#At the limit of Moore's law: scientists develop molecule-sized transistors Scientists have created a transistor made up of a single molecule.
Surrounded by just 12 atoms, it is likely to be the smallest possible size for a transistor and the hard limit for Moore law.
The transistor is made of a single molecule of phthalocyanine surrounded by ring of 12 positively charged indium atoms placed on an indium arsenide crystal,
as revealed in the scientific journal Nature Physics. Each indium atom is 167 picometres in diameter,
which makes them 0. 167nm wide or 42 times smaller than the very smallest circuits currently possible,
as recently revealed by IBM. For comparison a strand of human hair, at 100, 000nm thick, is about 600,000 times wider than the atoms surrounding the new transistor.
A red blood cell is a 36,000 times bigger, at 6, 000nm in diameter. Even a strand of DNA is 15 times bigger at 2. 5nm wide.
The transistor represents a big step forward toward quantum computing, and was made possible using a scanning tunnelling electron microscope to place atoms in exact positions
and control the electron flow through the gate. Typically scientists working to this atomic scale have struggled to reliably control the flow of electrons
which are difficult to contain and can jump outside of the transistor, rendering it useless.
The international team of researchers from Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik and the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, the NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Japan,
and the US Naval Research Laboratory also discovered unexpected behaviour from the transistor. The orientation of the molecule of phthalocyanine an organic molecule typically used in dyes at the heart of the transistor is affected by charge.
Its orientation could be changed by altering its charge, leading to more than a simple on-off switch-like state as seen in traditional transistors.
The work proves that precise control of atoms to create a transistor smaller than any other quantum system available is possible
and opens the door to further research into harnessing these tiny transistors for computers and systems with orders of magnitude more processing power than today machines.
Chip manufacturers have struggled to maintain Moore law, which dictates that processing power will double every 18 to 24 months,
primarily through the doubling of the number of transistors they can fit on a chip.
The more transistors that can fit on a chip, the more powerful it can be.
Chips used in computers are made currently at the 14nm scale, but going smaller has proven difficult, with 7nm the latest breakthrough.
While single-molecule transistors are nowhere near being ready to put into a chip this new research will help bring about quantum computing,
widely considered to be the next stage in the evolution of computers. Quantum computing explained: harnessing particle physics to work faste o
#HOLY SEA SNAILS! Their TEETH are strong enough to build a plane Forget the Killer Rabbit from Monty python,
limpets a type of aquatic snail have far more power behind their bite, say the scientists who've discovered their teeth are composed of the strongest natural material.
The creatures need high strength teeth to scrape algae off rocks. But researchers from Portsmouth University have found their structure is so biologically strong it could be copied to make cars, boats and planes.
The teeth are curved, 100 times thinner than the diameter of a human hair, and just less than a millimetre long.
Scientists used atomic force microscopy to pull the teeth apart at the atom level. They found the teeth contain a hard mineral known as goethite,
which forms in the limpet as it grows. Professor Asa Barber from the university School of engineering said:
ntil now we thought that spider silk was the strongest biological material because of its super-strength
and potential applications in everything from bulletproof vests to computer electronics but now we have discovered that limpet teeth exhibit a strength that is potentially higher.
The research also discovered that limpet teeth are the same strength no matter what the size.
Usually the bigger a structure, the more prone it is to flaws. Limpet teeth break this rule as their strength is the same no matter what the size.
These structures could be mimicked and used in high-performance engineering applications such as Formula 1 racing cars, the hulls of boats and aircraft structures.
Barber said: iology is a great source of inspiration when designing new structures but with so many biological structures to consider,
it can take time to discover which may be useful. Drawing on nature for effective designs is apparently known as"bioinspiration"o
#REGARD our TINY but POWERFUL LASER suitable for very SMALL sharks Shrinking the scale of semiconductor materials to help build powerful quantum computing systems has proved to be a real head-scratcher for scientists.
However, boffins at Princeton university have come up with a device that they think could be a major step forward"for the tech.
The university's associate physics professor, Jason Petta, who led the study, said that researchers had created the smallest laser possible powered by single electrons that burrow through quantum dots.
