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On Tuesday, microcontrollers and touch-technology developer Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) released samples of a new type of super-low power, ARM-based family of microcontrollers (MCUs). Many are already saying that the SMART SAM L21 family of MCUs has the potential to revolutionize the way the Internet of Things (IoT) works. 411 On These Chips Made by Atmel and based on ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ: ARMH) technology, these chips can last for over 10 years on a single battery charge. According to Atmel, this family of MCUs delivers power consumption down to 35 microamps per megahertz in active mode and to...

Stanford University scientists have invented the first high-performance aluminum battery that's fast-charging, long-lasting and inexpensive. Researchers say the new technology offers a safe alternative to many commercial batteries in wide use today. "We have developed a rechargeable aluminum battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries, which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames," said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford. "Our new battery won't catch fire, even if you drill through it." Dai and his colleagues describe their novel aluminum-ion battery in "An ultrafast rechargeable aluminum-ion battery," in...

The reason for the arachnid’s sensitivity to temperature doesn’t rely chiefly on their muscles to move, but they rather employ their blood which also called hemolymph. The spider’s fluid is sensitive to temperature. Hence, when the hydraulic fluid flows into their tube-like legs, it makes them quite loosened and enlarged. An associate professor of biology at Harvey Mudd College in California and who spearheaded the study quipped that temperature can alter the thickness, or viscosity, of hemolymph. Ahn said that at colder temperatures, the spiders moved at a slower pace since the hemolymph has become more viscous than at higher...

NY Times: Samsung finally seems to understand the many criticisms that have long been leveled at its phones: the plastic hardware looked cheap, the most promoted features were mostly useless and the software was too complicated,” Farhad Manjoo writes for The New York Times. “Samsung, according to Samsung, has realized the errors of it ways.” “The realization was born out of necessity. Samsung’s market share and profits in the smartphone business have plummeted over the last year. The company, which is based in South Korea, is in the unenviable position of getting squeezed from the bottom by the affordable phones...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The following is about infrastructure. Don't nod off just yet. To be specific, it's about pavement — basic, boring road surface. In the six decades since Interstate 70 began to creep across Missouri, how we view pavement hasn't changed much. Now meet Tim Sylvester, 33. He sees pavement as an electronic tablet with a concrete touch screen, The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/1MWYIxn) reports.

Faith’s left forearm and hand were amputated when she was 9 months old, according to Build It Workspace, where her new limb was printed in 24 hours. It took less than a month to design and plan for the hand, and the final pieces were printed Tuesday morning. The family was put in touch with Build It Workspace President Mark Lengsfeld through the Lucky Fin Project, a nonprofit devoted to children with different abilities related to their limbs. Lengsfeld authorized full use of the facility to make Faith’s hand. “It’s just an amazing opportunity to be here just to help...

Only months after moving into his new home in Washington state, Consumerist reader Seth is already looking to sell his house. He didn’t lose his job or discover that the property is haunted. No, Seth can’t stay much longer because no one can provide broadband service to his address; even though Comcast and CenturyLink both misled him into thinking he’d be connected to their networks and in spite of the fact that his county runs a high-speed fiberoptic network that goes very near to his property. Like an increasing number of Americans, Seth works from home, meaning that it’s vital...

The study is the first ever to prove that acoustic phonons (particles responsible for the transmission of both sound and heat) contain magnetic properties, The Ohio State University reported. The team of researchers demonstrated that a magnetic field about the size of an MRI was able to reduce the amount of heating flowing through a semiconductor by about 12 percent. "This adds a new dimension to our understanding of acoustic waves," said Joseph Heremans, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanotechnology and professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State. "We've shown that we can steer heat magnetically. With a strong enough magnetic...

China and US molten salt nuclear reactor cooperation china, energy, future, molten salt, nuclear, science, technology, united states A Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, or CRADA, between ORNL and SINAP focuses on accelerating scientific understanding and technical development of salt-cooled reactors, specifically fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactors, or FHRs. The project will draw on ORNL’s expertise in fuels, materials, instrumentation and controls, design concepts, and modeling and simulation for advanced reactors, as well as the lab’s experience in the design, construction and operation of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, the only molten salt reactor ever built. The Chinese Academy of Sciences...

Are smartphones making our children mentally ill?Leading child psychotherapist Julie Lynn Evans believes easy and constant access to the internet is harming youngsterstelegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11486167/Are-smartphones-making-our-children-mentally-ill.html

Share on email View Comments Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (left) shows off Amazon PrimeAir drones to Charlie Rose of CBS News. (CBS) Related Tags:Amazon, Delivery, Drone, FAA, Magid Larry Magid Larry Magid is a technology journalist and an Internet safe...Read More You've Earned Points for Reading!Claim points in our Reward Center, and earn more tomorrow. San Francisco (KCBS) —  Amazon scored a victory this week in its battle with government regulators over their plan to deliver products by drone.The FAA has agreed to let the company fly Amazon Prime Air Drones… but with some big restrictions.  One of those restrictions...

