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Next-generation TMOS displays closer to mass production

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Uni-Pixel, a company based in Woodlands, Texas, has announced it is about to start mass production of a thin-film to be used in time-multiplexed optical shutter (TMOS) displays, a next-generation display technology that exploits retinal persistence in the human eye and promises significantly better performance than CRT, LCD and OLED displays with, among other things, great durability and dramatically improved energy efficiency.


The vast majority of displays available today use spatial superimposition of a synchronized red, green and blue light, each shining with a specific intensity, to create millions of color combinations. For instance, in LCD displays each pixel is made up of three RGB-colored dots that can take up discrete values over a 6- or 8-bit range: when watching the pixels from a distance, the human eye blends these three components together and perceives a single color over a total 18- or 24-bit range respectively.


TMOS displays harness a different principle in human vision: rather than superimposing the three components spatially, they do it temporally, exploiting the retinal persistence by intermittently sending just one of the three components at a time at very short intervals, and letting our brains "do the math" by adding the colors.


This approach greatly simplifies the manufacturing process, basically subtracting components from existing LCD lines and reducing others — such as the thin-film transistors for the RGB dots — by a factor of three, resulting in monitors that are 60 percent cheaper to manufacture than LCDs.


Because each layer placed between the top and the bottom glass sheet reduces the monitor's overall light output (each layer acts as a filter), removing components and simplifying the rest makes TMOS displays highly energy-efficient, letting through more than ten times as much light as a conventional LCD screen. Intuitively, this means one could obtain the same picture brightness using less than one-tenth of the power.


The intermittent red, green and blue light come from side-mounted LEDs that illuminate the bottom glass layer. Applying a voltage to the specially-developed film causes it to deform downward and touch the bottom glass, routing light from LEDs up to a particular pixel. The routing is done with the help of tiny mirrors, each less than 10 microns in size, that can manipulate the signals very quickly and achieve refresh rates 1,000 times higher than in LCD displays.


This simple but seemingly very powerful architecture also has other advantages: for instance, because of its small pixel size, it will be possible to reach densities as high as 300dpi. But the figure that might well be the most impressive is the projected display's life. The first component expected to fail in a TMOS display is one of the three LEDs, each of which have a life of 100,000 hours under continuous operation. However, TMOS displays use the three LEDs intermittently, which puts display life to approximately 300,000 hours, much more than LCDs or OLEDs.


"It is our plan to have film production begin in low volume this coming quarter for these initial customer orders and then ramp to high volumes for additional opportunities in the beginning of 2010," UniPixel's president and CEO Reed Killion explained.

Memory chips could lead the way to gigapixel cameras

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Image sensors embedded in digital cameras are expensive, and issues with their circuitry limit the quality and resolution in the pictures they produce. Now a research group from the Netherlands believes a cheaper solution could be right before our eyes - the team's "gigavision" technique exploits the high light sensitivity of memory chips to produce inexpensive gigapixel sensors that perform very well, especially in extreme lighting conditions.

Today's image sensors in digital cameras are based on CCD or CMOS technology, which is effective but relatively complex and not very energy-efficient. With CMOS sensors, as light hits the objective its intensity is translated to an analog voltage for each pixel; the voltage is then transferred to the edge of the chip, where it's converted to a greyscale value between 0 and 255 by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in a process that often compromises image quality.

Memory chips store digital information as an electrical charge, which needs to be very small to make read and write operations faster and store more data on the same surface area. However, this makes them very sensitive to external sources of noise such as light, which can easily alter the bits' values as photons hit the transistors in the chip.

A team led by Edoardo Charbon of the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands, decided to exploit this phenomenon by conceptually "removing" the black plastic packages that protect memory chips from interfering photons. The team mapped the light hitting the camera's objective directly to the chip's memory cells, which act as a myriad of miniaturized digital sensors.

The main advantage with this approach is the better resolution with reduced complexity, because it can achieve imaging with 100 times as many pixels on a chip of the same area, reducing the cost in the meantime. Since most digital cameras can now take pictures at 10 megapixels, this means affordable gigapixel cameras could be easily manufactured.

This could pave the way for inexpensive digital cameras in cell phones or other devices that can take better pictures especially in conditions of very dim or very bright light, two areas in which digital cameras tend to struggle.

There is however one catch: each bit can only be set to either "0" or "1," as opposed to a the traditional greyscale sensor that is translated to one of 256 possible levels. This means that sensing the right level of gray accurately is trickier and requires an algorithm to consider not just one, but rather a few adjacent bits at a time.

The team is still working on developing an efficient algorithm for greyscale detection, and is hoping to have a first version of a gigavision memory chip manufactured late this year and a definitive version early next year.

Via New Scientist.

Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling

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The blue line shows estimates of Arctic temperatures over the last 2,000 years. The green line shows the long-term cooling trend. The red line shows the recent warming based on actual observations. (Courtesy Science, modified by UCAR.)

Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, new research indicates. The study, which incorporates geologic records and computer simulations, provides new evidence that the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions that are overpowering natural climate patterns. The international study, led by Northern Arizona University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), will be published in the September 4 edition of Science.
The scientists reconstructed summer temperatures across the Arctic over the last 2,000 years by decade, extending a view of climate far beyond the 400 years of Arctic-wide records previously available at that level of detail. They found that thousands of years of gradual Arctic cooling, related to natural changes in Earth's orbit, would continue today if not for emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
"This result is particularly important because the Arctic, perhaps more than any other region on Earth, is facing dramatic impacts from climate change," says NCAR scientist David Schneider, one of the co-authors. "This study provides us with a long-term record that reveals how greenhouse gases from human activities are overwhelming the Arctic's natural climate system."
Darrell Kaufman of Northern Arizona University, the lead author and head of the synthesis project, says the results indicate that recent warming is more anomalous than previously documented.
"Scientists have known for a while that the current period of warming was preceded by a long-term cooling trend," says Kaufman. "But our reconstruction quantifies the cooling with greater certainty than before."
The new study is the first to quantify a pervasive cooling across the Arctic on a decade-by-decade basis that is related to an approximately 21,000-year cyclical wobble in Earth's tilt relative to the Sun. Over the last 7,000 years, the timing of Earth's closest pass by the Sun has shifted from September to January. This has gradually reduced the intensity of sunlight reaching the Arctic in summertime, when Earth is farther from the Sun.
The research team's temperature analysis shows that summer temperatures in the Arctic, in step with the reduced energy from the Sun, cooled at an average rate of about 0.2 degrees Celsius (about .36 degrees Fahrenheit) per thousand years. The temperatures eventually bottomed out during the "Little Ice Age," a period of widespread cooling that lasted roughly from the 16th to the mid-19th centuries.
Even though the orbital cycle that produced the cooling continued, it was overwhelmed in the 20th century by human-induced warming. The result was summer temperatures in the Arctic by the year 2000 that were about 1.4 degrees C (2.5 degrees F) higher than would have been expected from the continued cyclical cooling alone.
"If it hadn't been for the increase in human-produced greenhouse gases, summer temperatures in the Arctic should have cooled gradually over the last century," says Bette Otto-Bliesner, an NCAR scientist who participated in the study.
To reconstruct Arctic temperatures over the last 2,000 years, the study team incorporated three types of field-based data, each of which captured the response of a different component of the Arctic's climate system to changes in temperature.
This data included temperature reconstructions published by the study team earlier this year. The reconstructions were based on evidence provided by sediments from Arctic lakes, which yielded two kinds of clues: changes in the abundance of silica remnants left behind by algae, which reflect the length of the growing season, and the thickness of annually deposited sediment layers, which increases during warmer summers as deposits from glacial meltwater increase.
The research also incorporated previously published data from glacial ice and tree rings that were calibrated against the instrumental temperature record.
The scientists compared the temperatures inferred from the field-based data with simulations run with the Community Climate System Model, a computer model of global climate based at NCAR. The model's estimate of the reduction of seasonal sunlight in the Arctic and the resulting cooling was consistent with the analysis of the lake sediments and other natural archives. These results give scientists more confidence in computer projections of future Arctic temperatures.
"This study provides a clear example of how increased greenhouse gases are now changing our climate, ending at least 2,000 years of Arctic cooling," says NCAR scientist Caspar Ammann, a co-author.
The new study follows previous work showing that temperatures over the last century warmed almost three times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. This phenomenon, called Arctic amplification, occurs as highly reflective Arctic ice and snow melt away, allowing dark land and exposed ocean to absorb more sunlight.
"Because we know that the processes responsible for past Arctic amplification are still operating, we can anticipate that it will continue into the next century," says Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado at Boulder, a member of the study team. "Consequently, Arctic warming will continue to exceed temperature increases in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in accelerated loss of land ice and an increased rate of sea level rise, with global consequences."
The research was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation

'Time telescope' speeds up optical transmission by 27 times

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Most of today's telecommunication data is encoded at a speed of 10 Gbit/s, but researchers are constantly looking for new ways to push this limit even further. A group of researchers at Cornell University have recently come up with the "time telescope," a sophisticated system that can speed up optical communication by 27 times to an outstanding 270 Gbits/s by squeezing more information into a single flash of light and that, unlike previous solutions, does so in an energy-efficient manner.
Pushing the limit beyond 10 Gbps with today's electronics is proving challenging because engineers have to deal with a series of technological constraints that don't allow it to deliver much higher frequencies.
Faster transmission speeds can be achieved with optical fiber, but this usually requires a lot of energy because photons, which don't interact with each other easily, must be "forced" to do so. The team's work gets around the issue and makes achieving these higher speeds cheaper and much more energy-efficient.
The device developed by the Cornell team is called a "time telescope" and includes two silicon chips called "time lenses" — which work together like the lenses of a normal telescope — lengths of optical fiber and a laser. Because of its small size, it could be used in optical chips inside a computer, as well as for speeding up Internet connections over long distances.
The time telescope achieves these ultra-high speeds by squeezing more information — up to 24 bits — into each burst of light, and it does so by using silicon waveguides that can channel light.
As the information enters the waveguide, it is combined with a laser pulse from a series of infrared lasers that vibrates the atoms of the waveguide. The vibration lowers the frequencies of the front of the light pulse and increases those in its tail, effectively compressing the signal. As a result, the pulse is "squeezed" but no information is lost in the process.
The team then used a second time lens to convert the compressed pulse back into a 24-bit signal, and observed that the pulse duration shrank from 2.5 nanoseconds to 92 picoseconds, speeding up the data rate by over 27 times.
The physics involved are complex, but the net effect is that the system can speed up optical communication significantly, requiring no more energy than that needed to power the lasers, which is significantly less than that required by analogous systems previously developed by other researchers.
The device could be used to compress the data passing through packet-based optical networks, allowing to send 27 times as much information on the same wavelength channel, even though the information would have to be decompressed and then compressed again before and after every router, which would account for a small lag.
Via New Scientist

