via Stanford News Service

Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices.

The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers.

via Next Energy News

Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs.

The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.

Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009.

via Washington Post

It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life’s most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA — an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.

Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world’s first entirely handcrafted chromosome — a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

…”We’re heading into an era where people will be writing DNA programs like the early days of computer programming, but who will own these programs?” asked Drew Endy, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

…Venter has now built the first fully artificial chromosome, a strand of DNA many times longer than anything made by others and laden with all the genetic components a microbe needs to get by.

Details of the process are under wraps until the work is published, probably early next year. But Venter has already shown that he can insert a “natural” chromosome into a cell and bring it to life. If a synthetic chromosome works the same way, as expected, the first living cells with fully artificial genomes could be growing in dishes by the end of 2008.

The plan is to mass-produce a plain genetic platform able to direct the basic functions of life, then attach custom-designed DNA modules that can compel cells to make synthetic fuels or other products.

…”Ultimately synthetic biology means cheaper and widely accessible tools to build bioweapons, virulent pathogens and artificial organisms that could pose grave threats to people and the planet,” concluded a recent report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, one of dozens of advocacy groups that want a ban on releasing synthetic organisms pending wider societal debate and regulation.

…”The cat is out of the bag,” said Jay Keasling, chief of synthetic biology at the University of California at Berkeley.

via Wired

A Missouri professor took several types of chicken heart cells and 3D printed them into large sheets with cell-friendly gel. The cells took over from there, sorting themselves into working order. Then they began beating, just as a heart would.

via Tech News World

Clunky old batteries may soon be a thing of the past thanks to a new energy-storage device that looks and feels like a scrap of paper.

Developed by a team of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), the nanoengineered battery is 90 percent cellulose, made up of the same plant cells used in nearly every type of paper. Infused in that paper, though, are aligned carbon nanotubes, which act as electrodes and allow the battery to conduct electricity.

The result is a lightweight, ultra thin, completely flexible storage device that can be rolled, twisted, folded or cut into any number of shapes with no loss of mechanical integrity or efficiency. The paper batteries can also be stacked, like a ream of printer paper, to boost the total power output.

via Stanford New Service

Infinitely secure cryptography that renders any computer unhackable. Computers that can solve the structure of a complicated protein at the drop of a hat. Programs to decrypt complicated enemy secrets. Optical data connections up to 100 times faster than current technology allows.

Photons and atoms hold the power to make these innovations reality; scientists just have to figure out how to unlock their potential. Now, researchers at Stanford and the University of California-Santa Barbara have developed a quantum “light switch” that could have implications for the future of certain kinds of computing.

A team of scientists led by Jelena Vuckovic, assistant professor of electrical engineering, has succeeded in directly probing a solid quantum system with light. This finding could be a milestone on the road to building a functional “quantum computer,” a machine where information is coded in individual particles that flip between different states instead of in transistors switching on and off. The finding could lead to better quantum cryptography and faster optical data connections. Their study was published in the Dec. 6 issue of Nature.