a surveillance society, with hundreds of thousands of closed-circuit television cameras already monitoring people countrywide every day.

ThruVision came up with the technology for the T5000 in collaboration with the European Space Agency and from studying research by astronomers into dying stars.

The technology works on the basis that all people and objects emit low levels of electromagnetic radiation. Terahertz rays lie somewhere between infrared and microwaves on the electromagnetic spectrum and travel through clouds and walls.

Depending on the material, the signature of the wave is different, so that explosives can be distinguished from a block of clay and cocaine is different from a bag of flour.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080309/tc_nm/security_britain_technology_dc

WMAP Reveals Neutrinos, End of Dark Ages, First Second of Universe

NASA released this week five years of data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) that refines our understanding of the universe and its development. It is a treasure trove of information, including at least three major findings:

• New evidence that a sea of cosmic neutrinos permeates the universe
• Clear evidence the first stars took more than a half-billion years to create a cosmic fog
• Tight new constraints on the burst of expansion in the universe's first trillionth of a second

"We are living in an extraordinary time," said Gary Hinshaw of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Ours is the first generation in human history to make such detailed and far-reaching measurements of our universe."

WMAP measures a remnant of the early universe - its oldest light. The conditions of the early times are imprinted on this light. It is the result of what happened earlier, and a backlight for the later development of the universe. This light lost energy as the universe expanded over 13.7 billion years, so WMAP now sees the light as microwaves. By making accurate measurements of microwave patterns, WMAP has answered many longstanding questions about the universe's age, composition and development.

The universe is awash in a sea of cosmic neutrinos. These almost weightless sub-atomic particles zip around at nearly the speed of light. Millions of cosmic neutrinos pass through you every second.

"A block of lead the size of our entire solar system wouldn’t even come close to stopping a cosmic neutrino,” said science team member Eiichiro Komatsu of the University of Texas at Austin.

WMAP has found evidence for this so-called "cosmic neutrino background" from the early universe. Neutrinos made up a much larger part of the early universe than they do today.

Microwave light seen by WMAP from when the universe was only 380,000 years old, shows that, at the time, neutrinos made up 10% of the universe, atoms 12%, dark matter 63%, photons 15%, and dark energy was negligible. In contrast, estimates from WMAP data show the current universe consists of 4.6% percent atoms, 23% dark matter, 72% dark energy and less than 1 percent neutrinos.

Cosmic neutrinos existed in such huge numbers they affected the universe’s early development. That, in turn, influenced the microwaves that WMAP observes. WMAP data suggest, with greater than 99.5% confidence, the existence of the cosmic neutrino background - the first time this evidence has been gleaned from the cosmic microwaves.

Much of what WMAP reveals about the universe is because of the patterns in its sky maps. The patterns arise from sound waves in the early universe. As with the sound from a plucked guitar string, there is a primary note and a series of harmonics, or overtones. The third overtone, now clearly captured by WMAP, helps to provide the evidence for the neutrinos.

The hot and dense young universe was a nuclear reactor that produced helium. Theories based on the amount of helium seen today predict a sea of neutrinos should have been present when helium was made. The new WMAP data agree with that prediction, along with precise measurements of neutrino properties made by Earth-bound particle colliders.

Another breakthrough derived from WMAP data is clear evidence the first stars took more than a half-billion years to create a cosmic fog. The data provide crucial new insights into the end of the "dark ages," when the first generation of stars began to shine. The glow from these stars created a thin fog of electrons in the surrounding gas that scatters microwaves, in much the same way fog scatters the beams from a car’s headlights.

"We now have evidence that the creation of this fog was a drawn-out process, starting when the universe was about 400 million years old and lasting for half a billion years," said WMAP team member Joanna Dunkley of the University of Oxford in the U.K. and Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. "These measurements are currently possible only with WMAP."