A 3D printing technology developed by Silicon Valley startup, Carbon3D Inc., enables objects to rise from a liquid media continuously rather than being built layer by layer as they have been for the past 25 years, representing a fundamentally new approach to 3D printing. The technology, to appear as the cover article in the March 20 print issue of Science, allows ready-to-use products to be made 25 to 100 times faster than other methods and creates previously unachievable geometries that open opportunities for innovation not only in health care and medicine, but also in other major industries such as automotive...

Ethereum, the brainchild of wunderkind software developer Vitalik Buterin, who was just 19 when he came up with the idea, is the most buzzed-about project right now in the cryptocurrency community. It has attracted an all-star team of computer scientists and raised $18.4 million in a crowdfunding campaign—the third most successful of all time. And now, according to the official Ethereum blog, it's on the verge of being rolled out to the public. Ethereum's developers use a rolling ticker tape of bold tag lines to describe what they're creating, including a “Social Operating System for Planet Earth,” and “the Upcoming...

Remember way back when online dating was this new, futuristic concept? Although not an online dating app, the matchmaking service Three Day Rule has taken the technology-meets-dating game to a whole new level — they’ve been using facial recognition technology to help their users find dates. How’s that for futuristic? Matchmakers at Three Day Rule have their clients send them pictures of people whom they find attractive — friends, celebrities, etc. The matchmakers then run the pictures through the service’s database (a group of 30,000 singles in the area). The technology pulls out people from the database who have similar...

Being a tech professional is a good career with plenty of high-paying jobs. But it's an ever-changing job market. One day a skill is hot and the next it's not. Job site Dice.com recently published its 2015 Salary Survey, which named the highest-paying tech skills. Dice, a tech-job-hunting site, surveyed 23,470 IT professionals in the fall of 2014 to come up with this list. Of course, skills alone won't always lead to a high salary. Work experience counts, too. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ No. 30: RDBMS is worth $114,100 RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) is the full-jargon term for the thing otherwise known...

Self-driving cars. Delphi, one of the biggest auto parts suppliers in the country, will pilot a self-driving Audi from California to the New York auto show. It's part publicity stunt, part experiment: The vehicle's advanced active safety sensors will collect gigabytes of data about the experience, which Delphi will use to help build parts for autonomous cars of the future. (There will be a driver in the car, on stand-by, in case things go wrong, and to take the wheel when the car crosses into a state that regulates the robots.)

Cables lying on the seafloor bring the internet to the world. They transmit 99 percent of international data, make transoceanic communication possible in an instant, and serve as a loose proxy for the international trade that connects advanced economies.Their importance and proliferation inspired Telegeography to make this vintage-inspired map of the cables that connect the internet. It depicts the 299 cables that are active, under construction, or will be funded by the end of this year. In addition to seeing the cables, you'll find information about "latency" at the bottom of the map (how long it takes for information...

Buckybomb shows potential power of nanoscale explosives Mar 05, 2015 by Lisa Zyga Enlarge Molecular configuration of an exploding buckybomb. Credit: ACS (Phys.org)—Scientists have simulated the explosion of a modified buckminsterfullerene molecule (C60), better known as a buckyball, and shown that the reaction produces a tremendous increase in temperature and pressure within a fraction of a second. The nanoscale explosive, which the scientists nickname a "buckybomb," belongs to the emerging field of high-energy nanomaterials that could have a variety of military and industrial applications. The researchers, Vitaly V. Chaban, Eudes Eterno Fileti, and Oleg V. Prezhdo at the University of...

Once you really solve a problem like direct brain-computer interface ... when brains and computers can interact directly, that's it, that's the end of history, that's the end of biology as we know it. Nobody has a clue what will happen once you solve this. If life can break out of the organic realm into the vastness of the inorganic realm, you cannot even begin to imagine what the consequences will be, because your imagination at present is organic. So if there is a point of Singularity, by definition, we have no way of even starting to imagine what's happening...

The American firm Silent Circle has made its debute of a new phone which is its second highly encrypted handset to come to the market.The BlackPhone 2 is able to place calls, send text messages, and store contacts with complete privacy free of government snooping. This is becoming critical for it is not terrorists they are really after, it is loose change. They will now revoke your passport if they even THINK you have money they are entitled to. The handset, due to be released later this year alongside a larger BlackPhone+ model, can also override data demands from third-party...