Speedy communication takes a quantum leap towards reality

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Quantum computing is expected to revolutionize electronics over the course of the next few decades, but a number of outstanding issues still remain. One such problem is that "qubits," the basic building blocks of quantum information, are very fragile and can be easily destroyed when sent on a fiber optics cable, due to the surrounding noise. Working on this issue, a team from Stockholm's KHT University, led by Magnus Rådmark, has developed a new method for combining six photons to obtain a robust qubit that is resistant to noise and is, therefore, able to travel long distances without interference.
Small imperfections in the cable, electromagnetic waves coming from nearby sources and small changes in temperature are just a few of many possible sources of noise that, when they add up, can corrupt the information traveling on a cable. Digital electronics deals with it by periodically regenerating the signal and adding redundant data (checksums, parity bits, etc) to identify and fix possible errors.
With quantum computing, however, the problem becomes much more complicated. When a single photon is sent through an optical fiber, the information is encoded in terms of the particle's polarization, which could be, for instance, horizontal or vertical. Adding a second photon makes it possible to generate many more useful combinations, but it then become impossible to know which photon has which polarization — it's only possible to observe the relationship between the two.
Quantum entanglement, a property of quantum mechanical systems according to which the state of one part (the polarization of one photon) can't be described without the mention of its remaining parts (the polarization of the remaining photons) is the cause of this further complication But it's also what makes quantum computing so attractive to scientists and engineers, because it allows for massive parallelism in data processing — when an operation is performed on one photon, the entire system is simultaneously affected.
With their work, the researchers managed to build a quantum state formed by six photons that can easily travel long distances in optical fibers, even when subject to mechanical stress or interference, allowing for reliable data transmission from one end to the other.
What's the catch? Unfortunately, while the team has successfully shown that its design would perform well, they still lack the technology to actually encode information on this six-photon configuration and then read it back. Once this issue is resolved, though, science will be very close to obtaining fast and highly reliable quantum communication.

Mouse 2.0: Microsoft's multi-touch mouse prototypes

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It's been over forty years since the first computer mouse saw the light of day, and the fact that its basic design hasn't changed all that much is a testament to the original. But that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement. A group of researchers at Microsoft has come up with five new experimental designs that tie traditional mouse functionality to increasingly popular multi-touch technology on a single device.

Each prototype explores a unique combination of shape, sensing and interactive capabilities:

The FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) mouse is roughly the size and shape of a standard mouse and uses an Infrared camera to track the user's fingers as they move on its translucent surface. A sheet of acrylic is put on the device's surface and lit with infrared light: when a finger is pressed against the surface, it causes the light to be scattered away from it, which is immediately picked up by the camera and translated into an input signal.
The Orb Mouse uses again Infrared light, but this time tracking the user gestures on a hemispherical surface. The IR light radiates from the center and is reflected back by objects, such as the user's fingers, that come close to the surface of the mouse. The resulting image is picked up by a camera, normalized as if it came from a plain surface and then further processed to analyze the hand motions.
The Cap Mouse (short for Capacitive Mouse) uses a different technique for tracking the user's hand motions — a matrix of capacitive-sensing electrodes that track the location of the fingers as they move. Interestingly, this prototype can also be used as a single-button mouse when users press down towards the front of the device.
The Side Mouse doesn't need to be touched directly, and instead senses the user's fingers as they touch the surface around the mouse. This device is designed to rest under the user's palm, allowing fingers to touch the surface directly in front of the device, where a camera picks up the data and processes it as usual.
Finally, the Arty Mouse is equipped with three high-resolution optical mouse sensors, one in the base resting under the user's palm and two under the extensions that follow the movements of the index and thumb.
The team concluded in its paper that one of the challenges of placing a multi-touch sensor on the surface of a mouse is making it easy for users to switch between the two modes without drastically changing their hand position — a challenge that the team plans to address in the future.

For now, however, it seems like we'll be stuck with pointing and clicking for a little while longer.

Triumph’s Rocket III Roadster gets more power and torque

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Triumph’s three-cylinder 2,294cc Rocket III megamotorcycle has the strongest motor of any two wheeled roadgoing conveyance we’ve ever ridden – nothing else comes even close. As much as we fell in love with the monster, all the Rockets until now have been created with a laid-back riding position which doesn't necessarily suit everybody in general, or mountain roads and city traffic in particular. For 2010 though, the iconic British marque is to introduce a Roadster version with increased horsepower and a 15% torque boost to 224Nm. Anti-lock braking is fitted as standard and ergonomics have been reworked for a more natural around-town riding position.

Coming in two black color options, metallic Phantom Black and Matt Black, the Rocket III Roadster is powered by an uprated version of Triumph’s iconic powerplant. Maximum power has increased with torque up 15% to a mighty 224Nm.

The new ergonomics give the Rocket III Roadster a completely different riding experience from its predecessors. The new footrests are further back, lower down and more inboard than on the Rocket III, creating a comfortable riding position which non-cruiser riders will feel at home with. The plush new seat sits the rider higher and further forward than before, giving a comfortable and natural leg position while reducing the reach to the handlebars.

The result, says Triumph, is a motorcycle that is easier to steer through corners than any other Rocket III variant.

New rear suspension units have been designed to offer a comfortable ride, while the main components take on a blacked out appearance for that "bad boy" image. Many components have been taken back to black, including the forks, yokes, radiator shroud and rear springs. New silencers, one on each side, are the final touches. These have been designed to release more power and torque and optimize the aural experience.

