IBM and 3M Team Up to Make a Semiconductor Adhesive That Will Enable Next-Gen Chips

By Clay Dillow

IBM and 3M are Making a Semiconductor Adhesive IBM

IBM and 3M are collaborating on a new semiconductor glue that will bind future generations of 3-D semiconductor chips. The idea is to create a whole new kind of adhesive that holds things tightly together while also conducting heat and insulating at the same time.

In other words, it doesn’t sound easy. But material like this is necessary if companies like IBM are going to move beyond stacking a few layers of silicon and get down to the business of stacking 100-chip towers that will power future devices.

3-D semiconductors are basically multi-layered chips that can stack computing power, networking, and memory all into one neat system-on-a-chip. Right now companies like IBM can stack a handful of chips, but what they want are silicon towers. That means they need some kind of mortar that possesses these unique properties to hold everything together. That’s what 3M and IBM are striving for: some kind of adhesive that could coat entire silicon wafers, holding them tightly together while still dissipating heat away from heat-sensitive components like logic circuits.

And they want it by 2013--about the same time the first generation of smaller 3-D processors is expected to hit the market in mobile devices. If they get it right, they predict that they could leapfrog today’s existing processor technology, creating a silicon “brick” 1,000 times faster than today’s fastest microprocessors.

After A Magnetic Pulse to the Brain, Study Subjects Cannot Tell a Lie

By Rebecca Boyle

Polygraph Vibragiel via Flickr

The act of deception is probably as old as civilisation — not long after humans began communicating, they began speaking lies. Shortly after that, they probably started trying to force others to tell the truth. Modern technology has given us a few options in this arena, from dubious polygraphs to powerful drugs — and now a new study suggests brain interference can work, too.

Stimulating part of the front brain alters the simplicity of lying, according to Estonian researchers. Magnets applied to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the area right behind your forehead, can amplify or dampen fibbing abilities.

Inga Karton and Talis Bachmann worked with 16 volunteers who submitted to transcranial magnetic stimulation, which can stimulate some parts of the brain and not others. Transcranial magnetic and electric stimulation is used to study several complex aspects of human nature, like morality, memory and learning patterns that can impact autism and even speech. The stimulation temporarily interferes with the affected area, causing it to function differently.

In this study, volunteers submitted to TMS to stimulate their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is thought to be involved in decision-making, complex thought and deception. Like most of the brain, it has a right and a left side, both responsible for different tasks. The volunteers were shown a series of coloured discs and told they could tell the truth or lie about their colours. Half were stimulated on the left, half on the right.

The researchers said the eight people who had their left DPC stimulated lied more often. The ones with the right DPC stimulated were likelier to tell the truth. The experiment was repeated while a different brain region was stimulated, and that region, the parietal lobe, had no effect.

“Spontaneous choice to lie more or less can be influenced by brain stimulation,” the researchers write.

It wasn’t exactly a robust study involving just 16 people, and they had nothing at stake when asked to lie — but it suggests a possible new method for truth-seekers.

Prefrontal Cortex: The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the brain (shown in purple) is thought to be intimately involved with decision-making. Wikimedia Commons

Most studies of deceptive behaviour have examined brain activity during mock thefts or pretending not to recognise objects, the researchers write. Here, the subjects had no “criminal” reason to lie, yet they did anyway; the researchers were able to study the brain regions responsible for this behaviour. This raises some interesting philosophical, if not physiological, questions. If lying has no practical or moral benefits, why do we do it? That's presumably a question for another study. This one is reported in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.

Lightweight Cable Made of Braided Nanotubes Could Replace Copper Wires

By Rebecca Boyle

Nanocable A power cable made entirely of iodine-doped double-walled carbon nanotubes is just as efficient as traditional power cables at a sixth the weight of copper and silver. Yao Zhao/Rice University

Cables made out of nanowires could be just as efficient as the copper cables we’ve been using for more than a century, but at a fraction of the weight, according to a new paper. Braiding billions of carbon nanotubes into a nanowire cable can efficiently replace copper in a light bulb circuit.

Traditional cables are made by braiding or twisting together two or more wires or optical fibers, usually metal or silicon, to carry a current or signal. In a new study, Rice University researchers instead used double-walled carbon nanotubes, made of concentric rolled-up sheets of graphene.

