The University of Bath is to lead an international £555,000 three-year project to develop a system which could cut out the need for wiring to carry electric currents in silicon chips.

Computers double in power every 18 months or so as scientists and engineers develop ways to make silicon chips smaller. But in the next few years they will hit a limit imposed by the need to use electric wiring, which weakens signals sent between computer components at high speed.

The new research project could produce a way of carrying electric signal without the need for wiring. Wi fi internet systems and mobile phones use wireless technology now, but the electronics that create and use wireless signals are too large to be used within individual microchips successfully.

The research project, which involves four universities in the UK and a university and research centre in Belgium and France, will look at ways of producing microwave energy on a small scale by firing electrons into magnetic fields produced in semi-conductors that are only a few atoms wide and are layered with magnets.

The process, called inverse electron spin resonance, uses the magnetic field to deflect electrons and to modify their magnetic direction. This creates oscillations of the electrons which makes them produce microwave energy. This can then be used to broadcast electric signals in free space without the weakening caused by wires.

(more…)

June 22nd, 2006 | Physics, Technology | 1 comment

Let’s continue in the spirit of the World Cup (Go Croatia!) and present some extensions that help you stay up to date while browsing the web with Firefox. (You can download
here).

• FootieFox displays two country flags in the status bar, according to the match you choose. The good thing is that this extension is non-obstrusive and yields plenty of space for the web browsing. However, the updates are slow coming (roughly 10 minutes late). So if you want to be up-to-the-minute, this might not be the extension of choice.
• Joga Companion is a much more complete. You get the score in the status bar when matches are live (and automatically selects the match, unlike FootieFox). It installs a sidebar in which you can see past results, videos and stats. Finally, it skins you browser to the color of the country of your choice. It’s a pretty nice extension. It’s only drawback is that it conflicts with All-in-one-Sidebar that I was using. So far, I’ve disabled the latter. I have yet to experience this extension during a live match, though.
• Sports Fox can give you the scores of plenty of pro sports, including the world cup. Pretty minimal, but it might be what you’re looking for.

June 15th, 2006 | Internet, Technology | 1 comment