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Asus has unveiled their latest top end AM2 motherboard dubbed the Crosshair, which is part of their new 'Republic of Gamers' lineup. The new board is aimed at gamers and tweakers and is based off of NVIDIA's nForce 590 SLI chipset. Though it uses an identical chipset and a similar heatpipe setup, the new R.O.G. board utitlises a completely different layout than that of the M2N32-SLI, though we'd still bet on it being a solid overclocker.
The back panel also features illuminated ports for simpler searching in the dark. Asus are included the full version of 3DMark 06 with this board as well, reinforcing that this is aimed at gamers specifically.
A seperate HD audio card is included along with their now-standard soundMAX mic. The LED ridden board also features 8 SATA ports along with the usual gamut of ports. Asus have replaced standard capacitors with chip-style polymer aluminum electrolyte capacitors on this new board as well, looking to boost the overall durability of the system.

sa: http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/5935/

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A Paralyzed man using a new brain sensor has been able to move a computer cursor, open e-mail and control a robotic device simply by thinking about doing it, a team of scientists said on Wednesday.

They believe the BrainGate sensor, which involves implanting electrodes in the brain, could offer new hope to people Paralyzed by injuries or illnesses.
"This is the first step in an ongoing clinical trial of a device that is encouraging for its potential to help people with paralysis," Dr Leigh Hochberg, of Massachusetts General Hospital, said in an interview.
The 25-year-old man who suffered paralysis of all four limbs three years earlier completed tasks such moving a cursor on a screen and controlling a robotic arm.
He is the first of four patients with spinal cord injuries, muscular dystrophy, stroke or motor neurone disease testing the brain-to-movement system developed by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc in Massachusetts.
"This is the dawn of major neurotechnology where the ability to take signals out of the brain has taken a big step forward. We have the ability to put signals into the brain but getting signals out is a real challenge. I think this represents a landmark event," said Professor John Donoghue of Brown University in Rhode Island and the chief scientific officer of Cyberkinetics.
The scientists implanted a tiny silicon chip with 100 electrodes into an area of the brain responsible for movement. The activity of the cells was recorded and sent to a computer which translated the commands and enabled the patient to move and control the external device. "This part of the brain, the motor cortex, which usually sends its signals down the spinal cord and out to the limbs to control movement, can still be used by this participant to control an external device, even after years had gone by since his spinal cord injury," added Hochberg, a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature.
Although it is not the first time brain activity has been used to control a cursor, Stephen Scott of Queen's University in Ontario, Canada said it advances the technology.
"This research suggests that implanted prosthetics are a viable approach for assisting severely impaired individuals to communicate and interact with the environment," he said in a commentary in the journal.


sa: http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jh...rss/healthNews

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DVD technology is by no means new, but that doesn’t mean that we know everything about the way that these devices store our movies and data. New research conducted by scientists at North Carolina State University has provided new insight into how this mature technology works. Their findings may lead to advances in data storage as well as within the computer industry as a whole.
Dave Baker, a doctoral candidate in physics in NC State’s College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, worked with Drs. Michael Paesler and Gerald Lucovsky from NC State as well as with colleagues from the Colorado School of Mines and the Indian Institute of Technology to discover how DVD-RAMs work on the microscopic level. Their findings appear in the July 7 edition of Physical Review Letters.
DVD-RAMs, or read/writable DVDs, are composed of an alloy that contains three elements: germanium (Ge), antimony (Sb) and tellurium (Te). This alloy is commonly used in data storage technologies due to its ability to change phases from a crystalline to a non-crystalline state. The phase changes are what allow the DVD-RAM to take and hold data. While scientists were familiar with the basic properties of the alloy, they didn’t know how it worked on a microscopic level: why one particular ratio of elements worked better than others.
Baker and his team used a tool called EXAFS to examine the alloy on the microscopic level. EXAFS, or extended x-ray absorption fine structure, is a type of x-ray spectroscopy that allows scientists to determine specifically which atoms are present in a particular material, and where they are located in relation to each other. By then applying bond constraint theory to the data, the researchers were able to calculate the optimum ratio of elements within the material.
“With EXAFS, you have the ability to look at the position of atoms within the material both before and after a switch from the crystalline to the non-crystalline state,” Baker said. “It shows you exactly how the mechanism works to get the material from one state to the other.”
The practical result of the information is that scientists will be able to “fine tune” the alloy, which could lead to the development of not only more efficient data storage devices but also remotely reconfigurable electronics - for example, computers that could be sent into orbit and then reprogrammed as needed without the cost of sending up another spacecraft or satellite.
“Our work deepens the understanding of these materials,” Baker says, “and that will in turn allow us to create more efficient materials that will be useful in a number of applications.”

