IBM scientists build computer chips from DNA

The company is researching ways in which DNA can arrange itself into patterns on the surface of a chip, and then act as a kind of scaffolding on to which millions of tiny carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles are deposited. That network of nanotubes and nanoparticles could act as the wires and transistors on future computer chips, the IBM scientists said.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/hardware/ibm-scientists-build-computer-chips-dna-833

Computer input by scratching

This is the idea behind a scratch input — a system that would measure surface scratches and interpret them as commands. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing such an interface. In theory, all you'd need to turn any surface in to an input device would be a kind of stethoscope and a processor to interpret the scratches. The potential applications are innumerable: Scratch your computer to turn it on, or use your desk as a drawing surface for your fingernail, with the drawings appearing on the monitor.

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/scratch-input/

Fujitsu develops world’s fastest processor

While its 45-nanometer architecture doesn't pack its components together as tightly as Intel's latest 32-nanometer configuration, it accomplishes that world-record blistering speed while sipping one third the power of Intel's flagship chip.

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Australian ISP Argues For BitTorrent Users

A BitTorrent cannot be used to distribute pirated content because a packet does not represent a substantial portion of the infringing material.

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Ants and Collective decision-making

By analyzing models from neuroscience and insect socio-biology, Dr James Marshall from the University of Bristol and colleagues show how colonies of house-hunting social insects could collectively compromise between the speed and accuracy of decision-making, using mechanisms similar to those used by neurons in the primate brain.

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The plasmonic switch

A research team at Penn State has developed a plasmonic switch that may help pave the way for the next generation of super-fast computers.

“If plasmonics are realized, the future will have circuits as small as the current electronic ones with a capacity a million times better,” said Tony Jun Huang, James Henderson assistant professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics. “Plasmonics combines the speed and capacity of photonic — light based — circuits with the small size of electronic circuits.”

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Penn State Live

The Most powerful Quantum Chip

The prototype chip built by D-Wave Systems in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, is designed to handle 128 qubits of information. (The most powerful machines to date can cope with only a handful of quantum bits, or qubits, making them little more capable than a hand-held calculator.) The data is stored in 128 superconducting niobium loops as either a clockwise or an anticlockwise current, representing a 0 or a 1, or as a qubit with both currents at the same time in a quantum superposition. When the information needs to be processed, the individual qubits are manipulated by a magnetic field. To make the entire chip superconduct so that the currents can flow indefinitely without dissipating heat, it is cooled to 0.01 °C above absolute zero.

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D-Wave Systems

Top 8 Web 2.0 Security Threats

The Secure Enterprise 2.0 Forum has just released their 2009 industry report and the topic is the top Web 2.0 security threats.

See the list HERE.

The Secure Enterprise 2.0 Forum

A self-reproducing machine

More than 50 years ago, computer pioneer John von Neumann conceived of a self-reproducing machine. RepRap (short for “replicating rapid-prototyper”) doesn’t harvest its own materials, but it’s entirely real. For about US $725 in parts, this self-reproducing machine, spawned by a global band of engineers and hobbyists, will squirt out complex three-dimensional patterns of molten plastic filaments that will solidify into most, if not all, of the mechanical parts for another RepRap.

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RepRap Research Foundation

First Terabit Speed Computing

Electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego have achieved world-record speeds for real-time signal processing in an effort to meet ambitious goals set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop the first Terabit-scale technology for optical processing. The technology could have widespread ramifications for networking, computing, defense and other industries.

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