Middle East Conflict and an Internet Tipping Point

First in Tunisia, then in Egypt, now in Libya: technologically savvy protestors are making extraordinary use of the Internet and digital media to support mass movements against autocratic governments.  The Twitter hashtag #jan25 and its corresponding date in history will mark a change in how those seeking to cling to power will look at networked digital technologies for the coming generation.

Fly Over the 'Brainbow'

Four years ago, Harvard scientists devised a way to make mouse neurons glow in a breathtaking array of colors, a technique dubbed “Brainbow.” This allowed scientists to trace neurons’ long arms, known as the dendrites and axons, through the brain with incredible ease, revealing a map of neuron connections.

Where Solar Power Meets the Oil Field

Extracting heavy oil from the ground carries a large carbon footprint, because the oil must be coaxed from the earth with steam. In California's Kern County, where steam-hungry oil fields account for 9 percent of the state's natural-gas consumption, GlassPoint Solar is testing an alternative: a one-acre greenhouse full of solar heat collectors. The Fremont, California, firm hopes this method will deliver steam in a way that's cleaner and cheaper than burning natural gas.

Why Voice Will Rule the Road

For years, people have been predicting that speech recognition will soon be the primary way we interact with computers, but it's never really taken off. Speaking at Blur, a conference in Orlando, Gary Clayton, chief creative officer at voice-recognition company Nuance, talked about what's still holding the technology back and why he thinks everything's about to change.

Erectile Dysfunction Treatment to Save Soldiers' Lives

Losing half your blood volume is a tough thing to survive, even if you're a hamster in a controlled
laboratory study. It's very bad if you're a soldier on the battlefield, hours away from an emergency room or trauma center.

Eliminating the Laptop Charging Brick

A startup called Transphorm has announced a technology that could eliminate the bulky charging bricks that come with laptops and other devices. It could also make data centers and electric cars more efficient. 

Social Networking's Newest Friend: Genomics

It was the baby's case that first caught people's attention: an infant in a medium-sized community in British Columbia that was diagnosed with tuberculosis in July 2006. When public health workers took a deeper look at the community's medical records, they found a number of additional cases suggestive of an outbreak. By December 2008, 41 cases had been identified, bumping up the region's annual incidence rate by a factor of 10.

Computers Get In Touch with Your Emotions

Computers could be a lot more useful if they paid attention to how you felt. With the emergence of new tools that can measure a person's biological state, computer interfaces are starting to do exactly that: take users' feelings into account. So claim several speakers at Blur, a conference this week in Orlando, Florida, that focused on human-computer interaction.

Super-thin Superconducting Cables

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have found a way to make high-temperature superconducting power cables that can carry as much current as existing superconducting cables while being a tenth of the diameter. The thin, flexible cables could open up new applications in electrical power transmission and could lead to powerful new magnets.

New Materials Make Photovoltaics Better

A startup called Solar Junction says its pilot manufacturing plant is producing solar cells units that are more efficient than the best ones on the market today. The advance, based on new semiconductor materials that the company has developed, could help make a type of solar power system called concentrated photovoltaics a far more attractive way to generate electricity from the sun.

Early Warning for Asthma Sufferers

Asthma is a chronic disease, much like diabetes. But while diabetics can keep track of their symptoms with glucose meters, asthma patients have little to go by beyond their own judgment. As a result, asthma causes more than a million emergency room visits each year in the U.S. alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Silicon Solar Cells Ditch the Wafers

Startup Crystal Solar hopes to take some of the cost out of high-performance single-crystalline solar cells by eliminating conventional silicon wafers. The company says it has developed a wafer-free process for making 50-micrometer-thick solar cells with over 15 percent efficiency, with the possibility of higher efficiencies.

The First Full-Color Display with Quantum Dots

Researchers at Samsung Electronics have made the first full-color display that uses quantum dots. Quantum-dot displays promise to be brighter, cheaper, and more energy-efficient than those found in today's cell phones and MP3 players.

Biografi Presiden Soekarno

Presiden pertama Republik Indonesia, Soekarno yang biasa dipanggil Bung Karno, lahir di Blitar, Jawa Timur, 6 Juni 1901 dan meninggal di Jakarta, 21 Juni 1970. Ayahnya bernama Raden Soekemi Sosrodihardjo dan ibunya Ida Ayu Nyoman Rai. Semasa hidupnya, beliau mempunyai tiga istri dan dikaruniai delapan anak. Dari istri Fatmawati mempunyai anak Guntur, Megawati, Rachmawati, Sukmawati dan Guruh. Dari istri Hartini mempunyai Taufan dan Bayu, sedangkan dari istri Ratna Sari Dewi, wanita turunan Jepang bernama asli Naoko Nemoto mempunyai anak Kartika..

