Tri-band WiGig in a laptop? Yawnsville. Now, put that 60GHz connection in a high-end smartphone and we're all ears (and sweaty palms). Panasonic is the first out the gate with a 802.11ad compatible chip for mobile devices and, despite its head-spinning multi-gigabit speeds, the company's creation draws less that 1W of power. It'll be sometime before WiGig makes its way into your Droid or iPhone, but when it does you can look forward to wirelessly syncing entire seasons of Good Eats (in 1080p, of course) to your phone in mere minutes.
As you may know, crafting a katana is a delicate process that involves carefully constructing a razor-sharp high-carbon edge around a soft shock-absorbent core. One day though, smiths and forging fires could be replaced by electrode-wielding mad-scientists, with the technology to selectively harden and soften metal at will. At least that's what we envisioned when we read about Jörg Weißmüller's breakthrough research in the field of nanomaterials. The German scientist discovered that by placing precious metals in acid he could create tiny ducts through corrosion. Once those channels are flooded with a conductive liquid, electrical currents can be used to harden the material and, if you change your mind about the brittle results, the effect can easily be reversed to make it soft again. The tech could eventually lead to self-healing vehicle armor or scratch-resistant cellphones -- but, really, we just want to zap our way to a high-quality samurai sword. Physorg
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