Stretching for thousands of miles beneath oceans, optical fibers now connect every continent except for Antarctica. With less data loss and higher bandwidth, optical-fiber technology allows information to zip around the world, bringing pictures, video, and other data from every corner of the globe to your computer in a split second. But although optical fibers are increasingly replacing copper wires, carrying information via photons instead of electrons, today’s computer technology still relies on electronic chips.Now, researchers led by engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are paving the way for the next generation of computer-chip technology: photonic chips. With integrated circuits that use light instead of electricity, photonic chips will allow for faster computers and less data loss when connected to the global fiber-optic network.

“We want to take everything on an electronic chip and reproduce it on a photonic chip,” says Liang Feng, a postdoctoral scholar in electrical engineering and the lead author on a paper to be published in the August 5 issue of the journal Science. Feng is part of Caltech’s nanofabrication group, led by Axel Scherer, Bernard A. Neches Professor of Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, and Physics, and co-director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech.

In that paper, the researchers describe a new technique to isolate light signals on a silicon chip, solving a longstanding problem in engineering photonic chips.

An isolated light signal can only travel in one direction. If light weren’t isolated, signals sent and received between different components on a photonic circuit could interfere with one another, causing the chip to become unstable. In an electrical circuit, a device called a diode isolates electrical signals by allowing current to travel in one direction but not the other. The goal, then, is to create the photonic analog of a diode, a device called an optical isolator. “This is something scientists have been pursuing for 20 years,” Feng says.

Normally, a light beam has exactly the same properties when it moves forward as when it’s reflected backward. “If you can see me, then I can see you,” he says. In order to isolate light, its properties need to somehow change when going in the opposite direction. An optical isolator can then block light that has these changed properties, which allows light signals to travel only in one direction between devices on a chip.

“We want to build something where you can see me, but I can’t see you,” Feng explains. “That means there’s no signal from your side to me. The device on my side is isolated; it won’t be affected by my surroundings, so the functionality of my device will be stable.”

To isolate light, Feng and his colleagues designed a new type of optical waveguide, a 0.8-micron-wide silicon device that channels light. The waveguide allows light to go in one direction but changes the mode of the light when it travels in the opposite direction.A light wave’s mode corresponds to the pattern of the electromagnetic field lines that make up the wave. In the researchers’ new waveguide, the light travels in a symmetric mode in one direction, but changes to an asymmetric mode in the other. Because different light modes can’t interact with one another, the two beams of light thus pass through each other.

Look at what happened from 1998 until 2008.

In just ten years it has grown and grown. Watch the pieces come together as they are sent up from Earth.

This is the International Space Station (ISS) Assembly diagram, piece by piece.

I had no idea the Space Station had grown to this size.

This is really cool!!!

Click here to see the flash presentation.

In what could be called a major technological innovation, scientists have unveiled an ultra-fast chip which they claim could make desktop computers 20 times faster than the current ones.

Modern computers have a processor with two, four or sometimes 16 cores to carry out tasks. Now, a team, led by the University of Glasgow, has developed a central processing unit, which effectively has 1,000 cores on a single microchip.

The developments could usher in a new age of high-speed computing in the next few years for home users frustrated with slow—running systems; the new “super” computer is also much greener than modern machines, despite its high speed, say its developers.

The scientists used a chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which like all microchips contains millions of transistors —— tiny on—off switches that are the foundation of any electronic circuit, the Daily Mail reported.

But FPGAs can be configured into specific circuits by the user, rather than their function being set at a factory. This enabled the team to divide up the transistors within the chip into small groups and ask each to perform a task.

By creating more than 1,000 mini-circuits within the FPGA chip, the scientists effectively turned the chip into a 1,000-core processor —— each core working on its own instructions.

Canada is the most web-addicted nation on the planet.

Canadians spend more time on the web and its offshoots - Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – than people anywhere else in the world.

They are neck and neck with Indians for the number of Facebook accounts, says a report.

According to comScore, the leading online measurement service, Canadian online users log in more than 2,500 minutes a month, followed by Israelis with about 2,300 minutes. Users in a few other countries cross the 2,000-minute mark.

Giving figures for the month of April 2010, comScore said nearly 68 percent of the Canadian population was online, compared to 62 percent in France and the United Kingdom, 60 percent in Germany, 59 percent in the U.S., 57 percent in Japan, and 36 percent in Italy.

