Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Scientists stuffed Bible on supersmall chip


Researchers in Israel say they have succeeded in putting a version of the Bible on a chip smaller than a pinhead. Its 300,000 words in Hebrew were inscribed on a silicon surface at the Haifa Institute of Technology. Scientists say the aim of the project is to increase young people’s interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The record for the smallest copy is held by a Bible measuring 2.8×3.4×1cm (1.1×1.3×0.4in), weighing 11.75g (0.4 ounces) and containing 1,514 pages. The 0.5sq-mm (0.01sq-in) nano-Bible was written on a silicon surface covered with a thin layer of gold (20nanometres thick - 0.0002mm).

It was written using a device called Focused Ion Beam (Fib). “When we send the particle beam toward a point on the surface, the gold atoms bounce off of this point, thus exposing the silicon layer underneath,” Ohad Zohar, one of the project’s managers at Technion, said. “By sending a particle beam towards various points on the substrate, we can etch any pattern of points, especially one that represents text.” The next step for Technion researchers is photographing the Bible and displaying it on a giant wall within the Faculty of Physics.

Source: BBC

Apple plans iPods with automatic volume control


Future versions of Apple’s MP3 player are to be adapted to prevent users from playing tracks at full blast through their earphones for too long. Amid growing fears that listeners could cause irreversible damage to their hearing - the highest setting is as loud as a chainsaw - Apple is developing an automatic volume control. A new patent reveals that the next iPods and iPhones could automatically calculate how long a person has been listening and at what volume, before gradually reducing the sound level. The device will also calculate the amount of “quiet time” between when the iPod is turned off and when it is restarted, allowing the volume to be increased again to a safe level.

Listening to volumes below 70 decibels is considered safe. But iPods can currently reach volumes of over 100 decibels - the equivalent to standing 10ft from a pneumatic drill - and enough to cause permanent damage after just 15 minutes. Some MP3 players can even exceed 120 decibels. In April, Apple revealed it had sold more than 100million iPods worldwide and was expecting, by the end of this year, to have sold more than 4.5million iPhones. Of those 200,000 will have been bought in Britain. Its patent application, however, is the first time Apple has acknowledged concerns over the risk the iPod poses to hearing and comes after a series of damning studies highlighted the potentially damaging effects. I appreciate the effort, but isn’t it little weird? I want to be master of my mp3 player and not to be annoyed by automatically decreased volume…

Source: Daily Mail

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

France: 30 000 iPhones sold in 5 days

French mobile phone operator Orange sold 30,000 iPhones in the five days following its November 29 launch, the company said Wednesday. In comparison, German operator T-Mobile said it sold 10,000 on November 9, the day the phone went on sale there. Apple’s U.K. partner O2 said the phone is its fastest-selling ever, but refused to give sales figures. Some 80 percent of Orange customers bought the iPhone with an “Orange for iPhone” service contract that includes unlimited access to the Internet and the Visual Voicemail service. Those customers paid €399 (US$585) for their iPhone, the same price T-Mobile charges for its iPhones. Orange also offers the iPhone for €549 with other types of contract, or €649 without a contract.

About 1,500 were sold without a contract, said Orange spokesman Louis Michel Aymard. Customers buying an iPhone from Orange for use on another operator’s network must pay a €100 unlocking charge, which is waived if they wait for six months from the purchase date. Since an iPhone without a contract is of little use on Orange’s network, the majority of those 1,500 customers have probably unlocked their phones, Aymard said. Orange is now the only one of Apple’s network operator partners to sell the iPhone unlocked. It does so to comply with a French law that forbids making the sale of one item conditional on the sale of another. T-Mobile briefly offered unlocked iPhones for €999 to comply with a temporary court injunction. It had been sued by rival operator Vodafone, which claimed that selling the phone tied to a two-year contract breached Germany’s consumer protection laws. On Tuesday, a court in Hamburg rejected Vodafone’s complaint, giving T-Mobile the go-ahead to sell the phone bundled with a contract.

Source: PC World