Chitin makes cockroaches blend in with pantry shelves and dark linoleum, and yet, without mixing in any new elements, it makes the gold and silver beetles of Costa Rica shine like jewelry. Find out how changing shape can change color. More
We were bowled over from the start by Intel’s Wireless Display technology, which lets you stream HD content from select laptops to an HDTV (with the help of a small adapter, of course). But while WiDi’s been good for watching The Colbert Report on Hulu and streaming flicks stored on your hard drive, it hasn’t played so nice with DVDs and Blu-rays. At last, though, Intel is supporting HDCP-protected discs (along with some online content) through a free driver update. One catch: it only applies to Sandy Bridge laptops, which just started shipping this spring. If your notebook’s a few months too old, well, using an HDMI cable isn’t the worst consolation prize.
Intel refreshes Wireless Display with support for DRM-protected DVDs, Blu-rays originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 May 2011 10:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
A standing desk can help you avoid the health risks of sitting at a desk all day and also burn more calories while you’re at it. This calorie-burn calculator from Just Stand reveals just how many extra calories. More
It’s 8am and I find myself sipping on my second cup of Maxwell House as I watch The TODAY Show and do my FEELguide morning updates.
“YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over, at the very least, the next 100 years,” says Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL.
Let our great grandkids worry about it.
Huge asteroid to fly by Earth in November
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Huge asteroid to fly by Earth in November
We all know people who look like they can nod off with their eyes open. These exceptions aside, we generally think of sleep as a switch with two settings – you’re either asleep or awake. But Vladyslav Vyazovskiy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has found that sleep is more complicated than that.
By studying the brains of sleep-deprived rats, Vyazovskiy found that individual neurons can effectively fall asleep, going “offline” while those around them carrying on firing. Even if the rats are awake, parts of their brain can be taking a nap. What we know as “sleep” is the global version of something that happens throughout the brain at a local level.
Our neurons exist in two states. When they’re “on”, they have an electric charge across their membranes and they fire erratically and often. When they’re “off”, the charge disappears and they stop firing altogether. When we’re awake, our neurons are mostly on. When we’re asleep, they cycle between the two states, in time with one another. Scientists can detect these flips as “slow waves” on an electroencephalogram (EEG).
To find out what happens in a sleep-deprived brain, Vyazovskiy kept rats …
We’ve already seen plenty of glasses-free 3D HDTVs and portable devices, but a promising new technology called HR3D (High-Rank 3D) has hit the prototype phase. Engineers from MIT’s Media Lab, who developed the new solution, say that it avoids compromising on screen brightness, resolution, viewing angle, and battery life, and doesn’t require those pesky (and pricey) 3D glasses. HR3D uses a pair of layered LCDs to give the illusion of depth, with the top layer (or mask) displaying a variable pattern based on the image below it, so each eye sees a slightly different picture. Nintendo’s 3DS uses a similar technique, but with a parallax barrier instead of a second display. The designers constructed the prototype from two Viewsonic VX2265wm displays, removing the LCDs from their housings and pulling off polarizing filters and films. We’ve yet to go eyes-on with HR3D, so we’re a mite skeptical, but tech this promising is worth watching closely, and from every angle.
Continue reading MIT Media Lab develops glasses-free HR3D, supports broad viewing angles (video)
MIT Media Lab develops glasses-free HR3D, supports broad viewing angles (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 May 2011 21:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
At an event today in San Francisco, Intel announced one of the most important pieces of semiconductor news in many years: the company’s upcoming 22nm processors will feature a fundamental change to the design of the most basic building block of every computer chip, the transistor.
Intel has been exploring the new transistor for over a decade, and the company first announced a significant breakthrough with the design in 2002. A trickle of announcements followed over the years, as the new transistor progressed from being one possible direction among many to its newly crowned status as the official future of Intel’s entire product line.
In this short article, I'll give my best stab at explaining what Intel has announced—the so-called tri-gate transistor. Semiconductor physics are not my strong suit, so corrections/clarifications/comments are welcome. Also, this explanation focuses solely on the “3D” part of today's announcements. Other features of the 22nm process, like high-K dielectrics and such, are ignored. (So if you see a funny term on a slide and you don't know what it means, either ignore it or hit one of the Related Links for more info.)
But we dive into what’s new about Intel’s transistor design, we first have to review how traditional transistors work.
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Feature: Transistors go 3D as Intel re-invents the microchip
Convicted murderer Joseph Paul Jernigan was executed in Texas on August 5, 1993, at 12:31. Jernigan donated his body to science, and it was sliced into 1,871 milimeter-thick segments. Now a new photo project puts him back together. More
