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Issue no. 12, 2003 Published: Mar 21, 2003
China opens web to the West
New ICANN chief promises global focus
Synapse chip taps into brain chemistry
Researchers develop on-chip battery
Alcohol-powered laptops ahead
Spider silk delivers finest optical fibres
P-Ink changes colour at flick of a switch
Researchers create smallest silicon nanowires
Techno sniffer dog debuts at Heathrow
Computer games linked with anaesthetic properties
Spell-check can worsen writing

China opens web to the West
Western businesses are now able to buy a piece of real estate in Chinese cyberspace, opening up a potentially massive new e-commerce market. As from Sunday, businesses outside China can register .cn domain names for the first time ever. By allowing foreign business to buy up a Chinese domain name, Beijing has removed one of the barriers to Western companies trading. It will allow big e-tailers such as Amazon to establish a local presence in a lucrative market. China currently has 56.6 million citizens online and analysts expect this to jump by 46 per cent to 86.3 million by the end of the year. The country's e-commerce market is currently valued at $500m per year but it is predicted to expand to $23bn within three years. China's ever expanding number of surfers are expected to feel greater affinity with .cn brands, even if they are registered overseas.
BBC News Mar 17, 2003	back to top

New ICANN chief promises global focus
The group that oversees the internet's traffic system has picked Australian Paul Twomey as its new president, marking the first time a non-US resident will head the global body. Twomey said he would try to reach out to developing countries over the next three years as he heads the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. The non-profit body was created in 1998 to take control of the internet's operating framework from the US government. Since then the group has introduced competition into the sale of internet domain names and introduced several new domain suffixes such as .info to compete with .com and other established domains. But critics charge that the group too often reflects the interests of US businesses despite its global nature. Twomey, who formerly served as the Australian government's representative to ICANN and chaired its government committee, said he would try to change that focus.
Reuters Mar 19, 2003	back to top

Synapse chip taps into brain chemistry
A microchip that uses chemicals instead of pulses of electricity to stimulate neurons has been created by Researchers at Stanford University in California. It could open the way to implants that interact with our nervous system in a far more subtle way than is possible now. The researchers have created four 'artificial synapses' on a silicon chip one centimetre square. To cells on the surface of the device, the 'synapse' is simply a hole in the silicon. But each hole opens into a pipeline etched into a plastic layer on the back of the chip, connected at both ends to a reservoir of neurotransmitter. When an electric field is applied, the neurotransmitter is pumped through the pipeline, and a little of it squeezes out of the hole, stimulating nearby cells. The ultimate ambition is to develop neural prosthetics - implanted devices that can interact with our nervous system. In the meantime, the most immediate application of the technique could be in tissue research. Drugs could be delivered to individual cells in a tissue sample to see how this affects the entire system.
New Scientist Mar 19, 2003	back to top

Researchers develop on-chip battery
Researchers from Hosei University in Japan have taken a big step toward giving nano devices and biochips onboard power supplies. The researchers etched 200- by 100- by 2-micron trenches into silicon chips to house tiny batteries. The researchers filled the trenches with a porous glass electrolyte and electrodes made from lithium and lithium manganese oxide. The battery produces a current of electrons when lithium ions move through the glass from one electrode to the other. The researchers added numerous nano-sized pores to the inside and surface of the glass, which opened more paths for the lithium ions to travel, increasing the tiny battery's power. The 3.6-volt batteries deliver 34.6 watt-hours per square centimetre. The researchers are working on embedding larger numbers of smaller batteries into silicon chips, and are working on materials that allow ions to diffuse more efficiently. Practical miniature batteries could be ready for use in computer chips and biochips in five to ten years, according to the researchers.
Technology Review / TRN Mar 18, 2003	back to top

Alcohol-powered laptops ahead
Toshiba has unveiled a prototype fuel cell it hopes will become the power source for laptops in the future. The fuel cell breaks down methanol to generate power and will provide enough juice to run a laptop for about five hours, according to Toshiba. Toshiba developed a way to re-use the by-products of the fuel conversion process to maintain its fuel source in the right concentration. When methanol is broken down it generates carbon dioxide and water. The water is used to dilute the concentrated methanol held in the fuel cell's cartridge and keep it at the right concentration. This means that the laptop fuel cell requires a cartridge with a capacity of only 50cc. The prototype of the fuel cell is about the size of a house brick. Future versions of the fuel cell should be able to power a laptop for about 10 hours. Toshiba hopes to put the cell on sale in early 2004.
BBC News Mar 15, 2003	back to top

