Antique Nanotubes

All hail the great 17th-century nanotechnologist Assad Ullah!

Actually, he was a swordmaker, one in a long line of smiths who forged the legendary weapons known as Damascus sabers. They were strong yet flexible and supremely sharp, which European warriors first discovered, much to their misfortune, at the hands of Muslims during the Crusades.

The recipe for making Damascus steel was lost at the end of the 18th century, so no one knew the reasons for its remarkable qualities. But an analysis by 21st-century researchers in Germany provides a clue: Damascus sabers, they report in Nature, contain carbon nanotubes.
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Google: 'iPod will hold all the world's TV in 12 years'

The idea of fitting your entire music collection into a single device the size of a packet of cigarettes might have seemed outlandish 15 years ago. But that was before the iPod. Now, one Google exec is predicting the iPod will lead a further media transformation of similar magnitude in the coming decade.

Speaking at the FT World Communications Conference, Nikesh Arora, Google's VP of European operations, told delegates that, in the coming years, the plummeting price of storage and its increasing volume-to-size ratio will give iPods almost unlimited potential to hold music and video.

Back Pain? Don't Sit Up Straight!

Researchers are using a new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to show that sitting in an upright position places unnecessary strain on your back, leading to potentially chronic pain problems if you spend long hours sitting. The study, conducted at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen, Scotland, was presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

"A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal," said Waseem Amir Bashir, M.B.Ch.B., F.R.C.R., author and clinical fellow in the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta Hospital, Canada. "Sitting in a sound anatomic position is essential, since the strain put on the spine and its associated ligaments over time can lead to pain, deformity and chronic illness."
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Laptop Hard Drives Take It Up A Notch

Two new hard drives from Toshiba and Western Digital offer more storage for laptops.


Tom's Hardware reviews these two new 2.5" drives comparing price, storage, speed, and power consumption. Conclusion? The Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS comes out on top.