The rice grain-sized device, dubbed a"maser, "is a minuscule microwave laser that demonstrates how light and moving electrons interact with each other,
said Princeton university. To get an idea of the scale of the teeny-tiny maser, the researchers explained that it uses about one-billionth the electric current needed to power a hair-dryer."
"I consider this to be a really important result for our long-term goal, which is entanglement between quantum bits in semiconductor-based devices,
"enthused the Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland-National Institute of Standards and Technology's adjunct assistant prof Jacob Taylor,
who co-authored the research paper. Boffins undertook the study to create a better understanding of how to use double quantum dots (two quantum dots joined together) as the basic units of information, known as qubits, in quantum computers.
Getting the double quantum dots to"communicate with each other"was the end goal explained physics grad Yinyu Liu,
who worked with Petta in his lab. Prof Petta added that a double quantum dot was capable of only transferring one electron at a time.
He said: It is like a line of people crossing a wide stream by leaping onto a rock so small that it can only hold one person.
They are forced to cross the stream one at a time. These double quantum dots are zero-dimensional as far as the electrons are concerned they are trapped in all three spatial dimensions.
The research could apparently aid the future development of light sources. Princeton university provides further details about the study's promising outlook for quantum computing here.
The paper, Semiconductor double quantum dot micromaser, was published in the Science journal yesterday d
#Graphene sheaths could boost processor signal speeds by 30 per cent Scientists at Stanford have found a new use for graphene that will significantly increase the speed of standard computer processors.
Most chips use copper interconnects to route signals around their semiconductor circuits, and these are insulated typically with a coating of tantalum nitride.
The Stanford team instead used an atom-thick layer of graphene to sheath the copper,
and found that could boost the data transfer speeds of the wires: the graphene-coated interconnects,
depending on their length, can reliably transfer data between four and 17 per cent faster than the equivalent interconnects in today's processor designs, apparently."
"Researchers have made tremendous advances on all of the other components in chips but recently, there hasn't been much progress on improving the performance of the wires,
"said Stanford electrical engineer Philip Wong.""Graphene has been promised to benefit the electronics industry for a long time, and using it as a copper barrier is perhaps the first realization of this promise."
"The advantages of using graphene in this way are twofold. Firstly, from an engineering standpoint, graphene is a much more efficient material,
taking up a ninth of the space of tantalum nitride coatings. But the biggest advantage is that the graphene actually acts both as an insulator,
but also a conductor. The team found that electrons would travel through the graphene as well as through the copper wire,
and it was there that the speed benefits really kicked in. The team, which will present its findings at the Symposia of VLSI Technology And circuits in Kyoto,
Japan, this week, reported that interconnect speeds could be boosted by up to 30 per cent, if the graphene tech is shrunk down to next-generation process sizes.
The research is interesting, but needs more work before going into production. The team are now looking into how to grow the graphene directly onto copper wires,
which would lower production costs drastically.
#Is that a FAT PIPE or are pleased you just to stream me? TERABIT fibre tested Proximus and Huawei have successfully trialled a super-channel optical signal, flinging out information at up to one terabit per second (Tbps.
Tech lothario Huawei shacked up with Belgian box-wrecker Proximus back in January. The pairing has produced now a single super-channel optical transport network (OTN) card with a transmission speed of a pretty hefty 1tbps, running along Proximus'optical backbone.
Although the speed is claimed to be a record, Alcatel-lucent and BT managed to achieve 1. 4 Tbps using BT's fibre-optic pipe between the BT Tower and BT's Adastral Park in Ipswich.
As The Register noted at the time, the really impressive achievement was the spectral efficiency:
at 5. 7 bits per second per Hertz, it is the highest ever recorded. Proximus/Huawei's transmission speed was conducted over a 1,
040km fiber link using an advanced"Flexgrid"infrastructure with Huawei's Optical Switch Node OSN 9800 platform.
The companies claim their approach increases the capacity on a fiber cable by compressing the gaps between transmission channels."
"The technique increases the density of the transmission channels on fiber, making it around 150 per cent more efficient than today typical 100gbps core network links,
"they said. Jeffrey Gao, president of the Huawei transmission network product line, said the network"is turning to data center centric,
which brings a boost demand for increased bandwidth, "adding that"businesses are currently undergoing a digital transformation
and consumers require always-on connectivity.""Geert Standaert, chief technology officer at Proximus, said"together with Huawei we want to let our network infrastructure evolve to support current and future bandwidth demands."