A third major finding arising from the new WMAP data places tight constraints on the astonishing burst of growth in the first trillionth of a second of the universe, called “inflation”, when ripples in the very fabric of space may have been created. Some versions of the inflation theory now are eliminated. Others have picked up new support.

"The new WMAP data rule out many mainstream ideas that seek to describe the growth burst in the early universe," said WMAP principal investigator, Charles Bennett, of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. "It is astonishing that bold predictions of events in the first moments of the universe now can be confronted with solid measurements."

The five-year WMAP data were released this week, and results were issued in a set of seven scientific papers submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.

Prior to the release of the new five-year data, WMAP already had made a pair of landmark finds. In 2003, the probe's determination that there is a large percentage of dark energy in the universe erased remaining doubts about dark energy's very existence. That same year, WMAP also pinpointed the 13.7 billion year age of the universe.

Additional WMAP science team institutions are: the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, Columbia University, University of British Columbia, ADNET Systems, University of Chicago, Brown University, and UCLA.

Solar-Powered Recharger Ships

Solar Technology's FreeLoader supports iPhones, iPods, and many other electronic devices.

Solar Technology has introduced a combined solar and battery-based recharging system for iPods and other devices, the FreeLoader 8.0.

The device ships with the capacity to charge many of the latest mobile gadgets: digital cameras, iPods, PDAs, PSPs and mobile phones, and even supports a direct connection to the iPhone and the iTouch.

Attractively-designed, Freeloader 8.0 has a durable casing and folds up small for transport in a pocket or handbag. The device can power an iPod for 18 hours, a mobile phone for 44 hours, a PSP for 2.5 hours and a PDA for 22 hours.

To ensure batteries never run flat, the Freeloader 8.0 can charge its own internal battery which holds its charge for up to three months and features extra sensitive solar panels which are more much efficient at absorbing light in the cloudy and dim conditions the UK endures.

Freeloader 8.0 is available in both Hot Pink and Cool Aluminium Silver and costs £29.99 (US$60).

Artificial black hole created in lab

Everyone knows the score with black holes: even if light strays too close, the immense gravity will drag it inside, never to be seen again. They are thought to be created when large stars finally spend all their fuel and collapse. It might come as a surprise, therefore, to find that physicists in the UK have now managed to create an “artificial” black hole in the lab.

Originally, theorists studying black holes focused almost exclusively on applying Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which describes how the gravity of massive objects arises from the curvature of space–time. Then, in 1974, the Cambridge University physicist Stephen Hawking, building on the work of Jacob Bekenstein, showed that quantum mechanics should also be thrown into the mix.

Hawking suggested that the point of no return surrounding a black hole beyond which light cannot escape — the so-called event horizon — should itself emit particles such as neutrinos or photons. In quantum mechanics, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle allows such particles to spring out of the empty vacuum in pairs all the time, although they usually annihilate shortly after. But if two particles were to crop up on either side of a black hole’s event horizon, the one on the inside would be trapped while the one on the outside could break free. To an observer, the black hole would look like a thermal body, and these particles would be the black hole’s “Hawking radiation”.

This is all very well in theory, but in practice Hawking radiation from a black hole would be too low to be detected above the noisy cosmic microwave background (CMB) left over from the Big Bang. Simply put, black holes are too cold. Even the smallest black holes, which according to Hawking should have the warmest characteristic temperature, would still be about eight orders of magnitude colder than the CMB.

Faced with the difficulty of observing Hawking radiation from astrophysical black holes, some physicists have attempted to make artificial ones in the lab that have a higher characteristic temperature. Clearly, generating huge amounts of gravity is both dangerous and next to impossible. But artificial black holes could be based on an analogous system in which the curved space–time of a gravitational field is enacted by another varying parameter that affects the propagation of a wave. “We cannot change the laws of gravity at our will,” Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews in the UK tells physicsworld.com. “But we can change analogous parameters in a condensed-matter system.” Leonhardt’s group at St Andrews is the first to create an artificial black-hole system in which Hawking radiation could be detected (Science 319 1367).

