Researchers at the University of Glasgow claim to have created a molecule-sized switch that offers vast increases in solid-state storage for devices such as MP3 players. The “breakthrough” molecule-sized switch can theoretically increase the number of transistors per chip from today’s limit of around 200 million to “well over a billion,” the team says.
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While nanotechnology promises to transform the fields of electronics, medicine, environmental remediation, and solar energy, the “nano boom” is not without substantial envirnmental risks, warns the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) in a newly published 30-page report.
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Embedded chipmaker STMicroelectronics (ST) has announced commercial availability of a portable “lab-on-chip” claimed capable of detecting all major influenza types within two hours — including the Avian Flu strain H5N1.
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MIT’s Technology Review magazine has just published its annual list of the top ten emerging technologies. Dubbed the TR10, these “revolutionary innovations” are “poised to have a dramatic impact” on computing, medicine, nanotechnology, our energy infrastructure, and more, say the magazine’s editors.
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Researchers at Georgia Tech are developing a “power shirt” capable of running portable electronic gadgets. Clothing woven with fibers containing microscopic “nanogenerators” will use piezoelectric effects to convert the wearer’s movements into electrical energy.
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Harvard University’s tiny microrobotic fly, hailed by its creators as “the first robotic fly that is able to generate enough thrust to takeoff,” will be showcased at New York’s Museum of Modern Art starting Feb. 24.
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Researchers at the University of Washington have created a contact lens that includes electronic circuitry and LEDs. Eventually, ‘bionic’ contact lenses such as these could provide superhuman vision, or could be used for 3D virtual reality displays.
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Kopin Corp. claims its new fingernail-sized display is the world’s smallest SVGA resolution (800 x 600 pixel) color LCD. The 0.44-inch diagonal CyberDisplay SVGA LVS microdisplay targets PC- and HD-related video eyewear applications.
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Researchers at Israel’s Technion institute have used nanotechnology to print the entire Hebrew bible on an area smaller than the head of a pin. The “nano-Bible” reportedly was etched onto a 0.5 square-millimeter silicon surface plated with 20 nanometers of gold, using a focused beam of gallium ions.
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A University of California Berkeley research team claims to have created the world’s smallest radio, a fully functional radio receiver built from a single carbon nanotube one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair.
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Wondering what’s happening in the exciting world of nanotechnology? A free 198-page report offers everything you could possibly want to know, and more.
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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) reports that a team of researchers in one of its labs has found a way to harness carbon nanotubes to seek out and neutralize dangerous proteins such as anthrax toxin, using nothing but light.
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