Mummy autopsy result ‘wrong’

The first scientific autopsy on an ancient Egyptian mummy probably got the cause of death wrong, research suggests.

Dr Augustus Bozzi Granville caused a sensation when he described the autopsy to the Royal Society of London in 1825.

He concluded the mummified woman, Irtyersenu, died of ovarian cancer.

But a University College London study, published in the Royal Society journal Biological Sciences, strongly suggests she died of tuberculosis.

Italian-born Dr Granville, a surgeon and a gynaecologist, had practised medicine across the world, and had survived malaria, bubonic plague and yellow fever.

In the mid 19th century interest in Egyptian mummies was intense.

So when one of Dr Granville’s patients told him he had brought back a mummy from the necropolis at Thebes still sealed in its coffin he jumped at the chance to investigate further.

He carried out a long-lasting and exhaustive study of the tissues.

By studying the thinning of the pelvic bone, he established the woman was 50-55 when she died. He also determined that she was a mother, and overweight.

He then found that she had an ovarian tumour, and concluded that this – a condition he called ovarian dropsy – probably caused her death.

However, the tumour has subsequently been found to be benign, and the UCL team believe the key to the woman’s death was the fact that her lungs were inflamed.

Tuberculosis was widespread in ancient Egypt and can cause these symptoms.

Tissue analysis

Following Dr Granville’s autopsy only fragments of the mummy’s tissues remained.

But analysis by the UCL team has found traces of Mycobacterium tuberculosis – the bacterium which causes TB – in lung, gall bladder and bone samples.

Researcher Dr Helen Donoghue said Dr Granville had failed to pin down exactly how the mummy had been preserved, and the exact technique remains a mystery today.

She said extracting DNA from the tissue samples had proved extraordinarily difficult.

She was full of praise for Dr Granville’s work: "He was remarkably careful and thorough.

"It was the first time anybody had tried to do a medical autopsy on an Egyptian mummy.

"Before that it was all about their entertainment value – it was a bit like a circus, and most of the interest was in the jewellery that was wrapped up in the bandages." </p

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Winds of change

By Jude Sheerin
BBC News

The extraordinary true story of a Malawian teenager who transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk is the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

Self-taught William Kamkwamba has been feted by climate change campaigners like Al Gore and business leaders the world over.

His against-all-odds achievements are all the more remarkable considering he was forced to quit school aged 14 because his family could no longer afford the $80-a-year (£50) fees.

When he returned to his parents’ small plot of farmland in the central Malawian village of Masitala, his future seemed limited.

But this was not another tale of African potential thwarted by poverty.

Defence against hunger

The teenager had a dream of bringing electricity and running water to his village.

"Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy – people thought I was smoking marijuana"

William Kamkwamba

And he was not prepared to wait for politicians or aid groups to do it for him.

The need for action was even greater in 2002 following one of Malawi’s worst droughts, which killed thousands of people and left his family on the brink of starvation.

Unable to attend school, he kept up his education by using a local library.

Fascinated by science, his life changed one day when he picked up a tattered textbook and saw a picture of a windmill.

Mr Kamkwamba told the BBC News website: "I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water.

"I thought: ‘That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself’."

When not helping his family farm maize, he plugged away at his prototype, working by the light of a paraffin lamp in the evenings.

But his ingenious project met blank looks in his community of about 200 people.

"Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy," he recalls. "They had never seen a windmill before."

Shocks

Neighbours were further perplexed at the youngster spending so much time scouring rubbish tips.

"William Kamkwamba’s achievements with wind energy show what one person, with an inspired idea, can do to tackle the crisis we face"

Al Gore

"People thought I was smoking marijuana," he said. "So I told them I was only making something for juju [magic].’ Then they said: ‘Ah, I see.’"

Mr Kamkwamba, who is now 22 years old, knocked together a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire.

"I got a few electric shocks climbing that [windmill]," says Mr Kamkwamba, ruefully recalling his months of painstaking work.