The new Triumph Rocket III Roadster will be a lot cheaper at GBP 10,950 and will be available at official Triumph dealerships from early 2010. The long-haul Rocket III Touring is GBP 13,000.

Up to six screens from one AMD Eyefinity graphics card

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Forget high definition, AMD claims its ATI Eyefinity multi-screen technology has up to 12 times 1080p resolution, breaking into almost true eye-definition video quality. It's able to power up to six monitors from one card, is Windows 7 ready and positively champing at the bit to unleash the power of Direct X 11. Users can look forward to a much improved immersion gaming experience, or to taking advantage of one huge desktop workspace for better multi-task management, or to being able to keep an eye on breaking Internet news while also playing a game or watching a DVD.

Providing you have powerful 8000 by 8000 screens set to a suitably low resolution, a theoretical resolution of 268 megapixels is also possible. Even at the more familiar 60Hz, you should still enjoy an impressive 98.4 megapixels where, according toAMD: "the display of a virtual environment is so detailed that it seems optically real to the human eye", rendering panoramic better-than-high-definition resolution roughly on a par with real human eye resolution in a 90 degree arc.

Recently showcasing the technology, AMD demonstrated digitally-created actors and scenes which were "almost indistinguishable from reality, rendered in real-time and shown as completely interactive."

But it's the enormous display real estate generated from a single card that's really grabbing the attention, and the imagination, of gamers and businesspeople alike.Eyefinity technology will see up to six independent ultra-high-resolution displays powered from just one graphics processing unit. As well as being able to handle screen displays in both landscape and portrait orientations simultaneously, the card can be configured to display one image across all the screens or offer multiple workflow opportunities with each screen displaying its own working environment, or various other mix and match combinations.

What this means to the user is an increased field of view for panoramic, immersed Direct X 11 powered gaming, or a multiple display business environment for enhanced productivity possibilities, or enabling a home user numerous media viewing scenarios configured from one card in one PC.

AMD offers a number of possible models where it sees this technology being of use. The first is a single user surrounded by numerous screens, having volumes of information available without resorting to scrolling. Graphic designers, stocks and shares traders, or analysts will no doubt immediately benefit from such a set up. Game-play which involves the use of peripheral vision or multiple screens is another area where Eyefinity technology might be of use to a single user.

The second scenario involves a number of people accessing information or media from one source. For instance, meetings, presentations or classrooms might benefit from a number of screens being controlled from one device.

The third will require more computing power, too, as multiple users view multiple screens in multiple sessions. If one PC were to accept multiple inputs as well as multiple outputs, then it could serve the needs of numerous users throughout a whole household or small office.

AMD is working with Samsung to further enhance the Eyefinity experience with the creation of ultra-thin bezel monitors that can be easily tiled together to produce a display wall, like those in the gallery.

The first of the ATI Radeon 5800 cards to incorporate Eyefinity technology have just been announced. The Radeon 5850 and 5870 are capable of expanding the display environment over three monitors, are the first to support Direct X 11, and are twice as fast as previous offerings (at 2.72 TeraFLOPS).

The forthcoming ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 graphics card will see this capability increase to six monitors but, as of writing, there's no word on when that's going to arrive. Chris Hook of AMD simply said to "stay tuned" when asked for a more precise definition of forthcoming.

Intel Core i7 Mobile Processor - fastest ever laptop chips

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Intel says processing power that was reserved for desktop computing can now be conducted on laptops equipped with its new Intel Core i7 Mobile Processor and Intel Core i7 Mobile Processor Extreme Edition. Using its award-winning and super-fast Nehalem microarchitecture, along with the new Intel PM55 Express Chipset, gamers, photographers, digital music mixers, movie-makers, etc, will no longer have to be anchored to a desktop computer to access the processing power they need.

Intel says the chips also boost overall performance when using several of these applications simultaneously.

“With intelligent features like Intel Turbo Boost Technology, Intel Hyper-Threading Technology and a host of others, Intel has revolutionized the laptop PC processor, delivering performance when you need it, energy efficiency when you don’t,” said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager, Intel Architecture Group. “For the first time, mobile users can choose a laptop that delivers Internet-server like speed, right in their laps for the most demanding tasks, from intense gaming to digital video editing and social media applications.”

Formerly codenamed 'Clarksfield', Intel Core i7 mobile processors offer Intel Turbo Boost Technology, which can accelerate the processor clock speed up to 75 percent to match workloads, as well as better performance on highly threaded applications with the power of Intel Hyper-Threading Technology.

Flexibility

The new Intel Core i7 mobile processors also include two-channel DDR3 1333MHz memory support and full 1 x16 or 2 x 8 PCI Express 2.0 graphics. Users now can edit videos, compose songs, play video games or update their social networking pages with videos and images from anywhere they choose, without sacrificing processing power.

Intel says laptops with the Core i7 mobile processor Extreme Edition support Intel Extreme Memory Profiles (Intel XMP) and Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, making it possible to overclock (dangerous if you don't know what you're doing) and fine tune your laptop for incredible performance and battery life optimizations. In addition, the Intel PM55 Express Chipset enables high-end workstation and gaming laptops to support features such as Intel Matrix Storage Technology, Intel High-Definition Audio, and increased I/O interfaces.

Pricing and availability

Asus, Dell, HP and Toshiba have begun shipping Intel Core i7 mobile processor-equipped laptops. More OEMs will follow. 1ku pricing for the Intel Core i7-920XM, Intel Core i7-820QM and Intel Core i7-720QM mobile processors is USD$1,054, $546 and $364, respectively.

Water found on the moon – what will it mean for the future?

