IBM keeps light pulse bandwagon rolling, uses ‘em for chip-to-chip communication

Lenovo loves its red mousing nipple, Apple digs its aluminum and IBM adores those light pulses. Nearly two full years after we heard this very company touting breakthroughs in science thanks to a nanophotonic switch , in flies a similar technique from Yorktown Heights that could “greatly further energy efficient computing.” As the story goes, gurus at IBM have figured out how to replace electrical signals that communicate via copper wires between computer chips with tiny silicon circuits that chat using pulses of light. The device is called a nanophotonic avalanche photodetector, and according to Dr.

Scientists to bring piezoelectrics and rubber together to form flexible, wearable energy harvester

Piezoelectrics are nothing new — though most applications, they’ve proven to be far more theoretically useful than practical. Still, the technology is starting to move in a direction that could prove more applicable to everyday situations — and a new piezo material recently developed could really get the ball moving.

Sony’s Rocket Project helps students reach the stratosphere, unloads some Vaios in the process (video)

We’ve seen plenty of cockamamie rocket stunts in our day, but there are still few things cooler than an amateur project that reaches for the stars.

Sony’s Rocket Project helps students reach the stratosphere, unloads some Vaios in the process (video)

We’ve seen plenty of cockamamie rocket stunts in our day, but there are still few things cooler than an amateur project that reaches for the stars. To this end (and for some free advertising) Sony’s announced the imaginatively named Rocket Project, wherein eight high school science students will be selected to receive Vaio CW-series laptops which they’ll then use to design and build a twenty-five feet tall, 500 pound rocket capable of reaching the stratosphere (at least theoretically)

Caltech gurus whip up highly efficient, low cost flexible solar cell

Solar cells are cute and all , but let’s be real — these things are far too inefficient for mainstream use. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology are working hard to remedy that very issue, and they’ve recently concocted a “new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons.” The solution relies on arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded onto a polymer substrate, which uses just a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells.

Newfangled nanoscale scanning technique could improve heart health

Oh, nanotechnology — your wonders never cease. Boffins at Imperial College London have been able to use live nanoscale microscopy (a technique called scanning ion conductance microscopy) in order to see the surface of the cardiac muscle cell at more detailed levels than those possible using conventional live microscopy.

DARPA longs for magnetic body healers, crazy respawn camps

Even DARPA understands that its futuristic bubble shield can be penetrated given the right circumstances, and when it does, the soldier behind it is going to need some serious healing.

DARPA longs for magnetic body healers, crazy respawn camps

Even DARPA understands that its futuristic bubble shield can be penetrated given the right circumstances, and when it does, the soldier behind it is going to need some serious healing. In a hurry. In the entity’s newest budget, there’s $6.5 million tucked away “for the creation of a scaffold-free tissue engineering platform, which would allow the construction of large, complex tissues in vitro and in vivo.” As you well know, this type of mad science has been around for quite some time, and now it looks as if DARPA is ready for the next best thing: “non-contact forces.” Put simply, this alludes to replacing scaffolds with magnetic fields or dielectrophoresis, which could purportedly “control cell placement in a desired pattern for a sufficient period of time to allow the cells to synthesize their own scaffold.” It’s still too early to say how close we are to being able to instantaneously heal soldiers on the battlefield, but frankly, the public is apt to never know for sure.

Thought-control research brings mental channel changing ever closer

Pinky and the Brain don’t get nearly the respect they deserve, but then again, neither do the lab coat-wearing boffins who make great strides behind sterilized doors to bring us one step closer to mass laziness . The latest development in the everlasting brain control saga takes us to the University of Washington, where a team of researchers are carefully studying the differences between doing an action and simply imagining the action. So far, they’ve discovered that interacting with brain-computer interfaces enables patients to create “super-active populations of brain cells.” Naturally, this finding holds promise for rehabilitating patients after stroke or other neurological damage, but it also suggests that “a human brain could quickly become adept at manipulating an external device such as a computer interface or a prosthetic limb.” Or a remote control, or a Segway , or a railgun

Thought-control research brings mental channel changing ever closer

Pinky and the Brain don’t get nearly the respect they deserve, but then again, neither do the lab coat-wearing boffins who make great strides behind sterilized doors to bring us one step closer to mass laziness . The latest development in the everlasting brain control saga takes us to the University of Washington, where a team of researchers are carefully studying the differences between doing an action and simply imagining the action

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