The finished product – a 5-m (16-ft) tall blue-gum-tree wood tower, swaying in the breeze over Masitala – seemed little more than a quixotic tinkerer’s folly.

But his neighbours’ mirth turned to amazement when Mr Kamkwamba scrambled up the windmill and hooked a car light bulb to the turbine.

As the blades began to spin in the breeze, the bulb flickered to life and a crowd of astonished onlookers went wild.

Soon the whiz kid’s 12-watt wonder was pumping power into his family’s mud brick compound.

‘Electric wind’

Out went the paraffin lanterns and in came light bulbs and a circuit breaker, made from nails and magnets off an old stereo speaker, and a light switch cobbled together from bicycle spokes and flip-flop rubber.

Before long, locals were queuing up to charge their mobile phones.

WINDS OF CHANGE

• 2002: Drought strikes; he leaves school; builds 5m windmill
• 2006: Daily Times writes article on him; he builds a 12m windmill
• 2007: Brings solar power to his village and installs solar pump
• Mid-2008: Builds Green Machine windmill, pumping well water
• Sep 2008: Attends inaugural African Leadership Academy class
• Mid-2009: Builds replica of original 5m windmill

Mr Kamkwamba’s story was sent hurtling through the blogosphere when a reporter from the Daily Times newspaper in Blantyre wrote an article about him in November 2006.

Meanwhile, he installed a solar-powered mechanical pump, donated by well-wishers, above a borehole, adding water storage tanks and bringing the first potable water source to the entire region around his village.

He upgraded his original windmill to 48-volts and anchored it in concrete after its wooden base was chewed away by termites.

Then he built a new windmill, dubbed the Green Machine, which turned a water pump to irrigate his family’s field.

Before long, visitors were traipsing from miles around to gawp at the boy prodigy’s magetsi a mphepo – "electric wind".

As the fame of his renewable energy projects grew, he was invited in mid-2007 to the prestigious Technology Entertainment Design conference in Arusha, Tanzania.

Cheetah generation

He recalls his excitement using a computer for the first time at the event.

"I had never seen the internet, it was amazing," he says. "I Googled about windmills and found so much information."

Onstage, the native Chichewa speaker recounted his story in halting English, moving hard-bitten venture capitalists and receiving a standing ovation.

A glowing front-page portrait of him followed in the Wall Street Journal.

He is now on a scholarship at the elite African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Mr Kamkwamba – who has been flown to conferences around the globe to recount his life-story – has the world at his feet, but is determined to return home after his studies.

The home-grown hero aims to finish bringing power, not just to the rest of his village, but to the whole of Malawi, only 2% of which has electricity.

"I want to help my country and apply the knowledge I’ve learned," he says. "I feel there’s lots of work to be done."

Former Associated Press news agency reporter Bryan Mealer had been reporting on conflict across Africa for five years when he heard Mr Kamkwamba’s story.

The incredible tale was the kind of positive story Mealer, from New York, had long hoped to cover.

The author spent a year with Mr Kamkwamba writing The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which has just been published in the US.

Mealer says Mr Kamkwamba represents Africa’s new "cheetah generation", young people, energetic and technology-hungry, who are taking control of their own destiny.

"Spending a year with William writing this book reminded me why I fell in love with Africa in the first place," says Mr Mealer, 34.

"It’s the kind of tale that resonates with every human being and reminds us of our own potential."

Can it be long before the film rights to the triumph-over-adversity story are snapped up, and William Kamkwamba, the boy who dared to dream, finds himself on the big screen</p

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Probe’s pass and brake at Mercury
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News

Nasa’s Messenger probe is about to make its third and final fly-by of Mercury.

The pass, just 228km from the surface, will make use of the planet’s gravity to help slow the spacecraft enough to enable it to enter into orbit in 2011.

Messenger will train its instruments on scientifically interesting craters and study the stream of charged particles blasted from its surface by the Sun.

By the time the fly-by is complete, the probe will have mapped 95% of Mercury’s surface at high resolution.