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Newspapers and websites around the world are buzzing with the news that water and hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen) molecules have been found in the polar regions of the moon. NASA announced yesterday that instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed that water molecules were present, although in relatively small amounts. It was also discovered that hydroxyl also existed in the lunar soil. Although the amount of water found is small, it is exciting in terms of potential for the possibilities of establishing a lunar base and even for creating spacecraft fuel.

The data from a remote sensing instrument aboard Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to lunar orbit, together with data obtained earlier from NASA's Cassini and Epoxi spacecraft missions, confirm that water and hydroxyl molecules are present. The spacecraft carried imaging spectrometers which made the mapping of lunar water more effective than on previous space missions.

When the Apollo missions returned to earth, the soil samples they brought with them were found, when examined in the laboratory, to be slightly “damp”. However, at the time, scientists were not confident that the water did not enter the samples on return to Earth.

"Water ice on the moon has been something of a holy grail for lunar scientists for a very long time," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This surprising finding has come about through the ingenuity, perseverance and international cooperation between NASA and the India Space Research Organization."

Chandrayaan-1 carried NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3 spectrometer. This instrument measured the reflective light from the lunar surface at infrared wavelengths which revealed new detail in the moon’s surface composition. When the data was analyzed, it revealed that the light wavelengths being absorbed showed an absorption pattern that was consistent with those of water and hydroxyl molecules.

"For silicate bodies, such features are typically attributed to water and hydroxyl-bearing materials," said Carle Pieters, M3's principal investigator from Brown University, Providence, R.I. "When we say 'water on the moon,' we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles. Water on the moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimeters of the moon's surface.”

Scientists believe that the water may be created as a result of the soil interacting with solar wind. A chemical reaction is triggered due to the space radiation, and the oxygen in the lunar soil attracts hydrogen nuclei to create water and hydroxyl.

Professor Taylor, a researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said, "If it is a little or a lot, it's easy enough to split into hydrogen and oxygen and then you have rocket fuel."

Given the need for finding new sources of water, this discovery is heartening. However, these molecules of water are bound to rock and dust molecules, so scientists would have to find a way of extracting the water. This could be a costly and technically difficult process. So, what will it mean for the future? Will astronauts be able to set up a base camp on the moon and will it be actually possible, in future years, to harness lunar water for fuel?

World’s biggest and fastest desktop hard drive from Seagate

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Hard drives aren’t just getting bigger, they’re also getting faster. And, for the time being, there's no bigger or faster desktop hard drive than Seagate’s new Barracuda XT. It's a 7200RPM drive that boasts 2TB of storage space and a blazing 6Gb/second SATA interface. This high performance, high capacity drive is aimed at gamers, digital video editors and other storage- and speed-hungry desktop computing applications.

The Barracuda XT is a four-platter drive that features an area density of 368 Gigabits per square inch and delivers burst speeds of up to 6 Gigabits per second. At the same time, it maintains backwards compatibility with the SATA 3Gb/second and 1.5Gb/second interfaces, and uses the same cables and connectors as previous SATA generations. The drive’s 64MB cache also helps optimize burst performance and data speeds.

There are already motherboards available from ASUS and Gigabyte with SATA 6Gb/s interface support to take advantage of the speed of the Seagate Barracuda XT, which is available now for USD$300.

Scientists cure color blindness in monkeys - humans next?

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When English chemist John Dalton first wrote about color blindness in 1798, he must have wondered how science would improve the quality of life for people living with the condition. Today, spectacles, contact lenses and revolutionary corrective eye surgery combat the effects of a myriad of vision disorders, yet people with color blindness still live in quiet acceptance of this common genetic disorder. Now researchers have delivered promising results by successfully treating two squirrel moneys with defective color perception using a gene therapy that could also safely eradicate color blindness in humans.

Although not a particularly debilitating condition, millions of people around the world, including 3.5 million Americans, 13 million people in India and 16 million in China, are affected by color blindness. It is a congenital problem, largely experienced by men, that renders its sufferers incapable of discerning mainly red and green hues: seemingly trivial but, in reality, a necessity for everyday practicalities such as recognizing traffic lights.

The results have come to fruition after many years of collaboration between researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Florida. As explained by William W. Hauswirth, Ph.D., a professor of ophthalmic molecular genetics at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, the gene therapy has involved adding "red sensitivity to cone cells in animals that are born with a condition that is exactly like human color blindness.”

Hauswirth’s team developed a gene-transfer technique to produce a desired protein. In this study, the monkeys Dalton and Sam, were treated with a substance called long-wavelength opsin, a colorless protein that works in the retina to produce pigments that are sensitive to red and green. Strengthening this study’s link to a human cure is the use of human DNA to avoid having to “switch to human genes as we move toward clinical treatments,” said Hauswirth.

The research team at the University of Washington, responsible for the long-term care and post-treatment assessment of Dalton and Sam’s color blindness, developed a variation of the Cambridge Color Test, the standard vision-testing technique given to school children whereby they must identify a specific pattern of colored dots among a field of dots varying in size, color and intensity. In this study, the test was modified to perfect the way the monkeys could communicate with the researchers and “tell” them which colors they were seeing.

According to Jay Neitz, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Washington, “Nothing happened for the first 20 weeks…but we knew right away when it began to work. It was as if they woke up and saw these new colors. The treated animals unquestionably responded to colors that had (previously) been invisible to them.” It has taken more than 18 months of testing the monkeys' ability to discern 16 hues, with some varying as much as 11-fold in intensity. The monkeys were able to trace color patterns on a computer touch screen and, when they chose correctly, they were rewarded with grape juice.

