Silicon oxide has long played the sidekick, insulating electronics from damage, but scientists at Rice University have just discovered the dielectric material itself could become a fantastic form of storage. Replacing the 10-nanometer-thick strips of graphite used in previous experiments with a layer of SiOx, graduate student Jun Yao discovered the latter material worked just as well, creating 5nm silicon nanowires that can be easily joined or broken (to form the bits and bytes of computer storage) when a voltage is temporarily applied. Considering that conventional computer memory pathways are still struggling to get to 20nm wide , this could make for quite the advance in storage, though we’ll admit we’ve heard tell of one prototype 8nm NAND flash chip that uses nanowires already

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Silicon oxide forms solid state memory pathways just five nanometers wide

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is suing several high-tech giants for infringing patents held by a Silicon Valley lab he founded in the 1990s.

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Billionaire sues hi-tech giants

Just our favorite combination of news: a mind-bending innovation that can have a very practical impact on our daily tech consumption.

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Melting silicon ‘in reverse’ can help purify it, result in cheaper electronics

Using copper cables to transfer data around a computer? Get your head out of the sand, Grandpa! Intel thinks that’s on the outs and is touting its recent accomplishments with Silicon Photonics and integrated lasers, using light pulses to move data at 50Gbps (last time we heard Intel tout the tech was when it hit 40Gbps speeds in 2007 )

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Intel’s 50Gbps Silicon Photonics Link shines a light on future computers (video)

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is to join Silicon Valley venture capital firm Khosla Ventures as an adviser.

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Tony Blair in green advisory role

Russia plans to create its own Silicon Valley

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Digital vision

The Nokia / Samsung / Toshiba / Sony / Silicon Image team hoping to bring a standard to the world of high definition outputs on mobiles just got a bit official-er, shifting from the old working group title to the newly formed MHL (Mobile High-Definition Link) Consortium. If you haven’t been paying attention over the last couple of years (we understand, we’ve been caught up in the Twilight series too — Bella’s life is so complex) Silicon Image has been pushing a 5-pin alternative to pared down HDMI jacks that are capable of outputting 1080p to connected displays while also providing power to the mobile device over a single cable. A 1.0 draft of the spec is due in the first half of the year, but an early peek is available now for $100.

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Mobile High-Definition Link supergroup upgrades to Consortium status

Another day, another experimental CPU cooling method that may or may not come to pass. We’ve seen ” thermal paste ” from IBM and polyethylene from MIT, and now researchers at the University of Rochester have developed a method for coaxing water along nanometer-scale grooves carved into silicon. So hydrophilic are the patterns that water will even flow against gravity (and we’ve got the video to prove it).

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Researchers teach liquid to flow uphill, hope to cool future CPUs (video)

Image Credit: Daniel Adel, New York Times Nothing sells papers (or ads) like turning a little corporate competition into something personal. Case in point, a New York Times piece from the weekend titled “Apple’s Spat With Google Is Getting Personal,” that opened with this rather ominous, one-sentence paragraph: “It looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Cue the orchestra.

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Apple vs. Google gets personal: "Steve Jobs simply hates Eric Schmidt" (video)

Lenovo loves its red mousing nipple, Apple digs its aluminum and IBM adores those light pulses.

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IBM keeps light pulse bandwagon rolling, uses ‘em for chip-to-chip communication