Physicists Create Working Transistor
Consisting of a Single Atom

Next Generation: Sneaking into a Cell

A nanoscale device measures electrical signals inside cells without causing damage

Photograph: Peter Dazeley/Getty Images
Can you really be addicted to the internet?

Ion Torrent CEO and chairman Jonathan Rothberg
holds a semiconductor sequencing chip that will
be used in the new Proton semi-conductor based
genome sequencing machine in Guilford,
Connecticut, January 5, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Michelle McLoughlin

Atomic electrical components conduct just like conventional wires, giving a new lease of life to Moore's law.

(Phys.org) -- In the course of its evolution, the architecture of the mouse brain may have barely changed. Similar to the tiny ancestors of modern mammals that lived about 80 million years ago, nerve cells in the mouse visual cortex are densely packed in a small area of ​​the brain. However, during the subsequent evolution of larger brains the architecture of the cerebral cortex was radically restructured. This is the conclusion of an international team of researchers led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, the University of Göttingen and the Bernstein Center Göttingen. The brains of larger mammals, such as humans, however, have a completely different structure to those of mice. Processes of self-organisation led to the emergence of modules in which neurons conjointly are responsible for specific tasks.

An "annular eclipse" will be visible from a 240 to 300km-wide swathe of Earth stretching from Asia across the Pacific to the western US on Monday.

Researchers in Spain have found that many of the individuals claiming to see the aura of people actually present the neuropsychological phenomenon known as "synesthesia".