"The companies announced that the purpose of the test was to determine whether Huawei's technology can be integrated into the core network,
to anticipate the constant and growing customers demand for more bandwidth.""By reusing the existing optical platform, chassis and slot,
we can hence upgrade the transmission capacity of the core network links from 16tbps to 20tbps,
"said the statement. We'll see.
#White house unveils $215 million plan to develop patient-specific medical treatments The White house unveiled a"Precision Medicine Initiative"today a $215 million investment that will go toward building a database containing genetic information
and medical records belonging to millions of Americans, reports Science. The investment, one that part of President Obama 2016 budget proposal, will also go toward pioneering new models for patient-specific medical research research that caters to a specific patient needs based on their genetics instead of relying on a one-size-fits-all
treatment approach.""Most medical treatments have been designed for the verage patient, according to A white house statement. As a result, treatments can be very successful for some patients,
but not for others. And that exactly what the White house plan aims to change.""The Precision Medicine Initiative will leverage advances in genomics,
emerging methods for managing and analyzing large data sets while protecting privacy, and health information technology to accelerate biomedical discoveries."
"The White house investment is split in four parts. The biggest chunk of the money, about $130 million, will go to the NIH to recruit a million
or more volunteers"whose genetic information will be stored in a series of databases. About $70 million will go to the National Cancer Institute, a subsection of the NIH,
so it can increase its efforts to identify genetic mutations that contribute to a person's cancer risk.
The FDA, for its part, will receive $10 million to improve its databases, as well as the technologies used to analyze DNA.
Finally the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information technology will receive $5 million that will be used to address privacy issues
and ensure that data exchanges between research centers are secure. Some of the genetic data that will be included in this initiate has already been gathered, according to Jo Handelsman, associate director of the White house Office of Science and Technology Policy.
He told The New york times that"there are existing cohorts around the country that have already been started
and have rich sources of data. The challenge in this initiative is to link them together
and fill in the gaps.""New volunteers will also be recruited, he said, and their"privacy will be protected rigorously."
"Despite these safeguards, recruiting participants might be a challenge. A recent survey conducted by researchers at Brigham
and Women Hospital showed that Americans worry that insurance companies and employers may discriminate against them based on their family histories or genetic test results.
The Genetic information Nondiscrimination Act was signed into law in 2008 to prevent genetic discrimination from happening,
but these protections only cover instances of discrimination by an employer or a health insurance company.
Companies that sell life insurance, long-term care insurance, and disability insurance can still ask for genetic tests results
if they wish and they can base their rates on this information. $215 million is a very large amount to spend on an initiative of this kind,
says Michael Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley.""I worry that this $200 million will ultimately come from basic research funding,
and will thus be another step in the decade long shift from basic to applied research,
"he says. If that's the case, then precision medicine"will be useless, "as basic medicine is where all the ideas for how to use that information is produced.
Eisen also told The Verge that the money will be flushed down the toilet "if the databases developed through this initiate are constructed poorly."
"I am very leery of big, centrally organized science endeavors, as they do not have a good recent track record."
"Still, the initiative has a lot of potential, he says, and having a large group of people to study will be valuable."
"The potential for precision medicine to improve care and speed the development of new treatments has begun only just to be tapped,"according to the White house statement.
This may be true, but until Americans feel safe under the law, recruiting"a million or more volunteers"might prove difficult e
#Chinese government moves to ban anonymous online accounts starting March 1st Starting March 1st, anonymous accounts will no longer be permitted on many Chinese web services.
The Cyberspace Administration of China set the policy today in a statement on the China Communication Network,
which said the policy was aimed at wiping out the"username chaos"that allowed users to masquerade as world leaders or counterfeit news organizations.
The central government had advocated long for the restrictions, but Chinese companies had resisted it as too much of a technical burden.
The new regulations will still allow users to choose their own username and photo but require them to register an actual name with the service
and stamping out the casual anonymity that defines US social networks like Twitter and Tumblr. Enforcement of the policy has been left to companies
Sina Weibo, a Chinese micro-blogging service similar to Twitter, has adopted already real-name registration at the urging of the central government,
A much larger spill that occurred in Santa barbara in 1969 is credited often with galvanizing the environmental movement.
