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Tianhe-1A, a new supercomputer revealed today at HPC 2010 China, has set a new performance record of 2.507 petaflops (quadrillion floating point operations per second), as measured by the LINPACK benchmark, making it the fastest system in China and in the world today, according to an NVIDIA statement.

A study appearing Feb. 10 in Science Express calculates the world's total technological capacity to store, communicate and compute information, part of a Special Online Collection: Dealing with Data. The study by the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism estimates that in 2007, humankind was able to store 2.9 × 1020 optimally compressed bytes, communicate almost 2 × 1021 bytes, and carry out 6.4 × 1018 instructions per second on general-purpose computers. General-purpose computing capacity grew at an annual rate of 58%. The world's capacity for bidirectional telecommunication grew at 28% per year, closely followed by the increase in globally stored information (23%). Humankind's capacity for unidirectional information diffusion through broadcasting channels has experienced comparatively modest annual growth (6%). Telecommunication has been dominated by digital technologies since 1990 (99.9% in digital format in 2007), and the majority of our technological memory has been in digital format since the early 2000s (94% digital in 2007).

Using stem cell technology, reproductive scientists in Texas, led by Dr. Richard R. Berhringer at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, have produced male and female mice from two fathers.

Cisco predicts more than 15 billion network-connected devices by 2015, reaching 966 exabytes (10^18 bytes) per year - close to 1 zettabyte (10^21 bytes). Average global IP traffic in 2015 will reach 245 terabytes per second, equivalent to 200 million people streaming an HD movie (1.2 Mbps) simultaneously. This growth will primarily be driven by the global online video community, which will increase by approximately 500 million users by 2015, up from more than 1 billion Internet video users in 2010, Cisco says. Global IP traffic growth is driven by four primary factors, according to Cisco: An increasing number of devices: The proliferation of tablets, mobile phones, connected appliances and other smart machines is driving up the demand for connectivity.  By 2015, there will be nearly 15 billion network connections via devices - including machine-to-machine - and more than two connections for each person on earth. More Internet users: By 2015, there will be nearly 3 billion Internet users - more than 40 percent of the world's projected population. Faster broadband speed: The average fixed broadband speed is expected to increase four-fold, from 7 megabits per second in 2010 to 28 Mbps in 2015. The average broadband speed has already doubled within the past year from 3.5 Mbps to 7 Mbps. More video: By 2015, 1 million video minutes -+ the equivalent of 674 days - will traverse the Internet every second. By 2015, the Asia Pacific region will generate the most IP traffic (24.1 exabytes per month), surpassing last year's leader, North America (22.3 exabytes per month), for the top spot. The fastest-growing IP-traffic regions for the forecast period (2010-2015) are the Middle East and Africa, surpassing last year's leader, Latin America.

Despite shifting into higher gear within the consumer's green conscience, hybrid vehicles are still tethered to the gas pump via a fuel-thirsty 100-year-old invention: the internal combustion engine. However, researchers at Michigan State University have built a prototype gasoline engine that requires no transmission, crankshaft, pistons, valves, fuel compression, cooling systems or fluids. Their so-called Wave Disk Generator could greatly improve the efficiency of gas-electric hybrid automobiles and potentially decrease auto emissions up to 90 percent when compared with conventional combustion engines. The engine has a rotor that's equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy. The Wave Disk Generator uses 60 percent of its fuel for propulsion; standard car engines use just 15 percent. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines. Researchers estimate the new model could shave almost 1,000 pounds off a car's weight currently taken up by conventional engine systems. Last week, the prototype was presented to the energy division of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is backing the Michigan State University Engine Research Laboratory with $2.5 million in funding. Michigan State's team of engineers hope to have a car-sized 25-kilowatt version of the prototype ready by the end of the year.

Robots have been considered too unpredictable and dangerous to work alongside humans in factories, but improved technologies for artificial sensing and motion are leading to a new wave of safer robots. Last winter, NASA sent a humanoid robot dubbed Robonaut 2 (R2) to the International Space Station. R2, which has only a torso, sophisticated arms and fingers, and a head full of sensors, jointly developed by NASA and General Motors under a program to create a robot that could operate safely alongside humans. R2 uses a popular robotics technology called series elastic actuators in its joints. The actuators have an elastic spring component between the motor and the object the robot has to pick up. The actuators help the robot detect and control the force of its own movements. R2 is also covered in soft material in case of accidental collisions, and its head contains cameras so it can keep track of its human colleagues. In June, President Obama announced a $500 million federal investment in manufacturing technology (including $70 million for robotics). It represents another step in developing robots that can assist with repetitious or physically stressful assembly-line tasks without posing a safety risk.

What does the future of science look like? About a year ago, I was asked this question. My response then was: Transdisciplinary collaboration. Researchers from a variety of domains-biology, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, law-all coming together, using inputs from each specialized area to generate the best comprehensive solutions to society's more persistent problems. Indeed, it appears as if I was on the right track, as more and more academic research departments, as well as industries, are seeing the value in this type of partnership. Now let's take this a step further. Not only do I think we will be relying on inputs from researchers and experts from multiple domains to solve scientific problems, but I see society itself getting involved on a much more significant level as well. And I don't just mean science awareness. I'm talking about actually participating in the research itself. Essentially, I see a huge boom in the future for Citizen Science.

Global risk-based authentication market stood at $ 2.3 bn & is projected to grow at a CAGR of more than 18.8% by 2024 due to increasing adoption of risk-based authentication solutions in various industries.