Toggle light / dark theme

Of course bio technology holds the key for better memory.


Newswise — A group of Boise State researchers, led by associate professor of materials science and engineering and associate dean of the College of Innovation and Design Will Hughes, is working toward a better way to store digital information using nucleic acid memory (NAM).

It’s no secret that as a society we generate vast amounts of data each year. So much so that the 30 billion watts of electricity used annually by server farms today is roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants.

And the demand keeps growing. The global flash memory market is predicted to reach $30.2 billion this year, potentially growing to $80.3 billion by 2025. Experts estimate that by 2040, the demand for global memory will exceed the projected supply of silicon (the raw material used to store flash memory). Furthermore, electronic memory is rapidly approaching its fundamental size limits because of the difficulty in storing electrons in small dimensions.

Read more

Quantum mechanics, with its counter-intuitive rules for describing the behavior of tiny particles like photons and atoms, holds great promise for profound advances in the security and speed of how we communicate and compute.

Now an international team of researchers has built a chip that generates multiple frequencies from a robust quantum system that produces time-bin entangled photons. In contrast to other quantum state realizations, entangled photons don’t need bulky equipment to keep them in their quantum state, and they can transmit quantum information across long distances. The new device creates entangled photons that span the traditional telecommunications spectrum, making it appealing for multi-channel quantum communication and more powerful quantum computers.

“The advantages of our chip are that it’s compact and cheap. It’s also unique that it operates on multiple channels,” said Michael Kues, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), University of Quebec, Canada.

Read more

We definitely need precision medicine. If you don’t believe it is worth that; then I have a few widows & widowers who you should speak to; I have parents that you should speak with; I have a list of sisters & brothers that you should speak with; and I have many many friends (including me) that you should speak with about how we miss those we love because things like precision medicine wasn’t available and could have saved their lives.


Precision medicine is the theme for the 10th annual symposium of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Nano Biotechnology, Friday, April 29, 2016 at 9 a.m. in the Owens Auditorium at the School of Medicine. This year’s event is cohosted by Johns Hopkins Individualized Health Initiative (also known as Hopkins in Health) and features several in Health affiliated speakers.

By developing treatments that overcome the limitations of the one-size-fits-all mindset, precision medicine will more effectively prevent and thwart disease. Driven by data provided from sources such as electronic medical records, public health investigations, clinical studies, and from patients themselves through new point-of-care assays, wearable sensors and smartphone apps, precision medicine will become the gold standard of care in the not-so-distant future. Before long, we will be able to treat and also prevent diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, and cancer with regimes that are tailor-made for the individual.

Hopkins in Health is a signature initiative of Johns Hopkins University’s $4.5 billion Rising to the Challenge campaign is a collaboration among three institutions: the University, the Johns Hopkins Health System, and the Applied Physics Laboratory. These in Health researchers combine clinical, genetic, lifestyle, and other data sources to create innovative tools intended to improve decision-making in the prevention and treatment of a range of conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, and infectious disease. The goal is to “provide the right care to the right person at the right time.”

Read more

Apple’s bad week — 1st stock plummets; now) a dead body found in a conference room.


CUPERTINO, Calif. — A person was found dead at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., two local television stations reported Wednesday.

ABC7 reported that the body was found in a conference room, adding that authorities said the victim was a man and that a gun was found next to his body.

KTVU said law enforcement officials are conducting an investigation and that it couldn’t be confirmed whether the death was suspicious.

Is AR your new diet plan?


The future of dining is here, and it’s all about molecular gastronomy, augmented reality headsets and multi-textured algae — and it’s virtually no calories.

Researchers at Project Nourished have found a way to merge the taste, feel and smell of food using atomizers, virtual reality headsets, a device that mimics chewing sounds, a glass with built-in sensors, a specialized utensil, and a 3D-printed food cube. The goal is to trick the user’s mind and palate into thinking they’re experiencing something entirely different than what they’re actually eating.

According to CEO Jinsoo An, the project was born out of his frustrations with his own gluten and soy sensitivities. He wants to help people struggling with weight management, diabetes and other food intolerances, so they can enjoy foods they might not otherwise be able to consume.

UCF physics professor Dan Britt has been named to the New Horizons mission team as the spacecraft heads to the Kuiper Belt. He’s also just landed a grant to help create fake asteroid material, which will help NASA and private companies prepare the technology needed to mine asteroids and eventually other planets.

“It’s been a pretty good month,” Britt said from Boulder, Colo., where he’s working on another proposal for NASA. “This is a great time to be in this field.”

Britt joins the team responsible for sending New Horizons to Pluto and which made Professor Named to NASA Mission, Lands Grant to Plan for Space Minings last year when it unveiled the first pictures of Pluto’s surface. Mountain ranges and perhaps even oceans under its frozen surface have been recorded by the spacecraft.

Read more

With that goal in mind, a few years back, Wiseman began to ponder what would happen if multiple worlds not only existed, but could influence each other. Within these worlds even objects on the smallest scales obey the plain old rules that Isaac Newton devised to explain force and motion. A classical law is also used to describe the forces that the parallel worlds exert on each other. “Ours is a new picture of reality at the atomic scale,” Hall says, adding that they believe it to be “both elegant in principle, and useful for calculations in practice.”

Read more