But in many parts of the world they carry deadly diseases and are major threat to the health of a population.
000 cases of yellow fever each year. And of these, 30,000 result in death. There has been a number of efforts over the years to solve this problem,
Aedes aegypti isn't known for carrying malaria but it is responsible for spreading other deadly diseases like yellow fever, dengue fever,
and the chikungunya virus.""When we injected Nix into mosquito embryos, we found that more than two-thirds of the female mosquitoes developed male genitals
and testes,"says Brantley Hall, a computational biology researcher and co-author on the paper. And when the team removed the Nix gene from male mosquitoes,
they developed female genitals. Scientists have known for about 70 years that there was a gene which controls a mosquito's sex,
a professor of biochemistry in the College of Agriculture and Life sciences. There's so much information to sift through that it was simply too daunting of a numbers game.
Zach Adelman, an associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the paper, likens the problem to a puzzle.
"The mosquito genome is like an unfinished puzzle""Jake and his students found a way to look in those pieces
and find a really, really important gene just sitting there, "Adelman says.""That gene wasn part of the assembly
what's referred to as the"black hole"of the genome regions full of duplicate information that are extremely hard to sequence.
For example, companies that perform these releases have no way of breeding only males.""They're throwing away half of the mosquitoes that they rear because theye females,
and you don have to spend the money rearing them and then throwing them away."
and eventually exploit this male-determining factor by using transgenics, essentially changing this specific gene in mosquitoes on a deep enough cellular level that they pass it on to any offspring."
we'll have our best weapon yet in the fight against mosquito-borne diseases s
after a gunshot wound 13 years ago rendered him quadriplegic. But after scientists implanted chips into his brain three years ago, he's been able to move a robotic arm to shake hands;
play rock, paper, scissors; and yes, drink beer, according to a study in the journal Science."
"Sorto is one of a handful of people who have been given brain implants to help move objects with their minds since 2006,
when a paralyzed man named Matthew Nagle moved a cursor on a computer using only his thoughts.
Today's study differs from most previous research in the area of the brain researchers targeted for implants
says researcher Richard Andersen, a neuroscience professor at Caltech. Instead, his group targeted a different area in the brain,
Information from the implants in the posterior parietal cortex transmit the intent to pick up a pint of beer
and lets the computer figure out how to make the movement.""I wanted to run around and just high-five everybody.""
The first time Sorto tried to control a robotic arm, 16 days after surgery, he pantomimed a handshake with a researcher."
which area of the brain is better for implanting the chips four square millimeters that record the activity of about 100 neurons
But it may be that the real best way to create new prosthetic would be embed to chips in both,
says Andrew Pruszynski, an associate professor of physiology and pharmacology at Western University. He wasn't involved in the research
That way, the computer gets information about intent and precise movements, more closely mimicking how we control our own limbs."
It's a tough problem to solvethe implants aren't ready for prime time yet, Andersen says,
That's because right now, Sorto has wire bundling connecting his implant to the computer that controls his robot limb.
The wire bundling goes through a plug in his skin which could be a prime site for infections.
Sorto hasn't had any infections there yet, Andersen says.)Ideally, the implants would need to be wireless,
but the amount of information coming out of the chips is so large, it's a tough problem to solve,
Andersen says. Infections aren't the only worry. The chip is like a microscopic pincushion that's pushed into the brain,
Pruszynski says. There's some damage associated with that, and the recovery process may mean that some of the points of contact might be lost over time.
What's more, the body is a corrosive place so the implant has to be stable for a long period of time
because it's not feasible to repeat serious surgery every 5 years, he says. like a microscopic pincushion that's been pushed into the brain But
what might really improve the device would be feedback. Right now, Sorto is controlling his limb by watching it.
But that's not as fine-grained a movement as he might ideally like it's like trying to move your hand when your arm's fallen asleep,
Andersen's group has implanted chips in two more patients, and will be exploring the technique further,
Maybe moving objects or playing video games with your mind isn't going to be routine any time soon but for patients like Sorto,
This summer, United airlines will starting flying planes using fuel derived from farm animal poop and fats.
