Knowledge Update

Washington, Oct 7 (IANS) A research team led by US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has created the world's smallest transistor with a working one-nanometre gate.

In a study published in the journal Science, the researchers described the novel transistor made with a new combination of materials that is even smaller than the smallest possible silicon-based transistor.

"We made the smallest transistor reported to date," said lead researcher Ali Javey from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Instead of using silicon, the researchers built their prototype device with a class of semiconductor materials called transition metal dichalcogenides, or TMDs. 

Specifically, their experimental device structure used molybdenum disulfide for the channel material and a single-walled carbon nanotube for the gate.

"Silicon transistors are approaching their size limit," said one of the study authors, Moon Kim, Professor at The University of Texas at Dallas.

"Our research provides new insight into the feasibility to go beyond the ultimate scaling limit of silicon-based transistor technology," Kim explained.

As current flows through a transistor, the stream of electrons travels through a channel, like tap water flowing through a faucet out into a sink. 

A "gate" in the transistor controls the flow of electrons, shutting the flow off and on in a fraction of second.

"As of today, the best/smallest silicon transistor devices commercially available have a gate length larger than 10 nanometres," Kim said.

"The theoretical lower limit for silicon transistors is about five nanometres. The device we demonstrate in this article has a gate size of one nanometre, about one order of magnitude smaller," he added.

"It should be possible to reduce the size of a computer chip significantly utilising this configuration," Kim noted.

One of the challenges in designing such small transistors is that electrons can randomly tunnel through a gate when the current is supposed to be shut off. Reducing this current leakage is a priority.

"The device we demonstrated shows more than two orders of magnitude reduction in leakage current compared to its silicon counterpart, which results in reduced power consumption," Kim said. 

"What this means, for example, is that a cellphone with this technology built in would not have to be recharged as often," he explained.

​San Francisco, Oct 5 (IANS) US technology company Avaya on Wednesday announced "Cloud Networking Platform", a complete network lifecycle management solution for enterprise and mid-size businesses.

​New York, Oct 6 (IANS) Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new method for 3-D printing soft materials that make robots safer and more precise in their movements.

​Washington, Oct 7 (IANS) Citing the example of the proposed pan-India Goods and Services Tax (GST), the IMF on Friday said the country has shown that progress on reforms could attract investment and boost prospects of India's medium-term growth.

​Seoul, Oct 7 (IANS) With the aim to bolster its virtual personal assistants to deliver an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based ecosystem across its devices and services, Samsung Electronics has acquired Viv Labs, an AI start-up.

​New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The BRICS Business Council is looking into low trade volume among the five emerging economies, while recent agreements in areas like customs coopration are attempts to lower trade barriers among member-nations, the Indian government said on Friday.

New York, Oct 6 (IANS) Apple has reportedly bid goodbye to its third-gen Apple TV, shifting its focus on the new fourth-gen model, media reported on Thursday. According to 9to5mac.com, in an email sent out to employees and education partners, Apple said that it is discontinuing the device. "The third-gen model was introduced in 2012 and was quietly updated a year later. Since then, Apple has shifted its focus to the tvOS-powered fourth-gen Apple TV," the report said. Apple, however, said it will fulfill order backlog for the device. The company is currently selling refurbished models of third-gen Apple TV for $59. Once the refurbished models disappear, "Apple will seemingly have stopped sales of the third-gen Apple TV all together," the report added. It is also not clear if third-gen Apple TV will receive any additional software updates. According to Apple website, every Apple TV comes with complimentary telephone technical support within 90 days of its purchase. In addition, Apple TV and all accessories are covered against defects for one year from the original purchase date by a limited hardware warranty.

New York, Oct 7 (IANS) Just like us, apes can grasp complex mental states and have the ability to guess what others might be thinking, suggests new research.

Apes can correctly anticipate that humans will look for a hidden item in a specific location, even if the apes know that item is no longer there, a new study revealed. 

The results, which show that apes can grasp what others know even when it differs from their own knowledge, demonstrate that nonhuman primates can recognise others' beliefs, desires, and intentions -- a phenomenon called "theory of mind" (ToM), and one that has generally been believed as unique to humans. 

"This is the first time that any nonhuman animals have passed a version of the false belief test," said one of the lead researchers Christopher Krupenye from Duke University in Durham, US.

The capacity to tell when others hold mistaken beliefs is seen as a key milestone in human cognitive development. Such skills are essential for getting along with other people and predicting what they might do. 

The new findings, published in the journal Science, suggest the ability is not unique to humans, but has existed in the primate family tree for at least 13 to 18 million years, since the last common ancestors of chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and humans.

"If future experiments confirm these findings, they could lead scientists to rethink how deeply apes understand each other," Krupenye said.

In the study, the apes watched two short videos. In one, a person in a King Kong suit hides himself in one of two large haystacks while a man watches. Then the man disappears through a door, and while no one is looking the King Kong runs away. In the final scene, the man reappears and tries to find King Kong.

The second video is similar, except that the man returns to the scene to retrieve a stone he saw King Kong hide in one of two boxes. But King Kong has stolen it behind the man's back and made a getaway.

The researchers teased out what the apes were thinking while they watched the movies by following their gaze with an infrared eye-tracker installed outside their enclosures.

To pass the test, the apes must predict that when the man returns, he will mistakenly look for the object where he last saw it, even though they themselves know it is no longer there.

In both cases, the apes stared first and longest at the location where the man last saw the object, suggesting they expected him to believe it was still hidden in that spot.

Their results mirror those from similar experiments with human infants under the age of two.

The apes' correct anticipation of where the human expected the object to be suggests that they understand that person's perspective.