Look Out for the 256GB Thumb Drive and the 128GB Tablet

Intel and Micron have announced advances in memory technology that should double flash memory capacities.

How much money would you be willing to pay for a 128GB thumb drive or a 512GB solid-state hard disk? What about paying half the amount that you would have to spend today? Intel and Micron Technology say the scenario should become a reality next year.
Thanks to improvements to its production technology, IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, has begun to make 8GB NAND devices using a 20 nanometer (nm) production process. The joint venture should begin to produce samples of 16GB NAND devices later this year.
After production of the 16MB devices begins, memory prices should be twice as cheap next year, thanks to the extra density the devices will have, Micron representatives said. For example, you should be able to buy a 128GB thumb drive sometime next year for the same price that you would pay for a 64GB USB 2.0 thumb drive today.
It should also be possible to buy a 256GB thumb drive in retail channels next year, but as a Micron representative said, "It will command a hefty price," like 128GB drives do today.
In the PC drive space, you should be able to purchase a 1TB solid-state hard disk sometime in 2012 for the same price that a 512GB model commands now.
For tablets, which consume a large percentage of the world's NAND supply, it is difficult to say how plummeting memory prices will affect the total cost of these devices, but I would expect to see tablets with 128GB of memory to be in the pipeline.
Besides offering larger memory capacities, the NAND devices will shrink in size. The 8 GB NAND devices will be up to 40 percent smaller compared with existing 8GB devices produced with a 25 nm process. The extra real estate means more room for larger-sized batteries, screens, or more chips for extra computing horsepower, Intel and Micron said.
Times certainly have changed. It wasn't that long ago when a 1GB thumb drive commanded a premium price and solid-state drives were in the prototype stage. Going further back in time, a Micron representative said the per-gigabyte price of NAND memory devices was about $1000 in the mid 1990s while prices have plummeted to about $1 per gigabyte today. Suppliers have been able to shrink the memory chip and the circuitry designs over the years, thanks largely to advances in lithography similar to what AMD and Intel have done with CPUs.
Extra memory capacity at an affordable price can obviously be put to good use at a small business or home office. Besides being able to buy tablets and smartphones with much more memory, think how nice it will be to be able to copy a large chunk of your PC hard drive's data onto a thumb drive. You can then carry the data with you in your pocket to take on trips or just for an easy file transfer from one machine to another. (Hopefully the drive will be encrypted, of course.) Workstations with 1TB solid-state drives at affordable prices will not be so bad to have, either.

How Snakes Can "Fly" Looking up, doing the twist among "flying" snakes' best moves, study says.

It's been known for a while that certain snake species can "fly," gliding as far as 330 feet (100 meters) from branch to branch—but how?
A new study—using unprecedented filming, 3-D modeling, and snakes both real and plastic—has shown how flying snakes angle and arrange themselves to achieve optimal lift.
Found in Southeast and South Asia, five Chrysopelea snake species have been observed twisting their ribs and flattening their bodies in midair, but this doesn't fully explain how the reptiles control their descent.
"Other snakes flatten their bodies as well," said Jake Socha, a biologist at Virginia Tech. For example, king cobras can flatten their hoods for defensive purposes.
To find out what else enables the snakes to glide, Socha and his colleagues used four cameras to record four flying snakes as they leaped off a five-story tower to another, smaller tower several dozen yards away.
The team then used the images to create 3-D computer models of the reptiles' body positions during flight. (See snake pictures.)
The images and models revealed that the snakes position their bodies at 25-degree angles as they fall—heads up, tails down.
The effect is similar to what happens when you stick your arm out of a moving car and rotate your hand so the palm is pointed slightly upward.
"You hand is now angled to the oncoming flow, and that angle helps push the air down," Socha said. "As a consequence, your hand goes up."

(Also see "Drug-Filled Mice Airdropped Over Guam to Kill Snakes.")

Video: Flying Snakes
(See more videos of "flying" snakes from the National Geographic Channel.)
Flying Snakes Do the Twist
The Chrysopelea snakes, which can grow up to 4 feet (1.2 meters) long, also hold their bodies in S-shaped configurations while gliding. The computer model suggested this twisty position helps them stay aloft. Subsequent experiments proved the software right.

The team tested the aereodynamics of different snake shapes using plastic models in a water tunnel.

