Nobel for graphene researchers

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to the two researchers who performed the first experiments on graphene, a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms, reports MIT Technology Review.

The award, given to University of Manchester physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, recognises work that began less than a decade ago on a material that's since been used to make record-breaking transistors and stretchy electrodes.

Graphene's perfect structure gives rise to exotic quantum effects that are being studied by physicists. However, the material's electrical properties, its transparency, and its strength have been seized on by engineers working to make everything from touch-screens to solar cells to lightweight structural materials.

A 'comprehensive' review is being undertaken to transform the Indian armed forces into net-centric warriors, but the defence industry has the responsibility to identify the right choice of emerging technologies for the purpose, the Indian army's top communication officer has said, according to Sify.

“The Corps of Signal is making a comprehensive reappraisal of its information infrastructure by upgrading and building resilient and homogenous strategic and technical communication networks to transform the Indian armed forces into net-centric warriors,” said lieutenant-general P Mohapatra, the army's signal officer-in-chief.

Mohapatra was addressing a ceremony ahead of the Defcom 2010 defence communication seminar being held in December. The identification of military trends in communication technology will be high on the agenda of the two-day seminar.

The technology that has been booting up computers for 30 years is set to be replaced by start-up software which is set to revolutionise computing, states Geeks.

The next generation of home computers will run on new UEFI software, not the traditional BIOS tech. Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) has been built to the spec of modern machines and could activate a computer in mere seconds.

“At the moment, it can be 25 to 30 seconds of boot time before you see the first bit of OS sign-on,” Mark Doran, head of the UEFI Forum, told the BBC. “With UEFI, we're getting it down to a handful of seconds.”