Russia bullish on nanotech plans

Russian pledges to spend billions in public funds to develop its nanotechnology industry are being treated cautiously by leading British technology companies, states The Telegraph.

President Dmitry Medvedev said the country will channel 318 billion rubles (R80 billion) into the development of a nanotech infrastructure to increase exports of products built in Russia using the technology.

"We want to lead the process, and we have the intellectual potential, the organisational skills and the finance," he said. Oxford Instruments, a British nanotechnology company, said, however, that it may take time for the cash to become available.

Interactive coffee tables, robopets and talking walking frames could help elderly people stay at home for longer, according to a new report, says Craegmoor News.

Research at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Centre for Usable Home Technology at the University of York carried out a study which found councils could use a variety of emerging technologies in order to provide at-home care.

Among the futuristic technologies looked at in the research were robopets which would offer people companionship but could also be used as fire and burglar alarms. Coffee tables which can dispense medicines and talking walking frames that remind people where they are going were also looked at.

In what could boost the capacity of strained broadband networks and improve download time worldwide, scientists have developed a new optical fibre technology to transmit ten-fold more data over existing cables, writes The Hindu Business Line.

An international team, led by Monash University, has pioneered the innovation which is known as optical Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing, or oOFDM.

The technology applies ADSL principles, already used to expand the capacity of data transfer over traditional copper and wireless broadband, to optical fibre cables, potentially increasing their data capacity tenfold.