SA: http://www.physorg.com/news71849090.html

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Is this our Sun? Yes. Even on a normal day, our Sun is sizzling ball of seething hot gas. Unpredictably, regions of strong and tangled magnetic fields arise, causing sunspots and bright active regions. The Sun's surface bubbles as hot hydrogen gas streams along looping magnetic fields. These active regions channel gas along magnetic loops, usually falling back but sometimes escaping into the solar corona or out into space as the solar wind. Pictured above is our Sun in three colors of ultraviolet light. Since only active regions emit significant amounts of energetic ultraviolet light, most of the Sun appears dark. The colorful portions glow spectacularly, pinpointing the Sun's hottest and most violent regions. Although the Sun is constantly changing, the rate of visible light it emits has been relatively stable over the past five billion years, allowing life to emerge on Earth.

sa: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060710.html

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that I do here in the space that I have been allowed, is showcasing the upper limits of technology in action. Items about computer, nano, communication, and high power technologies are most exciting to me...And when two or more can be combined, it makes for what I consider a great story. Cern is one of the greatest stories and I find it endlessly fascenating. Eements of Overclocking, such as super low temperatures...large-scale generators using millions of kw/h and its all driven by scientists using the fastest and largest computer systems and a world wide network...combine to create my favorite kind of story; the kind that shows us what high-level computing and technology can do FOR us...
Here's some film (Quick Time Plug-In)
Here's a Website
Here's an Idea of Scale of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)


sa: http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/200...rds_of_the.php

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Apple today quietly pulled its newly introduced $899 iMac from its online education store. The entry-level configuration released last week for the education market that features scaled-down specifications when compared to Apple's two retail configurations is no longer available to individuals, though institutions can still purchase the systems.
The education iMac was nearly identical to its consumer counterpart with the exception of an Apple remote and dedicated GPU, featuring a smaller 80GB hard drive and a Combo optical drive. When contacted by MacNN, Apple sales representatives were unable to provide an explanation beyond saying that the company made the change on Wednesday and that it was no longer available to education individuals for purchase.
Industry pundits have speculated the move was an attempt to channel sales directly to institutions, suggesting that the lower-priced configuration may have been cannibalizing sales of its other higher-margin retail configurations which are offered a slight discount to education customers. The $899 iMac is still available to educational institutions with an estimated ship date of 1-3 days.

sa: http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/07/....imac.removed/

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Aiming for Japan's First Practical Use of a DNA Chip

Daiichi Pure Chemicals Co. Ltd, Toshiba Corporation, and Toshiba Hokuto Electronics Corporation have agreed to work together to promote in-vitro DNA-chip-based diagnostics, starting with diagnosis of the human papilloma virus (HPV). Under an agreement announced today in Tokyo, the three companies will direct Toshiba's industry-leading capabilities in DNA chips and electrochemical DNA detection and analysis, and Daiichi Pure Chemicals' state-of-the-art know-how in in-vitro diagnosis toward further advances in DNA-based diagnostic systems.
DNA-based diagnosis is an innovative approach that draws on the latest advances in DNA profiling. It takes diagnosis to the level of the particular individual, giving care providers the potential to identify the presence or absence of specific strains of a virus, and to develop treatment regimes best suited to patients' DNA profiles. Daiichi Pure Chemicals and Toshiba have collaborated in the development of a diagnostic system based on an electrochemical DNA detection chip since January, 2004 and are now ready to make the transition to real-world application. The new agreement between the companies further promotes this goal by clearly defining the role of the three partners and selecting HPV as the first target application.
Infection with human papilloma virus (HPV) is the main cause of cervical cancer, the second most common cancer in women. Of its many strains 13 are potentially carcinogenic, but the cancer that they trigger can be treated and completely cured if detected at an early stage. Alongside progress in vaccines to treat HPV, the ability to detect the HPV strain will promote more effective treatment regimes and help to cut the incidence of cervical cancer. Daiichi Pure Chemicals, Toshiba and Toshiba Hokuto Electronics aim to develop Japan's first in-vitro diagnostic system for HPV based on an electrochemical DNA detection chip. Toshiba Hokuto Electronics has supported development and prototype production and will take responsibility for manufacturing the commercialized DNA chip and detection system.

