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Engineers have exploited the tenacious nature of life by persuading it to build with silicon – the stuff of microchips. In a breakthrough study, researchers have tweaked a bacterial protein to knit together carbon and silicon, producing the basis for compounds used in everything from drugs to TV screens. The team claims that their enzyme is far more efficient than man-made catalysts and could reduce the cost of making the compounds and avoid using toxic material. As silicon-carbon bonds are not known to occur naturally, they are made in the lab by chemists. But in a first, the CalTech team...

Process node scaling is becoming very expensive Carbon nanotubes have long been proposed as a significant substrate replacement to transform the chip design industry as we know it. They can operate using substantially less electrical charge and are six to ten times faster than silicon, yet due to their incredibly small size they have proven difficult to work with. The search for silicon alternativesOver the past 62 years since the first working silicon transistor was made at Bell Labs, companies have used different doping concentrations to influence electron mobility on circuit designs. But over the past half-decade, the industry...

China is flooding Silicon Valley with cash. Here’s what can go wrong. - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-wave-of-chinese-start-up-investments-comes-with-complications/2016/08/05/2051db0e-505d-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html "Investment from China into Silicon Valley, excluding real estate, topped $6 BILLION by the end of the first half of 2016, with more than half of that spending taking place in the past 18 months, according to the Rhodium Group research firm. Investors have been spurred by China’s growing wealth over the past decade and a government push to develop innovative technologies — particularly in areas such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, where China still lags."

In situ transmission electron microscopy at EMSL was used to study structural changes in the team’s new anode system. Real-time measurements show silicon nanoparticles inside carbon shells before (left) and after (right) lithiation. + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -+ - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -+ - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -+ - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -...

Federal health regulators have proposed banning Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes from the blood-testing business for at least two years after concluding that the company failed to fix what regulators have called major problems at its laboratory in California.

At left, a deformed sample of pure metal; at right, the strong new metal made of magnesium with silicon carbide nanoparticles. Each central micropillar is about 4 micrometers across. Credit: UCLA Scifacturing Laboratory ============================================================================================================= A team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has created a super-strong yet light structural metal with extremely high specific strength and modulus, or stiffness-to-weight ratio. The new metal is composed of magnesium infused with a dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles. It could be used to make lighter airplanes, spacecraft, and cars, helping to...

Researchers have written quantum code on a silicon chip for the first time And so it begins... FIONA MACDONALD 17 NOV 2015           For the first time, Australian engineers have demonstrated that they can write and manipulate the quantum version of computer code on a silicon microchip. This was done by entangling two quantum bits with the highest accuracy ever recorded, and it means that we can now start to program for the super-powerful quantum computers of the future.Engineers code regular computers using traditional bits, which can be in one of two states: 1 or 0. Together, two bits...

The significant advance, by a team at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney appears today in the international journal Nature. "What we have is a game changer," said team leader Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor and Director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility at UNSW. "We've demonstrated a two-qubit logic gate - the central building block of a quantum computer - and, significantly, done it in silicon. Because we use essentially the same device technology as existing computer chips, we believe it will be much easier to manufacture a full-scale processor chip than for any of the leading...

Like Earth, the interior of Mars has undergone a process known as differentiation. This is where a planet, due to its physical or chemical compositions, forms into layers, with denser materials concentrated at the center and less dense materials closer to the surface. In Mars’ case, this translates to a core that is between 1700 and 1850 km (1050 – 1150 mi) in radius and composed primarily of iron, nickel and sulfur. This core is surrounded by a silicate mantle that clearly experienced tectonic and volcanic activity in the past, but which now appears to be dormant. Besides silicon and...

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering have developed a novel paper-like material for lithium-ion batteries. It has the potential to boost by several times the specific energy, or amount of energy that can be delivered per unit weight of the battery. This paper-like material is composed of sponge-like silicon nanofibers more than 100 times thinner than human hair. It could be used in batteries for electric vehicles and personal electronics. Scanning electron microscope images of (a) SiO2 nanofibers after drying, (b) SiO2 nanofibers under high magnification (c) silicon nanofibers after etching, and (d) silicon nanofibers...

Veiled by the yellow willows and brush along a forgotten creek bed in San Jose, hundreds of people jerry-built a treehouse and constructed underground bunkers and ramshackle lean-tos to form one of the nation's largest homeless encampments. The 68-acre shantytown is just minutes away from downtown and the high-tech giants that made Silicon Valley one of the world's most opulent locations. For years, the city turned a blind eye to "the Jungle." But the camp along the muddy bank of Coyote Creek has become more crowded in recent years and is awash in rotting trash, rats and human waste —...