Only some polar regions will remain unknown and un-surveyed by the time Messenger sets up station above the planet in 18 months’ time.

"This third and last fly-by is the final time Messenger can use the power of Mercury to meet the demands of the cruise trajectory," explained Eric Finnegan, a mission systems engineer from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), which is managing the mission for the US space agency (Nasa).

"Any shortfalls in this gravity assist will need to be corrected by the spacecraft using its limited supply of onboard propellant.

"Slowing the spacecraft by [9,500km/h], Messenger’s orbital period around the Sun will be decreased by 13 days, closely matching the 88-day orbital period of the innermost planet."

Tail of Mercury

All the terrestrial planets are believed to have formed at the same time by common processes – but Mercury itself is a bit of an oddball. Messenger, the first spacecraft to target the innermost planet since Mariner 10 in the 1970s, is an attempt to solve some of Mercury’s mysteries.

The planet is so dense that more than two-thirds of it has to be of an iron-metal composition.

PLANET MERCURY

• Closest planet to the Sun; smallest in Solar System
• Visited by Mariner 10 in 1970s; by Messenger currently
• Diameter: 4,880km, about one-third the size of Earth
• Densest planet in Solar System; 5.3x that of water
• Caloris basin is largest known feature (1,300km in diameter)
• Possibility of water-ice in permanently shadowed craters
• Huge iron core takes up more than 60% of the planet’s mass
• Surface temperatures swing between 425C and -180C
• Has an extremely thin atmosphere (exosphere)
• Only inner planet besides Earth with global magnetic field

Q&A: Mercury space probe

A lot of this iron is at the surface, and Messenger will be using this pass to try to establish its mineralogical setting and the chemical forms in which it is bound up.

The spacecraft will also undertake manoeuvres not tried on the previous fly-bys.

On this occasion, Messenger will rock back and forth as it sweeps across the surface, holding its gaze on specific craters for a few seconds as it makes detailed observations.

"Our first target is an unmanned, [150km] across crater which is actually fairly old and has some interesting materials near the centre," said JHUAPL instrument scientist Noam Izenberg.

"We’re going to be pausing on that, taking a series of observations; and then the pointing of the spacecraft is going to alter slightly, moving to a younger crater.

"We’re going to look at the continuous ejecta of this crater, examining the younger, fresher material that was blown out after impact."

The probe will also get another chance to examine Mercury’s "atmosphere", or exosphere as the scientists call the tenuous cloud of charged atoms which encircle the planet.

These ions bleed from Mercury’s surface as it is blasted by the full force of the solar wind, a stream of particles from our star which buffets the entire Solar System.

Hot work

Many of the atoms thrown up from the surface – sodium, potassium, calcium, and probably even iron and aluminium – are then pushed away by sunlight into a gigantic gas cloud tail that extends millions of km behind Mercury.

"All the materials in the tail and in Mercury’s atmosphere, all the atoms heavier than hydrogen and helium, are derived from Mercury’s surface," said Messenger’s principal investigator Sean Solomon.

"So measurement of Mercury’s atmosphere and tail and its dynamics is telling us about the processes that maintain that envelope of volatile species around the planet and something about the composition of Mercury’s surface materials."

Messenger carries seven scientific instruments – a camera, a magnetometer, an altimeter and four spectrometers – and one radio science experiment.

The craft is equipped with a large sunshade made from a heat-resistant ceramic fabric to protect it from the Sun.

"Advances in materials science allow spacecraft electronics and sensitive instruments to run at room temperatures behind the shade while the front surface temperature rises to over [315C]," explained Eric Finnegan.

Time of closest approach is 2155 GMT on Tuesday. The spacecraft and its antenna are turned away from Earth during the observations, and so the first data is not expected to be returned for several hours after the fly-by.

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Mathematics to build cancer model

Mathematicians are to develop a virtual model of cancer growth in an effort to predict how it spreads.

Researchers at Dundee University have been given more than £1.5m to come up with a model that can measure the shape and speed of the disease.

