World’s first data storage system’ discovered

New York: Prehistoric CDs! Scientists have discovered the world's "very first data storage system" - 5,500-year-old clay balls unearthed in Iran that were used for record-keeping in Mesopotamia.

The clay balls, often called "envelopes", excavated in the 1960s, were made about 200 years before writing was invented.

The balls were sealed and contain tokens in a variety of geometric shapes, varying from golf ball-size to baseball-size.

Researchers used high-resolution CT scans and 3D modelling to look inside more than 20 examples that were excavated at the site of Choga Mish, in western Iran, in the late 1960s, 'LiveScience' reported.

The clay balls were created about 5,500 years ago at a time when early cities were flourishing in Mesopotamia.

The clay balls may represent the world's "very first data storage system," said Christopher Woods, a professor at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, in a lecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum.

Researchers have long believed these clay balls were used to record economic transactions.

That interpretation is based on an analysis of a 3,300-year-old clay ball found at a site in Mesopotamia named Nuzi that had 49 pebbles and a cuneiform text containing a contract commanding a shepherd to care for 49 sheep and goats.

But, how these devices would have worked in prehistoric times, before the invention of writing, remains a mystery.

How people recorded the number and type of a commodity being exchanged without the help of writing is also not known.

Researchers have found that the tokens within the balls are in 14 different shapes, including spheres, pyramids, ovoids, lenses and cones, the report said.

These shapes, instead of representing the whole words, would have conveyed numbers connected to a variety of metrological systems used in counting different types of commodities, Woods said.

For instance, one ovoid could mean a certain unit, say 10, which was used while counting a certain type of commodity.

Source::::  http://www.ndtv.com

World’s first nanotube computer built

New Carbon-Based Transistors Use Less Energy & Run Faster Than Silicon Chips

Palo Alto (California): A group of Stanford researchers has moved a step closer to answering the question of what happens when silicon, the standard material in today’s microelectronic circuits, reaches its fundamental limits for use in increasingly small transistors. In a paper in the journal Nature on Wednesday, the researchers reported that they had successfully built a working computer — albeit an extremely simple one — entirely from transistors fashioned from carbon nanotubes. The nanotubeshave long held the promise of allowing smaller, faster and lower-powered computing, though they have proved difficult to work with. 
    The computer can right now perform only basic functions at speeds likened to a 1950s computer, but the tiny machine was hailed as a breakthrough in the search for an alternative to silicon transistors. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are rolled-up, single-layer sheets of carbon atoms — tens of thousands can fit into the width of a single human hair. They are pliable and have the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any known material. Silicon is a good semiconductor but cannot be reduced to such a thin layer. Experts believe the structure of CNTs may make them better at carrying currents — thus yielding transistors that are faster, more energy efficient and smaller than silicon. 
    “People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond silicon,” said Stanford professor Subhasish Mitra, who led the research. “But there have been few demonstrations of complete digital systems using this exciting technology. Here is the proof.” 
    The computer is just a few square millimetres in size and able to perform basic counting and number-sorting functions using 178 transistors each holding between 10 and 200 nanotubes. It runs at 1 kilohertz — a processing capacity millions of times weaker than today’s computers. The 178-transistor limit was due to the team using a university chip-making facility rather than an industrial process, meaning the computer could in theory be made much bigger and faster, a statement on the study said. The machine ran a basic operating system that allowed it to multitask and swap between the two processes, it added. 
    Mitra and his team had been able to deal with two inherent shortcomings of CNT transistors: the tubes do not always grow in perfectly straight lines, which means that mispositioned ones can cause a short circuit, while others changed form and couldn’t be switched on and off. The team devised a method to burn up and eliminate the uncontrolled CNTs in a transistor and to bypass mispositioned ones. AGENCIES

BIG BOOST: The new technology raises hopes of future computers that are smaller, faster and more efficient.

Source:::: The Times of India, 27-09-2013, p.17,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1380269603906

HC raps Centre over use of foreign servers for secret info

Abhinav Garg TNN 

New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Thursday frowned at the high level of dependence of the government and its agencies on foreign internet servers. 
    “It’s an important issue. You must act fast,” a division bench comprising justices B D Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru told the government after seeing that the National Investigating Agency (NIA), while issuing a public notice, gave a gmail ID to solicit secret information on terror suspects. 
    “The government of India and the NIA are using private email IDs on foreign networks that store data outside India. This violates Section-4 of the Public Records Act 1993,” advocate Parag Gupta argued, prompting the bench to express its displeasure with the Centre for such a lapse. 
    Gupta, appearing for petitioner K N Govindacharya, submitted a contact directory of the ministry of communication and IT, in which gmail and Yahoo! IDs of minister of state Milind Deora and other senior officials were listed. Gupta argued this was against the government policy wherein ‘nic’ network of emails must be used to ensure information remains on Indian servers. 
    Appearing for the Centre, additional solicitor general Rajeev Mehra and standing counsel Sumeet Pushkarna assured the HC that an email policy will be formed in four weeks for official communication by government officers so that the data wouldn’t be transferred to foreign servers. 
    The Centre’s stand in the HC on bringing a policy on securing its official communication is important as it comes in the backdrop of claims that India is among the top five countries extensively monitored by the National Security Agency (NSA), a US agency tasked with foreign surveillance. Reports say NSA recorded 6.3 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks in India, placing it fifth on the list of most extensively monitored countries.


Source:::: The Times of India, 27-09-2013, p.10,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1380269603906