Tuesday, 7 October 2014
Baffled by Higgs bosons, quantum mechanics, and the accelerating expansion of the universe? This year's physics Nobel Prize is for something that's reassuringly understandable and useful: the blue LEDs used in everything from home lighting and headlights to TV screens and traffic signals.
Three researchers received the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for the invention of this blue light-emitting diode (LED), a technology now used in high-speed networking, data storage, smartphones, water purification, and efficient home illumination.
The winners are Isamu Akasaki, a Japanese citizen and professor at Meijo University and Nagoya University; Hiroshi Amano, a Japanese citizen and professor at Nagoya University; and Shuji Nakamura, an American citizen and professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara.
The key advantage of their invention 20 years ago is the production of light with far less waste of electrical energy than with preceding technologies like incandescent and fluorescent lights, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the prize.
"A quarter of energy consumption goes to illumination," said Per Delsing, a physics professor at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, during a press conference announcing the award. As a result, any increase in efficiency and consequent saving of energy "is really going to have a big impact on modern civilization," he said.
Nobel Prizes in physics often go to fundamental discoveries such as the Higgs Boson. But when the committee makes an award for an invention, "we really emphasize the usefulness of the invention," said Anne L'Huillier, an atomic physics professor at Lund University in Sweden, also speaking at the press conference. And the blue LED is nothing if not useful.
Recent Nobel prizes have been awarded for concepts that are very far from day-to-day human experiences -- giant magnetoresistance, Bose-Einstein condensates, superconductors and superfluids, and the accelerating expansion of the universe, for example. The blue LED -- something you can buy at the local home-improvement store -- seems downright mundane by comparison.
But it's anything but ordinary, said H. Frederick Dylla, chief executive officer of the American Institute of Physics, who called the work a "tour de force" because it required a combination of materials science, physics, and chemistry. Indeed, the invention of the blue LED was on a short list of his institute's candidates for the prize, he said.
"It's a very expensive technology requiring atomic-layer epitaxy, where layers are put down atomic layer by atomic layer at a very high vacuum," Dylla said. It's vastly more complicated than incandescent lights, he added. "Compare that to drawing tungsten wire and putting it into a blob of glass and blowing out the air with some argon, and you have a light bulb for a few cents."
Three colors of LED
The white light from the sun can be reproduced artificially by blending three colors of light: red, green, and blue. LEDs are very efficient at converting electrical energy into visible light, but blue LEDs proved much harder to engineer than red and green ones. It took more than a quarter century after red LEDs were invented in the early 1960s before semiconductor materials and fabrication techniques grew sophisticated enough to enable blue LEDs in the mid-1990s.White LEDs work either by packaging trios of red, green, and blue LEDs or by using just blue LEDs whose light also excites phosphors that emit blue and red.
Now those white LEDs are spreading rapidly across the globe, led by lighting applications.
Incandescent lights -- the traditional Thomas Edison-era light bulb -- work by heating up a filament until it glows. That approach produces light, but most of the energy is wasted as heat.
Fluorescent bulbs are more than four times more efficient, a big step forward. But LEDs are nearly twenty times as efficient as incandescent bulbs, and they aren't saddled with the risky mercury-related health risks of fluorescent bulbs. As an added bonus, LED lights last longer, too.
Akasaki and Amano worked together on the technology at Nagoya University, while Nakamura at the time was working at Nichia Chemical Corporation. It took more than a decade of work to produce practical blue-LED designs in the 1990s.
The trio will split an award of about $1.1 million. That's a lot more than the $200 that Nichia paid Nakamura for his invention -- but less than the $8 million he won in 2005 in a lawsuit arguing that he deserved a bigger share of the royalties his invention brought in.
Basic science bears fruit
Dylla is happy to see a Nobel Prize awarded to something comprehensible to the public. But that doesn't mean scientific inquiry should be directed only toward products that have an obvious commercial or practical benefit, he said."I am troubled by some who say if the government funds research, it should only be...directed towards things that have a practical application," Dylla said. "The trouble with that limited view is that most of what ended up as practical applications of science have come from rather unfettered basic research on the nature of matter or how energy interacts with matter."
For example Einstein's famously mind-bending theory of general relativity may seem remote. But ignoring it would make navigation with today's GPS satellites "highly inaccurate."
"You can trace many advances in science and engineering that have obvious and immediate practical applications to a foundation of basic science," he said.