The university has long pioneered the use of mathematics as a way of predicting tumour development.

The aim of the project, funded by the European Research Council, will be to aid clinicians with patient diagnosis.

Professor Mark Chaplain, head of mathematics at Dundee, said his team would use cutting edge computational mathematical techniques to develop the model.

He said: "One of the big challenges in addressing cancer treatment is that you can have two patients with the same kind of tumour in the same area of the body, but they will react to it completely differently.

"The factors which contribute to the creation and growth of cancerous cells can all be measured – most biological processes in the human body involve many different but inter-connected phenomena to which mathematical values can be applied."

‘Uniquely placed’

The modelling approach of the project will be unique in its development of an individual-based model, focussed at the cell level and treating the biomechanical properties of each cell.

Prof Chaplain and his team will collaborate with researchers in life sciences, medicine and physics at Dundee to develop the new models.

He added: "We are uniquely placed in Dundee in having all the relevant expertise needed across the different disciplines to work on this project."

The grant covers five years and will provide seven new posts at the university – three post-doctoral research assistants, three PhD students and one research lecturer.

Cancer is one of the major causes of death in the developed world, with about 11 million people diagnosed and about seven million people dying each year.

The World Health Organisation predicts that current trends show about nine million people will die in 2015, with the number rising to 11.5 million by 2030.</p

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Dinosaurs had ‘earliest feathers’
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News

Exceptionally well preserved dinosaur fossils uncovered in north-eastern China display the earliest known feathers.

The creatures are all more than 150 million years old.

The new finds are indisputably older than Archaeopteryx, the oldest recognised bird discovered in Germany.

Professor Xu Xing and colleagues tell the journal Nature that this represents the final proof that dinosaurs were ancestral to birds.

The theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs has always been troubled by the absence of feathers more ancient than those on the famous Archaeopteryx.

"All over the skeleton, you see feathers"

Xu Xing

This has given critics room to question the idea.

But the new fossils, which come from two separate locations, are in most cases about 10 million years older than the German bird discovered in the late 19th Century.

One of the dinosaurs, named Anchiornis huxleyi, is spectacular in its preservation.

It has extensive plumage covering its arms and tail, and also its feet – a "four-winged" arrangement, says Professor Xu from the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.

‘Immensely exciting’

"The first specimen we discovered earlier this year was incomplete," he told BBC News.

"Based on that specimen, we named it Anchiornis; and we thought it was a close relative of birds. But then we got a second specimen, which was very complete – beautifully preserved.

"All over the skeleton, you see feathers.

"Based on this second specimen, we realised that this was a much more important species, and definitely one of the most important species for our understanding of the origin of birds and of their flight."

Professor Xu believes the four-winged shape may have been a very important stage in the evolutionary transition from dinosaurs to birds.

Details of the latest discoveries have been presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists, being held this year at the University of Bristol, UK.

The renowned Bristol palaeontologist Michael Benton said the announcement was immensely exciting.

"Drawing the tree of life, it’s fairly obvious that feathers arose before Archaeopteryx appears in the fossil record," he told BBC News.

"Now these fantastic new discoveries by Professor Xu Xing prove that once and for all.

"These new discoveries are maybe 10 million years older than Archaeopteryx."

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Huge clean-up after Sydney storm

Australia has been clearing up after its worst dust storm in seven decades, which smothered Sydney and brought transport to a standstill.

Sydney’s residents have spent the day cleaning their streets, homes and cars.

Wednesday’s storm dumped millions of tonnes of dust over New South Wales before heading north to Queensland.

The skies are now clear, but industry groups are still counting the cost of wasted working hours, the loss of agricultural soil and flight delays.

Seen from space

The storm of red dust which blew into Sydney came from the desert outback; thousands of tons of topsoil from the arid and drought-stricken centre of the country were sucked up by powerful winds and blown eastwards.

The haze was so extensive it could be seen from space, appearing as a huge brown smudge in satellite photographs of Australia.