Biografi Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison dilahirkan di Milan, Ohio pada tanggal 11 Februari 1847. Tahun 1954 orang tuanya pindah ke Port Huron, Michigan. Edison pun tumbuh besar di sana. Sewaktu kecil Edison hanya sempat mengikuti sekolah selama 3 bulan. Gurunya memperingatkan Edison kecil bahwa ia tidak bisa belajar di sekolah sehingga akhirnya Ibunya memutuskan untuk mengajar sendiri Edison di rumah. Kebetulan ibunya berprofesi sebagai guru. Hal ini dilakukan karena ketika di sekolah Edison termasuk murid yang sering tertinggal dan ia dianggap sebagai murid yang tidak berbakat. 

Keluarga Terbesar di Dunia, Punya 39 Istri 94 Anak dan 33 Cucu

 BeritaUnik.net – Inilah Keluarga Terbesar di Dunia, Punya 39 Istri 94 Anak dan 33 Cucu – Keluarga ini tinggal di sebuah rumah dengan jumlah kamar 100, mengingat banyaknya jumlah istri hingga 39 orang merekapun harus bergantian berbagi tempat tidur, dan Anda mungkin kaget dalam sehari untuk makan mereka harus menyediakan 30 ekor ayam 489 kilogram beras dan 295 kilogram kentang , wah betapa repotnya bukan

Switchable Metamaterial Makes Itself Invisible

Magnetic resonance imaging works by blasting biological tissue with a strong, uniform radiofrequency magnetic field and then listening for the weak field generated by hydrogen nuclei in response.

Facebook App Reveals Your Social Cliques

Socializing online and in the real world may be edging ever closer, but one stark difference remains: it's much easier to juggle different groups of friends offline than it is online. A new tool developed at Stanford University addresses the problem by automatically working out a person's different and overlapping friendship groups by analyzing the history of their Facebook or Gmail account.

HP Sees Cloudy Skies Ahead

Last week, HP released several mobile devices running WebOS, an operating system that it acquired last summer when it bought Palm. HP's two new smart phones and tablet computer showed that the company is anxious to get a larger slice of the portable device market. But at the launch event, company executives mentioned that they plan to ship other devices, including PCs and printers, with WebOS installed. As the world's largest PC maker, HP may be in a unique position to promote personal cloud computing—whereby data and applications are accessible from whatever device a person is using.

Drug Follows Melanoma Wherever It Goes

A nanoparticle that targets melanoma and highlights cancerous tissue is entering an early-stage clinical trial. Researchers testing the nanotherapeutic agent, which has been under development for over a decade, hope it provides a way to target melanoma and map its spread throughout the body. Researchers have tested the drug in animals and found no toxicity. Safety tests in five melanoma patients should be completed by the end of the year.

Nerves Light Up to Warn Surgeons Away

Surgeons take pains to avoid injuring nerves in and around surgical sites—a stray cut could lead to muscle weakness, pain, numbness, or even paralysis. In delicate operations like prostate removal, for instance, accidentally damaging nerves can lead to incontinence or erectile dysfunction. Scientists at University of California San Diego have announced a new method for lighting up nerves in the body with fluorescent peptides, which could act as markers to keep surgeons away.

A World Wide Web that Talks

Some 10,000 people worldwide use a version of the Web like no other: it is operated by voice over the telephone. Called the "Spoken Web," it is the result of an IBM research project attempting to re-create the features and functions of the text-based World Wide Web for people in developing regions with low levels of literacy and technical skills.

PlayStation Phone: Innovator or Imitator?

After seeing the mobile gaming market invaded by smart-phone makers in recent years, Sony Ericsson has now launched the first "Playstation phone," called the Xperia Play. The device resembles a regular smart phone but has gaming buttons that slide out from beneath the screen.

How Your Username May Betray You

By creating a distinctive username—and reusing it on multiple websites—you may be giving online marketers and scammers a simple way to track you. Four researchers from the French National Institute of Computer Science (INRIA) studied over 10 million usernames—collected from public Google profiles, eBay accounts, and several other sources. They found that about half of the usernames used on one site could be linked to another online profile, potentially allowing marketers and scammers to build a more complex picture of the users.

A Twin-Cell Solar Panel

A start-up called Stion will receive $1 million from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to develop a new type of low-cost, high-efficiency solar panel. The company will use the new funding to make solar panels that combine two types of solar cells, which will allow the panels to efficiently convert a wide range of the solar spectrum into electricity.

Wireless Heart Implant Reduces Hospitalizations

A wireless sensor developed by Atlanta-based CardioMEMS reduced the number of hospitalizations in patients with heart failure by 39 percent. The tiny implant monitors fluid pressure in the pulmonary artery and transmits the data wirelessly to physicians, who can adjust patients' medications accordingly.

Light-Emitting Rubber Could Sense Structural Damage

Researchers at Princeton University have built a new type of sensor that could help engineers quickly assess the health of a building or bridge. The sensor is an organic laser, deposited on a sheet of rubber: when it's stretched—by the formation of a crack, for instance—the color of light it emits changes.

Electricity and Light in One Chip

Today's computer chips are chunks of silicon that use electrical pulses to crunch data. But IBM researchers are now making chips for tomorrow: chunks of silicon that also contain pathways for light pulses.

