The Official Science Thread

Intel Increases Transistor Speed by Building Upward
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: May 4, 2011

HILLSBORO, Ore. - Intel announced on Wednesday that it had again found a way to make computer chips that could process information more quickly and with less power in less space.

The transistors on computer chips - whether for PC's or smartphones - have been designed in essentially the same way since 1959 when Robert Noyce, Intel's co-founder, and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently invented the first integrated circuits that became the basic building block of electronic devices in the information age.

These early transistors were built on a flat surface. But like a real estate developer building skyscrapers to get more rentable space from a plot of land, Intel is now building up. When the space between the billions of tiny electronic switches on the flat surface of a computer chip is measured in the width of just dozens of atoms, designers needed the third dimension to find more room.

The company has already begun making its microprocessors using a new 3-D transistor design, called a Finfet (for fin field-effect transistor), which is based around a remarkably small pillar, or fin, of silicon that rises above the surface of the chip. Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., plans to enter general production based on the new technology some time later this year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/05chip.html

I thought this was really interesting when i first heard about it. Intel has really been pushing processing power up in leaps and bounds the past several years, ever since the core2 duo.

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

If you're in the right spot with no light pollution it'll be close. You can easily make out the milky way with the naked eye in the right conditions

My town is sh1t lol. I see like 10 stars and the moon.

Originally Posted by k2pilot

This is what it looks like at my house.

that's awesome

Originally Posted by mashalah20

always loved this pic

That artificial heart thing is really cool. I'd imagine you wouldn't have a pulse with that, so you could be like "Hey I'm a zombie" and freak people out.

Originally Posted by SLVR JDM

I loved that show!

I read about this last week but couldn't find it yesterday when I made the thread.


Researchers at LBL are working on magnetic memory that could replace processors. Nanomagnets are used to store and calculate information and given that altering one will have an effect on the adjacent magnets, they are incredibly efficient. They work at the upper limit of efficiency allowed by physics and use 1,000,000x less energy per operation than the processors we're using right now.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-...te-energy.html

Today's silicon-based microprocessor chips rely on electric currents, or moving electrons, that generate a lot of waste heat. But microprocessors employing nanometer-sized bar magnets - like tiny refrigerator magnets - for memory, logic and switching operations theoretically would require no moving electrons.

Such chips would dissipate only 18 millielectron volts of energy per operation at room temperature, the minimum allowed by the second law of thermodynamics and called the Landauer limit. That's 1 million times less energy per operation than consumed by today's computers.

I thought this was pretty cool. Some kind of bug has legs that use a helical screw joint.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...legged-weevil/

By Mark Brown, Wired UK

Think nuts and bolts are exclusive to mechanics and engineers? Think again. The Trigonopterus oblongus weevil has been using the mechanism in its hips for 100 million years.

wireduk
Using samples from the Karlsruhe State Museum of Natural History and the instruments at the Institute for Synchrotron Radiation at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (ANKA), biologists have made computed tomography (CT) scans of the Papua New Guinea bug.

They found that the weevil didn't have the classic ball-and-joint or hinged appendages seen in other animals and insects. The beetle instead has a distinctly spiral-shaped tip to the leg, and a threaded coxa, which acts like a hip.

The two body parts screw in together, and then allow for around 130 degrees of rotation on the back legs, and 90 degrees on the front. It doesn't make them better walkers - weevils are rather clumsy beetles - but it can help with climbing.

By being able to move their legs further down, the Trigonopterus can get a better foothold on the leaves and twigs of the Papua New Guinea jungle, as it climbs to higher areas and better food. The screw system is also less likely to become dislocated.

Since the discovery, researchers at the museum and ANKA have studied another 15 weevils and discovered the same screwy joints on all of the tiny beetles. "Obviously, this joint exists in all weevils, of which more than 50,000 species exist worldwide," explains Alexander Riedel from the Karlsruhe State Museum in a press release.