Visibility in Sydney was so bad that flights were diverted and harbour ferry traffic disrupted. Landmarks such as the Opera House were obscured, and many residents took to wearing masks.

Emergency services reported a surge in calls from people with breathing problems.

Skies over eastern Australia were mostly clear on Thursday, and the country’s largest airport aimed to resume normal flight schedules.

The authorities in New South Wales and Queensland have lifted water restrictions – imposed because of the drought – so residents can clean their homes and vehicles.

Weather bureau official Mike De Salis told reporters that there were likely to be more dusty days in the coming weeks, but nothing on the scale of Wednesday’s storm.

Dust storms are common in the arid "red centre" of Australia, but they rarely reach the populated coastal regions.

Thursday morning’s newspapers were full of coverage of the unusual event.

The Sydney Morning Herald called it "The day the country blew into town," while the headline in the Daily Telegraph was "Doomsday".

"It wasn’t, as the saying goes, a good laundry day," an editorial in the Telegraph added.

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Seismic bangs ‘block’ whale calls
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Scientists have turned up new evidence showing that ocean noise can affect the communication of whales.

Studying blue whales off the eastern Canadian coast, they found the animals changed their vocalisations in response to an underwater seismic survey.

The survey was conducted using gear considered to have a low impact.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers say this is the first evidence that whales will increase calls in response to underwater noise.

At this site, on a feeding ground, the whales make frequent calls of just a few seconds’ duration, rather than the long "songs" that can be heard across vast tracts of ocean.

"The calls are used for short-range communication within a range of a few hundred metres," said Lucia Di Iorio, based at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

"We should definitely reconsider these things, because clearly it’s not only the sound level that’s important"

Lucia Di Iorio

"And the frequency band they use is exactly where the main energy of those seismic pulses is located," she told BBC News.

Initially, Dr Di Iorio’s group tried to persuade the Canadian university conducting the seismic survey to co-operate in the research, and to give details of where and when the underwater bangs were being produced.

That attempt failing, the scientists recorded the pulses with an array of detectors mounted on the sea bed in the St Lawrence Estuary.

The detectors also recorded the blue whales’ calls, which are thought to be associated with feeding and socialising.

Information gap

On days with seismic surveys, the whales made two-and-half-times more calls than on days without.

The ratio was the same when the recordings were analysed in blocks of 10 minutes; survey noise induced more than a doubling of calls.

The researchers suggest the whales are having to "repeat information", as some of the calls are blocked or degraded by the seismic bangs.

Guide to the Great Whales

"Our research doesn’t say anything about whether this increase in call rate is negative for the animals, but of course it’s not positive and it may be stressful," said Dr Di Iorio.

This survey was carried out using "sparkers", devices that generate a bang from an electrical discharge between two electrodes.

Sparkers produce sounds quieter than the ones generated by airguns, another technique engineers use for underwater surveys.

"It’s used [here] because it’s thought to have a lower impact on marine life," said Dr Di Iorio.

"But we should definitely reconsider these things, because clearly it’s not only the sound level that’s important; and one thing might be not to do the test when there are lots of whales around."

Gray area

A number of recent reports have highlighted the increase in ocean noise brought about by humanity’s use of the oceans, in particular shipping.

One study indicated that the level of background noise from ships’ propellers was doubling every decade in the Pacific Ocean.

Conservation groups are raising the issue because many marine animals, including whales and dolphins, use sound to communicate and to hunt.

The sharp sounds of seismic surveys are a particular concern. Engineers use very sharp, very loud bangs because these produce the clearest images of geological structures below the sea floor.

The surveys are typically used to map oil and gas deposits.

Earlier this year, companies involved in the Sakhalin Energy consortium agreed to suspend seismic work after seeing evidence that it was driving the critically endangered western gray whale, of which only about 130 remain, away from its summer feeding ground.

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Burning problem

By Anthea Rowan
Focus on Africa Magazine, Tanzania

At a road block in western Tanzania, miles from anywhere, a uniformed official raises a flagged barrier. Nearby is a spill of black, like an oil slick.

