TIMES OF TECHNOLOGY

Simon Rhymes, 23, from Chippenham, thought up the idea for the Bulbed Egg Maker (BEM) while studying project design at Bournemouth University.

After experimenting with more than 600 eggs, Mr Rhymes says he can now produce a "perfect" boiled egg in six minutes.

He has patented the BEM, which uses high-powered halogen bulbs to cook the egg before slicing the top off.

Mr Rhymes got the idea after wondering if there was a use for the heat a light bulb produced.

"I started to experiment and cooked an egg under a table lamp. That took about half an hour.

India will soon set up an international nano-science centre for material sciences to undertake research and development (R&D) projects in the application of nano-technology.

Announcing this in Bangalore on Saturday, Minister of Science and Technology Kapil Sibal said the centre would be thrown open also to non-resident Indian (NRI) scientists and technologists to take up research projects and collaborate with other public and private institutes for developing nano products.

"We have earmarked Rs 10 billion for investing in nano-science and nano-technology over a five-year period. During the current fiscal (2006-07), Rs 1.8 billion are being spent to set up seven-eight nano-science and nano-technology centres in the country," the minister told reporters on the sidelines of a function.

Earlier, inaugurating the country's first nano lab at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Sibal said though India had missed the semiconductor revolution, efforts were being made by the government and the scientific community to tap the potential of nano-technology fully to develop a host of applications across verticals for the benefit of the common people.

"The nano lab at the JNCASR will focus on the energy sector to develop devices like super capacitors for batteries and photo voltaic cells to tap solar energy optimally. Similar nano labs in other cities will develop technologies to devise applications or sensors that can be used in healthcare, agriculture, electronics, hardware and life sciences," Sibal said.

The nano-science labs will undertake fundamental research to develop modules for using nano-technology in diverse fields, while nano-technology centres will device applications and products for mass production by the private sector.

CNR Rao, national research professor and chairman of the prime minister's scientific advisory council, said advances in nano-science and nano-technology during the last five years have brought about phenomenal changes in material manufacturing, electronics, pharmaceutical and catalysis industries.

"Nano-science and nano-technology pertain to the synthesis, characterisation, exploration and utilisation of nano-structured materials, which are characterised by one dimension in the nano-metre range. These constitute a bridge between single molecules and bulk systems.

"Individual nano-structures involve clusters, quantum dots, nano-particles nano-wires and nano-tubes, while collection of nano-structures involve arrays, assemblies and super-lattices in one, two or three dimensions," said Rao.

Around 2 months after their international launch, Sony India unveiled its first Digital SLR camera, α100 under the α(pronounced “alpha”) brand name. The α100 combines advanced SLR features with technologies that broaden users’ creative possibilities while assuring superior results for its audience of amateurs and families.

Announcing the India launch of α100 camera series, Mohit Parasher, General Manager - Sales & Marketing - AV/IT, Sony India said, “It is our constant endeavor to provide the best imaging technology to all our customers and the launch of DSLR series is a step in that direction.”

The α series in India will comprise of the DSLR-A100 (single camera body, Rs 54,990, DSLR-A100K (with normal zoom lens, Rs 64,990) and DSLR-A100W (with normal and tele zoom lenses, Rs 74,990). The series is complemented by a wide range of accessories, plus an extensive range of compatible flashes, lighting systems, adaptors, extension cables and external battery adaptors for off-camera and multiple flash.

It`s unlikely to occur by swallowing a pill or donning a special cloak, but invisibility could be possible in the not too distant future, according to research published on Monday.

Harry Potter accomplished it with his magic cloak. H.G. Wells` Invisible Man swallowed a substance that made him transparent.

But Dr Ulf Leonhardt, a theoretical physicist at St Andrews University in Scotland, believes the most plausible example is the Invisible Woman, one of the Marvel Comics superheroes in the "Fantastic Four".

"She guides light around her using a force field in this cartoon. This is what could be done in practice," Leonhardt told Reuters in an interview. "That comes closest to what engineers will probably be able to do in the future."

Invisibility is an optical illusion that the object or person is not there. Leonhardt uses the example of water circling around a stone. The water flows in, swirls around the stone and then leaves as if nothing was there.

"If you replace the water with light then you would not see that there was something present because the light is guided around the person or object. You would see the light coming from the scenery behind as if there was nothing in front," he said.

In the research published in the New Journal of Physics, Leonhardt described the physics of theoretical devices that could create invisibility. It is a follow-up paper to an earlier study published in the journal Science. (*)

(Source: Reuters/Patricia Reaney)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers trying to make tiny machines have turned to the power of nature, engineering a virus to attract metals and then using it to build minute wires for microscopic batteries.

The resulting nanowires can be used in minuscule lithium ion battery electrodes, which in turn would be used to power very small machines, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The international team of researchers, led by a group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used the M13 virus, a simple and easily manipulated virus.

"We use viruses to synthesize and assemble nanowires of cobalt oxide at room temperature," the researchers wrote.

They modified the M13 virus' genes so its outside layer, or coat, would bind with certain metal ions. They incubated the virus in a cobalt chloride solution so that cobalt oxide crystals mineralized uniformly along its length.

They added a bit of gold for the desired electrical effects.

Viruses cannot reproduce on their own but must be grown in cells -- in this case, bacteria. They inject their genetic material and then the cells pump out copies of the virus.

The viruses formed orderly layers, the researchers reported.

The resulting nanowires worked as positive electrodes for battery electrodes, the researchers said.

They hope to build batteries that range from the size of a grain of rice up to the size of existing hearing-aid batteries.

Each virus, and thus each wire, is only 6 nanometers -- 6 billionths of a meter -- in diameter, and 880 nanometers long, the researchers said.

"We have previously used viruses to assemble semiconductor and magnetic nanowires," the researchers wrote.