Fishy physics

The idea of using analogous systems to create black holes was first proposed by William Unruh of the University of British Columbia in 1981. He imagined fish trying to swim upstream away from a waterfall, which represents a black hole. Beyond a certain point close to the waterfall, the current becomes so strong — like an event horizon — that fish cannot swim fast enough to escape. In the same vein, Unruh then considered what would happen to waves flowing from the sea into a river mouth. Because the current gets stronger farther up a river, the waves can only progress so far upstream before being defeated. In this way, the river is a “white hole”: nothing can enter.

In the St Andrews experiment, which uses the refractive index of a fibre optic as the analogy for a gravitational field, there are actually both black and white holes. It relies on the fact that the speed of light of light in a medium is determined not only by the light’s wavelength, but also by the refractive index.

The group begins by sending a pulse of light through an optical fibre that, as a result of a phenomenon known as the Kerr effect, alters the local refractive index. A split-second later they send a “probe” beam of light, which has a wavelength long enough to travel faster through the fibre and catch up the pulse. But due to the altered refractive index around the pulse, the probe light is always slowed enough to prevent it from overtaking — so the pulse appears as a white hole. Likewise, if the group were to send the probe light from the opposite end of the fibre, it would reach the pulse but would not be able to go through to the other side — so the pulse would appear as a black hole.

Over the event horizon

Leonhardt and his colleagues proved that these black- and white-hole event horizons exist by monitoring the group velocity of the probe light, which never exceeded that of the pulse. More importantly, they have calculated that it should be possible to detect Hawking-radiation particles produced at either of the event horizons by filtering out the rest of the light at the far end of the fibre.

The detection of Hawking radiation would help physicists bridge the gap between quantum mechanics and general relativity, two presently incompatible theories. It might also help physicists investigate the mystery surrounding the wavelength of photons emitted at an event horizon, which is thought to start at practically zero before being stretched almost infinitely via gravity.

However, Renaud Parentani of University Paris-Sud in France thinks that, although it may be possible to glimpse radiation from an event horizon in future versions of the group’s system, the radiation might not possess all the expected properties of Hawking radiation generated by astrophysical black holes. For instance, the fibre-optic system is limited by dispersion, which means that the wavelength of photons produced at the event horizon will not be stretched very far. “What are the minimal properties required to induce Hawking radiation in a lab system the way we think it is induced by gravitational black holes?” he asks. “The answer, even on the theoretical side, isn't clear. But these experiments will encourage us to consider the question more deeply."

Source: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/33256

When you need internet...

Ukrainian version Wi-Fi antenna 8)

Welsh boffins invent faster broadband

BOFFINS BASED in Wales' Bangor University claim to have discovered a means whereby data can be downloaded over 100 times faster than today's typical broadband speeds.

According the university's Dr Jianming Tang, "Importantly, it works with the existing fibre optic technology we have, so there is no need to rip out the cabling which runs the country’s telecommunications network."

The discovery comes as a result of research into remote working for the EU-funded Alpha project. In certain parts of Wales almost a quarter (23 per cent) of people don't even have access to broadband.

To give an idea of the technology's speed, Bangor is claiming that it would be possible to download up to 15 typical Hollywood films in just one minute. But Dr Tang says it will offer a host of other possibilities in such fields as tele-medicine.

The research team also reckons that its technology may cut as much as 75 per cent off the cost of supplying broadband to consumers. Curiously, the same team hasn't been able to estimate how much the necessary black box would cost the consumer.

Critics of the system say that current communications aren't always asymmetric. That is, upload speeds are becoming just as important as download speeds.

A good example of a hugely asymmetric comms network was the UK's Prestel system. That worked well with certain industries such as travel and insurance but overall wasn't a massive success.

Here's an interesting piece of history for you. The Science Department of the university remained in an old coaching inn called the Penrhyn Arms until 1926.