sa: http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...19&newsLang=en

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ATI Technologies announced that Microsoft Corp. chooses ATI's H.264 video decoder for their XBox 360 HD DVD player. The HD DVDs encoded using one of three approved codec’s deliver up to six times the resolutions of traditional DVDs all on a single disc. That promises you a sharper and more true-to-life high-definition visuals and smoother playback content. How does it actually works? The ATI decoder technology makes use of the XBox 360's graphic processing unit (GPU) to accelerate video processing. It will enables the high-end processing techniques such as comb filtering and automatic gain control to ensure the video artifacts such as blockiness or color bands don't disrupt playback. So what's the suggested price for the Xbox 360 HD DVD player? We are not sure about it yet. "The momentum is with HD DVD. Eventually, we feel all the studios will support HD DVD, perhaps not exclusively. But the studios are too savvy to leave money on the table," said Penello.

sa: http://reviews.mobilewhack.com/micro..._xbox_360.html

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ATI will introduce its 65nm-made integrated chipset, dubbed RS700, in 2007, following the slated launch of its RS600 and RS690 chipsets in the second half of this year, according to sources at Taiwan motherboard makers.
The new RS700, which is designed for the Intel platform, will support DirectX 10, Shader Model 4.0 and unified shader mode. ATI will have a leg up in the advanced integrated chipset market as rival Nvidia has not yet announced any product roadmap regarding DirectX 10-compliant or 65nm-made chipsets, the sources commented.
ATI plans on introducing its Intel-based RS600, dubbed the Radeon Xpress 1250, and the AMD-based RS690, in the second half of 2006, according to the sources.

sa: http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20060712PR210.html

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The two firms have released software that ties the two networks into a huge community of 350 million users.
The trial software allows people to swap text messages but will eventually let people talk to each other too.
The move marks a break with the past when operators of the big instant message systems resisted calls to open up their networks.

Chat channel
AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo operate the largest instant messaging networks and, until recently, anyone wanting to talk to friends using different text chat systems had to maintain several separate accounts.
Users can sign up for the test software via the Yahoo and Microsoft messaging sites. Only those using the latest versions of the IM software will be able to join the trial. Eventually the software will be made available to every user.
The software uniting the two networks will use icons next to people's names to denote whether that person is on the Yahoo or Microsoft system.
"It does make it easier for many consumers who will need to keep one less instant messaging system up and running now," said Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg.
The tie-up makes good on a promise the two companies made in late 2005 to get their networks linked.
The trial version of the software is being made available to users of the two networks in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, the UK and US.

SA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5176032.stm

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Thank God the Inquirer finally put the whole "reverse hyperthreading" thing to rest with an admission that such a technology is not, in fact, coming to AMD processors.
Judging by the volume of questions I got about this, a fairly large number of people were taken in by this canard. I never bothered to report on it, for much the same reason that Nobel Intent doesn't report on, say, the latest theories about how the US government is using HAARP to manipulate the weather. But because the Inquirer seems to be trying to shift the blame for this nonsense subtly onto AMD, I'll go ahead and explain why, no, it's not something AMD "would like to have" or that they'd ever consider.
Anatomy of a fabrication
In case you haven't been following the whole reverse hyperthreading saga, here it is in a nutshell. The Inquirer originally posted a report to the effect that AMD's forthcoming dual-core processors would be able to present themselves to the OS as a single CPU, sort of opposite the way that a single-core Pentium 4 with hyperthreading can present itself to the OS as two separate processors. Here's the meat of the article:
It seems that all AM2 CPUs were outfitted with a support for Reverse-HyperThreading, an architectural change which enables software to think that it is working on a single-core alone. By combining two cores, the company has been able to produce the six IPC "core" that will go head to head against four IPC "core" from Conroe/Merom/WoodCrest combo.
It seems that in certain cases, even an old AMD Athlon 64 3800+ can wipe the floor with Core 2 Duo E6300 CPU.
First off, there's no way this would work the way the author seems to think it would. How would the cores' pipelines support this in any phase of execution? In the fetch phase, there would have to be some arbitration mechanism whereby the two cores fetched alternate instruction blocks from the I-cache, thus distributing the instruction stream across two processors.
Then, once the instruction stream is fragmented inside the two cores, how are the register files kept in sync? If an add in one line of code writes its result to a register in one core, then how could a test instruction in the other core read that distant register to see if it needs to branch? Or how would out-of-order execution work across two cores? Would the instruction schedulers have their own separate bus to communicate over?
Anyway, it's not worth going into too much detail here, because it's kind of like asking how Superman could lift an entire continent up into space without it breaking apart, or how he manages to fly in the first place, and so on.