"Our research suggests that, with an S configuration, [the snake] gets more lift than it would if it were a straight snake," said Socha, whose initial flying-snake research was funded by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

(Related: "Alien Giant Snakes Threaten to Invade Up to One-Third of U.S.")

With an S configuration, "the front part of the snake might be creating a wake that interacts with [and lifts] the back parts of the body," Socha said.
This is similar to the lift created when geese fly in a V formation: The wake generated by the lead goose makes flying marginally easier for the geese directly behind, and so on.
At least one mystery remains: Why do flying snakes undulate their bodies as they fall?
Socha's team thinks, but hasn't proven, that this rippling motion might help sustain the snakes' flight by creating a flow of air over the top of the snake's body.
"This reduces the pressure on top, creating a greater pressure difference from bottom to top, [and] increasing the net upward force," Socha explained.
Do Flying Snakes Hold Military Secrets?
In the long run, understanding how flying snakes glide might lead to better gliding air vehicles—Socha's latest research is funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Agency, or DARPA.
But, he said, DARPA wasn't "interested in this from the applications perspective, they were interested in it from a basic science view, with potential applications a secondary consideration."
And for his part, Socha said, the main motivation for studying the animals is simple curiosity. (Related pictures: "Snakes on Gel, in Jackets Illuminate Slithering.")
"This is amazingly interesting and curious, and it's not at all clear how it works or how it could have evolved," he said. "I'm just trying to answer these basic questions."

On Yuri Gagarin’s Night, Spy the Space Station Flying Overhead

This April 12 the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first human space flight, made by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961.

We have come a long way since then, with more than 500 people worldwide having flown in space.

What better way to honor this special moment in history than to take a few moments to watch the International Space Station flying over your backyard?

Over the next week or so, early risers in all of North America and Europe as well as parts of the Middle East and North Africa will be able to spot the football field-size orbiting laboratory making bright passes about an hour or two before local sunrise.

Speeding along at 17,000 miles (27,359 kilometers) an hour at an average altitude of 250 miles (402 kilometers), the huge space station appears like a superbright star gliding across the heavens.

Covered in metallic modules and solar panels, the ISS is highly reflective, making it at times shine brighter than any star or planet.

BTW, you will be able to tell it’s not an airplane, because the station won’t have any blinking lights. But you have to hurry, because at those speeds it takes only two to four minutes for the craft to traverse the sky.

Of course with the viewing window so short, the trick is knowing when and where to look. That’s made easy thanks to a couple of really good websites. Spaceweather.com and Heavens-above.com both have tools for generating time tables using nothing more than your zip code or city name.

These sites also list many other orbiters—from spy planes to old rocket boosters—that are visible to the unaided eyes, even within city limits.

How about taking a souvenir photo of the ISS flying over your house? It’s surprisingly easy. All you need is a camera that lets you set your exposure for 15 to 30 seconds and a tripod with the control timer set for at least two seconds, so your setup doesn’t shake.

Yellowstone's Volcanic Plume Even Bigger Than Thought Electric method gives new view of supervolcano's plumbing, study says.