To make the cable, the team grew billions of nanotubes and spun them with a polymer into tiny wires just a few centimeters long. The wires were doped with iodine to keep them stable, and then they could be tied together without compromising their conductivity, according to a Rice news release. The resulting cable is corrosion-resistant and is much lighter and less dense than copper. Its conductivity-to-weight ratio, known as specific conductivity, is better than copper and silver — it’s second only to sodium in the suite of metals with the highest specific conductivity, the researchers say.

To prove it worked, Rice doctoral student Yao Zhao built a circuit that directed power through the nanocable, replacing copper wire. He turned on a CFL bulb and let it shine for several days, and saw no signs of degradation in the nanocable. Tests showed it would be just as strong and durable as copper, and would work in a wide range of temperatures, the team says.

The next step is to make longer, thicker cables that can carry a greater current, according to Enrique Barrera, a Rice professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. The nanocables could someday be used in aircraft, spacecraft and cars, and could someday even replace electrical wiring in homes, the team says. Barrera and Zhao explain the technique in the video below.

The work appears in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

[via PhysOrg]

Fermilab Sets End-of-Month Deadline to Establish Whether or Not the Higgs Boson Exists

By Clay Dillow

Fermilab's Tevatron Collider DOE

Fermilab’s Tevatron collider runs out of money and time at the end of this month, but physicists there say that they are on track to establish whether the Higgs can exist within the most likely predicted mass range before their September 30 deadline. That’s not the same as actually finding the Higgs boson of course, but physicists say they’ll either rule out the possibility of its existence or not by month’s end.

The Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle,” is the most important missing piece in the Standard Model of particle physics and the theoretical particle thought to imbue all other particles with mass (that’s important). Tevatron has been in competition with CERN’s Large Hadron Collider to find the Higgs first--if it really exists, that is--but so far the God particle eludes physicists at both facilities.

However, the Higgs window is narrowing. Through trillions of particle collisions at varying energy levels, physicists have explored much of the range where the Higgs is predicted to be hiding. And that’s what Fermilab researchers are saying--that by month’s end, they’re pretty sure they will have the information they would need to rule out the existence of a Higgs with a mass within the most likely range.

That means physicists will have to get creative in the way they think about what the Higgs really is, or perhaps begin considering alternative theories of how things came to be.

But if it turns out the Higgs does appear to be present within that mass range, it will still be too late for Tevatron to actually find it. With no funding beyond the end of the month it will have to step aside and watch the LHC continue to search for the elusive particle within that range.

The LHC has its own set of deadlines for finding the Higgs, though none are set in stone. CERN’s director general thinks that the LHC’s data should be able to come to a preliminary conclusion about whether or not the Higgs is real by year’s end, and that hard scientific proof one way or the other should emerge next year.

[MSNBC]

Cloo Hopes to Turn Your City Into a Network of Friendly, Open Bathrooms

By Dan Nosowitz

Cloo iPhone App Cloo

Running around a city trying to find a public bathroom/Starbucks/secluded alley is one of those moments that's an urban dweller's nightmare, and one that's guaranteed to happen several dozen times in real life. (Here we should add that New York, PopSci's hometown, is among the worst of the offenders.) Cloo (technically, "CLOO'", but, you know, we're not calling it that) is a new app for iOS that tries to solve that problem by connecting those in need with friends or friends of friends that are willing to supply their bathrooms--for a price.

Cloo, which very Britishly stands for Community Loo, is an app currently under development (as in, not yet available) which will show a Google Maps layer overlaid with locations of friends and friends of friends who have put their own private bathrooms, in their own homes, where they live, up for grabs. (Presumably, that "friends of friends" thing will be done through Facebook, though Cloo hasn't made that clear.)

There are a few higher-level ideas at work, like a payment system that works kind of like that Bump app (you tap two phones together to exchange data, or, in this case, currency) and some vaguely-defined partnerships with toilet-supply companies so you don't have to cut into your own profit to buy toilet paper or hire professional cleaners like you'll probably want to, every week.