That sounds like the INQ's kind of science department

XPS 720 Red (Vista)

Offer Details

• Intel® Core™2 Q6600 Quad-Core (8MB L2 cache,2.4GHz,1066FSB)
  
• Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
  
• 22 inch SP2208WFP Wide Flat Panel with Webcam and Mic
  
• Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
  
• 2GB4 Corsair Dominator DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz OC'd to 1066MHz-2 DIMMs
  
• 320GB3 - Seagate 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
  
• Dual nVidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB4
  
• Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeGamer (D) Sound Card
  
• 1Yr In-Home Service,2 Parts + Labor,5 24x7 Phone Support

Tech Specs

Processors
Intel® CoreTM 2 Extreme Processor QX6800 (8MB L2 Cache, 3.20GHz, 1066MHz FSB)
Intel® CoreTM 2 Extreme Processor QX6700 (8MB L2 Cache, 2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB)
Intel® CoreTM 2 Quad Processor Q6600 (8MB L2 Cache, 2.40GHz, 1066MHz FSB)
Intel® CoreTM 2 E6700 (4MB L2 Cache, 2.66GHz, 1066MHz FSB)
Intel® CoreTM 2 E6600 (4MB L2 Cache, 2.40GHz, 1066MHz FSB)

Operating System
Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
Genuine Windows® XP Professional
For more details on Dell systems that run Windows Vista, see www.dell.com/vista.

Chipset
The NVIDIA® nForce 680i SLITM MCP core logic enables two graphics cards to work together rendering a single image. All connected by PCI Express x16 bandwidth to help provide the ultimate visual experience. NVIDIA nForce® 680i SLITM Chipset for Intel (D)6
Engineered for Enthusiasts NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Intel Edition (D)
NVIDIA SLI technology 2x16
Dual DDR2 Memory Architecture X
NVIDIA SLI-Ready Memory
NVIDIA MediaShield Storage X
NVIDIA Native Gigabit Ethernet* X
NVIDIA FirstPacket technology
NVIDIA DualNet technology
NVIDIA nTune Utility X
NVIDIA SLI Certified Components X
PCI Express X
High Definition Audio X
USB 2.0 X

Memory
DDR213 is a memory architecture that enables systems to improve performance and reduce power consumption. The amount of RAM you have is one factor that determines how many programs can be executed at one time and how much data can be readily available to a program. It also determines how quickly your applications perform and how many applications you can easily toggle between at one time. Simply put, the more RAM you have, the more programs you can run smoothly and simultaneously. Up to 4GB89 Dual-Channel DDR213 SDRAM (667MHz or 800MHz, 2 or 4 DIMMs)
XPS 720 Supports up to 8GB9 of Dual-Channel DDR213 SDRAM (667MHz or 800MHz, 4 DIMMs) when a 64-bit Operating System is installed
XPS 720 supports EPP Memory for simplified memory overclocking>

Hard Drives
The XPS 720 supports up to four hard drives12, –providing a potential capacity of up to 2.75TB11 total. And with RAID 1 and RAID 0 options, you can configure your storage to meet your needs, whether it's for storing large quantities of files, backing up system information and files, or improving performance with data striping.

Dell can ship up to 3 hard drives installed.Up to 2.75TB11 Multiple Serial ATA Hard Drives
Up to 1TB311 Single Serial ATA Hard Drive

Optical Drives, Floppy Drive, and Media Reader
Blu-ray disc
Multiple DVD+/-RW, Combo, DVD-ROM configurations Available
Optional Blu-Ray drive, 16x DVD+/-RW drive; 48X Combo Available
3.5" Floppy Drive and 13-in-1 Media Reader Available
Graphics
XPS 720 Red
512 MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce® 8800 GT - SLI capable
768MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce® 8800 GTX graphics card - SLI capable
768MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce® 8800 Ultra graphics card - SLI capable
XPS 720 Black
256MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce® 8600 GTS graphics card - SLI capable
512 MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce® 8800 GT - SLI capable
768MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce® 8800 GTX graphics card - SLI capable
768MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce® 8800 Ultra graphics card - SLI capable

Sound Cards
Integrated 7.1 Intel High Definition Audio – Standard
Sound Blaster X-FiTM XtremeMusic (D)6 - Included

Physics Accelerator
AGEIA® PhysXTM physics accelerator (optional)
Note: Games must be designed to take advantage of the PhysX accelerator.

