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Searching for life on Mars with spider silk sensors

Did you know that optical sensors made with spider silk could one day help scientists search for trace gases such as ammonia produced by biological processes on Mars?

“The scientists hunting for life on Mars would like to be able to test for small amounts of ammonia,” reports Neil Savage of IEE Spectrum. “[These] might be emitted by the metabolism of microbes, so they need a sensor that can detect that while remaining insensitive to the large amounts of carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere.”

Researchers eye graphene for next-gen memory chips

Stanford engineers have demonstrated a number of post-silicon memory materials and technologies based on graphene. According to Ramin Skibba of Stanford News, the materials are capable of storing significantly more data per square inch – all while sipping a fraction of the energy consumed by current memory chips.

This memory chip orbited the earth on March 23, 1965

Engadget’s Nathan Ingraham recently reported that a piece of RANAM (Random Access Non-Destructive Readout) from NASA’s Gemini 3 spacecraft is up for auction. The RANAM – containing 4096 bits of information – was a part of the first Gemini spacecraft on-board computer ever to fly on a manned mission.

Crossing the ReRAM bridge

Writing for IEEE Spectrum, Alexander Hellemans notes that researchers have thus far produced two commercially promising types of memristors: electrochemical metallization memory (EMC) cells and valence change mechanism memory (VCM) cells.

“In EMC cells, which have a copper electrode (called the active electrode), the copper atoms are oxidized—stripped of an electron—by the ‘write’ voltage,” he explained. “The resulting copper ions migrate through a solid electrolyte towards a platinum electrode. When they reach the platinum they get an electron back. Other copper ions arrive and pile on, eventually forming a pure metallic filament linking both electrodes, thus lowering of the resistance of the device.”

Bio-friendly implantable electrodes monitor neural activity

Scientists at Lund University are developing implantable bio-friendly electrodes capable of capturing signals from single neurons in the brain over an extended period of time.

According to a news release obtained by EurekAlert, there are several factors that must be considered for the electrodes to successfully record neuronal signals from the brain with decisive results. First, the electrode must be bio-friendly and cannot cause any significant damage to the brain tissue. Second, the electrode should be flexible in relation to the brain tissue.

Rambus and Riverside Research to co-host security workshop

Rambus’ Cryptography Research division and Riverside Research will be co-hosting a two-day workshop on identifying and preventing advanced security threats. The workshop – scheduled for November 18-19, 2015 – is targeted at hardware and software security developers with a focus on defense and government industries.

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