[H]ardNews - Blair Tech Ed.

Fear Of Nanotechnology:

Groups from Canadian bioethicists to the UK's Prince of Wales have expressed fears about the safety of nanotechnology. Other critics dismiss the emerging field as hopelessly overhyped. In an exclusive interview, New Scientist put these concerns to the man who coined the phrase nanotechnology, Eric Drexler. He is a founder and current chairman of the Foresight Institute in California, a nonprofit organization aiming to help prepare society for advanced technologies.

Finding Dark Matter:

British scientists equipped with state of the art detectors deep underground in northern England have begun a search for one of the most tantalizing secrets of the universe -- known as Dark Matter. "If we are successful in our quest then we are looking at a place in the history books," Neil Spooner of Sheffield University said on Tuesday. "This will be one of the great discoveries of our time." Teams of scientists around the world are racing to be the first to discover the truth about Dark Matter, which cannot be seen because it does not emit light.

Memory Architecture:

IMEC the international research consortium for microelectronics, has added a key piece to its suite of SoC memory optimization tools. The set, known as ATOMIUM, is a comprehensive set of interactive tools that traverses application code, optimizing it to reduce the number and cost of memory transactions. It then assists users in defining the optimum configurations of memory arrays to support the code. The process can result in dramatic reductions in system energy consumption as well as die area.

Importance Of Simulators:

U.S. pilots who bombed Baghdad say increasingly detailed flight simulators helped familiarize them with the terrain, the threats and even the weather conditions they would face on the battlefield. The location of my flight and the tactics employed were exactly like we were practicing in the MTC (Mission Training Center) ... before we left," the F-16 pilot who dropped the first HARM missile on Baghdad wrote in an e-mail to trainers at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. "It was pretty cool to see the terrain and scenario 'as practiced."