Melting memory chips in mass production

South Korean manufacturer Samsung Electronics announced this week that it has begun mass production of a new kind of memory chip that stores information by melting and freezing tiny crystals. Known as phase-change memory (PCM).

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Microchip can detect type and severity of cancer

University of Toronto researchers have used nanomaterials to develop a microchip sensitive enough to quickly determine the type and severity of a patient's cancer so that the disease can be detected earlier for more effective treatment.

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Time Lens Speeds Up Optical Data Transmission

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a device called a "time lens" which is a silicon device for speeding up optical data. The basic components of this device are an optical-fiber coil, laser, and nanoscale-patterned silicon waveguide.

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Researchers unravel brain's wiring to understand memory

Using a powerful microscope, Karel Svoboda, a brain scientist at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Va., peers through a plastic window in the top of a mouse's head to watch its brain's neurons sprout new connections -- a vivid display of a living brain in action.

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NASA Sets Target Date for Ares I-X Rocket's Test Launch

NASA is targeting Tuesday, Oct. 27, for the flight test of the Ares I-X rocket, pending successful testing and data verification. Senior managers made the decision after a meeting Monday at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

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Explaining Intel's Turbo Boost technology

Intel promotes the Turbo Boost technology in its new Core i7 Mobile processors as a way to adapt to the needs of the software and get more performance from the chip, but this isn't the real reason the technology exists.

The new "Clarksfield" Core i7 Mobile processors introduced at the Intel Developer Forum last week are certainly very impressive. They're huge high-performance quad-core chips with Hyper-Threading, support for two channels of DDR3-1333 DRAM, and an on-die PCI Express controller for the fastest possible connection to discrete graphics chips.

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Is Qualcomm's Mirasol The Future of Low-Power Displays?

It's not that Qualcomm is trying to keep its Mirasol display technology under wraps—the tech is now in a handful of products and has won six technology awards—it is just that the product hasn't yet found its killer app. This unique reflective display tech has not yet been packed into a touchscreen e-reader, a computer tablet or a smartphone. If it makes it to one of these mainstream devices (or a combination thereof), Mirasol could quickly become a household name.

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Self-Regulated Morphine Delivery for Wounded Warfighters

Medics still use morphine to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers on the modern battlefield, but have to watch out for morphine reducing breathing and blood pressure to dangerous levels. That may all change with a DARPA-backed combination drug that has successfully limited morphine delivery when it detects low blood oxygen levels.

The drug relies upon nanotech particles that carry both morphine and its antagonist, known as Naloxone. That creates a self-regulating feedback system where Naxolone only activates to suppress morphine when blood oxygen levels drop too low.

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New hybrid solar cell promises higher efficiency

RoseStreet Labs Energy, Inc. (RSLE; Phoenix, AZ) claims to have demonstrated the world's first nitride/silicon tandem solar cell. Utilizing the same nitride material technology as solid-state lighting and blue lasers, the company fabricated and tested a working photovoltaic cell that couples a silicon solar cell with a nitride thin film.

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Pentagon Pushes For Unblinking Surveillance

U.S. plans to deploy an unmanned surveillance airship to Afghanistan are moving forward, with a contract for the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) demonstration expected to be awarded by year-end.

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Adobe, McAfee to Combine DRM and Data-loss Prevention

Adobe Systems and McAfee will jointly develop a product that combines digital rights management capabilities with technology designed to prevent data from leaking outside corporate networks, the companies said Monday.

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Panasonic Shows Prototype 3D Plasma TV

Panasonic has unveiled a prototype 50-inch television and companion glasses that together give the viewer the illusion of three dimensions. The TV is being unveiled less than a month after Panasonic said it plans to commercialize 3D home entertainment products next year.

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Alcatel Claims New Optical Network Speed

Alcatel-Lucent researchers said they have figured out how to multiply the speed of the fastest undersea cables by a factor of 10, an achievement that someday could send the contents of 400 DVDs hurtling from Paris to Chicago in one second.

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Is plasma starting to fade out?

Plasma televisions, while still the finest made in the eyes of purists, are rapidly losing ground to LCD-based models, say analysts and industry observers. That's because Liquid Crystal Display TVs have plunged in price and innovated their way to near-parity with plasma in terms of image quality.

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Stealth finally meets its match

Since the 1991 Gulf War, the USAF has launched thousands of stealth bombing sorties against the hardest targets offered by Baghdad, Belgrade and Baghdad again, yet suffered only one recorded combat loss when an F-117 was shot down over Serbia in 1999.

Perhaps no other technology in history has dominated the battlefield as long or as absolutely as the stealthy airframe.But technology marches on. Ask any World War II battleship captain. Lt. Col. Arend G. Westra, a plans officer at the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, writes that counter-stealth technology -- namely, passive radar -- is quietly achieving parity with the likes of the B-2, the F-22 and, eventually, the F-35.

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AGS: NATO’s Battlefield Eye In The Sky

Northrop Grumman’s E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (J-STARS) uses powerful ground-looking SAR radars mounted on a Boeing 707-300 airframe, in order to give American commanders outstanding battlefield surveillance and communications relay capabilities. The Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) system aimed to create a similar capability as a pooled NATO asset, based on a mix of smaller Airbus A321 airframes and RQ-4B Gobal Hawk UAVs, coupled with ground stations. In the end, however, the program was slashed by deleting its manned aircraft and advanced radar entirely.

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