There's certainly no shortage of companies working to make electronics of all sorts more energy efficient, but NEC and Rohm Co now say that they're on the verge of a breakthrough that could change things in a big way, and we could possibly see it in "practical use" by the end of this year.

ENGADGET: Integrated circuits with no standby power could be in use by year's end

This will be illustrated through specific practical examples of the use of the tools to facilitate change in different regions of the world.

UNESCO: All Events | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Much later, at the same time as wanting to learn more about all this public space, to have a geographic and practical knowledge - that is by getting hold of maps and keys to use the tunnels - we realized this really was the ideal location for numerous projects.

CNN: Bone people: The explorers of the Parisian catacombs

In the practical use case of a connected home, bandwidth will always be limited, but intelligent network management helps address this.

ENGADGET: Qualcomm Atheros announces StreamBoost technology to improve home networks, router performance

Dr. NIMAR: I think this report stops short of saying things that are of practical use to the law enforcement community.

NPR: NYPD Probes Path of Homegrown Terrorists

In 2008, Dr Cummer first described the theory of acoustic cloaking in an article in Physical Review Letters, and earlier this year a group from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrated the first practical use of the theory in an article in the same journal.

BBC: Acoustic 'cloaking device' shields objects from sound