The app isn't out yet, though you can follow the Cloo team's progress on Twitter. For now, it seems like the kind of idea that one side of the userbase (the side that has to pee, or poop, or whatever, no judgments here) would absolutely love, while the other side (the side with the bathroom) would be pretty leery about. At least we can be thankful the app doesn't have a urination-related pun as a name. (Though we would kind of love it if you guys contributed your own ideas in the comments.)

[Cloo]

New Mexico Building a 20-Square-Mile Empty City in Which to Test Renewable Energy

By Rebecca Boyle

Ghost Town Ybidau via Flickr

In the old West, ghost towns often formed from catastrophe, when natural or economic disasters led occupants to abandon their homes and buildings in search of better options. But in the new West, one purposefully-built ghost town will a center of opportunity.

New Mexico will soon be home to a 20-square-mile mock city, complete with highways, houses and commercial buildings. Structures will be erected to model various styles, old and new, to make it more realistic. Its Stephen King-esque name, The Center, seems fitting of a city that will be home to no one.

The $200 million city will be used to test new renewable energy infrastructure, smart grids, traffic systems, wireless networks and more, according to Washington, D.C.-based tech firm Pegasus Global Holdings. The company announced plans Tuesday to build the ghost town on state-owned land somewhere in New Mexico, according to the Associated Press. It would be located either in the Albuquerque-Santa Fe corridor or near Las Cruces, near the borders with Mexico and Texas.

The project, which the company says will be the first of its kind in the U.S., will let research institutions and private companies test new technologies in a real-world setting. Although there will be no human occupants, buildings could be tested just as they would if people were using them — different thermostat settings among neighbors would impact how a smart grid modulates energy, for instance. This would be more useful than simply using computer simulations in a lab.

The Center’s presence in New Mexico ensures it will be close (at least fairly close, it's the West) to the state’s lineup of federal labs and research centers, from Los Alamos to Sandia to White Sands Missile Range.

The Center would make money by charging researchers to use the facilities, according to CEO Bob Brumley. It would also sublease some of its state land for the development of a non-ghost town at its perimeter, where living humans visiting The Center could come to stay and eat.

New Mexico state leaders have been working with Pegasus for 18 months, the AP reported. Brumley is in the process of selecting a site for the ghost town, but it will be a few months before everything is final.

[Washington Post]

DNA Analysis Catches Carcinogens in a Simple Saliva Sample

Saliva Swabbing Torsten Philipp via Wikimedia

Researchers presenting at the 242nd National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society this week in Denver have demonstrated a new DNA test that can measure the amount of potential carcinogens clinging to a person’s DNA. But unlike previous tests that required white blood cell or urine samples and fairly intensive lab scrutiny, this one can hunt for carcinogens in a simple saliva swab.

DNA adducts--as strings of DNA damaged by carcinogens are known--serve as biomarkers for doctors, letting them know what diseases a patient might be vulnerable to and helping them monitor for ailments that the patient has a higher likelihood of developing. They’re kind of like a direct measurement of what carcinogens a person is coming in contact with in his or her daily life, through conscious choices or things like a job environment, and how those things are affecting that person’s genetic material.

Our DNA has mechanisms for repairing itself when carcinogens damage our genetic material, but when it fails to do so that genetic damage can lead to cell mutations and eventually to health problems like cancer and inflammatory diseases. So being conscious of what lifestyle choices and other factors are impacting our DNA can be extremely important.

It’s also relatively science intensive, and therefore not so common (do you have any idea what carcinogens are riding on your DNA? I could make a guess, but have no idea for certain). The saliva test developed by a research team at National Chung Cheng University (NCCU) in Taiwan makes keeping track of common DNA adducts much easier. From a saliva sample it can extract white blood cells found naturally there and then use mass spectrometry to analyze for specific DNA adducts.

The test would likely cost several hundred dollars--a cost that, in terms of potential preventative benefits, might be well worth it. And it's a first step toward what might eventually become a kind of cancer screening carried out by saliva swab. In the meantime, the researchers hope the tool might be used to help influence patients’ lifestyle choice. For instance, smokers could be shown exactly how their habit is damaging their DNA via high counts of DNA adducts. Future tests could then show, in plain terms, how curbing a behavior like smoking can have a direct impact on one’s genetic health.

[Science Daily]