Laser-Quick Data Transfer

For the first time, researchers have grown lasers from high-performance materials directly on silicon. Bringing together electrical and optical components on computer chips would speed data transfer within and between computers, but the incompatibility of the best laser materials with the silicon used to make today's chips has been a major hurdle.

A Rocket Built from U.S. and European Parts

A new rocket that would combine parts from NASA's canceled Ares I rocket as well as the Ariane 5 , a well-proven European satellite launcher, could provide a low-cost option for taking crew and cargo to the space station.

Do Anonymous Leaks Have a Future?

While the U.S. government tries to build a case against WikiLeaks, the secret-document publishing site run by Australian hacker-turned-celebrity Julian Assange and currently hosted in Sweden, an entire new generation of WikiLeaks-inspired services, enabling anonymous, secure submissions of leaked documents, is springing up around the world. Although the technology for these sites may be solid, however, potential leakers and those to whom they leak face growing threats from the law, and from outright spying.

HP's Risky Triple Play

Yesterday, HP announced its first three products using WebOS, the operating system for mobile devices that was its main prize for acquiring Palm in July of last year. HP is already known for printers, PCs, and laptops, but the new products—a tablet, an updated smart phone, and a new super-small smart phone—highlighted a new strategy for the company.

Getting More Value from Cell-Phone Data

Last month, attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, pulled out their smart phones. Each attendee watched as the gadget displayed an analysis of his or her mental state—relative to others in the room—gleaned from data gathered by the phone itself.

App Tells Your Friends What You're Watching

Sitting at home in front of the TV could soon become an altogether more sociable experience. A new iPhone app can identify the show you're watching just by analyzing a few seconds of audio, making it possible to automatically share your TV viewing choices with friends through Facebook and Twitter. It only does this when the app the user presses a button to activate it.

The Smallest Computing Systems Yet

A team led by Charles Lieber, a professor of chemistry at Harvard, and Shamik Das, lead engineer in MITRE's nanosystems group, has designed and built a reprogrammable circuit out of nanowire transistors. Several tiles wired together would make the first scalable nanowire computer, says Lieber. Such a device could run inside microscopic, implantable biosensors, and ultra-low-power environmental or structural sensors, say the researchers.

Startup Boasts Better Lithium Batteries

A California company called Envia Systems is developing a battery that promises to store twice the energy of lithium-ion batteries—the kind typically used in electric cars.

New Image Database Could Help Explain Evolution of Human Eye

The human eye is an amazing piece of machinery. It can distinguish some ten million colours thanks to the remarkable light-sensitive rod and cone cells that populate the back of the eye.

A Cell-Phone Tower for Your Pocket

The signal your cell phone receives typically comes from a large microwave transceiver a few miles away. Now it can be supplied—over a short range, at least—by a device the size of a USB memory stick.

How to Make an Object Invisible

A hairbrush-shaped device has been theoretically designed that would use bristles made out of nanowires to bend light around it, rendering the object invisible. The researchers who came up with the design say that it's the first practical design for an "optical cloak" to work in the visible spectrum. They are now working on building an actual device based on their calculations.

The Key to Better Solar Cells: Bumpy Mirrors

Dye-sensitized thin-film solar cells are cheaper to make than conventional silicon cells, but they're still relatively inefficient.

HP's Open Innovation Strategy: Leveraging Academic Labs

When Rich Friedrich of HP Labs looks into the future, he sees desks used as 3-D displays, printers that automatically tailor a newspaper to a reader's tastes, faster and more secure cloud computing servers, and wireless nano-sensor networks that monitor the environment.

App Turns iPhone into a Smarter Camera

The cameras in most mobile phones are an afterthought. This has left an opening for programmers to step in and develop software to make the images produced by smart phones much better.

The Android that Apple's Rivals Have Been Looking For

When Apple's iPad debuted last year, it resurrected a form of computing long thought unworkable, and created entirely new markets for book and news publishers. Attempts by others to follow that lead have lacked the iPad's polish, but Google may have changed the equation by revealing its own take on the tablet experience yesterday.

An Engine that Harnesses Sound Waves

A startup company has developed a new type of engine that could generate electricity with the efficiency of a fuel cell, but which costs only about as much as an internal combustion engine.

Capturing More Light with a Single Solar Cell

The most efficient solar cells typically have several layers of semiconductor materials, each tuned to convert different colors of light into electricity. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have now made a single semiconductor that performs almost the same job. More importantly, they made the material using a common manufacturing technique, suggesting it could be made relatively inexpensively.

The Internet Just Ran Out of Numbers

On February 3, it finally happened: the clock ran out on the Internet as we know it. That was the day that the stash of Internet protocol addresses that are used to identify and locate computers connected to the Internet—the telephone numbers of the online world—was exhausted.

A New Twist on Floating Wind Power

Wind turbines attached to floating buoys can harness stronger, more sustained winds in the open ocean. But the floats now used for such deep-water installations may prove prohibitively expensive because the buoys needed to keep them above water are enormous. Now a project in France is turning the turbine design on its head for what developers hope will be a low-cost alternative.