Tech Today w/ Ken May

Alright, this is cool. Take a virtual tour of the interior of the LHC.

Hey, look over there, it’s a higgs boson! Just kidding!

CERN CMS 4 in Europe

Clicking on one of the internal arrows will take you to new page with a larger view (and some google ads). If you open to full screen (top left button) it will have the option of a map on the left side. h/t to Dangerous Minds.

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Tour the Large Hadron Collider

Monosodium glutamate is a food additive that enhances flavor. Although it’s frowned upon today, the ancient Romans loved it and ate it with almost every meal. More

A hundred years ago, little boys wore pink and little girls wore blue—if their clothing was gendered at all. It wasn't always. In fact, a heavy emphasis on gendered clothing for children under the age of 6 is a relatively recent phenomenon. Smithsonian has really interesting story about the socio-cultural history of small children, gender, and clothing.

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In great-grandma’s time, little kids went around un-gendered

Facebook recently took the wraps off its shiny new data center in Prineville, Oregon and—courtesy the Open Compute Project—we've learned the whole massive thing sounds lean, mean and relatively green. More

A Navy laser set fire to a small ship bobbing in unruly seas this week, the first at-sea demonstration of one of the Navy’s ray guns. Check out the Navy’s video of a fire slowly consuming the inflatable boat’s outboard motors. More

We can’t say we’re pleased that camera makers still haven’t called an armistice in their megapixel war, but a race for the speediest memory card is one battle we can get behind. Delkin says its 32GB Elite 633 SDHC is the fastest in the world, with 80MBps and 95MBps write and read speeds, respectively, handily trumping Sony’s new Memory Sticks that so recently impressed us. This card’s ideal for people who shoot gobs of 1080p video, 3D movies, and high-resolution shots coupled with RAW files, but with a price of $440, it’s only worth it for pros. And debutants.

Delkin Elite 633 claims to be the fastest SDHC card with 80MBps write speeds originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 07:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IBM might be cautious about touting graphene as a a silicon killer, but that hasn’t stopped it from pushing the production of ever faster graphene transistors. With the recent demonstration of a 155GHz graphene transistor, the firm successfully outdid its previous record-setting efforts, which produced a cut-off frequency of 100GHz. What’s more, the thing is also IBM’s smallest to date, with a gate length of 40 nanometers; that’s 200 nanometers less than the 100GHz iteration. This smaller, faster transistor was produced as part of a DARPA research project that aims to develop high-performance RF (radio frequency) transistors. So, no, we probably won’t be seeing the things in our PCs anytime soon, but it looks like they could be right at home in war machines of the future.

IBM shows off 155GHz graphene transistor in the name of DARPA research originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As trippy as mind-control still seems to us, we’ve already seen it implemented in everything from wheelchairs to pricey gaming (and car driving!) headsets. But the problem is that they measure brain activity outside the skull — you know, the thing we’ve evolved to shield the murky goings-on in our minds from prying EEG sensors.

Now, though, a team of Washington University researchers appears to have happened upon a more effective — albeit, invasive — approach. The researchers got some brave specimens to move a mouse cursor by implanting plastic pads containing electrodes underneath their skulls, with the sensors sitting on the surface of the brain. That, they say, gives them access to more telling, high-frequency waves that say a lot more about cognitive intentions. In the end, the subjects moved the cursors by thinking one of these sounds: “ee,” “ah,” “oo,” and “eh.” Brain-computer interfaces ain’t new, of course, but the scientists say the subjects with electrode implants had more success than people wearing electrode-studded EEG caps, which could translate to less frustration for people with severe disabilities.

Test subjects with electrode implants use mind control to move a cursor originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 21:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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