Intel Corp. aims to launch a new architecture of computer microprocessors for low cost laptop PCs, code-named “Diamondville”, in early second quarter next year.

Diamondville will be focused on the low cost mobile PCs such as the Eee PC by AsusTech Computer, the XO laptop from One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) and Intel’s Classmate PCs. These laptops are designed for children and for economiies requiring long-lasting and durable batteries and dust proof casings.

In order to maintain the high quality of mobile computing even at a low cost price, Diamondville is designed as an all new architecture, with a new RTL (register transfer language) and a new silicon.

The new microprocessor will be of lower voltage than the ULV (ultra-low voltage) Core 2 Duo processor, said Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of the mobile platforms group at Intel. Intel launched two versions of ULV Core 2 Duo in April, each with the thermal design power of 10 watts.

These laptop PCs in this user category will probably cost between US$199 and $250, he said. For that reason, Diamondville will also be extremely low cost.

On Tuesday, an Asustek executive said his company has already received an order for 1 million Eee PCs from a government he declined to name. The OLPC group has also confirmed orders from several countries.

Trouble sometimes seems to appear out of thin air, and a new experiment suggests that’s exactly what may happen to the world’s biggest science project when it’s scheduled to begin operation in Switzerland next May. In the high-energy maelstrom of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), particles will spontaneously appear out of the empty vacuum, which might just cause the $4-billion accelerator to overheat—and shut down.The idea that pairs of particles (in this case, an electron and a positron) can emerge out of nothingness is well known. But physicists working on a competing extreme machine, New York’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, recently observed the heating effect for the first time. As they slammed together gold ions in a 2.4-mile loop guided by a magnetic field, reaching temperatures of over a trillion degrees, pairs of electrons and positrons were created out of the vacuum. But when some of these electrons latched on to passing gold ions, they diverted part of the beam, causing it to smash into the wall of the loop. The result: a “hot spot” of 0.0002 watts, roughly equivalent to the power output of a firefly.

That’s no big deal for the RHIC—but the LHC will be using heavier lead atoms, speeding along with nearly 100 times more energy, which is expected to make electron-positron creation 100,000 times more likely. As a result, the heat generated will be more like 25 watts, or a low-watt bulb. Given that the superconducting magnets that steer the beam are cooled to a brisk 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (-456 degrees Fahrenheit), the extra heat could cause a risky sudden shutdown, followed by lengthy downtime for the accelerator.

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ELECTRONIC SPY FLY - SMALL MACHINE FLY that can literally fly and look like a bug, yet lets the controller know what is happening.

As U.S. Military pouring considerable amount of money into MAV (micro air vehicle) projects, it’s likely that these robotic bugs will be used as spy flies. DARPA envisions this can be used by soldiers in their reconnaissance missions as they can be remotely controlled from the ground. This spy flies would not only relay images of troop movements, guidance to enemy targets, but it could also be used to detect weapons of mass destruction may it be biological, chemical or nuclear.

In the recent development, scientists from Harvard successfully invented a robotic fly which can be used in reconnaissance missions, search missions, and in many other military intelligence gathering activities . The researchers, headed by Professor Robert Wood, took seven years to complete the development with the backing of US Military.