IBM to build 1000 times faster PCs

Get ready for next-generation computers and smartphones that are up to 1,000 times faster than the systems you use today. Computer maker IBM is developing "skyscraper" computers using huge sandwiches of silicon chips by sticking layer after layer of chips covered with tiny components together.

The process, for which IBM has roped in glue maker 3M, will make PCs and smartphones up to 1,000 times faster than the existing ones and are expected to be available in market by 2013.

The 3M currently makes heat resistant glues, adhesives used in the aerospace industry and sticky tapes, but the hi-tech glues created for IBM could actually be the key step towards making the next evolutionary leap in computing, the Daily Mail reported.

The attempts at piling chips vertically - known as 3D packaging - has so far been suffering from overheating. But, the new glues could conduct heat through a stack of densely-packed chips and away from logic circuits that could be burnt out by heat. The research aims to create "stacks" of up to 100 layers of silicon, the report said.


Mike Bowman, marketing manager for 3M, said: "This material fits underneath computer chips when they're attached to printed circuit boards - the unique part of what we're doing is that our glue conducts heat out to the edge of the sandwich. It will spread heat more evenly through the chip. With conventional chips, with just one or two layers, but once you're stacking chips, the problem can become very severe."

How to automatically backup USB drives

USB flash drives are not indestructible - they may be sturdier than hard drives, but they're still susceptible to physical damage and breakage from falls, electrostatic discharge and data corruption if a device is removed while data is still being copied.

It's good practice to keep multiple backups of your important data, so try USB Flash Copy - a free utility for Windows PCs that automatically takes backups of your flash drive every time you connect it.

No installation is needed and it's only a 300kb download - get it from www.usbflashcopy.com and run it to set a particular folder on your computer's hard drive for backups (by default, it makes a backup folder in 'My Documents' ).

The first time you connect a USB drive, it will take a complete backup of all contents. Thereafter, it only makes small changes to the backup folder - copying only the files that have been changed or added. If you like, you can alter the settings to keep older versions of files too.

And if multiple people use the same PC or if you have multiple flash drives, you can create profiles for each device (with different settings).

World's Most Innovative Companies

We have been using various innovative products in our daily life. Innovation is wide ranging in nature and touching so many parts of an organization and areas of potential opportunity. While the staggering array of possibilities can be intimidating, innovation is most effective when implementing this diversity and including as many points of perspective as possible. The top innovative companies listed down have worked to give their best for the consumers so no wonder they top the list of the world's most innovative companies.
1.Google: The search engine giant tops the list of most innovative companies in the world. Their creativity in the layouts, display ads, Google talk, Google docs and spreadsheets, Google calendar, Google checkout, Picasa web albums and so many. The Google Picasa and other apps which has made the search engine very user friendly and Google has answer for every question in people's mind.
2. Apple:Steve jobs innovations have made a mark in the world of technology. The former CEO of apple gifted with great intellectual brain has brought the company's revenue to the top which is more than U.S. government treasury. The iPod saga is still in demand and will be as their planning and new innovations have always excited people. The graphical user interface, iMac, iTunes, Mac OS X and iPhones are the devices which have lead to rebellion of the war between the top tech giants. They are the king of the this gadget generation.
3. Nokia:The Finnish company which has created a strong goodwill for the quality of their products top the chart. Nokia's first phone, the 1100 series, 2100 model that int
roduced Nokia ring tone are unforgettable, they brought mobile phones to every corner of the world. Their Smartphones may not be upto the mark of apple phones but they are different from them in applications and usage. They have their own mission and vision which is to maintain their good will rather than just selling their product.
4. Facebook:Mark Zuckerberg the young chap who created the site when he was a student in Harvard. This website has been called as one of the worst innovated piece of the decade by many critics but the demand and usage of this social site has proved they are the best. Facebook enjoys monopoly because of their applications and layout and advancement which bring people together from every corner of the world. This site is very easy to use, public search; the privacy settings are perfect till the users know their limits. The surveys conducted have proved Facebook to be one of the best innovative website for their virtual gaming, chatting and status updates.
5. Disney: Disney is an art of innovation. Their animations for movies, cartoons, the Disneyland have attracted billions of people who can never forget the founder, Walt Disney. It's a land of innovations where fun, illusions, their works have been memories for millions.
6. News corp.: Rupert Murdoch is no wonder called as a media Mughal. The turning point brought by him in the world of journalism and media. The fox, Wall Street journalism, acquiring MySpace, The New York Times, and The Sun have dominated the whole print media which lead to the closure of thousands of newspaper in U.S. Their E-papers is a great hit and the fox channel and movies are no less popular.
7. Nike: The sporty generation is in love with Nike for their amazing products which gives the heights of comfort and richness. The new Nike air max 360 lets the person to run on air the latest innovation which has created a buzz among all the youth. The idea of full air cushioning system designed for the runners has been called as the most amazing shoes in the world by the users. Their jerseys, bags, shoes and deodorants have always had a great demand for their comfort.

Program to identify traffic 'black spots' developed

 A program that can identify traffic “black spots”, intersections which experience a high incidence of traffic accidents, has been developed.

