Now, a team of MIT researchers has come up with a very different approach: building cubes or towers that extend the solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations. Amazingly, the results from the structures they’ve tested show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.
via Solar ‘towers’ beat panels by up to 20x | ScienceBlog.com.
GOING UNDERGROUND ON CAMPUS
Tapping the Earth for Clean, Efficient Heating and Cooling
There are well known problems of course. The most obvious relates to guaranteeing the security of data when it is stored on computers that that a user does not own and that many others can also access. But various solutions have emerged such as encrypting data before it is sent to the cloud. For that reason, the migration to the cloud is proceeding at full speed in many places.
That may be folly. Today, Bryan Ford at Yale University in New Haven says that the full risks of this migration have yet to be properly explored. He points out that complex systems can fail in many unexpected ways and outlines various simple scenarios in which a cloud could come unstuck.
via The Hidden Risk of a Meltdown in the Cloud – Technology Review.
Now Ford imagines the scenario in which both load balancing programs operate with the same refresh period, say once a minute. When these periods coincide, the control loops start sending the load back and forth between the virtual servers in a positive feedback loop.
The annual Association for Computing Machinery ACM A.M. Turing Award, sometimes called the “Nobel Prize in Computing,” recognizes Pearl for his advances in probabilistic and causal reasoning. His work has enabled creation of thinking machines that can cope with uncertainty, making decisions even when answers aren’t black or white.
via Judea Pearl, a big brain behind artificial intelligence, wins Turing Award.
Congrats UCLA.
Are ESLs A Mercury-Free Replacement for CFL Lights? | Green Prophet.
If only there were a light bulb as efficient as a compact fluorescent light (CFL), but without the ghastly green light and brain-eating toxic mercury. Am I asking too much? The inventors of the Electron Stimulated Luminance (ESL) lights don’t think so. A company called Vu1 plans to sell ESL bulbs in Europe and the Mideast in 2013. Vu1 lights are based on cathode ray tube (CRT) technology, are dim-able and have the cozy glow of incandescent light bulbs. How did Vu1 accomplish this magic? It helps that I know a little bit about CRTs from the days when my brother and I repaired old televisions.
What’s confusing (and Ford says as much) is that there’s a first “Installation Complete” message after about a minute–but, wait, there’s more. Leave the USB drive in and keep the car turned on as a second installation then begins and will last much longer. After about five to ten minutes, the update is finally complete. You’ll then need to pair your mobile device again, but the contact information and your files should still be in the SYNC system.
via Ford Test Drives New Consumer Firmware Updates | SecurityWeek.Com.
What could possibly go wrong LOL?
You will then need to take the USB drive back to your laptop or home computer to report that the update was successful so that Ford can advance you to the next update, should one become available. This last step might not be completed by most consumers who will move on to other things. It’ll be interesting to see how many downloads correspond to successful installations of the update.
It may be possible to travel to space in an elevator as early as 2050, a major construction company has announced.
Charged Up: Electric Rockets Are Set to Transform Space Flight | Txchnologist.
NASA’s Dawn space probe, which is now exploring the asteroid Vesta, was among the first interplanetary craft to employ solar electric propulsion (SEP) for primary propulsion. But Dawn’s three electric engines are rated at only 2.3 kW each (3 horsepower), about the power of a small lawnmower engine, which means which means they had to produce their low thrust for years to build up the high velocity needed to travel to the distant asteroid in a reasonable time.
This tech is so cool.
Rather than trying to merge flat chips with round optical fibres, the team of scientists used high-pressure chemistry techniques to deposit semiconducting materials layer by layer directly into tiny holes in optical fibres. This bypasses the need to integrate fibre-optics onto a chip, and means that the data signal never has to leave the fibre.
via Soton boffins embed electronic components into optical fibres – Techworld.com.
Meanwhile, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced in Novemebr that they had developed photonic chips that use light beams rather than electrons. The arrival of photonic computers could help speed traffic across fibre optic networks by eliminating a conversion process, the researchers said.