Once again, Intel is ramping up its quad-core lineup.

This time, the world’s largest chip maker is scheduled to unveil a pair of Xeon quad-core processors with 50-watt thermal envelopes. This represents a 60 percent decrease in power use from early chips that had 120 thermal watt envelopes and a 38 percent drop from 80-watt models.

The Santa Clara, Calif., company will officially unveil these two new “Clovertown” quad-core processors on March 12.

PointerClick here to read more about Intel’s short-term plans for its dual- and quad-core chips.

In a call with financial analysts on Feb. 22, Intel officials said the company would offer these low-watt, quad-core models as part of its short-term road map. Later in 2007, the company plans on rolling out a 3.0GHz version of its quad-core chip, as well as processors that include a 1600MHz FSB (front side bus).

Later, the company will also produce quad-core chips that use its 45-nanometer manufacturing process.

Calls made on cell phones do not affect hospital medical devices, U.S. researchers said on Friday, but store anti-theft alarms might make implanted heart devices misfire.

Tests at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota showed normal use of cell phones, also called mobile phones, caused no noticeable interference with patient care equipment, they said.

But a portable CD player caused an abnormal electrocardiographic (ECG) reading when a patient used it near one of the leads of the device, according to one of several reports in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

And at least two reports suggest that anti-theft devices set up near the doors of retail stores can cause implantable rhythm devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators to malfunction.

Intel’s new phase-change memory technology (PRAM) will begin sampling this year. Samsung, IBM, and Hitachi are all working on phase-change memory as a successor to flash as it has a lower (~20ns) read latency than flash (50-90ns). ‘Intel says they plan to ship the first PRAM modules as a straight-ahead NOR flash replacement so that they can work the kinks out of the design before trying to move it up the memory hierarchy. The company claims a much higher number of read-write cycles (100 million) than flash, as well as a potential 10 years’ worth of data retention. NOR flash is typically used as program storage memory for mobile devices like cell phones, while more durable but slower NAND flash is used for mass storage in devices like the iPod nano.

Turkey lifted its ban on YouTube Friday, an official for the country’s largest telecommunications firm said, two days after a court ordered the Web site blocked because of videos that allegedly insulted the founder of modern Turkey.

Ahter Kutadgu, head of corporate communications for Turk Telekom, told the Anatolia news agency his company had been notified of a court decision to lift the ban.

Kutadgu did not elaborate on the court’s reasoning. “As soon as the court decision lifting the ban reached us, we immediately opened YouTube,” he said.

The Istanbul court that ordered the site blocked on Wednesday had said it would lift the ban as soon as it ascertained that videos insulting Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, were removed.

The ban had been condemned by the press freedom group Reporters without Borders and drew attention to Turkey’s shaky record on permitting free expression.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has no lack of pen pals. His Feb. 6 open letter, “Thoughts on Music,” calling for an end to digital rights management, elicited a flurry of responses from companies like Macrovision and SanDisk, entrepreneurs like Michael Robertson and Mark Cuban, and just about everyone with a blog.

Jobs’s letter was nothing if not provocative. “Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats,” he said. “In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store.”

Today, DefectiveByDesign, an initiative backed by the Free Software Foundation, a longtime foe of digital rights management, challenged Jobs to put his money where his mouth is.

Questioning Jobs’s sincerity, DefectiveByDesign called upon Apple to take three steps to demonstrate its commitment to ending DRM: drop DRM on iTunes for independent artists; drop DRM on iTunes for Disney movies and video; and fund a campaign to repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on bypassing digital rights management.