Ph.D. student Gennady Waizman of Tel Aviv University’s Geosimulation Lab at the Department of Geography and the Human Environment and Porter School of Environmental Science has developed SAFEPED.

SAFEPED is a computer simulation that integrates robotics and statistics on driver and pedestrian behaviour to determine the environmental features, which lead to these black spots. Based on real—world data, SAFEPED is more true—to—life than other computer traffic models. It allows traffic planners and engineers to analyse and fix dangerous intersections.

It also permits these engineers to test and rearrange the architecture of a planned junction and design it for optimal safety. The model has been presented at the Transportation Research Board Conference on Safety and Mobility in Jerusalem, and this July at the Geocomputation 2011 conference in London.

SAFEPED considers each car and pedestrian an autonomous “agent,” with the ability to reason and react based on its individual predictions of how surrounding agents will behave.

This is a significant improvement on other computer models of traffic, which do not account for the human ability to see the world in three dimensions, predict the actions of others, and react accordingly.

“Because drivers and pedestrians behave according to the same habits and rules at any intersection they approach, we presumed that the problem lay in the environment,” Waizman explained. “With this program, we can model a real intersection in the simulator

50 New Planets Found

Astronomers have discovered at least 50 new planets beyond the solar system, including 16 that are of a size similar to Earth.

The biggest planet of the new batch is named "HD 85512 b". It is 3.6 times the mass of Earth and can be found 36 light years away in the Vela constellation.

The discovery was made by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), installed at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The findings would be presented at a conference on Extreme Solar Systems to be held in Wyoming, US.

The discovery suggests that more than half of the stars like the sun possess planets.

"The detection of 'HD 85512 b' is far from the limit of HARPS, and demonstrates the possibility of discovering other super-Earths in habitable zones around stars similar to the sun," University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor was quoted as saying.

Team member Lisa Kaltenegger of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said the findings mark a new age in the search for habitable planets.

India, the Fastest Growing Nation on Facebook

Facebook is undoubtedly the reigning king in the space of social networking in the world over. Users now spend more time on Facebook than any other website and the numbers are staggering. Americans spent alone spend 53 billion minutes on Facebook in a month, now the question that pops up in the mind is which is the fastest growing nation on facebook. Well you will be happy to witness the fact that India is the fastest growing nation on facebook, reveals a study conducted by Online Marketing Trends.


Let's get a sneak peek into the nations who are on a raising spree in terms of growth of users on facebook is concerned.

1. India-India had 17,288,060 users in the beginning of the year 2011, now by the month June 2011, India stands at 28,581,200 users which meant that that it witnessed a staggering growth of 11, 292,140 (65.32 percent). With an online penetration of 36.39 percent the figure is justified.
2. Indonesia-At the initial time of the year 2011 Indonesia stood firm with 32,126,780 users and then it went to become 38,518,380 users by the month of June. It reco
rded a growth of 19.89 percent i.e. 6,391,600. Indonesia has an online penetration of 129.53 percent.
3. Philippines-Philippines had 19,227,060 users in the beginning of the year 2011, now by the month June 2011, India stands at 25,018,080 users which meant that th
ere is a growth of 5,791,020 (30.12 percent).
4. Thailand-In the beginning of the year 2011 Thailand registered 6,732,780 users, this went on to increase to 10,361,120 in the month of June. It recorded a growth of
3,628,340.

5. Japan-Japan recorded 1,816,300 users in the beginning of the year and it went up by 1, 896,600 and the number of users stood at 3,712, 900.

Coming soon, 3D television without glasses

Fraunhofer research scientists are working on new technologies that will make it possible to watch TV in 3D without technical aids such as 3D glasses. The new four-camera system will even be able to handle live transmissions.

"The breakthrough for 3D television will only come, however, when you don’t need glasses. Wearing them is just too uncomfortable and tiresome,” stated Frederik Zilly from the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) in Berlin.

"The development is based on our STAN assistance system, which has already proved its value in conventional stereo productions. But with four cameras calibration is much more complicated,” explained Zilly, who is working with 12 partners in the MUSCADE project.

The HHI research scientists are currently working on an efficient video encoding system for compressing the huge volume of data that arises when four cameras are used so that the content can be transmitted on the existing broadcasting infrastructure. A first prototype of the new system was presented on the Fraunhofer booth at the IBC trade show from September 9 to 13 in Amsterdam.

See, what could make Internet super-fast

British scientists have devised a way of using graphene, the thinnest material in the world, to capture and convert more light than previously, paving the way for advances in high-speed Internet and other optical communications.

In a study in the journal Nature Communication, the team -- which included last year's Nobel Prize-winning scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov -- found that by combining graphene with metallic nanostructures, there was a 20-fold enhancement in the amount of light the graphene could harvest and convert into electrical power.

Graphene is a form of carbon just one atom thick and yet 100 times stronger than steel.

"Many leading electronics companies consider graphene for the next generation of devices. This work certainly boosts graphene's chances even further," said Novoselov, a Russian-born scientist who with Geim won the 2010 Nobel Prize for physics for research work on graphene.