The effort is an attempt to curb the greenhouse gas emissions produced by burning jet fuel in commercial aircraft.
The animal-based propellent is produced by California-based Altair Fuels. Wee not letting our animal waste go to wastethe initiative doesn stop there.
Today, United will announce a $30 million investment in Fulcrum Bioenergy, one of the largest makers of aviation biofuels.
but this marks the biggest ever investment in alternative fuels by a major commercial airline, reports The New york times. Eventually, United plans to integrate biofuels into its entire fleet.
Since farm waste and fats have already been exposed to the atmosphere and have absorbed carbon during their lifetime,
The discovery could help couples struggling to conceive to spend less time and money on fertility treatments that don work.
In a new study published today in Science Translational Medicine, researchers detail how sequencing genetic information in sperm can show
whether a man is infertile. The scientists looked at the sperm RNA, a cornerstone in any cell it helps cells to"read"DNA,
and it plays a role in regulating genesactivities. Men who are missing certain RNA sequences from their semen have a much lower likelihood of conceiving than men whose sperm contain these sequences.
and in about 40 percent of these cases, the male partner is either the sole cause or partially contributing, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
the average price of in vitro fertilization hovers around $12, 400. If clinics could tell patients
whether they should save their money or go directly to high-cost interventions, skipping the cheaper ones that won work that may be reason enough to justify RNA sequencing of sperm.
Current methods for diagnosing male infertility involve looking at the shape, number, and movement of a man sperm.
But sometimes this isn enough to tell which men are infertile; in many cases, there no obvious reason that a man should have difficulty with fertility, a condition known as idiopathic infertility."
a professor at Wayne State university in Detroit, tells The Verge.""Current methods don really provide great information on the chance of natural pregnancy
a professor of urology at Cornell University who was not involved with this study.""There certainly is need a potential for this method."
"Sperm harbors a rich population of RNA (C. Bickel/Science Translational Medicine) Krawetz has suspected long that sperm RNA might play a role in infertility.
which carries essential genetic information. But around 20 years ago, Krawetz and his research team discovered that sperm also house RNA
fertility clinics could also look to see if these 648 RNA elements are present in the semen."
Since sperm RNA correspond to genes in a child genome, the researchers may be able to study these sequences to see
if any are linked with potential genetic disorders. But until then Krawetz says the main goal is to automate RNA sequencing of sperm
#World's first malaria vaccine gets green light from European regulatory agency The world's first malaria vaccine has cleared its last major hurdle on its way to being approved for real-world use.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) the regulatory group in the European union which roughly parallels the FDA gave a positive opinion of the vaccine,
saying it is safe and effective to use in babies at risk for the parasitic disease.
The vaccine RTS S, also called Mosquirix, is the product of British pharmaceutical company Glaxosmithkline and is funded partly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
It's not the only vaccine developed to fight malaria; an experimental malaria vaccine called Pfspz was found to be much more effective at preventing malaria infection.
Yet Mosquirix is the first to make it this far along in the approval process. Mosquirix helps to prevent infection from the Plasmodium falciparum, one of the deadlier malaria parasites.
The vaccine prompts the body to produce a higher amount of antibodies to stop the parasite from infecting the liver.
It's made specifically to combat infection in children and isn't intended for use in adults or travelers.
However, the shot comes with its share of controversy. Early results of a clinical trial of Mosquirix showed that three doses of the vaccine could cut the risk of infection in half for children between between five and 17 months old.
For younger infants between six weeks and 12 weeks, infection was reduced by only 30 percent.
Over time, the effectiveness of Mosquirix waned unless children were given a booster, and children's chances of getting severe malaria or dying did not change at all.
Some scientists are concerned that the potential costs associated with such a complex and somewhat ineffective vaccine may outweigh the benefits.
Still, Africa is need in desperate for a malaria vaccine, even if it's only partially effective.
Malaria infection spread through the blood by mosquito bites kills upwards of 500 000 people each year.
Half the world's population live in areas at risk of infection.""This vaccine could mean children will have only two bouts of malaria a year instead of five,"Dr. Martin De Smet,
a malaria expert at Doctors Without Borders, told the Huffington Post. THE WHO must decide if that is justification enough to recommend Mosquirix to the public h
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