|
|
 |
 A
consortium of industry and government laboratories has created
a prototype machine for making computer chips using extreme
ultraviolet (EUV) light. Processors built using EUV technology
are expected to reach speeds of up to 10 gigahertz (GHz)
in 2007. By comparison, the fastest Pentium 4 processor
today is 1.5 GHz. To make this next
generation of semiconductor devices possible, researchers
here test the optics used to print these chips and detect
flaws smaller than the radius of a hydrogen atom.
 RNA
is the workhorse of the genetic world. RNA molecules carry
out their many biological tasks through their ability
to fold themselves into complex three-dimensional structures.
Learning about the forces that drive and shape this folding
is a key to designing drugs that can enhance or inhibit
the performance of a specific task. Now for the
first time, researchers
have successfully unfolded and refolded single molecules
of RNA.
 Until
some 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was
so hot that matter and radiation were entangled in a kind
of soup in which sound waves could vibrate. Looking
at the telltale traces of these sound waves, three scientific
teams are reporting results that agree on what the "harmonic
proportions" of the cosmos imply: not
only is the universe flat, but its structure is definitely
due to inflation, not to topological defects in the
early universe.
|
|
|
