HP Labs just announced that they've built a fourth fundamental 2-terminal electronics component, called a "memristor". It's been theoretically predicted since the early '70s, but this is the first time one's been built. For those of you familiar with the other three components (resistors, capacitors, and inductors), memristors apparently "remember" how much current has flowed through it, and in what direction. Run current through it one way, its resistance rises... run current through it the other way, its resistance falls. Mind you, that's different from a diode, that's always high-impedance one way and low-impedance the other... the resistance of a memristor stays the same until current flows through it.
Why do you non-electronics-geeks care? It means, among other things, that low-power electronics that remember what they were doing before you turned them off are on the horizon... possibly no more waiting for your computer to boot, no more losing your term paper in a power outage, that sort of thing... and that's only the beginning.
My gut reaction is that this might be comparable to when the first diodes and transistors were created back in the mid-20th century. Start working on your "I remember when..." geezer anecdotes now. Oh, and if you want to see a news report, try this.
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