In this country which leads the world in internet access, Canadians also lead the world in various offshoots of the web – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, according to the report.

“In Canada, YouTube per capita consumption of video is No. 1 in the world. It’s just absolutely crazy in terms of how passionate Canadians are about YouTube,” the Canadian Press quotes Chris O’Neill, Canada’s Country Director for Google, as saying.

According to him, more than 21 million Canadians out of its population of 34 million visit YouTube each month, compared to 147 million Americans in a population of over 310 million. But considering the U.S. has 10 times Canada’s population, Canadians are way ahead on a per capita basis, says the report. Canadians also watch more videos each month, with an average of 147 as compared to 100 per U.S. viewer.

With more than 17 million Facebook users, Canada has more than half of its population hooked to this socializing web site.

India and Canada are neck and neck for the 9th and 10th positions on the list of countries with the most Facebook accounts, according to the report.

Though no figures are available for Twitter accounts in Canada, their number has jumped 75 percent since the beginning of the year, according to Twitter. In fact, Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber, who is just 16, has more than 6.4 million followers on Twitter.

One of the long-standing mysteries in solar physics is why the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, is millions of degrees hotter than its surface.

Now, scientists claim to have finally solved the mystery after they discovered a major source of hot gas that replenishes the corona — jets of plasma shooting up from just above the Sun’s surface, the Science journal reported.

Scott McIntosh of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, a member of an international team which carried out the NASA-supported research, said, “It’s always been quite a puzzle to figure out why the Sun’s atmosphere is hotter than its surface. By identifying that these jets insert heated plasma into the Sun’s outer atmosphere, we can gain a much greater understanding of that region and possibly improve our knowledge of the Sun’s subtle influence on the Earth’s upper atmosphere.”

Team member Rich Behnke of the National Science Foundation, which funded the research, said: “These observations are a significant step in understanding observed temperatures in the solar corona. They provide new insight about the energy output of the Sun and other stars. The results are also a great example of the power of collaboration among university, private industry and government scientists and organisations.”

In fact, for its research, the team focused on jets of plasma known as spicules, which are fountains of plasma propelled upward from near the surface of the Sun into the outer atmosphere.

For decades, researchers believed spicules could send heat into the corona. However, following observational research in the 1980s, it was found that spicule plasma did not reach coronal temperatures, and so the theory largely fell out of vogue.

“Heating of spicules to millions of degrees has never been directly observed, so their role in coronal heating had been dismissed as unlikely,” said Bart De Pontieu, the lead scientist and a solar physicist at Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory.

Nissan showed off its LEAF Electric Car recently, trumpeting its zero-emission technology and practicality with video of the hatchback zipping through snow and water. The car, among the world’s first mass-market electric vehicles, is already sold out until March 2011 because of limited production capacity. There have been 6,000 orders in Japan and 20,000 in the U.S. It arrives in Europe next year.

A grinning Nissan Motor Co. Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga said, before posing for photographs with Japanese customers who had placed orders for the LEAF. “The curtains are about to rise for a new era in the auto industry.” Shiga said the LEAF will sell in Japan for 3.76 million yen ($45,000) but with a 780,000 yen ($9,000) government green incentive the price will come down to 2.98 million yen ($35,000).

The manufacturer’s suggested retail price in the U.S. is $33,600. Some states offer incentives and rebates for the electric car, and a taxpayer can claim a $7,500 federal tax credit for purchasing a LEAF in the U.S.

The LEAF joins a small club of commercially available mass-produced electric vehicles. General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt which costs $41,000 goes on sale this month. The i-MiEV minicar from Mitsubishi Motors Corp. went on sale in Japan in April and costs 2.84 million yen ($34,000) with green incentives.

The LEAF is rated at 99 miles per gallon in the U.S. The Volt gets 93 miles per gallon. Mileage has not yet been released for the i-MiEV planned for the U.S. market next year.The LEAF goes 200 kilometres (124 miles) on a single charge under Japanese regulation test conditions. The Chevrolet Volt goes about 35 miles (56 kilometres) on its battery before a gas engine kicks in and generates electricity to keep it going.

Shiga acknowledged production won’t keep up with demand for a while and some customers are going to have to wait months for the LEAF. The LEAF is now being produced only in Japan with production capacity at 50,000 a year but production is set to start in the U.S. and Great Britain in 2012 and capacity will rise to 250,000 vehicles, according to Shiga.