Even more rewarding are the wider implications of this study for other vision disorders. For example, approximately one in 30, 000 Americans has achromatopsia, an hereditary form of blindness, which causes nearly complete color blindness and extremely poor central vision. “Those patients would be targets for almost exactly the same treatment. Even in common types of blindness such as age-related macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy, vision could potentially be rescued by targeting cone cells,” says Hauswirth. “We’ve shown that we can cure a cone disease in a primate, and that it can be done safely. That’s extremely encouraging.”

Google Chrome 3.0.195.21 Stable

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Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. Google Chrome also uses a brand new javascript engine (V8), which is much faster than existing javascript interpreters. This means you can create more complex and more intensive AJAX applications with fewer speed and processing constraints. Finally, Google Chrome is built on top of WebKit, so Google Chrome users will benefit from the CSS3 features being added to WebKit as those features are released.

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Asus to release world’s cheapest eBook reader

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Despite being around since the mid-nineties, eBooks have never really taken off and this is mainly down to the fact that eBook readers, which have been available for about a decade, have proven prohibitively expensive and barely more convenient than lugging around a couple of paperbacks. Sony and BeBook have seen relative success in recent times, along with the Amazon Kindle, but a new competitor in the form of Asus could be set to breathe new life into the market.

The device is currently being dubbed the Eee-reader and will undoubtedly look to build on the reputation for value and practicality garnered by Asus’ Eee PC range.

It’s off to a good start in terms of price, claiming to be the world’s cheapest digital reader. From the available image, it doesn’t look like Asus has sacrificed quality or usability in order to achieve this goal. Most notable is the hinged-spine design that apes the layout of an actual book, and should contribute nicely to comfort and general operation. Full-color touchscreens will be used to flick back and forth between pages, and users will allegedly be able to browse the web on one page while displaying a book or virtual keyboard on the other.

The presence of a speaker, webcam and microphone starts to draw the Eee Reader away from conventional digital reading device into Netbook territory, and though further details are scarce at present there’s enough here to generate some serious interest.

The Eee Reader, if indeed this is the name it will go by, is expected to be officially unveiled before the year is out and will likely be available in both budget and premium versions. The expected retail price is around £100 (USD$167) and while this may still be too expensive to help eBooks break into the mainstream market, the added advantage of its additional features would suggest that it’s certainly capable of making a splash.

Honda's Insane Valkyrie Rune

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Honda's stunning 1832cc flat-six Valkyrie Rune super cruiser will make its Asia-Pacific debut at the Sydney Motorcycle Show between May 13-16.

The six-cylinder Honda NRX1800 is a limited production model developed from a concept model. The genesis of the Valkyrie Rune was in concept vehicles such as the 1995 Zodia and the T2, which was first exhibited in the USA in 2000.

Honda spent six years to take the project from concept vehicle to production reality. It has now become, in the words of US publication Motorcycle Cruiser, a 'piece of rolling art'.

Honda MPE sales and marketing manager Tony Hinton said Honda's initial plan was to build one machine for each dealership in the United States. 'The plan expanded from there to initiate a limited production run and offer the machine for sale,' he said.

US press reports give a price of $US26,999 with chrome wheels.

'We've ordered a limited number of machines for Australia - a press test bike and some machines for sale - and those machines have all been pre-sold,' Tony Hinton said.

While there are many innovative and technically interesting respects to this motorcycle, it is the outrageous styling which will make the bike a milestone in motorcycle history - it is so different to anything previously seen, that it just could be the first of a new breed.

Known as the Valkyrie Rune, Honda released pics and specs of this amazing new motorcycle last week, though it does not plan to have in showrooms until 2004.

Powered by a liquid-cooled, horizontally-opposed, fuel-injected six cylinder derivative of the current Valkyrie engine, the 1832cc machine is designed for long maintenance intervals - the first valve clearance adjustments, for example, are not due until 50,000 kilometres. A maintenance-free hydraulic clutch, electronic ignition, chain-driven camshafts and a virtually maintenance-free shaft drive are all designed to reduce servicing time and cost.

But it is not so much the specifications of the bike but the visual impact which will make it a stand-out on the roads. Everything is big and everything is radically different. It is the longest wheelbase Honda has ever used in a motorcycle, and the Dual 330mm front and single rear 336mm brake discs are also the largest ever fitted to a production Honda.

The Rune's Linked Brake System is similar to that of the VTX1800 we recently wrote up in Gizmo, featuring two three-piston front brake callipers and a single two-piston rear calliper. Rider application of the front brake lever activates the two outer pistons of the front callipers. Application of the rear brake pedal activates the two pistons of the rear calliper and the centre pistons of the front callipers. When only the rear brake pedal is used, a PCV valve controls hydraulic pressure and smooths application of the front callipers' centre pistons.

The suspension is equally radical, with the trailing bottom-link front suspension transferring axle load through pushrods and linkage to two upper shocks, one housing the main spring and one a sub-spring and damping system. This unique suspension system offers 3.9 inches of compliant travel and superior stability.

Though the motorcycle is a far cry from a road-racer, its Pro-Link rear suspension is patterned after that of Valentino Rossi's World Championship winning RC211V GP racer. The upper shock mount is contained within the swing-arm rather than the frame. With no top frame-mount for the shock, this unique system eliminates negative suspension energy from being transmitted into the frame, allowing optimum frame rigidity and better handling in corners. The Unit Pro-Link design also permits a low seat height of 27.2 inches, and 3.9 inches of wheel travel.

