Moneymakers

NEC Corp, the Tokyo-based electronics concern, plans to dazzle consumers with a 256-megabyte flash memory chip. This "next generation" device, which will be 16 times as powerful as those now in the market, has the potential to beat the conventional dynamic random access memory chips hands down, says nec vice-president Hajime Sasaki. Not only will the new chip have a much shorter access time, it will also consume less energy.

Technological juggernaut loses speed

GERMANY is having the jitters about losing its reputation as the producer of world class technologies. In an open acknowledgement of the country's technological downslide, German chancellor Helmut Kohl is creating a National Technology Council to focus on technological shortcomings and revise policy.

Fingering the keyboard

The computer keyboard is not only a secretary's bete noire -- continuous typing leads to what is called the repetitive strain injury, characterised by the numbing of various muscles of the hand -- but all programming also presupposes a knowledge of English.

Ironing out pollution

SCIENTISTS at the University of California at Berkeley in the US have developed a method that cuts to 1/10th the cost of cleaning up nitrogen oxides produced when fossil fuels are burned (Nature, Vol 369, No 6476). The new technology is also environmentally less harmful than the techniques currently used by power plants and fossil fuel-intensive industries.

Everything else being equal

The title would cause non-scientists to groan, "Not another harangue on equity..." Scientists might dismiss it as a bit of hackery -- how could anyone be preposterous enough to say that equity is good science?

Car radars for the price of chips

MINI radars are being used in warning systems for cars when they are being reversed and for cruise-control systems to maintain constant distances from other vehicles. Now, Thomas McEwan, an engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, has designed miniature radars that, at just $10, are less than a thousandth of what other systems that perform the same functions cost.

MONEYMAKERS

• FARNWAY, a farmers' cooperative in northeastern England, is all set to pave the way for bio-diesel-fuelled vehicles. It plans to run its cars and lorries on bio-diesel produced from rapeseed.

Will the black government go green?

Smaller and faster

A FRESH approach has paved the way for small and compact high energy accelerators to propel electrically charged atomic and subatomic particles such as electrons and protons.

Face to face

WHEN chief election commissioner T N Seshan announced that identity cards would be compulsory for all elections held on or after January 1, 1995, he opened up one of the largest markets in the world.