The end of computers ! When it comes to our gadgets, we live by Moore's law, which implies that as time goes by and tech gets better, the hardware we use gets smaller and more sophisticated.
Now that we've whittled machines that filled whole rooms down to an MP3 player the size of a Triscuit, it's hard to say how much smaller our devices can get — but computing is continuing to evolve. In ten or twenty years, what we now call "computers" and how we do our computing are both guaranteed to be radically different and almost unrecognizable. In this REM-flavored infographic (which will surely get that song solidly stuck in your head for the rest of the day) we take a look at the progression of hardware from its beginnings in research to its future in quantum theory and even our own DNA. Click image to see full-size version. [source: OnlineComputerScienceDegree.com]
Leafsnap: An Electronic Field Guide. All-female lizard species created in the lab. Researchers have bred a new species of all-female lizard, mimicking a process that has happened naturally in the past but has never been directly observed.
“It’s recreating the events that lead to new species,” said cell biologist Peter Baumann of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, whose new species is described May 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It relates to the question of how these unisexual species arise in the first place.” Female-only species that reproduce by cloning themselves—a process called parthenogenesis, in which embryos develop without fertilization—were once considered dead-end evolutionary flukes.