This is one of several checkpoints which have been set up around the country in a half-hearted attempt to curtail the largely unregulated trade of charcoal, widely used across the continent as a fuel for cooking.

The guard on duty has confiscated six sacks. They lean against one another and bleed black dust into the sand.

"Once, Africa boasted seven million square kilometres of forest but a third of that has been lost"

Lee White
Climate change expert

Over the next 50 miles there are dozens of sacks propped up under trees. These will be loaded up by truck drivers who pay around $4 a bag to sell for up to six times the price in the city.

The guard at the roadblock has clearly opened his hand for "kitu kidogo" – a pay-off from coal traders in search of a quick buck.

The numbers tell the story – according to the Tanzania Association of Oil Marketing Companies, 20,000 bags of charcoal enter the capital Dar es Salaam every 24 hours.

Millions at risk

But the impact of this unregulated coal trade is chilling.

Aid agency Christian Aid estimates that 182 million people in Africa are at risk of dying as a consequence of climate change by the end of the century.

Meanwhile, Oxfam believes climate change is frustrating the efforts of millions on the continent to escape poverty.

Nobel laureate Professor Wangari Maathai offers a solution.

Why is climate change such a harbinger of doom Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation explains: "Global warming means that many dry areas are going to get drier and wet areas are going to get wetter."

This imbalance will make subsistence farming, upon which millions of Africans depend, even more precarious. It will also exacerbate famine and disease.

"One adaptation option for Africa is to keep her forests standing so that they provide essential environmental services such as carbon sinks," she said.

It is estimated that carbon is accumulating in the atmosphere at an annual rate of 3.5 billion metric tonnes. One hectare of trees can offset up to 200 tonnes of carbon a year.

A 40-year-study by the University of Leeds of African forests – which account for a third of the world’s total tropical forest – demonstrates that Africa is, indeed, a significant carbon sink.

Lee White, a climate change expert, concurs: "To get an idea of the value of the sink, the removal of nearly 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by intact tropical forests should be valued at around $25 billion a year. This is a compelling argument for conserving tropical forests."

But Africa has not been very good at this.

According to the UN the continent is losing forest twice as fast as the rest of the world.

"Once upon a time, Africa boasted seven million square kilometres of forest but a third of that has been lost – most of it to charcoal."

Lucrative business

The reality, however, is that in sub-Saharan Africa only 7.5% of the rural population has access to electricity.

Wood and its by-product charcoal are, unless radical steps are taken, likely to remain the primary energy source for decades.

POWER IN AFRICA

• Only 4% of electricity generated worldwide is produced in Africa
• Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s lowest electrification rate at 25.9%
• Rural electrification rates in sub-Saharan Africa are only 8%
• 70% of household income in Africa is spent on energy (diesel, kerosene, charcoal)
• 80% of Africans rely on biomass for energy (wood or charcoal fuel)
• 4 million hectares of forest are felled each year in Africa, twice the world average

Source: The World Future Council

Additionally, charcoal is a lucrative business – not only for those collecting wood to burn.

In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, over 70 tonnes of charcoal dust is discarded daily. Some 10% of that waste is absorbed by a company called Chardust, which salvages it from charcoal traders across the city and processes it with binders as a charcoal alternative.

The company manufactures 250 tonnes of saleable product a month.

Some though are trying to look beyond the finite resource. To the west of Nairobi, Cheryl Mvula of the Tribal Voice consultancy has introduced the extraordinary Cow Dung Fuel Initiative to counter deforestation in the Mara Triangle of Kenya’s Masai Mara.

Here dung is mixed with waste paper and water, fashioned into briquettes and sundried for use.

Since the project’s inception in March 2009, firewood collection has reduced by 75% in the five villages where the scheme has been piloted.

Organic alternative

Back in Tanzania, where the charcoal market remains largely backstreet, the industry is valued at upwards of $150 million a year.