Weight & Dimensions
Width: Without Stand 8.6"(21.9 cm) / With Stand 14.0"(35.6 cm)
Height: Without Stand 21.9"(55.5 cm) / With Stand 22.5"(57.2 cm)
Depth: 23.4"(59.4 cm)
Weight: Typical configuration 47.8 lbs (21.7 kg) / Maximum Configuration 56.4 lbs (25.6 kg)

Externally Accessible
Video: 2 DVI and 1 S-Video
IEEE 1394 - 1 front & 1 back 6-pin serial connector
USB: 10 Ports (2 Front, 6 Back, 2 internal)
Audio: Audio – Front: headphone, microphone; Back: line-in, line-out, microphone, surround, center/LFE; integrated HDA 7.1 channel sound
Network: Integrated Gigabit10 Ethernet
Legacy: 2 PS/2 Ports
1 - S/P DIF out (optical)

Expansion Slots
PCI: 3 Slots
PCIe x1: 1 Slot
PCIe x16 (Graphics): 2 Slots
PCIe x8: 1 Slot

Chassis
Power Supply: 1KW (Red system) or 750W (Black system) - SLI, ATX2.0, EPS12V, SSI industry compatibility
Externally available: 2 Optical (5.25), 1 9-in-1 Media Card reader (2 x 5.25) & 1 Floppy (3.5)
Internally available: 4 x 3.5 (HDD)
Memory DIMM slots: 4 available
(H x W x D): 22.5” x 8.6” x 24.25” (with stand); 21.86” x 8.6” x 24.25” (without stand)
7-slot BTX motherboard (12.6" x 10.5")

XPS ONE

Offer Details

• 20 inch widescreen display with Intel® Core™2 Duo E4500
  
• Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
  
• 8X Slot load CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW)
  
• 2GB* Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 DIMMs
  
• 250GB* Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
  
• Integrated Video
  
• Integrated Audio - 2.0 Speakers
  
• 1Yr In-Home Service,* Parts Labor, 24x7 Phone Support

Design

Break the Mold
Even when space is at a premium, the Dell XPS One is a perfect fit. Just over 16" tall with a single cord that rests flush against the body of the computer, it sits comfortably in even compact workspaces.



Look Sharp
To help you stay in touch with friends and interact with the online community, the XPS One features a discreet 2-megapixel webcam and enhanced-capture, dual-microphone array with noise cancellation. LED lights tell you when the camera is on and stay dark when it’s not in use.

Sonic Sensation
Maximize your listening pleasure. The XPS One features integrated right and left speakers for incredible Hi-Def sound. And when you want to listen to music with the lights down low, a single touch dims the screen while the songs play on.



Entertainment Command Center
Use your XPS One as a media hub with:

• Easy data transfer options, including an 8-in-1 media card reader, USB drives, IEEE 1394a data ports, integrated gigabit Ethernet and more
  
• Integrated 802.11a/b/g/n Draft 2.0 Wi-Fi so you can share files, printer access and a broadband connection across multiple systems in your home
  
• Internal BlueTooth 2.0 for wireless connection to Bluetooth-enabled peripherals like your PDA or cell phone
  
• Standard DVD+-/RW drive so you can watch or burn video and audio discs or back up your data
  
• Optional BluRay Disc Drive for additional storage and viewing high def movies
  

Asus shows new Eee PC with larger screen

March 4, 2008 (IDG News Service) The anticipated new version of Asustek Computer Inc.'s low-cost Eee PC with a larger screen has made its debut at the CeBIT trade show.

