willohara's blog

An accidental discovery announced this week has taken LED lighting to a new level, suggesting it could soon offer a cheaper, longer-lasting alternative to the traditional light bulb. The miniature breakthrough adds to a growing trend that is likely to eventually make Thomas Edison's bright invention obsolete.

Ever thought about being able to regenerate your own body parts? Slice your thumb off while chopping vegetables...no worries, grow another! Well, researchers at Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have discovered a strain of mouse that can heal and regenerate itself, even down to its internal organs.

OK, so maybe people aren't overly impressed that Nanotechnology has so far given us anti-stain trousers and a few other early-stage ideas. Today, however, two stories caught my eye, both relating to the discovery and treatment of various types of cancer using Nanotechnology.

When you mention "nanotechnology" people will most likely counjure a futuristic vision of "nanobots" zooming around the place and generally being very helpful. While nanobots are a long way off (some say 50 years, some say never), nanotechnology should start to bring some exciting developments within most of our lifetimes.

Having doubled flash memory capacity yearly since introducing a 256 megabit device in '99, Samsung have announced the planned launch in late 2006 of a 16-gigabit (equivalent to 2Gb of storage) NAND chip. Analysts have been expecting this by 2007, however this earlier announcement shows that Samsung are still ahead of main rival Toshiba by at least 6 months to a year.

Now, I know what you're thinking.....will I one day have a laptop or car powered by something that has passed through a cows arse? The answer is yes, possibly, but not in manure format. In fact, it's not the manure that's the answer, it's the bacteria.

In recent years we've seen superb bot-innovation by Japan's largest tech companies. Sony and Honda have led the way with the QRIO and ASIMO respectively. Due to this, the Japanese public have been some of the first to try many of the world's most advanced robot-based gadgets, often months and years before the rest of us. This has meant that they've become one of the most demanding technology audiences to satisfy.

There's been a few snippets of Tech news today. Sadly nothing that warrants a full post so i thought i'd start a new feature on the blog, The Tech Round-up. Hopefully i'll be able to make this a regular post. Once more info comes through on the more interesting stories from below i'll post in more detail.

The Cell chip, to be shipped in the Sony Playstation 3, has other applications outside of gaming, claim Sony, Toshiba and IBM. The chip, which consists of a Power processing core and is flanked by several "helper" processors, has been in the pipeline since the group formed in 2001. Extra technical specifications for the Cell architecture were released today to entice developers, business partners and research teams to take on the new chip.

Hi Threadwatch fans, i'm Will O'Hara and you've probably seen me posting on TW for a while now. I'm possibly the most prolific poster in the "Bollocks" section which may set the tone for part of this blog, who knows?