First, let's assume you've already downloaded and installed the Windows 10 Technical Preview. If not, you can download and install it directly from Microsoft's Technical Preview page, though you may be best downloading the ISO file, which you can either burn onto a CD or transfer to a USB flash drive and install from either media.
However and wherever you install it, you'll want to make sure you don't install it as an upgrade on your main production PC since the product is still very much in beta stage. Instead, you can install it in its own separate partition on an existing PC or as a virtual machine using a product such as VMware Player or Oracle VirtualBox.
Assuming you've installed Windows 10 on a PC, click the Start button after Windows appears, and you'll see the new Start menu with its hybrid approach. On the left, the familiar menu column appears with shortcuts to your applications and settings. On the right, a screen full of tiles to Windows apps displays so you can access key Windows apps right from the menu.
Click any shortcut on the left to open that particular setting or location. Click any tile on the right to open a specific Start screen app, such as Mail, Calendar, or News. Click the familiar All Apps setting, and the left column changes to show the standard Start screen apps as well as folders to familiar Windows settings and controls.
Need to search for an app, file or other item? Simply type your word or phrase in the search field, and a list of suggestions pops up. You can do the same thing by clicking the Search icon, but in that case Windows also displays recent and trending searches.
Want to shut down or restart Windows? Click the Power button at the top of the menu next to your name, and Windows will at the very least display options to Shut down and Restart. Right-click your account name, and you'll see a menu with three options: Change account picture, lock and sign out.
OK, now let's say you want to change or personalize some aspects of the Start menu. Here's where your right mouse button comes into play. For example, you want to add your Documents folder as a tile on the right side of the menu. Right-click the folder and click Pin to Start. A tile for your Documents appears on the right. Maybe you want to add your Documents folder to the taskbar instead. Right-click the folder and click Pin to Taskbar. Or maybe you want to remove the shortcut for your Documents folder from the menu entirely. Right-click the folder and click Remove from this List.
Now let's say you want to manage certain apps. Click the All Apps setting. Right-click any app, and you'll typically see four options: Open, Uninstall, Pin to Start (or Unpin from Start if the app is already set up as a tile), and Pin to taskbar (or Unpin from taskbar if the app is already there). Simply click the option you want.
OK, next step. Let's say you want to manage the tiles that appear on the right side of the menu. Right-click a specific tile, and a menu pops up with certain choices: Unpin from Start, Pin to taskbar, and Resize. Most apps will also have an Uninstall option. An app that can appear as a Live tile will also have one of two choices: either turn Live tile on or turn Live tile off, depending on the current setting. Again, simply click the option you want.
By customizing the left column and the right column, you can easily control how much you want to stick with the standard Start menu and how much you want to tap into the tiled Start screen portion.
Any other tricks to customizing the Start menu? Yep, as in Windows 7, there's a whole screen dedicated to that very task. Right-click the taskbar and click the Properties command. From the Taskbar and Start Menu properties window, click the tab for Start menu. In the Start Menu section, click the Customize button. You can now determine which items appear in the Start menu list and how they behave.
Since Windows 10 is just an early Technical Preview, Microsoft will undoubtedly add more features and functionality to the Start menu before the final product is released. But for now, these tips and tricks should help you navigate your way around the new Start menu and show you how to easily manage and customize it.
An eBay seller who was trying to hawk an alleged iPhone 6 prototype has terminated the auction with no sale and no explanation.
Put up for auction late last week, the phone was apparently an iPhone 6 still running in developers mode. The eBay seller kimberlyk1018 -- (Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)
identified as Alex Kantor -- said he ordered a new iPhone 6 from Verizon, only to discover that the model sent to him was a prototype, and not the standard consumer edition.
"I determined that this iPhone was a version not meant for the consumer market after seeing the software version on it," Kantor told CNET on Monday. "I am an avid tech lover and I knew what this software was right away. It is actually called SwitchBoard and is only for internal Apple testing. Also, there is no FCC markings on the rear of the device or model number. Also, there is a red charging port which is known on prototypes."
Realizing he had a prototype, Kantor said, he decided to test the waters by putting it up for auction on eBay. The bidding reached a feverish pitch, pushing the price to more than $100,000 on Monday night, according to news site The Independent.
The description of the item on eBay offered the following details:
For sale is a brand new never used Apple iPhone 6 Prototype. Apple does NOT let these phones out of their possession yet I was accidentally sent one upon renewing my contract. As you can see from the photos, iOS8 has not been placed on this device, rather it is in the true developer mode. There are no FCC markings on the rear of the device or a model number. This is the real deal!!! The lightening port is red which is a sure sign of a prototype. This device is being sold as is. I cannot guarantee that it will make calls or that the camera will work. However I can guarantee you that the device is a 64gb iPhone 6 which was sent to me from Verizon.Kantor also said that by labeling the device a prototype, he was admitting that it was never meant for the consumer market.
