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Research Watch
PG&E signs up for 200 MW of baseload space solar power
By Paul Evans
03:51 April 19, 2009 PDT
US utility PG&E has this week announced it is seeking regulatory approval for a power supply deal that could see it buying power generated by solar satellites within seven years. If the proposal gets approval from regulators in its home state of California it will agree to a power purchase deal that from 2016 would see PG&E buy 200MW of renewable power over a 15-year period from space solar technology startup Solaren Corp. Read More
The future 3D TV – we look at some of the best angles
By Kyle Sherer
19:37 April 13, 2009 PDT
A number of companies has invested considerable resources into developing autostereoscopic 3D TVs, confident that they will be the “next big thing”. Gizmag examines some of the best 3D TV design concepts out there, in an attempt to sort what's truly possible from what's pie in the sky. Read More
New climate model predicts almost ice-free Arctic Ocean in just 30 years
02:15 April 8, 2009 PDT
According to new research the Arctic Ocean may be ice free in the summer months much faster than previously estimated. Research based on earlier climatic models suggested that this would not occur until the end of the century, but new models suggest that the Arctic might lose most of its ice cover in as little as 30 years - three times more rapid than previous studies have indicated. If this was to occur, the amount of the arctic covered by ice at the end of the summer could be down to around 1 million square kilometers (390 000 square miles) compared with the currently coverage of 4.6 million square kilometers (1.8 million square miles). Read More
Engineers develop cheap flexible loudspeaker that's only 0.25mm thick
By Paul Best
22:32 April 6, 2009 PDT
A loudspeaker that’s so flat and flexible it can be tacked to a wall just like a picture? That’s precisely what engineers at Warwick Audio Technologies in the UK have cooked up. The speaker – dubbed the Flat Flexible Loudspeaker (FFL) for obvious reasons – is less than 0.25mm and thin enough to be concealed inside office ceiling tiles, cars or printed with a design and attached to any flat surface, like a wall. Read More
Breakthrough promises faster graphene based computer chips
By Darren Quick
05:12 April 6, 2009 PDT
Since its discovery in 2004 graphene has promised some truly astounding developments in the realm of computer technology. We’ve previously looked at how graphene could provide the means to keep pace with Moore’s Law. Now engineers at Ohio State University are developing a technique for mass-producing computer chips made from graphene that meshes with standard chip-making practices. Read More
Music really is a universal language
By Karen Sprey
04:19 March 30, 2009 PDT
It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words but the same image can have different meanings across cultures. Music, however, may bridge the cultural divide: a new study has shown that regardless of culture or previous exposure, people were accurately able to recognize three emotions in Western music - happiness, sadness and fear. Read More
Zebrafish sheds light on blindness
By Darren Quick
00:42 March 27, 2009 PDT
Since the eyes of the zebrafish contain a mosaic of light-sensitive cells whose structure and functions are nearly identical to those of human eyes, their study may help understand the progression of disease and find more effective treatments for blindness. A study of the retinal development of zebrafish larvae by scientists from Florida State Universityand has identified a genetic switch that should shed new light on these molecular mechanisms and, consequently, provide much needed insight on inherited retinal diseases in humans. Read More
Indian Ocean temperature link to bushfires
By Mike Hanlon
02:33 March 24, 2009 PDT
March 24, 2009 The weather conditions that lead to Southern Australia’s past two devastating bushfires may be linked to lower than normal sea-surface temperatures in the eastern Indian Ocean, according to CSIRO research presented at the Greenhouse 2009 Conference today. The Ash Wednesday bushfires in February 1983 and the Black Saturday bushfires in February were preceded by months of very dry conditions. Those dry conditions were partly caused by cooler ocean sea-surface temperatures in the eastern Indian Ocean, which contributed to a substantial reduction in spring-time rainfall over the south-east of Australia. Read More