Nissan also showed how it was working with apartment complexes and community groups to encourage widespread adoption of electric vehicles through car-sharing and partnerships with local governments.

The big sticking point is the need for charging stations and other infrastructure. Rempei Matsumoto, author of a book about green vehicles, believes the Leaf is for now little more than an image perk for Nissan. Experimentation in electric vehicles dates back decades but their consumer use is expected to be limited for years, he said. “They can only be used for limited distances such as picking your kid up from kindergarten or going grocery shopping,” he said in a telephone interview.

A good compromise may be gas-electric hybrids such as Toyota Motor Corp’’s Prius which travels a limited distance on the electric motor but never runs out of a battery charge because it also has a gasoline engine. Toyota is introducing an electric version of the iQ ultra-compact in 2012 and is working with Tesla Motors Inc. on an electric RAV-4 sport utility vehicle. Honda Motor Co. sells three hybrids, the Insight, CR-Z and Fit, and plans an electric vehicle in 2012. Even Nissan, long upbeat on electric vehicles, has recently come out with its own hybrid, the luxury Infiniti M.

The Leaf is designed to connect wirelessly to a data centre so that owners can use their smart phones to remotely recharge it in situations such as when the car is connected to a home charger. To highlight the green message, Nissan used recycled material for the interior, including seat covers that use synthetic cloth made of recycled plastic bottles. The car is almost completely recyclable, it said.

Hello Readers,

I have been bringing you news from various streams but I am sure this will give you a REAL SHOCK!!!

THIS IS VERY SCARY STUFF…

ELECTRONIC PICKPOCKETING
The latest in thievery technology

The Banks  are aware of this situation. Unfortunately, they offerred no viable solution or comment.

Maybe it’s time to go back to old-fashioned cash or cheques!!!???!!!

Have any of the you heard anything about it? Have any of you faces such a situation?…if yes, please post your comments.

It seems cumbersome right now, but give them time and I am sure someone will make it much more secretive.

Click here to see the video — THIS IS NO FALSE ALARM!

Researchers have brought the world one step closer to ‘hearing’ gravitational waves - ripples in space and time predicted by Albert Einstein in the early 20th century.

The research, conducted at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California, tested a system of lasers that would fly aboard the proposed space mission called Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA.

The mission’s goal is to detect the subtle, whisper-like signals of gravitational waves, which have yet to be directly observed. This is no easy task and many challenges lie ahead, reports the journal Physical Review Letters.

Just as a boat sailing through the ocean produces waves in the water, moving masses like stars or black holes produce gravitational waves in the fabric of space-time. A more massive moving object will produce more powerful waves, and objects that move very quickly will produce more waves over a certain time period.

The new JPL tests hit one significant milestone – demonstrating for the first time that noise or random fluctuations in LISA’s laser beams can be hushed enough to hear the sweet sounds of the elusive waves, according to a NASA statement.

‘In order to detect gravitational waves, we have to make extremely precise measurements,’ said Bill Klipstein, study co-author and physicist at JPL.

‘Our lasers are much noisier than what we want to measure, so we have to remove that noise carefully to get a clear signal. It’s a little like listening for a feather to drop in the middle of a heavy rainstorm.’

The JPL team is one of many groups working on LISA, a joint European Space Agency and NASA mission proposal, which would launch in 2020 or later, if selected.

Scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the ageing process after rejuvenating worn out organs in elderly mice.

The experimental treatment developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School turned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies.

The surprise recovery of the animals has raised hopes among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat in humans — or at least to slow down the ageing process.

An anti-ageing therapy could have a dramatic impact on public health by reducing the burden of age-related health problems, such as dementia, stroke and heart disease, and prolonging the quality of life for an increasingly aged population.

“What we saw in these animals was not a slowing down or stabilization of the ageing process. We saw a dramatic reversal — and that was unexpected,” said Ronald A. DePinho, who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.

“This could lead to strategies that enhance the regenerative potential of organs as individuals age and so increase their quality of life. Whether it serves to increase longevity is a question we are not yet in a position to answer.”

The ageing process is poorly understood, but scientists know it is caused by many factors. Highly reactive particles called free radicals are made naturally in the body and cause damage to cells, while smoking, ultraviolet light and other environmental factors contribute to ageing.

The Harvard group focused on a process called telomere shortening. Most cells in the body contain 23 pairs of chromosomes, which carry our DNA. At the ends of each chromosome is a protective cap called a telomere.

