A Boy and His Atom

IBM has released the world’s smallest movie. Company researchers moved thousands of atoms to create a miniature stop-motion movie titled A Boy and His Atom.

A Scene From A Boy and His Atom by IBM Research

The movie, which has 242 frames, was made with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) which IBM Research has been using to conduct research into data storage. The movie has been certified as the world’s smallest by the Guinness World Records, according to IBM.

The film shows that it’s possible to manipulate single atoms and molecules with the tip of an STM, and IBM scientists had to develop “new low temperature, ultra-stable scanning tunneling microscopic techniques” over many years,” Crommie told TechNewsWorld.

BlabDroids

BlabDroids, (little robot cameras), filming their own documentary, asking questions of whoever decides to pick them up and chat with them:

Winners of the 2013 Skyscraper Competition

eVolo Magazine announced the winners of their 2013 Skyscraper Competition. The award was established in 2006 to recognize outstanding ideas for vertical living. Since then, the publication has received more than 5,000 projects that envision the future of building high. These ideas, through the novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.

The first place was awarded to Derek Pirozzi from the United States, for his project “Polar Umbrella”. The proposal is a buoyant skyscraper that rebuilds the arctic ice caps by reducing the surface’s heat gain and freezing ocean water. In addition, the super-structure is equipped with a desalinization plant and solar powered research facilities and eco-tourist attractions.

Second place are Darius Maïkoff and Elodie Godo from France, for their “Phobia Skyscraper”. The project seeks to revitalize an abandoned industrial area of Paris, France, through an ingenious system of prefabricated housing units. Its modularity allows for a differentiation of various programs and evolution in time.

The third place was awarded to Ting Xu and Yiming Chen from China, for their project “Light Park”, a floating skyscraper that takes new development within large cities to the sky. The project allows for a continuous growth of the world’s mega-cities by providing adequate infrastructure, housing, commercial, and recreational areas.

Go to eVolvo for the honorable mentions.

MYO - Armband Gesture Control

The MYO armband lets you use the electrical activity in your muscles to wirelessly control your computer, phone, and other favorite digital technologies.

Using groundbreaking technology, MYO is able to measure electrical activity in your muscles instantly. The result is a seamless way to interact with computers, and a truly magical sense of control. Pre-order for $149.

DisplAir - (Interactive Hologram)

New technology with limitless applications that will eliminate the need for screens and monitors.

IBM Watson Healthcare

IBM has taken a major step forward with partners Memorial Sloan Kettering and WellPoint in putting IBM Watson to work in healthcare.

On Friday, February 8th, the team unveiled the first commercially-developed Watson-based breakthroughs. These innovations have the potential to help transform the quality and speed of care — and the entire healthcare industry — through individualized evidence-based medicine.

via IBM Watson

A Day Made of Glass 2

Corning’s expanded vision for the future of glass technologies. This video continues the story of how highly engineered glass, with companion technologies, will help shape our world.

1TB USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Kingston Digital, Inc., announced the DataTraveler® HyperX® Predator 3.0 USB Flash drive.
DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3.0 is the world's largest-capacity USB 3.0 Flash drive as it will be available in a 1TB capacity later in Q1.

DT HyperX Predator 3.0 is the fastest USB 3.0 Flash drive in the Kingston® family, with speeds of up to 240MB/s read and 160MB/s write. It has also achieved SuperSpeed USB 3.0 certification.

Kingston currently has a 512GB capacity available for shipping.

via Kingston

IBM's "Next Five in Five"

2012 forecast of inventions that will change your world in the next five years; how computers will mimic the senses:

Touch:        You will be able to reach out and touch through your phone

Sight:          A pixel will be worth a thousand words

Hearing:      Computers will hear what matters

Taste:         Digital taste buds will help you to eat healthier

Smell:         Computers will have a sense of smell

Building a Smarter World

Super Computers

The 40th edition of the twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world’s top supercomputers was recently released this month. 

 Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Titan is a Cray XK7 system

The world’s fastest supercomputer is Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at Oak Ridge, achieved 17.59 Petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second) on the Linpack benchmark. Titan has 560,640 processors, including 261,632 NVIDIA K20x accelerator cores.

The Sequoia supercomputer built by IBM 

Titan knocked Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Sequoia out of No. 1 and into second place. Sequoia, an IBM BlueGene/Q system, was No. 1 in June 2012 with an impressive 16.32 Petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark. With 1,572,864 cores, Sequoia is the first system with one million or more cores.

 Fujitsu’s K computer

Rounding out the top five systems are Fujitsu’s K computer installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, Japan (No. 3); a BlueGene/Q system named Mira at Argonne National Laboratory (No. 4);

Mira, the 10-petaflop IBM Blue Gene/Q 

and a BlueGene/Q system named JUQUEEN at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany (No. 5), which was upgraded and is now the most powerful system in Europe.

JUQUEEN at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany

The other new system in the Top 10 is Stampede, a Dell PowerEdge C8220 system installed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas in Austin. It uses the brand new Intel Xeon Phi processors (previously known as MIC) to achieve its 2.6 Petaflop/s.

In all there are 23 systems with Petaflop/s performance on the latest list, just four-and-a-half years after the debut of Roadrunner, the world’s first Petaflop/s supercomputer. In spite of delivering petascale performance on applications, the Cray Blue Waters system at NCSA at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, chose not to submit a Linpack benchmark performance figure.

via Top500