Archive for the ‘design’ Category
passion
Posted on: May 2, 2008
- In: Advance | chip | design | H.P. Reports Big | Memory | New York Times
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Hewlett-Packard scientists reported Wednesday in the science journal Nature that they have designed a simple circuit element that they believe will make it possible to build tiny powerful computers that could imitate biological functions.
R. Stanley Williams, Hewlett-Packard’s director of the quantum science research group, and his team designed a circuit element that may make it possible to build tiny powerful computers.
The device, called a memristor, would be used to build extremely dense computer memory chips that use far less power than today’s DRAM memory chips. Manufacturers of today’s chips are rapidly reaching the limit on how much smaller chips can be.
The memristor, an electrical resistor with memory properties, may also make it possible to fashion advanced logic circuits, a class of reprogrammable chips known as field programmable gate arrays, that are widely used for rapid prototyping of new circuits and for custom-made chips that need to be manufactured quickly.
Potentially even more tantalizing is the ability of the memristors to store and retrieve a vast array of intermediate values, not just the binary 1s and 0s conventional chips use. This allows them to function like biological synapses and makes them ideal for many artificial intelligence applications ranging from machine vision to understanding speech.
Independent researchers said that it seemed likely that the memristor might relatively quickly be applied in computer memories, but that other applications could be more challenging. Typically, technology advances are not adopted unless they offer large advantages in cost or performance over the technologies they are replacing.
“Whether it will be useful for other large-scale applications is unclear at this point,” said Wolfgang Porod, director of the Center for Nano Science and Technology at the University of Notre Dame.
The technology should be fairly quickly commercialized, said R. Stanley Williams, director of the quantum science research group at Hewlett-Packard. “This is on a fast track.”
- In: cancer | cells | design | machine | medicine | nano | nanomachines | nanotechnology | research | UCLA
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Well, as long as I’m posting about nanotechnology, check this out (Via PhysOrg):
Researchers from the Nano Machine Center at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA have developed a novel type of nanomachine that can capture and store anticancer drugs inside tiny pores and release them into cancer cells in response to light. Known as a “nanoimpeller,” the device is the first light-powered nanomachine that operates inside a living cell, a development that has strong implications for cancer treatment.
The study was conducted jointly by Jeffrey Zink, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Fuyu Tamanoi, UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics. A little further along in the press release:
The pores of the particles can be loaded with cargo molecules, such as dyes or anticancer drugs. In response to light exposure, a wagging motion occurs, causing the cargo molecules to escape from the pores and attack the cell. Confocal microscopic images showed that the impeller operation can be regulated precisely by the intensity of the light, the excitation time and the specific wavelength.
The cells they killed were only in vitro, of course, and there’s the usual caveat:
Tamanoi and Zink say the research represents an exciting first step in developing nanomachines for cancer therapy and that further steps are required to demonstrate actual inhibition of tumor growth.
The accomplishment is detailed in the nanotechnology journal Small. You can find the citation here, but you’ll have to pay to read the article.
And look out for the fine print. One would think that in a nanotechnology journal, it might be very fine indeed.
(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
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