IBM developing PCs that may run 30 times faster

1.   A one-atom-thick layer of carbon has currently become the focus of interest of IBM and the U.S. military to build computers that function at near the speed of light.

2.  The focus is actually based on GRAPHENE, the thinnest and toughest material ever produced, that conducts electricity, a breakthrough that opens the door to its use in digital electronics

3.   Some key finding on GRAPHINE :

- Graphene is the basic structural element of some carbon allotropes including graphite, charcoal, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes.

- Graphene conducts electricity 30 times faster than silicon -- approaching the speed of light

- Until recently, use of graphene was limited to development of more-efficient batteries and foldable touch screens.

- Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones by volume, is investigating the material’s potential use in cell phones, touch screens, and printed electronics. 

- Graphene’s flexibility and strength is astonishingly 300 times tougher than steel - may lead to the Nokia Morph, the first foldable phone.

- “With a graphene battery the same amount of weight and volume as a current one, you could drive 300 miles instead of 100,” said Yuegang Zhang, a principal investigator at the lab. 

- Graphene has the ideal properties to be an excellent component of integrated circuits. Graphene has a high carrier mobility, as well as low noise, allowing it to be used as the channel in a FET.

4.     Thanks Wiki and electroiq

Mobiles & Brain Cancer : WHO Speaks.

1. In an earlier post at http://anupriti.blogspot.com/2009/10/radiation-effects-ur-mobile-quantified.html,wherein the sad and bad effects of using mobiles on brain and health,the quantified SAR ie specific absorption rate were discussed.There is good news for those who always feared using mobile phones for standing at a risk to gain brain cancer in the long run.The WHO study on links between mobile phone use and certain types of brain cancer has proved inconclusive.The researchers said that even though there could be possible health risks from heavy mobile phone use, nothing conclusive has been found as yet.

2. The long ten year study of about 13,000 people focused on both healthy users of mobile phones and those with two types of brain cancer - glioma and miningioma tumors. There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma, and much less so meningioma, in the users with highest decile (10 per cent) of cumulative call time, in subjects who reported phone use on the same side of the head as their tumor. Strangely though, the study declares these 10 per cent to be people who use their phone to call for more than 30 minutes a day. These stats seem seriously doubtable. Going by it, almost everyone we know is in that 10 percent.

3. However, the study has been criticized, as biased, because mobile phone companies provided 25 percent of the funding.Actually...now it is more then 15 years when the world has been actively using mobiles...more so in india in last 10 years....had it been the other way...how much of the human populi in the world would have been effected by now....

4. More at http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs193/en/