The remarkable styling and the equally distinctive flat six could deliver what Honda has been seeking for many years - a viable alternative custom format to the Harley V-twin mould.

First ride: Honda's outrageous(?) DN-01 automatic sports-cruiser motorcycle

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At a recent Honda test-ride day, I finally had the chance to throw a leg over what must be one of the oddest motorcycles on the market - the bizarre DN-01 "sports cruiser." The Dino's way-out looks don't particularly float my boat, but it's bristling with fascinating new technology, like Honda's 'Human-Friendly' automatic transmission (HFT), which operates as a CVT in Drive or Sports modes, but is also able to mimic a 6-speed manual box when you want to get some gumboot up it. Then there's the Combined Braking System (CBS) with ABS, which isn't quite as techno as the computer controlled Combined ABS system going into Honda's new sportsbikes, but it's still right at the pointy end of motorcycle brake technology. So how did it ride?

The first thing you notice when you swing a leg over the DN-01 is that you're very definitely the center of attention. What started out as an eyebrow-raising concept bike has come through to production with its bizarre looks virtually unchanged. For better or worse, there's nothing on the road that looks remotely similar.

The next thing you realize is that for all the "sports cruiser" branding, the Dino feels squarely like a maxi-scooter. That's not necessarily a bad thing - indeed, maxis like the Silverwing and the Yamaha T-Max are some of the most practical bikes on the road, and they can be a real giggle around town, too.

Still, any pretensions to practicality are turfed out the window when you realise that the Dino's low-slung body shape doesn't actually provide any storage. Among all those acres of plastic at the front end, there's not a single hidey-hole for wets, wallets or phones. This is one of the few areas in which it seems directly related to sportsbikes and cruisers.

The Human-Friendly Transmission

Still, we're here to sample the Dino's marquee features - the HFT auto and the CBS with ABS, and to do that, we need to endure bemused stares from all and sundry as our helpful Honda representative shows us how to use the transmission.

It's not too difficult to grasp - you start the bike in neutral or D (Drive) mode, and a switch on the left block lets you swap between that and S (Sports) mode. Both these modes are CVT, the only difference being that S mode holds the revs a little higher for quicker acceleration.

Once the bike's running, you can then hit a trigger on the right hand side to engage M (Manual) mode, and here's where things get interesting. The D/S mode switch on the left switchblock then becomes a manual shift control, and you can run the Dino up and down six pre-defined, fixed ratios in the CVT. Flicking the trigger on the right again drops you back into either S or D mode, depending on where you entered Manual mode from.

Oh, you can also go back and select Neutral, if for some reason you want to sit still and rev it. Go figure.

Trundling down the road, enjoying the pleasant surge of torque from the Dino's 680cc V-twin - yes, the engine from the Transalp and Deauville - the HFT makes itself virtually unnoticeable in D or S modes. It's a very effective, clutchless twist and go. Jumping into Manual mode and surfing up and down the gears... Well, it works excellently and effortlessly. The gear changes are quick without being super quick, they're fairly smooth, and it's all exceptionally easy to control.

In fact, for such an advanced transmission, it's almost... Dare I say it? Boring? It works beautifully, it's Honda smooth and it does everything that it says on the tin - but it's hardly the revolutionary riding experience that I was preparing myself for.

On top of that, the Drive and Sports modes do such a good job of keeping the ratios where you need them that the Manual shift seems almost a little redundant. I mean, it's clearly there to give you a sense of connection to the engine when you're riding the twisties, and yet the bike's so unassuming and easy to ride that it doesn't put you in the mood to thrash it anyway.

Combined Braking System with ABS

CBS with ABS - not to be confused with Honda's more advanced Combined ABS - is effectively two separate systems. The CBS works largely as it does on Honda's Blackbird and VFR800 - it's a simple mechanical system that proportions the braking between both the front and rear brakes even if you only use one lever.

If you ever find yourself on a bike with combined brakes, for God's sake don't do what my buddy Cam did when he got his CBR1100XX Blackbird - hold the front brake on and try to pull a burnout. Here's why - the front brake lever hydraulically actuates four of the six pistons in the front calipers, as well as one of the three pistons in the rear caliper. The idea is that when you grab the front brake, the bike doesn't pitch forward so much as it can with an unlinked system. Likewise, the rear brake pedal operates the remaining two pistons on the rear brake as well as one piston in each of the front calipers, so that you can get some decent stopping power out of the rear brake pedal. In Cam's case, the front brake lever stopped the back wheel from spinning up, and he burnt the clutch clean out of a brand new bike. Cam, you are a goon.

The DN-01's ABS system works both front and rear. And how does it all feel on the road? Well, fine. The CBS is completely unobtrusive on a bike like the Dino - as long and low as it is, you're not likely to be pulling stoppies on it anyway. I tested the anti-lock mechanism both front and rear, on slippery wet tarmac and loose gravel, and was surprised how cleanly and quickly it pulled the bike up - jamming on the front brakes gave a few twitches through the steering, but nothing to rattle a rider's confidence. You can strangle the Dino's brake levers with merry abandon. And I think I would, daily, if I owned one.

There's nothing like ABS to remind you exactly how much traction you've got, even in the wet. It's a great safety system on a bike, to be able to push to the very brink of traction in an emergency in the confidence that you'll stay upright while stopping as fast as possible. I've been critical of ABS on bikes before, but this system seems very practical on the DN-01. I'll have to try out that Combined ABS sometime to see how it meshes with a sportsbike riding experience, but sampling the brakes on the Dino has certainly made me more positive.