This figure encouraged Briton Nicholas Harrison to get involved. His company, the East Africa Briquette Company, is the only producer of an organic alternative in a region where 90% of people use charcoal.

The company’s product, Mkaa Bora, is prepared from waste and post-harvest products – sawdust, charcoal dust, maize cobs and even banana skins.

Effectively, local "recipes" are designed according to a given area’s crop predominance.

The waste burns more slowly and is 30% hotter than traditional charcoal.

The production is also much leaner than traditional charcoal-making, where just 40% of the wood felled is converted into a useable fuel.

But how to balance job creation with the need to protect the environment

In Uganda, for example, which has lost half of its forest cover in the past 30 years, charcoal production yields 20,000 jobs and generates more than $20 million in income every year. In Kenya it is 10 times that figure.

Clearly any future charcoal alternative has to fill the gap.

Whether any African governments are keen to break away from the convenient job-creator – particularly during a challenging economic climate – to invest in alternatives will be a true test of their commitment to the environment.</p

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Intel shows chips can get smaller
By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

Intel has unveiled a new microchip that shows less can be more.

One of the world’s largest makers of processors has produced what is thought to be the first working version of a 22 nanometer SRAM chip.

Some industry experts were surprised, saying they did not think chips could get any thinner.

The chip contains nearly three billion transistors packed into an area the size of a fingernail but Intel says there could be smaller to come.

The development shows there is still life in Moore’s Law, which states the number of transistors on a silicon chip will double every two years.

Generally speaking the smaller the chip’s geometry, the faster and more power efficient the chip.

"Moore’s Law is not a law of physics, it’s a law of human inventiveness," Intel president and chief executive Paul Otellini told BBC News.

"There is nothing that says that humans can’t continue to invent."

Intel is currently making chips based on 45 nanometer technology and will move to 32 nanometer later this year.

The company’s first chips in the 1970s had just a few thousand transistors.

IBM and a European project called Duallogic are also involved in creating 22 nanometer chips.

‘Vision’

Mr Otellini displayed the silicon wafer during his keynote speech at the firm’s developer conference in San Francisco.

He revealed that it contained 364 million bits of memory and has more than 2.9 billion transistors. It is expected to go into production in 2011.

"We have at least four generations of what we are shipping today in development. That is as far out as we have ever been able to develop things.

"Not everything is done but it gets harder for sure. It requires more invention and more money and it’s our job to continue that pace," said Mr Otellini.

Those attending Intel Developer Forum, IDF, were impressed by what they saw.

"I believe we are always going to be able to improve on Moore’s Law," said Professor Tom Murphy from Contra Costa College.

"It’s always delightful to see the vision of what Intel is planning because it translates to the toys I will get to play with real soon."

Haider Sabri from techSpeak said: "I was starting to have doubts that Moore’s Law was valid anymore, but thankfully I have been proven wrong today."

Meanwhile Matthew Wolf, a research scientist from Georgia Tech, said he could not help thinking the end for Moore’s Law had to come eventually.

"I am coming at this as a physicist and it just had to end sometime. But I think that the trajectory for the next few years is clearly one that is real and on its way," said Mr Wolf.

Marketplace

During his speech, Mr Otellini also predicted that the worldwide personal computer market was due for a resurgence and could actually defy predictions by growing this year.

"In general, technology was the first into the recession and is likely to be the first out. We have seen this in past recessions and so far the pattern seems to be holding to that.

"The computer has become so indispensable that if it breaks you don’t wait for the recession to buy a new one. You are going to go out and get another because it is simply a part of your life," said Mr Otellini.

The optimism displayed by Intel’s boss goes against the grain given recent studies done by research companies IDC and Gartner.

Both have predicted that PC shipments will decline year-over-year in 2009, representing the first drop since 2001.

Researchers at Gartner point to a 2% decline this year, which is an improvement on the 6% drop the company was projecting a few months ago.

"Things are looking much better in the second half," Gartner research director George Shiffler told Cnet.com.

