SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- Researchers in California said they have created the world's densest memory circuit, one that's about 100 times denser than today's standard memory circuits, while remaining as small as a human white blood cell.
Scientists from the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles, reported the development in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
The circuit has 160,000 bits of capacity, compared with previous generations of molecular circuits that were demonstrated at 64 bits.
But researchers point to the circuit's density as the real breakthrough: 100 billion bits per square centimeter, which the researchers said is about 100 times more tightly packed than current memory circuits.
"As the semiconductor industry moves forward, they're always making things smaller and smaller, and according to their own projections, just a few years from now they're manufacturing approach will run out of steam," said Caltech chemistry professor James Heath, who authored the research with J. Fraser Stoddart at UCLA. "What we did is leapfrogged that and developed another approach."
Technology experts said the new circuit shows the potential for making integrated circuits at increasingly smaller sizes.
Although still at least a decade away from mass production, outside experts say, the circuit could spur companies to create new manufacturing technologies to squeeze more circuitry onto ever-smaller devices.
Martin Reynolds, vice president and research fellow at Gartner Inc., said Hewlett-Packard Co. researchers demonstrated similar technology in 2002, but at 64 bits.
The Caltech and UCLA researchers demonstrated a similar technology the same year, and HP and the university researchers have worked together on developing a manufacturing approach and architecture, but the projects were separate.
The latest development, Reynolds said, shows development progressing from research into something manufacturable.
Reynolds added that the latest research shows the technology is advancing more quickly than Moore's Law, the 1965 observation by Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years.
"It's like adding an extra floor to your house -- it's a way to get more memory," Reynolds said.
The researchers described the 160,000 memory bits as being arranged like a large tic-tac-toe board, with 400 silicon wires crossed by 400 titanium wires and a layer of molecular switches in between.
Each bit is just 15 nanometers wide, compared with the most dense memory devices currently available that measure 140 nanometers in width, the researchers said. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
Heath said it's the sort of device that a semiconductor company like Intel Corp. would contemplate making in 2020.
"This shows it is possible to manufacture really high-fidelity circuits at a density that is more molecular in scale than the way things have been done traditionally," he said. "That's what we were really after. The memory is just a demonstration of that."
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Nearly 150 years ago it was no more than a concept by a visionary scientist, but researchers have now created a minuscule motor that could lead to the creation of microscopic nanomachines.
Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first imagined an atom-size device dubbed Maxwell's Demon in 1867. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have made it a reality.
"We have a new motor mechanism for a nanomachine," said David Leigh, a professor of chemistry at the University.
A nanomachine is an incredibly tiny device whose parts consist of single molecules. Nature uses nanomachines for everything from photosynthesis to moving muscles in the body and transferring information through cells.
Scientists are trying to unravel the secrets of nanomachines and nanotechnology, which works on a tiny scale. One nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or about 80,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair.
"Molecular machines allow life itself to occur at a molecular level. Our new motor mechanism is a small step towards doing that sort of thing with artificial molecular machines," Leigh told Reuters.
His mechanism traps molecular-sized particles as they move. As Maxwell had predicted long ago, it does not need energy because it is powered by light.
"While light has previously been used to energize tiny particles directly, this is the first time that a system has been devised to trap molecules as they move in a certain direction under their natural motion," said Leigh who reported the findings in the journal Nature.
"Once the molecules are trapped, they cannot escape."
Leigh credits Maxwell for establishing the fundamentals for understanding how light, heat and molecules behave.
In an earlier study, he and his team showed that a nanomachine could move a drop of water uphill by using molecular force. Although the movement was small, it was a big step in learning to make machines with artificial molecules.
The new motor mechanism will enable scientists to do things that are much closer to what biological machines do.
Nanotechnology is already being used in cosmetics, computer chips, sunscreens, self-cleaning windows and stain-resistant clothing.
Leigh believes nanoscale science and engineering could have a huge impact on society -- comparable to the impact of electricity, the steam engine and the Internet.
But quite how, is difficult to predict.
"It a bit like when stone-age man made his wheel asking him to predict the motorway," he said.
"It is a machine mechanism that is going to take molecular machines a step forward to the realization of the future world of nanotechnology. Things that seem like a Harry Potter film now are going to be a reality."
BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Scientists in eastern China say they have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains, state media reported on Tuesday.
Scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of Science and Technology said their electrodes could command them to fly right or left or up or down, Xinhua news agency said.
"The implants stimulate different areas of the pigeon's brain, according to signals sent by the scientists via computer and force the bird to comply with their commands," Xinhua said.
"It's the first such successful experiment on a pigeon in the world," Xinhua quoted the center's chief scientist, Su Xuecheng, as saying.
Su and his colleagues, who Xinhua said had had similar success with mice in 2005, were improving the devices used in the experiment and hoped that the technology could be put into practical use in future.
The report did not specify what practical uses the scientists saw for the remote-controlled pigeons.
Tokyo (Japan) - Researchers of the Keio University Institute for Advanced Biosciences and Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus announced development of a "new technology" that enables "long-term" data storage in bacterial DNA. According to JCN Newswire, the scientists were able to create "artificial" DNA that could preserve digital data within their genome sequence.
Since the DNA information is passed down from generation to generation, researchers believe that "large data files" could be saved in "long-term" scenarios, for example data backups.
The idea of using bacterial DNA as potential storage medium is not entirely new. Back in 2003, scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said that bacteria may lead the way to virtually indestructible storage media. At least in theory, data could be stored for as long as a specific organism is alive - and could survive even catastrophic events such as nuclear explosions.
"We are taking advantage of a time-tested, natural, nanoscale data storage technology perfected over the last 3 billion years," said Pak Wong, a chief scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in a conversation with Technology Research News at the time.
Storage capacity of bacterial DNA is very limited at this time and, but researchers believe that organisms carry the potential to save text, pictures, music and even video one day.
Since the DNA information is passed down from generation to generation, researchers believe that "large data files" could be saved in "long-term" scenarios, for example data backups.
That's all well and good until they evolve or mutate after a few thousand generations to the point where the data is corrupted beyond recognizability.
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The Slinky Chair
We may use computers and stuff to enhanse living organisms, but can we not also use living organisms to enhance computers?
Apparently the thing walks better the more it walks. It learns.
That's all well and good until they evolve or mutate after a few thousand generations to the point where the data is corrupted beyond recognizability.
...Heh, I wonder if we'll see them use viruses to store data. Let the puns begin!
Not if they find a way to synthesis that stuff frogs produce to stop it occurring!