Stick a fork in this one, because it's done.

sa: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060713-7263.html

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A group of industry players is proposing an open-standard directional networking system designed to provide 1-gigabit-per-second data communication with anyone in a network on the ground, in the air or at sea, within hundreds of miles.
The planned mobile mesh network, known as DirecNet, will use a network-friendly data link waveform to provide secure Internet Protocol communications up to 1 gbps for all types of air and surface platforms.
The 1-gbps wideband infrastructure compares with the Common Data Link’s (CDL) current capability of 274 mbps. The higher data rates would easily accommodate bandwidth-hungry data such as video or audio.
DirecNet would use fast-steered directional antennas to substantially boost link power and operating range, and to permit reuse of radio frequency (RF) spectrum. Any DirecNet node can serve as a relay. This will multiply connectivity and extend the range to beyond line of sight.
“We consider this a revolutionary, very high data rate network,” said Gary Nault, vice president for business development and advanced programs for the communications and electronics business unit within Cubic Defense Applications.
Nault said he anticipates that the industry consortium now being formed will release a DirecNet specification in two years.
“DirecNet essentially enables a gigabit data rate at hundreds of miles. That immediately distinguishes it from the other omni-directional networks that are being developed within DoD,” Nault said. Those other networks include the Wideband Networking Waveform, which is at most a 10 mbps data link, according to Nault.
Potential founding members of the DirecNet consortium are Cubic Defense Applications, Raytheon, Rockwell Collins, L-3, Harris Corp., BAE Systems, Boeing, NGC, Herley Industries and ITT Industries. Other interested companies include Innocon and Nova Engineering.
DirecNet meshes with the Global Information Grid (GIG), Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) and other networks. Its domain is “the edge of the GIG, or ‘the last mile,’” said Nault. There would be DirecNet terminals on aircraft, land vehicles and ships to close that last mile.
“It’s akin to the WiFi in your laptop,” Nault continued. “Except, instead of communications hundreds of feet, you’re in a network with other nodes that are potentially hundreds of miles away at speeds that are orders of magnitude faster.”
In addition to higher data rates, DirecNet would substantially improve interoperability, remedying the stovepiped networks that commonly only allow for point-to-point communications, rather than communications among all players.

sa: http://www.military-information-tech...cfm?DocID=1539

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It looks like Dell is intent on keeping up its in-house rivalry with Alienware, upping it's top-of-the-line XPS 700 gaming PC to include overclocked Intel Core 2 Extreme CPUs -- but still no AMD processors, overclocked or otherwise. The desktop is also getting a significant upgrade on the graphics side of things, with the highest-end option now hitting up two Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX cards operating in SLI mode, replacing the earlier single GeForce 7900 GS card. Availability appears to be dependent on Intel actually delivering the goods, but Michael Dell himself says that the system will be available the second Intel announces that it's good and ready. Exact pricing hasn't been announced, but we're guessing it should come in somewhere below $10,000. Just how far below 10k is yet to be seen.

sa: http://www.engadget.com,%20www.engad...ocked-xps-700/

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'The YP-Z5F displays Samsung's commitment to expanng the market possibilities in the portable digital audio space,' said Sathish Shenoy, Dy. General Manager of Samsung Division of Eros Electricals.

'By providing a variety of features in a sleek and stylish, yet strong and scratchproof, aluminium case, the Z5F, which is available in both silver and black colours, is a flash memory music player that is designed to maximise user choice by supporting a wide variety of music formats and subscription services,' he added.
Ultra-slim and weighing in at a mere 58g - perfect for the pocket or the smallest handbag, the Z5 delivers heavyweight audio performance with DNSe Portable 3D Sound Technology, a dedicated sound engine designed to reproduce music in 3D surround sound.
With its 4GB memory (2GB model also available) that can hold up holds up to 2,000 WMA tracks or 130,000 photos it also packs an outstanding 35-hour rechargeable battery, so even long trips can fly by with a musical accompaniment. The built in Stereo FM Tuner and Voice Recorder further add to its versatility. The player can also be used as a data storage device to store all types of files.
With a 1.82' colour TFT-LCD screen that's one of the largest in its class, the Z5F is a visual treat, letting you view photographs and album art with ease, create exciting slideshows while listening to music at the same time. The unique touch pad interface makes navigating the players functions with ease and allows you to tailor the look and feel of players background with your own photos to suit your personal style.
'With its ultra long battery life, FM Radio, Voice Recorder and Data Storage functionality, its superb LCD and the unsurpassed surround sound experience, Z5 represents the latest in digital entertainment technology."

sa: http://www.ameinfo.com/91401.html

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Hon Fujin Precision Industrial (Shenzhen), a subsidiary of Foxconn Electronics (the registered trade name of Hon Hai Precision Industry), a maker of computer components, was China's leading exporter last year, with an export value of US$14.47 billion, according to China's Ministry of Commerce, as cited by the Chinese-language newspaper Economic Daily News (EDN) in Taiwan. Of the top 200 exporters in China, 37 were subsidiaries of Taiwan IT companies, the paper said.

sa: http://digitimes.com/systems/a20060713PB205.html