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Father of VR worried.


One might think that Jaron Lanier would be elated right now.

More than 30 years after his pioneering work in virtual reality, VR finally appears to be on the verge of becoming a mass market phenomenon. Major companies are investing in the technology; high-profile products are hitting store shelves; and developers of all sorts are creating VR experiences.

But rather than being excited, Lanier is deeply worried.

Got to luv this.


Is this brand new type of battery the key to clean energy and off-grid electricity?

Lithium-ion batteries are having a moment. After becoming the de facto battery in laptops and cell phones over the years, they’re now starting to power electric cars (like those made by Tesla) and plug into the power grid.

But lithium-ion batteries aren’t the only battery type in town. Some brand new battery varieties could actually be more promising than lithium-ion when it comes to storing energy generated by solar panels or used to power remote villages in Africa, India, and Asia.

Nice.


/EINPresswire.com/ — SAN JOSE, CA — (Marketwired) — 05/24/16 — UltraMemory Inc. (UltraMemory) has selected NanoSpice™ and NanoSpice Giga™ from ProPlus Design Solutions, Inc., the leading technology provider of giga-scale parallel SPICE simulation, SPICE modeling solutions and Design-for-Yield (DFY) applications, to simulate its super-broadband, super large-scale memory design.

UltraMemory is developing innovative 3D DRAM chip, which includes Through Chip Interface (TCI), enabling low-cost and low-power wireless communication between stacked DARM when compared to TSV technology.

Highly accurate and high-capacity SPICE simulation was necessary because it needed to simulate several DRAM chips with analog functions. UltraMemory’s decision to adopt NanoSpice, a high-performance parallel SPICE simulator, and NanoSpice Giga, the industry’s only GigaSpice simulator, came after an extensive evaluation of commercial SPICE and FastSPICE circuit simulators. NanoSpice and NanoSpice Giga have been integrated in UltraMemory’s existing design flows to replace other SPICE and FastSPICE simulators to provide full circuit simulation solutions from small block simulation to full-chip verification.

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More information on ANTs.


In the minuscule world of nanotechnology, big steps are rare. But a recent development has the potential to massively improve our lives: an engine measuring 200 billionths of a metre, which could power tiny robots to fight diseases in living cells.

Life itself is proof of the extreme effectiveness of nanotechnology — the manipulation of matter on a molecular or atomic scale — in which DNA, proteins and enzymes can all be considered as machinery. In fact, researchers have managed to make micro-propellers using tiny strands of DNA. These strands can be stitched together so freely and precisely that the practise is known as “DNA origami”. However, DNA origami lacks force and operational speed (it takes time measurable in seconds), reducing its robotic function.

But we have now produced nano-engines that can be operated with beams of light to work pistons, pumps and valves. Made from bound together by a heat-sensitive chemical, our machines are strong, fast and simple to operate, making them extremely practical for future applications.

Nice.


Sandia National Laboratories has taken a first step toward creating a practical quantum computer, able to handle huge numbers of computations instantaneously.

Here’s the recipe:

A “donor” atom propelled by an is inserted very precisely in microseconds into an industry-standard silicon substrate.

US biochemical engineer Frances Arnold on Tuesday won a million-euro technology prize in Finland for her work on “directed evolution”, a method of rewriting DNA to improve medicines and develop green fuels.

“Frances Arnold receives the 2016 Millennium Technology Prize in recognition of her discoveries that launched the field of ‘directed evolution’, which mimics natural evolution to create new and better proteins in the laboratory,” the Technology Academy Finland, which awards the prize at two-year intervals, said in a statement.

Arnold, 59, who is a professor of chemical engineering at California Institute of Technology, said her work made it possible to “solve human problems”, such as replacing toxic chemicals like fossil fuels.

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