Each time a cell divides, the telomeres are snipped shorter, until eventually they stop working and the cell dies or goes into a suspended state called “senescence”. The process is behind much of the wear and tear associated with ageing.

At Harvard, they bred genetically manipulated mice that lacked an enzyme called telomerase that stops telomeres getting shorter. Without the enzyme, the mice aged prematurely and suffered ailments, including a poor sense of smell, smaller brain size, infertility and damaged intestines and spleens. But when DePinho gave the mice injections to reactivate the enzyme, it repaired the damaged tissues and reversed the signs of ageing.

“These were severely aged animals, but after a month of treatment they showed a substantial restoration, including the growth of new neurons in their brains,” said DePinho.

Repeating the trick in humans will be more difficult. Mice make telomerase throughout their lives, but the enzyme is switched off in adult humans, an evolutionary compromise that stops cells growing out of control and turning into cancer. Raising levels of telomerase in people might slow the ageing process, but it makes the risk of cancer soar.

DePinho said the treatment might be safe in humans if it were given periodically and only to younger people who do not have tiny clumps of cancer cells already living, unnoticed, in their bodies.

Professor David Kipling, who studies ageing at Cardiff University, said: “The goal for human tissue ‘rejuvenation’ would be to remove senescent cells, or else compensate for the deleterious effects they have on tissues and organs. Although this is a fascinating study, it must be remembered that mice are not little men, particularly with regard to their telomeres, and it remains unclear whether a similar telomerase reactivation in adult humans would lead to the removal of senescent cells.”

Lynne Cox, a biochemist at Oxford University, said the study was “extremely important” and “provides proof of principle that short-term treatment to restore telomerase in adults already showing age-related tissue degeneration can rejuvenate aged tissues and restore physiological function.”

DePinho said none of Harvard’s mice developed cancer after the treatment. The team is now investigating whether it extends the lifespan of mice or enables them to live healthier lives into old age.

Tom Kirkwood, director of the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University said: “The key question is what might this means for human therapies against age-related diseases? While there is some evidence that telomere erosion contributes to age-associated human pathology, it is surely not the only, or even dominant, cause, as it appears to be in mice engineered to lack telomerase. Furthermore, there is the ever-present anxiety that telomerase reactivation is a hallmark of most human cancers.”

Customers will now be able to transfer money from their accounts to any other account in the country using their cellphones, through the National Payment Corporation of India‘s Inter-bank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS).

The facility allows transactions without the need for a computer or an Internet-enabled phone.

Experts say the service introduces a new form of customer-friendliness that a developing ICT nation like India requires. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India records more than 670 million registered mobile subscribers; with the penetration of Internet technologies through mobile phones being higher than the spread of the Internet through broadband connections, the service, they reckon, is expected to boost banking transactions better than Internet banking.

“Though the Internet banking services are user-friendly, they are actually restricted to a limited number of tech-savvy, English-speaking Internet users in the country. With the IMPS, the mobile phone, which is ubiquitous, becomes a handier device for the average user,” says Nishant Shah, director (research), Centre for Internet and Security.

The service provides an inter-operable infrastructure for banks to offer a real-time money transfer facility to customers through mobile phones in seven seconds, says A.P. Hota, CEO and Managing Director of the NPCI. The mobile fund transfers offered by banks and technology providers take 24 hours, and are allowed only if the sender and the receiver hold accounts in the same bank, a hiccup the IMPS seeks to overcome.

With mobile phone-based applications popular and more inclusive in their reach, Mr. Shah says, it might be not only more far-reaching to have banking services available through encrypted SMS systems, because it is a medium that people are familiar with, but also the application-based systems are going to benefit a lot of people, especially who live in areas with inadequate access to banking systems.

Citing South Africa and the Philippines where the IMPS has been successfully launched, experts say the banking and telecom sectors are equipped with the latest security measures for launching the service. With most banks now using a Java-based robust system which works on some kinds of phones and is supported by a various operating systems, the system is said to have tried-and-tested security features with double layers of encryption. Hence, the responsibility of caution is more on the side of the user than on technology, experts say, citing cases of sharing of passwords, leaving phones unlocked and sharing of sensitive information with strangers as causes for financial crimes online.

Seven banks have already been offering the IMPS. Seven more are linking up through this network. Gradually, all 50 banks licensed by the RBI are expected to offer the service, which will be free of cost till March 31, 2011.