The only real complaint I could muster about the brakes was that the rear brake pedal - a chunky thing you'd expect to see on a cruiser - was a bit high up; you have to lift your foot off the floor to get a boot on it. And with the rear brakes being such a comfortable and quick stop, I can see a lot of riders using this as their primary brake. A small issue that can be sorted out if you just cover the front brake.

Riding the DN-01

With the transmission and brakes out of the way - and they DO stay out of the way - the Dino is left to prove itself as a rider's bike. And it does a fairly good job of it.

The steering is light and easy due to the bike's low center of mass. It flicks left to right smoothly and securely. The suspension is certainly set more for comfort than for hard cornering thrills, and this reveals itself in the usual slight wallow in bumpy corners. Ground clearance is a little better than I expected, but if you push on, the footboards will kiss the bitumen fairly quickly.

Comfort-wise, the seat is plush but the forward footboards give you a sit-up-and-beg riding position. You're not lounging back like you would on a cruiser, you're certainly not tucked in like a sporty, and you don't feel as 'commanding' over the road as you might on a naked standard. It's pretty scooterish, even if it's not a step-through. I can't see it being particularly suited to long distances, but then it wouldn't be a backbreaker either.

The fuel-injected motor delivers a friendly 61 horsepower, more than enough to clear off from the tin-tops at the lights, and an adequate figure for medium-pace cruising and scratching. The Dino is reasonably wide, but not too wide for lane-splitting if that's your cup of tea.

As a package, it feels hugely refined. It's smooth, it reeks of Honda quality, it's easy to ride and doesn't feel like a bike to get in trouble on. Despite its heaped-on lashings of technology it's a doddle to get used to. Such a doddle that it failed to inspire me to look much deeper to discover where its charms might lie.

I should add, my buddy Kenny test rode it straight after I did. Kenny's a Bandit man; as far as he's concerned, bikes have never gotten any better than the old 1200cc air-cooled Suzi. Kenny stepped off the Dino with a huge grin on his face. He loved it, the ride, the handling, the brakes, the transmission, it gave him a huge giggle and he liked it even more than the CB1000R. So it's clearly a personal thing.

But here's the kicker - even if you're a big fan of this sporty/cruisy scooter, its refined ride and its bizarre looks, a lot of folks will be put off from buying it due to the exorbitant price tag - US$15,000 at retail. Yeah, well into exotic sportsbike territory, or you could buy yourself a perfectly good Fireblade and a maxi-scooter.

Honda claims that sales have been better than expected - fair enough, although I haven't seen one in the wild yet. I'm not sure what the Dino's demographic will be. It certainly doesn't fit any of the standard market segments, and the rampant use of technology is simply too well-integrated to stir my gadget-freak side.

Where it does stand out is where we started - looks. I would anticipate that for some years to come, the DN-01 is going to turn heads at just about any event. And that's a pretty neat achievement for a Honda!

Honda announces Dual Clutch Transmission for large-displacement sport motorcycles

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Dual Clutch Transmissions (DCT) are still a relatively rare breed, though in the past few years we have been inundated with them in high end automobiles. By using a separate clutch for odd and even gears, gears can be changed without interrupting power by applying the engine's torque to the next gear just as it is being disconnected from the previous one. This enables quicker and smoother gear changes and delivers better fuel economy while reducing emissions. Honda’s newly-announced, fully-automatic motorcycle DCT is a first for large-displacement sport bikes and will debut on the new VFR set for release in 2010.

Honda’s DCT is light and compact, making it suitable for use with existing engines without substantial layout modification. Not surprisingly, the simultaneous feeding in and out of the power to each clutch is done electronically, offering the precise acceleration control necessary for motorcyles with their limited cornering tire adhesion. What it will be like to ride with such a set-up is still unknown, but theoretically, the smooth, seamless gear changes should enable greater stability downchanging for corners under brakes, gear changing through the apex, and smoother exiting of corners – all likely to get you through a corner faster and smoother.

Honda seems completely confident that its new internally-developed transmission (with more than 100 patents pending) will not only be better, but that it will be embraced by the motorcycle community as it intends to introduce the DCT to more of its large-displacement motorcycles, particularly sports models destined for use in developed countries. It certainly would not be committing to such a radical change in its premium sports motorcycles unless it was convinced of the benefits and ease-of-use, as the new technology impacts the most critical area of safety and enjoyment of riding a motorcycle.

In order to suit a variety of riding styles, the transmission is equipped with three operating modes, two full-auto modes (D-mode for regular operation and S-mode for sporty riding); and a six-speed manual mode, which delivers the same shift feel as a manual transmission.

The new transmission features a Dual Clutch Transmission configuration in which independent clutches are employed for the odd gears (first, third, fifth) and the even gears (second, fourth, sixth), respectively. The two clutches operate alternately to effect gear changes. For example, when changing from first to second gear, the computer detects the up-shift and engages second gear, then releases the first-gear clutch while engaging the second-gear clutch to achieve a seamless gear change.

While some dual-clutch transmissions tend to be bulky, the new system employs original technologies such as dual input shafts, exclusive in-line clutch design, and concentration of hydraulic circuitry beneath the engine cover to achieve a compact design. Compactness and lightness is further enhanced through the use of a simple shift mechanism design based on that of a conventional motorcycle shift drum. Optimized shift scheduling achieves fuel economy equal to or better than that of a fully manual transmission, enabling the Dual Clutch Transmission to deliver both sporty riding and environmental performance combined.

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