Those little tubes are getting everywhere…two physicists at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University have managed to get a rough and ready flash memory device based on carbon nanotubes to work at room temperature. It’s not perfect by a long chalk, but it’s the first step on the inevitable road to nanotube electronics.

NASA scientists have announced that all the systems on the New Horizons probe that can be checked have been checked, and passed with flying colours. The only system untested is an imaging device that cannot be used while the probe is still exposed to high levels of sunlight. Once the probe reaches the Jupiter-slingshot stage of its journey next year, they can give it a trial run.

Quantum entanglement is a great way of transmitting information over distances almost instantly, but signal loss restricts the effective range to about 100 miles. So you need the equivalent of signal repeaters along the route – and a group of Chinese physicists have developed a method of boosting the signal via a process called ‘entanglement swapping’ which involves entangling photons that are already entangled. The scientists admit that this is a hard concept for them to get their own heads around; scant hope for us laymen, then.

Where the hell are those mag-lev trains they promised us when they discovered superconductivity? They are a step closer to reality thanks to scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who have introduced nanoscale defects into a “cuprate” superconductor to create short wires that can carry large currents and work in strong magnetic fields. Once they get it scaled up to kilometer lengths, high speed trains will be one of many applications.

The world eats a lot of chickens. The world uses a lot of PCBs too, and they’re made of expensive materials that are hard to recycle. So why not kill two birds with one stone and start making PCBs from processed chicken feathers and soybeans? Not only will they be recyclable, they’ll be faster than normal boards as well – the University of Delaware is on the case.