UK Researcher claims there are just eight patterns behind all humour
By Mike Hanlon
16:54 March 21, 2009 PDT
March 22, 2009 Evolutionary theorist Alastair Clarke this week published details of eight patterns he claims to be the basis of all the humour that has ever been imagined or expressed, regardless of civilization, culture or personal taste. Clarke has stated before that humour is based on the surprise recognition of patterns but this is the first time he has identified the precise nature of the patterns involved, addressing the deceptively simple unit and context relationships at their foundation. Read More
Survey shows successful women use a distinctive gender-associated influencing style
By Mike Hanlon
16:43 March 21, 2009 PDT
March 22, 2009 A recent survey of women leaders in information technology shows that 92% of those surveyed believe that the ability to influence stakeholders is key to their overall success, and view their influencing approach as very different from the style of their male colleagues. The study was conducted The Leader's Edge/Leaders By Design in partnership with a major professional association for CIOs. Read More
Self inspecting bridges could save lives
By Jamilah Le
23:58 March 15, 2009 PDT
From mundane traffic overpasses to marvelous feats of soaring engineering, bridges are something we tend to take for granted - until something goes wrong that is. A team from the University of Michigan is leading a five-year, $19 million project to engineer an intelligent infrastructure monitoring system designed to prevent tragedies like the collapse of the Interstate 35 West bridge over the Mississippi river in 2007 in which 13 people were killed and 145 were injured. Read More
Nanotechnology and rainmaking
By Darren Quick
23:41 March 10, 2009 PDT
Rainmaking has advanced since the days when a ritual dance was believed to invoke the wet stuff, but while modern day cloud seeding has been shown to change the structure and size of clouds, it’s still debatable whether the practice actually has any effect on rainfall. After all, even if precipitation does occur after cloud seeding there’s no way of knowing whether it would have rained anyway. This uncertainty hasn’t stopped widespread use of cloud seeding in countries around the world including the US, Russia, Australia and China, which boasts the largest cloud seeding system in the world. Now a breakthrough by an international team of scientists could help in the development of new materials which could be used to enhance the process. Read More
Virtual reality for all five senses
By Darren Quick
03:15 March 10, 2009 PDT
To date most virtual reality devices have been focused on providing input for just two senses – sight and hearing - and while haptic technologies are on the march, we've yet to see a complete VR system that convincingly mimics all aspects of our perception. In a taste of what could be, last week at the Pioneer 09 science show in London researchers unveiled a mock-up of a virtual reality headset designed to stimulate all five senses. Read More
The earliest archeological traces of the domestication of horses
By Mike Hanlon
06:06 March 9, 2009 PDT
An international team of archeologists has discovered the earliest known traces to date of horse domestication by humans, dating back to 5500 years. This discovery suggests that horses were harnessed, probably for riding, and exploited for their milk. The researchers have traced the origins of horse domestication back to the Botai Culture of Kazakhstan around 5,500 years ago – about 1,000 years earlier than thought and about 2,000 years earlier than domestic horses are known to have been in Europe. Read More
This battle station is fully operational - the world's largest laser nears completion
By Darren Quick
15:36 March 5, 2009 PST
Lasers, is there anything they can’t do? If they’re not shooting down UAVs, they’re fighting AIDS or bringing us the next generation of HDTVs. That’s all well and good, but when it comes to lasers there’s none bigger than the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California - an instrument capable of delivering 500 trillion watts of power in a 20-nanosecond burst which is now nearing completion. Its myriad uses will include providing fusion data for nuclear weapons simulations, probing the secrets of extrasolar planets and could even lead to the holy grail of energy production - practical fusion energy. Read More
Solar power beamed from space within a decade?