An increasing number of electric-vehicle driving employees at Silicon Valley companies are finding it hard to access car-charging stations at work, creating incidents of "charge rage" among drivers. Installation of electric vehicle charging ports at some companies has not kept pace with soaring demand, creating thorny etiquette issues in the workplace, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer for German software company SAP, says the company's 16 charging stations are now not nearly enough for the 61 employees who drive electric vehicles. Graf says cars are getting unplugged while charging, creating animosity between employees. A charge...

“Instant energy, just add water” – you might expect the expression under an ACME label in an old Warner Bros cartoon, but not from a University. However, researchers at the University of Buffalo in New York have demonstrated that nano-particles of silicon react with water to produce the non-toxic silicic acid and release hydrogen. The reaction is well known, but the university says using 10nm spheres of silicon works 1,000 times faster than bulk silicon. Published in Nano Letters, the experiment didn’t require external heat or light to release the hydrogen, which was captured by the researchers to power a...

The buzz at Pivot25, a conference for mobile-phone software developers and investors held this June, is all about the future of money. Ben Lyon, the 24-year-old business-development VP of Kopo Kopo, wants $250,000 to produce his app for shops to process payments made by text message. Paul Okwalinga, 28, describes his money app — called M-Shop, it allows you to buy travel tickets and takeout via mobile phone — as "not reinventing the wheel but pimping it." Kamal Budhabhatti, 35, claims Elma, the latest product from his company Craft Silicon, lets a phone do and be almost anything financial —...

Two recent developments—a plastic processor and printed memory—show that computing doesn't have to rely on inflexible silicon.Silicon may underpin the computers that surround us, but the rigid inflexibility of the semiconductor means it cannot reach everywhere. The first computer processor and memory chips made out of plastic semiconductors suggest that, someday, nowhere will be out of bounds for computer power. Researchers in Europe used 4,000 plastic, or organic, transistors to create the plastic microprocessor, which measures roughly two centimeters square and is built on top of flexible plastic foil. "Compared to using silicon, this has the advantage of lower price...

Intel announced today that it has created a breakthrough data-transfer technology in its labs, using a combination of silicon chips and lasers to transfer data over a fiber optic cable at a speed of 50 gigabits per second. That is far faster than the maximum possible today with copper wires, which hit their peak around 10 gigabits per second. The new Intel Silicon Photonics Link is fast enough to transfer a high definition movie from iTunes in one second, or to transfer 1,000 high-resolution digital photos in a second, or send 100 hours of music in a second, or to...

Scientists have already created mini-cyborgs out of living cells and semiconductor materials, but now biological cells can also contain tiny silicon chips, which could become sensors that monitor microscopic activities, deliver drugs to target cells or even repair cell structures. According to Nanowerk, experiments found that living human cells can ingest or receive injections of silicon chips and continue functioning as usual for the most part. More than 90 percent of chip-containing HeLa cells — the first immortal human cell line derived from a poor, cancer-stricken woman – still survived a week after receiving their silicon loads. Other studies have...

The U.S. Navy has sped up its efforts to ready its X-47B UCAS (Unmanned Combat Aerial System), for carrier operations. This includes an additional $2 billion for development, in an attempt to have the X-47B demonstrating the ability to regularly operate from a carrier, and perform combat (including reconnaissance and surveillance) operations, within five years. Senior admirals see this as a way to solve several problems. One is the dominance of the U.S. Air Force in UAV operations (with their fleet of Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk UAVs). Then there is the growing cost of the new F-35, that is...

More than a dozen suspected members of a ruthless Norteño street gang allegedly responsible for four murders, several attempted murders and assaults in San Jose are behind bars, the result of a 1 1/2-year police investigation. A five-week grand jury proceeding culminated Tuesday with indictments being issued against 13 suspected members of El Hoyo Palmas, described by police as a multi-generation gang that has operated in San Jose for about 30 years.

By Darren Waters Technology editor, BBC News website Dr Leonid Ponomarenko shows off a device with the transistor embedded Researchers have built the world's smallest transistor - one atom thick and 10 atoms wide - out of a material that could one day replace silicon. The transistor, essentially an on/off switch, has been made using graphene, a two-dimensional material first discovered only four years ago. Graphene is a single layer of graphite, which is found in the humble pencil. The transistor is the key building block of microchips and the basis for almost all electronics. Dr Kostya Novoselov and...