Previous research has shown that electrical power can be generated by putting two closely-spaced metallic wires on top of graphene and shining light on the whole structure, effectively making a simple solar cell.

The researchers explained that due to the particularly high mobility and velocity of the electrons in graphene, such graphene cell devices can be incredibly fast -- tens or potentially hundreds of times faster than communication rates in the fastest Internet cables currently in use.

The main stumbling block to practical applications has so far been the cell devices' low efficiency, the researchers said. The problem is that graphene absorbs little light -- only around 3 per cent -- with the rest going through without contributing to the electrical power.

In a collaboration between the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge, Novoselov's team found they could solve this problem by combining graphene with tiny metallic structures known as plasmonic nanostructures, which are specially arranged on top of graphene.

By using the plasmonic enhancement, the light-harvesting performance of graphene was boosted by 20 times without sacrificing any of its speed, they wrote in their study. Future efficiency could be improved even more, they said.

"We expected that plasmonic nanostructures could improve the efficiency of graphene-based devices but it has come as a pleasant surprise that the improvements can be so dramatic," said Alexander Grigorenko, an expert in plasmonics and a leading member of the team. "Graphene seems a natural companion for plasmonics."

Andrea Ferrari of Cambridge University's engineering department, who also worked on the team, said the findings show graphene's great potential in photonics and in developing electronic devices that channel and control light. He said the combination of its special optical and electronic properties with plasmonic nanostructures could be fully exploited

How the Brain Stores Information for Short Periods of Time

Freiburg biologist Dr. Aristides Arrenberg and his American colleagues studied mechanisms used by the brain to store information for a short period of time. The cells of several neural circuits store information by maintaining a persistent level of activity: A short-lived stimulus triggers the activity of neurons, and this activity is then maintained for several seconds. The mechanisms of this information storage have not yet been sufficiently described, although this phenomenon occurs in very many areas of the brain.The authors of the study, now published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, investigated the persistent activity in a hindbrain circuit responsible for eye movements in zebrafish larvae. This circuit, the so-called oculomotor system, gives the command for rapid eye movement by way of special nerve cells that produce a short-lived succession of action potentials. On the one hand, this "burst of fire" reaches the neurons responsible for movement in the eyes and triggers a "saccade," a rapid movement of the eye. On the other hand, it is also transmitted to a second cell population, the so-called neural integrator for eye movements, where the speed signal is integrated mathematically and a position signal is created. This signal is then transmitted to the motor neurons, thus producing -- in fish as well as in humans -- a stable eye position following the rapid eye movement. The neural integrator keeps up this signal for several seconds, until a new saccade is initiated.

The persistent activity in the neural integrator for eye positions is never perfect, as the eyes gradually drift back to their point of rest after a saccade. The authors thus had the possibility of measuring the dynamics of the system during spontaneous eye movements in the dark and testing the model without the measurements being distorted by saccade commands or visual feedback.

The authors discovered that, contrary to previous belief, the cells of the neural integrator for eye movements do not constitute a homogeneous population and that existing models for explaining persistent activity in the oculomotor system will have to be reconsidered. The scientists demonstrated that the integrator neurons do not posses a uniform dynamics and that the neurons are distributed in the hindbrain with the help of their integrator time constants.

These findings provide new evidence on the organization and functioning of circuits with persistent activity and suggest a potential explanation for their low susceptibility to failure. The study is an important milestone in the quest of network neuroscience to explain the functioning of local circuits and thus close the gap between the functioning of a single neuron and the production of behavior.

Astronomers Find Supermassive Black Holes

Astronomers have discovered a pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way, NASA said Wednesday.

Approximately 160 million light years from Earth, the pair is the nearest known such phenomenon, said scientists at NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole in a galaxy, in the order of hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. The black holes are located near the centre of the spiral galaxy NGC 3393. Separated by only 490 light years, the black holes are likely the remnant of a merger of two galaxies of unequal mass a billion or more years ago.

Both the black holes are heavily obscured by dust and gas, which makes them difficult to observe in optical light.

Sine X-rays are more energetic, they can penetrate this obscuring material, Xinhua reported quoting the experts.

They said that Chandra's X-ray spectra show clear signatures of a pair of supermassive black holes.

"If this galaxy weren't so close, we'd have no chance of separating the two black holes the way we have," said Pepi Fabbiano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, who led the study published in the online edition of the journal Nature Wednesday.

"Since this galaxy was right under our noses by cosmic standards, it makes us wonder how many of these black hole pairs we've been missing," he said.

Previous observations in X-rays and at other wavelengths indicated that a single supermassive black hole existed in the centre of NGC 3393.

However, a long look by Chandra allowed the researchers to detect and separate the dual black holes. Both black holes are actively growing and emitting X-rays as gas falls towards them and becomes hotter.

When two equal-sized spiral galaxies merge, astronomers think it should result in the formation of a black hole pair and a galaxy with a disrupted appearance and intense star formation.

A well-known example is the pair of supermassive black holes in NGC 6240, which is located about 330 million light years from Earth.

However, NGC 3393 is a well-organized spiral galaxy, and its central bulge is dominated by old stars. These are unusual properties for a galaxy containing a pair of black holes, said the experts.