The new Eee PC 900 model sports an 8.9-in. screen -- a couple of inches larger than the 7-in. display on the original computer -- and more storage capacity. It has a 12GB, solid-state disk (SSD) drive, which is 50% greater than the largest drive available on current machines.

SSDs are replacements for hard disk drives that store data on flash memory. They offer better performance and lower-power consumption but are more expensive.

Other features of the new computer include 1GB of memory, Ethernet connection, 802.11b/g wireless LAN, 1.3-megapixel camera and a card reader for MMC, SD and SDHC memory cards. About three and a half hours of battery life is expected from the computer's 4-cell battery, said Asus.

The machine is expected to go on sale in the middle of this year and will cost €399 ($606 U.S.).

Asus has high hopes for the expanded Eee PC range and hopes to sell between 3 million and 5 million of the machines this year. Since its launch last year, sales have totaled about 350,000 units.

The Eee PC first debuted at the Computex trade show in Taipei in June 2007. The basic model is currently available in four configurations with the main difference being the size of the SSD storage. The cheapest model packs just 2GB of space while the most expensive of the four has an 8GB SSD.

Bamboo laptop is star of computer show

It's not often that computers are sold on their "spiritual warmth" and "refreshing fragrance" but the star of the world's biggest IT fair was something different. Instead of shiny plastic it was encased in laminated bamboo strips. The result, said its Taiwanese makers, Asus, was "both aesthetically pleasing and good for the environment".

The Eco Book was the answer, they said, to the growing concern about the use of plastics.

"Bamboo is the most sustainable raw material there is," said Jellent Sun, a senior director.

"It grows very fast and therefore we decided to combine bamboo with metal, and leave out the plastic." The resulting laptop is due to go into production in June.

The computer fair, CeBIT, which opened in Hanover yesterday, took on the green theme for the first time in its 36-year history. It was met with a mixture of praise and scepticism.

One company presented a notebook that claims it can "bring you to a healthier life", by "detoxifying, sterilising and exterminating the silent assassin viruses" in your working environment, thanks to its built-in ioniser.

"Admittedly the Anion computer is not going to save the planet," said Craig Martus of MSI, "but it will sweeten the air you breathe so that rather than being stuck in an office, you'll feel like you're in the mountains."

Until now it has been aeroplanes and cars which have taken the brunt of the criticism when it comes to environmental pollution. But now the IT industry is admitting that it has to cut users' energy costs - rising electricity bills are as much of an incentive as the environment - as well as improve its recycling capabilities.

"Green IT is hype," admitted Thomas Tauer of IBM Germany, "but it is an issue that will keep us busy for a long time".

The industry has coined such phrases as "ecolutions" - short for the rather long-winded eco-friendly and environmental evolution and solutions - "cooler

and cleaner," and "hi-tech, low carbon" in its attempt to plug the message that emissions can be reduced without computer users having to sacrifice functionality or style.

"Worldwide internet usage alone needs the equivalent of 14 power stations to run the required computers and servers, which means it's producing the same amount of carbon emissions as the entire airline industry," said Omur Canaltay, a marketing manager with Fujitsu Siemens.

He was presenting the world's first O-Watt monitor, which uses no electricity when in standby mode and is due to go on sale in the spring.

Use of similar products, he said, could reduce a family's electricity bill by 40%. Calculated on the grander scale of a multi-national company, the savings could run into millions.

The environmental pressure group Greenpeace was on hand to provide a healthy degree of scepticism about the industry's claims.

"We're here to cut through the corporate greenspeak and find out how much is real, and how much is just PR," said Omer Einaiem, Greenpeace International media relations specialist.

The organisation is using its presence at CeBIT to stress its appeal to the industry to eliminate toxic chemicals, boost energy efficiency and improve computers' life cycles so that old machines do not so readily land in unregulated and hazardous "recycling yards" in developing countries.

Today it will use the fair to present a list of the most environmentally friendly IT products on the market.