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

I read about this last week but couldn't find it yesterday when I made the thread.


Researchers at LBL are working on magnetic memory that could replace processors. Nanomagnets are used to store and calculate information and given that altering one will have an effect on the adjacent magnets, they are incredibly efficient. They work at the upper limit of efficiency allowed by physics and use 1,000,000x less energy per operation than the processors we're using right now.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-...te-energy.html

I could see this being a huge deal as it pretains to A/C & Servers for larger company's. Money saving's in the long run could be huge - that's if they decide to switch from the current processors to these nanomagnetic processors..... interesting. I like this thread.

Lab-made organ implanted for first time

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/07...ea.transplant/




Cliffs:
A guy was in desperate need of a trachea transplant but no cadaver organs were available. Doctors made a plastic mold of a trachea and covered it with stem cells harvested from the patient's own bone marrow. The stem cells bonded together into a useable trachea tube and since the lab grown organ was made from the patient's own cells the orgran wasn't rejected. Quite the contrary -- in a remarkable discovery, doctors noticed the body began growing new veins to supply the new organ with blood.

A Japanese man, who has been paralyzed for 28 years is taking a trip to France thanks to the help of an exoskeleton.
http://inhabitat.com/japanese-robo-s...-visit-france/

edit: Turns out the person caring for him will be wearing the suit; it will allow him to carry the paralyzed man. Not as exciting as I thought at first, but still cool none the less.

Originally Posted by k2pilot

^ Mmmmmm i'll take maxwell's equations girl.

I'd take the one with the matrix.

I think those are relativity equations

I'm IN!

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

I think those are relativity equations

Maybe. She has the best looking proportions.

New telescope array, set to go online in 2020, will generate more data in a single day than the entire world does in a year
http://www.skatelescope.org/

The telescope, which will end up in either Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa, is aimed at searching for Earth-like planets, extraterrestrial life, dark matter, and black holes, and will require a central supercomputer with "the processing power of one billion PCs." What's more, it is expected to be 10,000 times more powerful than any telescope in existence and "generate the same amount of data in a day as the entire planet does in a year.

Meditation might be good for preventing atrophy of the brain. The researchers are still unsure, though, whether the denser fibers in the subjects' brains are a direct result of meditation or if people with better brains are naturally drawn to meditation.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-0...-up-brain.html

Also, soylent green
New method for making human-based gelatin
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-...d-gelatin.html

I just got a book on meditation, but I haven't opened it up yet. No time.

I currently work in a research lab working with Secreted Amyloid Precursor Protein (sAPP***945 and I found out that this protein may have to do with autism and Alzheimer's disease! Very interesting stuff if you are in the field.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21731612

We have shown previously that in a subset of patients with severe autism and aggression, plasma levels of the secreted amyloid-***946; (A***946 precursor protein-alpha form (sAPP***945 were significantly elevated relative to controls and patients with mild-to-moderate autism.

Originally Posted by 'busa

I just got a book on meditation, but I haven't opened it up yet. No time.

I got the kindle version of the book JonJon keeps recommending and I'll be honest, it's pretty great. I've been doing it for ~a week now and I don't see myself stopping. I've always had a problem shutting my brain off at night and it has done wonders in that department, not to mention the sensations you feel in your body are just downright fun to experience.

Originally Posted by Yosha452

I currently work in a research lab working with Secreted Amyloid Precursor Protein (sAPP***945 and I found out that this protein may have to do with autism and Alzheimer's disease! Very interesting stuff if you are in the field.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21731612

We have shown previously that in a subset of patients with severe autism and aggression, plasma levels of the secreted amyloid-***946; (A***946 precursor protein-alpha form (sAPP***945 were significantly elevated relative to controls and patients with mild-to-moderate autism.

I was just reading over this article that points to varying conditions both prior to and immediately after birth as possible links to autism. I think the fact is that there isn't one single cause, but rather a constellation of things that manifest as autism.