Roentgen Seeing is believing with IBM's prototype 200-pixel-per-inch flat-panel LCD. Project manager John Ritsko boasts that this ultrahigh-res display, code-named Roentgen, offers more than 5.2 million full-color pixels, almost seven times greater than the average CRT display. In fact, Roentgen's resolution is better than most types of offset printing. The display weighs in at 20 pounds and uses half the power of a standard 18-inch CRT. While Roentgen will be pricey (Ritsko won't speculate on cost, but the smart money says at least $5K), this dazzling screen will be worth it for inspecting onscreen X rays, desktop proofing, and electronic blueprinting.
Quantum Crypto Developed by quantum information manager Nabil Amer, Big Blue's quantum crypto system uses physics instead of math to churn out uncrackable code. To cloak a message, scientists embed the crypto key into a stream of photons by oscillating the light particles in different directions. This process allows encryption keys to be exchanged over insecure networks (a telephone, for example) because the system doesn't depend on the code itself for security. Since by definition a quantum state can't be observed without disturbing it, any tampering would scatter the photons and the receiver would know if someone had hacked the message.
FLASH Strange as it sounds, IBM is doing biotech. The latest project of the Computational Biology Center, called FLASH (Fast Look-up Algorithm for Structural Homology), helps scientists hunt for new drugs or killer genes. Rather than sifting through chunks of data one item at a time, FLASH indexes an entire database and determines the best place to begin searching for a match. A newly discovered DNA sequence, for example, can be compared to a database of sequences whose functions are known. When similarities pop up, scientists are clued in to the role the new sequence plays in a cell, and a new drug may soon follow.
Millipede Millipede project leader Gerd Binnig's idea for improving storage capacity involves tossing out the old magnetic meme in favor of a mechanical - or, in this case, nanomechanical - alternative. Binnig and company hope to replace the CD-ROM drive with a miniature Mylar disc that spins under a bank of microscopic cantilevers, each equipped with a silicon tip about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. When an electric pulse is fired through a lever, it burns indentations into the Mylar. Later, the same tips read the dents. The prototype offers a read-only capacity 100 times the volume of an average CD-ROM.
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