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You asked Cliff Schmidt, founder and executive director of Literacy Bridge, about charity, education, and the "talking book", and he has answered your questions with a fair amount of detail. Cliff asks that if you are interested in getting involved please don't hesitate to donate either your time or your hard earned cash.

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hardsky submitted thrilling news about everyone's favorite interconnect cable by saying "USB 3.0 is set to deliver data-transfer speeds of up to 5Gb/s, initially over tweaked connectors and wiring and, later, over optical links."

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arcticstoat writes in with word that scientists at the Space Nanotechnology Laboratory at MIT have found a new way of extending Moore's law into the future — they have succeeded in etching a grid of 25nm lines into a silicon wafer. The article notes that this technique could be used for writing the grid on which chips are laid down, but that the electronic elements would have to be written using more complex techniques. "[Researchers] created an interference pattern using light from a laser with a wavelength of 351 nm. The pattern consists of alternating light and dark zones repeating every 200 nm. This allowed them to etch 25-nm lines into a silicon wafer, each 175 nm apart. They then repeated the process three times, each time shifting the interference pattern by 50 nm and etching another 25-nm groove. The resulting grid has alternating 25-nm stripes and grooves..."

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neural.disruption writes "According to the EETimes, HP is announcing that it 'plans to unveil RRAM prototype chips based on memristors with crossbar arrays in 2009.' I don't know if you remember the earlier story about HP Labs proving the existence of the Memristor that had been predicted in 1971 by Leon Chua, and has the nice property of maintaining a memory of the current that passes by it. This could bring us a new type of small non-volatile high-speed RAM at low cost because of the low complexity of the mechanism employed."

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Stony Stevenson brings news from Rice University about designing integrated circuits with multiple distinct identities, which could be used in new types of hardware-based DRM, among other things. From the news release: "'With "n-variant" integrated circuits, it is possible to design portable media players that are inherently unique,' said Farinaz Koushanfar, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice and principal investigator on the project. 'New methods of digital rights management can be built upon such devices. For example, media files can be made such that they only run on a certain variant and cannot be played by another.' Koushanfar said content providers could also use n-variant chips to sell metered access to software, music or movies because the chips can be programmed to switch from one variant to another at a particular time or after a file has been accessed a certain number of times."

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Stony Stevenson writes to tell us IT News is reporting that Acer is betting big on Linux, looking to push Tux on many of their upcoming laptops and netbooks. "The company is already heavily promoting Linux for its low cost ultra-portable netbook range out later this year, but senior staff have said that Acer will also push Linux on its laptops. [...] Acer sees two killer apps with Linux on computers: operation and cost. Its flavour of Linux will boot in 15 seconds compared to minutes for Windows, and the open source operating system can extend battery life from five to seven hours."

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eldavojohn writes "For the processor geeks here, Jon Stokes has an thoughtful article up at Ars Technica analyzing RISC vs. CISC in mobile phones (Wikipedia on Reduced Instruction Set Computers and Complex Instruction Set Computers). He wraps it up with two questions: 'How much is the legacy x86 code base really worth for mobile and ultramobile devices? The consensus seems to be "not much," and I vacillate on this question quite a bit. This question merits an entire article of its own, though.' and 'Will Intel retain its process leadership vs. foundries like TSMC, which are rapidly catching up to it in their timetables for process transitions? ARM, MIPS, and other players mobile device space that I haven't mentioned like NVIDIA, AMD/ATI, VIA, and PowerVR, all depend on these foundries to get their chips to market, so being one process node behind hurts them. But if these RISC and mobile graphics products can compete with Intel's offerings on feature size, then that will neutralize Intel's considerable process advantage.'"

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esocid writes to tell us that researchers from Taiwan have created a new baseball cap complete with embedded -bio-signal monitoring system. The purpose was to give a neural interface that could be useful in everyday life. "The cap contains five embedded dry electrodes on the wearer's forehead, and one electrode behind the left ear, that acquire EEG signals. Then, the EEG signals are wirelessly transmitted to a data receiver, where they are processed in real-time by a dual-core processor. The BCI system includes Bluetooth transmission for distances of 10m or less (e.g., for driving applications), as well as RF transmission for distances up to 600m (e.g., for potential sports applications). Next, the processed signals are transmitted back to the cap, where the data can be stored, displayed in real-time on a screen, or be used to trigger an audio warning, if necessary."

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emj writes to tell us project jDome has started actively soliciting consumer feedback and, of course, donations. They are currently promising to deliver their "180 degree FOV monitor" this year for a pricepoint of around $200. The videos and talk have been circulating for the last couple of weeks or so, but they have added a video of the supposed tech in action. Buyer beware, but I would love to see a couple of reviewers get ahold of this and let us know what the story is.

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schliz lets us know about research out of Princeton on melting away defects on microchips using a laser. The new technique, termed Self-Perfection by Liquefaction (SPEL), was published in the May 4 issue of Nature Nanotechnology. Researchers have traditionally approached chip defects by trying to improve the microchip fabrication process, but this eventually reaches fundamental physical limits to do with random behavior of electrons and photons. By focussing on fixing defects, the new method enables more precise shaping of microchip components, the engineers expect to dramatically improve chip quality without increasing fabrication cost. The before-and-after images are remarkable. Here's a diagram of how the process works.

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