A massive European effort to develop high-brightness semiconductor lasers could transform healthcare, telecoms and display applications and make Europe an undisputed leader in the field.

Experimental devices that read brain signals have helped paralysed people use computers and may let amputees control bionic limbs.

Electronic devices of the future could be smaller, faster, more powerful and consume less energy because of a discovery claimed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US.

The fast pace of growing computing power could be sustained for many years to come due to new research from Britain's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) that is applying advanced techniques to magnetic semiconductors.

Ancient microscopic organisms are the tools of the future for the advancement of material science in areas such as solar cell technology.

Malicious code activity continued to grow at a record pace throughout 2008, primarily targeting confidential information of computer users, says Symantec.

IMEC, Europe’s independent nanoelectronics research institute has developed a method of integrating high-speed CMOS electronics and nanophotonic circuitry based on plasmonic effects.

A Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)-funded lab at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, has laid the groundwork for a lithium battery that can store and deliver more than three times the power of conventional lithium-ion batteries.

Symantec has published its April 2009 MessageLabs Intelligence Report that highlights a spam increase of almost 10% in one month, reaching heights of 85.3%, levels not experienced since September 2007.

Technology is struggling to meet the demands of high-performance, specialised computing systems according to a European consortium, which has responded by developing a reconfigurable chip that is both efficient and flexible.

Symantec has released the findings of its 2008 state of the data centre report that finds data centre managers caught between two conflicting goals — more demanding user expectations and higher levels of performance, yet reducing costs.

Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 to 24 months, still holds as true as it has for the last 40 years, but it no longer translates into a linear increase in performance. Previously, chip manufacturers increased processor clock speed to double chip performance — from 100 to 200 MHz and more recently into the multi-gigahertz (GHz) range.

In 2008, the MEMS market saw significant changes in the ranking of the top 30 MEMS companies.

Supplier for the solar power industry, Germany’s Roth & Rau AG will set up a silicon solar cell production line at the University of NSW. It will be the first solar research and development facility of its kind in Australia.

The long-term trend that has persisted in the computer industry since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 has been for the hardware to become smaller and smaller. But scientists believe that conventional miniaturisation processes could soon reach their fundamental limits.