The giant plume of hot rock feeding the Yellowstone supervolcano may be even bigger than thought, scientists have discovered.
The volcanic plume had previously been imaged using seismic tomography. This method uses the speeds of seismic waves from distant earthquakes to map features of the crust and upper mantle in 3-D—similar to the way medical CT scans use x-rays to map the human body.
Earlier, seismic studies had shown that the magma chamber that fuels Yellowstone's geysers lies atop of a plume of unusually hot, and therefore soft, rock shaped like a tilted tornado. (Related: "Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells.")
Based on seismic data, the plume appears to slant downward at a 60-degree angle, extending about 150 miles (241 kilometers) west-northwest, toward the Montana-Idaho border. (See "Under Yellowstone, Magma Pocket 20 Percent Larger Than Thought.")
The latest research is instead based on the plume's electrical conductivity. This data also shows a tilting plume, but the new study suggests the plume dips at a shallower, 40-degree angle and extends at least 400 miles (643 kilometers) westward.
Each technique also shows a different depth for the plume, although that discrepancy is due to the methods' differing capabilities. Electrical conductivity can "see" just 200 miles (322 kilometers) deep. But seismic readings can see as deep as 410 miles (660 kilometers)—and the previous data showed the plume extending that far.
"It's like in medical imaging, you can use ultrasound or you can use MRI," said study leader Michael Zhdanov, a geophysicist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Both methods show different aspects of the same structures.
Yellowstone Plume Sheathed in Hot Water
For the new study—accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters—Zhdanov examined Yellowstone's plumbing with magnetotelluric imaging.
This technique uses dozens of monitoring stations to measure the intensity of ultralow-frequency electromagnetic waves generated in the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer of Earth's upper atmosphere.
These waves penetrate deep into Earth, all the way to the upper mantle, where they are affected by variations in the electrical conductivity of the materials they encounter.
Magnetotelluric imaging allowed Zhdanov's team to map not only the hot rock of the plume but also a shadowy zone surrounding it made of partially molten rock and areas impregnated with hot, salty water. (See Yellowstone pictures.)
In addition to showing a larger plume, the new data reveal some intriguing details, said Kenneth Pierce, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Bozeman, Montana, office who was not part of the study team.
For example, the new images show the plume's eastward extent corresponding to the location of a previously inferred "hot spot swell" of elevated terrain east of Yellowstone National Park, Pierce said.
This region marks where heat rising from the leading edge of the plume is pushing rock up, as tectonic forces cause the plume to drift eastward.
Larger Plume Doesn't Signal Impending Eruption
The fact that both techniques show an overall similar shape to Yellowstone's plume is comforting, said Peter Cervelli, deputy scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, who was also not part of the study team.
"It's always reassuring when an entirely different methodology gives you a similar answer," Cervelli said. "It gives you reassurance that you're converging on the truth."
But he warns that it may be too early to properly interpret some of the details in the data, such as the hot spot swell.
"It is exciting [that] we are seeing details we haven't seen before," he said. "But I wouldn't make too much of [them] until they're corroborated by an independent data stream." (Take a Yellowstone quiz.)
Study leader Zhdanov cautions against misconstruing a larger plume as proof that the Yellowstone supervolcano is on the verge of erupting. (See "When Yellowstone Explodes" in National Geographic magazine.)
The new findings instead bring scientists a step closer to understanding the magmatic plumbing that underlies Yellowstone and similar regions around the world, he said. Ultimately this data might help scientists determine which currently dormant volcanic regions are primed to erupt hundreds to thousands of years in the future.
(See "Sleeping' Volcanoes Can Wake Up Faster Than Thought.")
In addition, Zhdanov said, the data "can help us build better geological models of the crust and upper mantle for mineral exploration and general understanding of geological structure."

World's first human brain map unveiled

The world's first computerised map of the brain was released yesterday by scientists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, in Seattle, Washington, after more than four years of cutting-edge research.
The Human Brain Atlas is an interactive research tool that will help scientists to understand how the brain works and aid new discoveries in disease and treatments.
The information used to build it comes from the analysis of two human brains, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and a variation of MRI called diffusion tensor imaging.
Allan Jones, the CEO of the institute, told Wired how the brains were also chopped up into small pieces, and RNA extracted from the tissue. They used this RNA to obtain a read-out of the 25,000 genes in the human genome.
All this information was put together to create a detailed map of the brain. One thousand anatomical sites in the brain can be searched, supported by more than 100 million data points that indicate the gene expression and biochemistry of each site.
For example, a researcher could quickly create a 3D snapshot (see image below) of all the locations in the brain where Prozac's biochemical targets are expressed.

The researchers found a striking 94 per cent similarity in the biochemistry between the two brains, and discovered that at least 82 per cent of all human genes are expressed in the brain.
Allan says this isn't too surprising:


Both brains used in the $55 million project were male, which prompted The Wall Street Journal to ask why a woman's brain had not been included. Allan told Bloomberg that eligible brain donors usually die from accidental causes or cardiac arrest, both of which disproportionately affect men. However, he says the project is currently processing a female brain, and that ultimately, the facility will run at least 10 brains through the process.

Other researchers are also attempting to map neural connections in a mouse brain, something MRI cannot do. They will turn slices of brain into digital images by an automated electron microscope. A computer will read those images, trace the outlines of nerve cells, and stack the pictures into a 3D reconstruction.
Maps like these have limitless potential in drug discovery and human genetics and will no doubt be an essential step forward in the fight against disease.