"It wouldn’t surprise me if we did see positive growth, but that’s not our call at the moment. I think that’s more of a best-case scenario," said Mr Shiffler.</p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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UN chief praises climate summit

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says a one-day climate change summit in New York has given fresh impetus to efforts to tackle global warming.

He says the momentum has shifted in favour of reaching a deal at December’s crucial climate meeting in Copenhagen.

Earlier, the summit heard that China will increase efforts to improve energy efficiency and cut its CO2 emissions.

The pledge prompted former-US vice-president and environmental activist Al Gore to praise China’s leadership.

Chinese President Hu Jintao gave no details about the measures, which should mean emissions grow less quickly than the economy.

China is the world biggest polluter, according to some measurements.

The US, the world’s other major emitter, said China’s proposals were helpful but figures were needed.

RICHARD BLACK: EARTH WATCH

"No-one seriously expects developing countries to accept numerical cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions"

Richard Black
Environment correspondent

Richard Black: Who’s listening

About 100 leaders attended the talks, ahead of the Copenhagen summit which is due to approve a new treaty.

At the close of the meeting, Mr Ban said: "While the summit is not the guarantee that we will get the global agreement, we are certainly one step closer to that global goal today."

He praised world leaders for their desire to tackle climate change.

"Climate change is a defining challenge of our time, he said.

"Today’s summit signals a determination of world leaders to address this challenge and reach a substantive deal in Copenhagen."

Figures requested

Negotiators for the Copenhagen summit are trying to agree on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol to limit carbon emissions.

The Chinese president said his country would curb its carbon emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product by a "notable margin" by 2020 from the 2005 level.

ANALYSIS
Shirong Chen, BBC China analyst
Change from Beijing is partly a reaction to international criticism as China becomes the world’s biggest polluter.

The country’s rapid economic growth has created demand for more energy and fuel.
There is a growing need for Beijing to provide clear answers on what is being done to deal with the problem.

Image-conscious Chinese officials want to be seen as co-operative internationally and accept that China must become part of the solution to major global issues such as the financial crisis and climate change.

China’s climate policy shift

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However, the proposal is unlikely to mean an overall reduction in emissions, as China’s economy is expected to continue to grow rapidly.

A US official said that China’s proposals were helpful but Beijing needed to provide figures.

"It depends on what the number is," US President Barack Obama’s climate change envoy Todd Stern said, quoted by Reuters news agency.

But Mr Gore praised China’s "impressive leadership".

"We’ve had… indications that in the event there is dramatic progress in this negotiation, that China will be prepared to do even more," he said.

BBC environment reporter Matt McGrath says that much of the debate about tackling global warming revolves around the idea of absolute cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide – but developing countries like India and China feel that this emphasis is unfair.

Richer countries, meanwhile, have had the benefits of centuries of fossil fuel use, and are now demanding that growing nations stop using them with no obvious alternatives in place, he says.

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• THURSDAY
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Mr Hu also pledged to "vigorously develop" renewable and nuclear energy.

He restated China’s position that developed nations needed to do more than developing nations to fight climate change because they were historically responsible for the problem.

"Developed countries should fulfil the task of emission reduction set in the Kyoto Protocol, continue to undertake substantial mid-term quantified emission reduction targets and support developing countries in countering climate change," he said.

In other speeches at the summit:

• US President Obama acknowledged that the US had been slow to act, but promised a "new era" of promoting clean energy and reducing carbon pollution
• The new Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, pledged to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020 compared to the 1990 level, calling it the Hatoyama Initiative
• French President Nicolas Sarkozy called on leaders to meet again in mid-November ahead of the crucial Copenhagen conference

Airlines plan ‘to cut emissions’

Challenge to developed world

There is also concern about the US.

President Obama has already announced a target of returning to 1990 levels of greenhouse emissions by 2020, but critics say Washington is moving too slowly on legislation which does not go far enough.

China and the US each account for about 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas pollution from coal, natural gas and oil.

The European Union is responsible for 14%, followed by Russia and India with 5% each.</p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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