Spider silk delivers finest optical fibres
Researchers from the University of California at Riverside managed to make hollow optical fibres which they hope will soon be narrow enough to carry light beams around the fastest nanoscale optical circuits. The team took one-centimetre-long lengths of spider silk from Nephila madagascariensis, the giant orb-weaving spider of Madagascar. They gave it a glassy coating after which they burned away the silk by baking it at 420 °C. The next step will be to produce even finer fibres, using the thinnest known silk with a diameter of only 10 nanometres from the spider Stegodyphus pacificus, a native of the Middle East and South Asia. Allowing for shrinkage, that means the silk should produce fibres with a diameter of around two nanometres. The thinnest hollow fibre cores produced by conventional methods are around 25 nanometres wide.
New Scientist Mar 19, 2003	back to top

P-Ink changes colour at flick of a switch
A new electronic ink that changes colour could give rise to newspapers that show shifting images, or chemical sensors that display different hues depending on what substance they detect. P-Ink or 'photonic ink' is being developed by researchers at the University of Toronto, Canada. P-Ink's iridescent colours depend upon a process called diffraction. The ink contains spheres of silicon dioxide about 300 millionths of a millimetre across, stacked like oranges on a greengrocer's stall. When light bounces off these, interference eliminates some wavelengths, giving the reflected light a certain colour. To make the colour of the ink tunable, a polymer gel is packed between the spheres which swells when it is soaked in solvent and shrinks when it dries. The nanospheres' spacing dictates the wavelength of light that they reflect, so swelling changes the film's colour. Applying a voltage to the swelling gel makes it increasingly positively charged, which determines how much solvent it sucks up. So altering the voltage tunes the ink's colour smoothly through the spectrum.
Nature Mar 18, 2003	back to top

Researchers create smallest silicon nanowires
Researchers from City University of Hong Kong in China have produced silicon wires that are smaller than any made before. The wires, which can be used in nanoelectronics, have diameters as small as 1.3 nanometres, which is the size of a row of 13 hydrogen atoms. The researchers' tests show that the wires are stable and can be used in nanoscale computer chips, light emitting diodes and lasers. The key to the wires' stability is the presence of hydrogen rather than the usual oxygen on the outside surfaces of the wires. The researchers produced the more stable wires by dipping them in an acid bath. This extra-stable configuration made it easier to image the wires with a scanning tunnelling microscope, and makes the wires more suitable for electronics than ordinary silicon nanowires.
Technology Review / TRN Mar 13, 2003	back to top

Techno sniffer dog debuts at Heathrow
The world's busiest international airport, London Heathrow, unveiled a new electronic 'sniffer dog' Monday, becoming the first in the world to trial the new screening technology. The 'Sentinel II' portal 'sniffs' passengers as they pass through a detection arch, analysing air that is blown across their bodies for particles of explosives or other banned substances, according to airport operator BAA. Alongside the sentinel, BAA is testing a new three dimensional X-ray machine. Using special glasses, operators gain an enhanced 3-D view of objects in hand luggage.
CNN / Reuters Mar 17, 2003	back to top

Computer games linked with anaesthetic properties
Video games could become part of the modern physician's repertoire, based on research released this week that suggests playing games reduces sensitivity to pain. US professor Bryan Raudenbush conducted a study with 30 college students. Each student had a hand submerged in ice-cold water, once with no distraction and twice more while playing one of two video games. Subjects who played a zombie-shooting action game during the experiment were able to tolerate the pain a full minute longer than those without a game or those playing a mah-jongg puzzle game. Raudenbush said that while he was restricted to testing young adults, he expects the results would be even more dramatic with children - offering hope to parents who endure the tantrums of a young child being inoculated or given dental treatment.
Yahoo / Silicon.com Mar 20, 2003	back to top

Spell-check can worsen writing
How might you drag a good writer's work down to the level of a lesser scribe? Try the spell-check button. A study at the University of Pittsburgh indicates spell-check software may level the playing field between people with differing levels of language skills, hampering the work of writers and editors who place too much trust in the software. In the study, 33 undergraduate students were asked to proofread a one-page business letter - half of them using Microsoft Word with its squiggly lines underlining potential errors. The other half did not use any software. Without grammar or spelling software, students with higher SAT verbal scores made, on average, five errors, compared with 12.3 errors for students with lower scores. Using the software, students with higher verbal scores reading the same page made, on average, 16 errors, compared with 17 errors for students with lower scores.
CNN / AP Mar 14, 2003	back to top