Recent updates to Computers, Internet, Software, Household and Office Equipment:

PHYSICISTS TEAM UP TO LEARN HOW QUANTUM MECHANICAL STATES BREAK DOWN

Researchers at the U. S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Microsoft Station Q have made significant advancements in understanding a fundamental problem of quantum mechanics – one that is blocking efforts to develop practical quantum computers with processing speeds far superior to conventional computers. Their respective theoretical and experimental studies investigate how microscopic objects lose their quantum-mechanical properties through interactions with the environment. The results of the researchers’ investigations were announced at the American Physical Society meeting held March 10-14 in New Orleans and also reported in Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science.

THOUGHT CONTROL UNDER YOUR HAT

An electrode-covered hat can translate brain waves into computer commands, according to a new study.

LAPTOPS MAY FRY YOUR SPERM

The increasing use of laptop computers could produce a generation of men with fertility problems, a new study suggests.

ROLL UP, ROLL UP FOR BENDY TV SCREENS

A television screen so flexible that it can be rolled up into a tube may one day be possible because of novel electronic circuitry, according to new research.

COMPUTERISED SHADOWS GET REAL

Animated computer-generated figures in films and virtual reality games will now look more life-like with the development of a new shadowing technique by a Swedish computer programmer.

NEW MEMORY DEVICE COULD OFFER SMALLER, SIMPLER WAY TO ARCHIVE DATA

Engineers at Princeton University and Hewlett-Packard have invented a combination of materials that could lead to cheap and super-compact electronic memory devices for archiving digital images or other data.

VANISHED INCA MAY HAVE USED BINARY CODE LANGUAGE

The vanished Inca civilisation of the Andes, long thought to have no writing, invented a seven-bit binary code to store information more than 500 years before the invention of the computer, argues an American anthropologist.

CELTIC ARRIVED IN BRITAIN, FRANCE WITH FARMERS

A new method of analysing language supports the idea that farmers carried Celtic to the British Isles, Ireland and France in a single wave 6,000 years ago, researchers report.

GOODBYE INTERNET GRIDLOCK

IMAGINE an internet connection so fast it will let you download a whole movie in just 5 seconds, or access TV-quality video servers in real time. That's the promise from a team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who have developed a system called Fast TCP. A key feature of Fast TCP is that it could run on the same internet infrastructure we have today.

OSU ENGINEERS CREATE WORLD'S FIRST TRANSPARENT TRANSISTOR

Engineers at Oregon State University have created the world's first transparent transistor, a see-through electronics component that could open the door to many new products.