Organic — or carbon-based — transistors are not new and can be used to design flexible computer displays, RFID tags and sensors. However, these organic single crystals could not be mass-produced because they needed to be individually handpicked. But now, researchers at Stanford University and the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a new method for building flexible organic transistor arrays. Even if the researchers have reached a density of 13 million crystals per square inch (or 2 million per square centimetre), there are still several issues to solve before this method can be used for commercial applications of these fast transistors
Panasonic said it has developed a lithium-ion battery that won’t overheat even if a short circuit occurs. The new battery includes a heat-resistive insulator inside the battery cell, next to an existing separator that insulates the anode and cathode. If that separator is punctured a short circuit occurs that typically causes the battery to overheat and in some circumstances catch fire. Panasonic said its insulation layer ensures that the battery won’t overheat even in the event of a short circuit
The Tasmanian government hopes it can drive down the cost of broadband in the state after a strong response to calls for companies to help manage fibre optic cables
CSIRO has won another small battle in its long fight against the globe’s technology giants over wireless LAN royalty payments. The court cases brought against CSIRO over its 1996 patent have been moved from California to Texas, where the science agency recently won a case on the same issue
Microsoft has quietly released an update for Internet Explorer that fixes a problem with the browser’s phishing shield. The feature that protects against fraudulent Web sites, new in IE7, in some cases could bog down computers running Windows, according to an article on Microsoft’s support site published last week. This could happen when a Web page contains many frames or when a user browses many frames in a short time
An article at the Radar lists the ten most dangerous toys of all time, those treasured playthings that drew blood, chewed digits, took out eyes, and, in one case, actually irradiated. To keep things interesting, the editors excluded BB guns, slingshots, throwing stars and anything else actually intended to inflict harm
Researchers at a Toronto hospital have stumbled upon a dramatic treatment for mouse diabetes, with large implications for the treatment of diabetes in humans. The islet inflammation cleared up and the diabetes was gone. Some have remained in that state for as long as four months, with just one injection. They also discovered that their treatments curbed the insulin resistance that is the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes, and that insulin resistance is a major factor in Type 1 diabetes, suggesting the two illnesses are quite similar
A third Stargate series is in the concept phase and is being actively worked on by the Vancouver creatives behind Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. No concept for the show has yet been revealed. Despite the cancellation of SG-1, the series is likely for a 2007 debut
Google has launched a service designed to help inventors search patents. The site is currently indexing the seven million patents granted by the USPTO, and will soon add other sources
The United States Mint, concerned that rising metal prices could lead to widespread recycling of pennies and nickels, has banned melting or exporting them. The Mint is also testing dozens of cheaper alternative metal compositions in the expectation that Congress will mandate a change when it meets in the new year. According to calculations by the Mint, the metal value of pennies, which are made of copper-coated zinc, is now more than one cent. The metal value of 5-cent coins, made from a copper-nickel blend, is up to 7 cents. Adding in the costs of manufacturing means the Mint now spends 1.73 cents for every penny and 8.74 cents for every nickel it makes
Australia’s $3.5 billion free-to-air commercial television industry is being threatened by the internet more quickly than expected, with a new online study showing 53 per cent of respondents regularly download TV shows from the internet, most of them illegally
Nanotechnology, the use of subatomic materials as microscopic building blocks for thousands of consumer products, has turned into a big business so quickly that few are monitoring its effects on health and the environment. So the government of Berkeley, California, is intending for the city to be the first to step into the breach and try to regulate this industry
The New York Times unveiled a new service that allows readers to quickly post stories that they find on the newspaper’s Web site to Digg, Facebook and Newsvine. It marks the first time that the country’s third-largest newspaper has added a news-sharing tool to its Web site, allowing readers to develop conversations and post comments about specific stories. Readers will be able to add headlines and a small portion of text to the social media sites by clicking on the logos of Digg, Facebook and Newsvine
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said his company, Wikia, is ready to give away all the software, computing, storage and network access that web site builders need to create community collaboration sites. Wikia, a commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia, will go even further to provide customers — bloggers or other operators who meet its criteria for popular web sites — 100 per cent of any advertising revenue from the sites they build
At least half of Google’s Checkout service has been opened up to countries other than the United States. Now, regardless of where you live, you can purchase items with Google Checkout
Emerging internet file-sharing services have begun to derail attempts by some wireless internet providers to weed-out bandwidth hogs on their services. Managing director of Sydney-based wireless ISP BigAir Jason Ashton said there was nothing the company could do to stop the traffic and pointed to Rapid Share, a web-based file-sharing system, as an example of one of the new breed causing headaches for the company’s technical staff
Llamas are not just for transportation anymore. It turns out that the animals’ blood could be useful for detecting all sorts of maladies in the surrounding environment — from deadly pathogens to industrial emissions. A research effort has done just that, manipulating a rare type of antibody found in llamas to make an inexpensive and diverse biosensor
Flash memory and hard-disk drives could face a challenge from a new chip technology, dubbed phase-change
memory, being developed by a group of companies led by IBM. The companies claim the technology does a better job of storing songs, pictures and other data on iPods and digital cameras than current flash memory, and could someday replace disk drives. The companies have built a prototype device that runs 500 times faster than today’s flash memory while using half as much power to write data to a memory cell
Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Mark Sheppard, Jonathan Woodward, Christina Hendricks and Adam Baldwin all turned up and partied with fans at the hotel bar into the night at the cancelled convention Flanvention
It is considered polite to light a match after passing gas. Not while on a plane. An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence — via Roguesun
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