By Paul Evans
22:46 February 22, 2009 PST
The concept of Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) has been doing the rounds for decades with fantastic claims of 24 hour a day solar power beamed from space via microwave to any point on earth. A start up company called Space Energy, Inc says it plans to develop SBSP satellites to generate and transmit electricity to receivers on the Earth's surface. To do this, the company plans to create and launch a prototype satellite into low earth orbit (LEO). The hitch: this concept is based on as yet unproven technology. Paul Evans investigates. Read More
Cosmic Dawn simulation provides insights into the early universe
By Kyle Sherer
14:18 February 18, 2009 PST
Computational Cosmology – the use of simulations to shed light on astronomical mysteries – has provided scientists with a glimpse of what the universe may have looked like 500 million years after the Big Bang, when the first galaxies were forming in the universe’s “reionization” stage. The images, produced by scientists at Durham University, will provide researchers with key insights into dark matter, which remains frustratingly elusive, despite being first proposed in 1933 and making up an estimated 80% of the universe. Read More
Moving towards terabit per second communications
By Darren Quick
20:14 February 16, 2009 PST
Internet speeds of a terabit per second have come one step closer with scientists at the University of Sydney developing a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) that can not only increase internet speeds by 60 times, but can also act as traffic monitors to keep the speed high and error free. Read More
Experiences, not possessions, lead to greater happiness
By Mike Hanlon
18:34 February 8, 2009 PST
Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? New research suggests buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness. The study demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs. Read More
Give people more freedom to create less selfish societies says research
By Mike Hanlon
16:13 February 8, 2009 PST
Cooperation, despite being now considered the third force of evolution, just behind mutation and natural selection, is difficult to explain in the context of an evolutionary process based on competition between individuals and selfish behavior. But this puzzle, that has haunted scientists for decades, is now a little closer to be solved by research about to be published on the journal Physical Review Letters. Read More
The International Year of Astronomy (and the man who preceded Galileo)
By Mike Hanlon
01:47 January 30, 2009 PST
January 30, 2009 This year the world celebrates the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009), marking the 400th anniversary of the first drawings of celestial objects through a telescope. The telescope was invented in Holland in 1608, though it is Italian Galileo Galilei who is commonly accredited with having made the first telescope-enabled discoveries in 1609 due to the publishing of his Siderius Nuncius in 1610. Galileo was the first to publish drawings of the cratered surface of the Moon and the satellites of Jupiter, which added considerable weight to the Copernican cause and man’s understanding of the universe. Now evidence has come to light that English polymath Thomas Harriot examined and recorded the Moon through a telescope prior to the brilliant Italian. Read More
Measurement Lab detects blocked or throttled ports
By Tim Hanlon
21:51 January 28, 2009 PST
Google, the PlanetLab consortium and the Open Technology Institute today launched the Measurement Lab (M-Lab), an open platform for Internet measurement tools, along with three tools for users to test their Internet connections - including Glasnost, which tests whether BitTorrent is being blocked or throttled. Read More
European researchers achieve solar efficiency record
16:37 November 23, 2008 PST
Scientists from the EU funded FULLSPECTRUM project have developed solar cells which are able to convert 39.7 percent of the energy of sunlight into electricity. The result represents the highest percentage ever reached in Europe and is more than double the efficiency of most conventional silicon-based PVs in production today. Read More
Global spam levels drop significantly after rogue ISP taken offline
By Emily Clark
17:58 November 16, 2008 PST
Ars Technica reports that there has been a marked (albeit temporary) drop in global spam levels following the shutdown of two rogue ISPs and an international spam operation. The three takedowns have all occurred within the last six weeks and are the result of work by security researchers and network professionals. Read More
Solar Power Satellites could broadcast energy to Earth
By Kyle Sherer
15:03 October 29, 2008 PDT
Dusting off an old renewable energy proposal, president of the National Space Society Ben Bova recently published an article in The Washington Post calling for the next president of the United States to commission a US$1 billion solar power satellite from NASA before the end of their second term. The satellite would harness energy directly from the sun and broadcast it back to a receiver on Earth using microwave frequencies. Read More
william
- November 26, 2009 @ 19:45 UTC