But alas the auction never got a chance to finish. On Tuesday, the device's eBay page showed that the auction had stopped with a simple note saying: "This listing was ended by the seller because the item is no longer available." The bid price showed just $999, and no bidding history was listed.
So why was the auction stopped and the phone no longer available? The answer may lie in the description of the item itself.
Apple does not let prototypes out of its possession, and such devices are not meant for consumers. As such, the iPhone maker itself may have intervened in the auction to put a halt to the proceedings, meaning it asked for or demanded the return of the phone. And Kantor may have had little choice but to return it or face unwanted trouble.
Of course, that is pure speculation. Without knowing the facts, that explanation is just a guess. But it wouldn't be the first time Apple secured the return of a device that was not meant for public consumption.
In 2010, Apple formally requested the return of an iPhone 4G prototype that was obtained by tech blog site Gizmodo. In 2011, the company asked for the return of a 3G MacBook prototype that was being sold through Craigslist. Apple also has a history of sending in the troops to track down prototypes of devices accidentally left in bars.
Apple, eBay, and Kantor did not immediately respond to a request for comment
Monday, 6 October 2014
As Motorola's low-cost entrant for smartphones, the handset runs Android 4.4 KitKat and features a 4.5-inch HD display. Powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, the Moto G LTE houses a 5-megapixel rear camera, and 8GB of internal storage.
The Moto G LTE arrives on Friday, October 10, with an $180 off-contract sticker price. Customers who opt for an AT&T Next Plan can spread payments out; you'll pay $7.50 a month with AT&T Next 18, and $9 a month with AT&T Next 12. You can also buy it for $80 with a one-year contract.
In addition to the phone, AT&T will also sell its latest mobile hotspot, the AT&T Velocity, on October 10. Standout features include dual-band Wi-Fi, 10 hours of battery life, and support for up to 10 devices at one time. Offered for $169 all-in, the Velocity can also be paired with a one-year ($95) or two-year ($20) contract.
NASA needs to be sure Orion can handle the rigors of launching on top of the new Space Launch System rocket, a rocket more powerful than any in history. To that end, NASA ordered up a 55,000-pound vibration-simulation table. The massive device is 22 feet wide and comes stocked with a slew of servo-hydraulic actuators that vibrate the table to replicate the kind of forces a spacecraft would endure while strapped to a honking big rocket.
This Magic-Fingers-on-steroids contraption is now in residence at NASA's Space Power Facility at the Glenn Research Center in Sandusky, Ohio. It joins what NASA describes as the world's largest vacuum chamber and the world's most powerful acoustic testing chamber for spacecraft. That makes the Space Power Facility a one-stop shop for tests that can re-create the rigorous conditions Orion will encounter when in use.
"Launch is the most dynamic and dangerous part of spaceflight. It takes an incredible amount of power for a rocket to boost a spacecraft like Orion into space. And all that power results in intense shaking. Spacecraft systems have to be specially designed to work in spite of the vibration -- this table lets us test them to make sure that they do," Jerry Carek, Space Power Facility manager, said in a statement.
The first Orion module to be tested at the facility will be a service module built by the European Space Agency. Later, NASA will test Orion's crew module, which is designed to carry astronauts on missions. If NASA eventually launches successful long-term manned missions using Orion, then at least a small part of that triumph will be attributable to the testing done on a massive, vibrating table.
In addition, the carrier also made noticeable changes to its Unlimited service plans. Effective immediately, customers have more options to choose from, including a new low-cost rate plan.
Subscribers can now opt for a $20 plan that gives you 300 voice minutes with unlimited text. You won't get any 3G or 4G data with the package, but you can have all the Wi-Fi you can handle.
The $35 plan now lets customers choose between two bundles. Behind door number one is unlimited voice, text, and 250MB of high-speed data; behind door number two is 300 voice minutes, unlimited texting, and up to 2.5GB of high-speed data access.
Or, for $45 per month, Virgin Mobile provides unlimited minutes and messages and 1GB of data. A $55 option sees the data bucket increased to 3GB. Both plans now offer unlimited international texting and 100 minutes of international calling.
If you need more minutes or flexibility, a $5 monthly add-on tosses in unlimited voice minutes to Canada and Mexico, and $10 per month more nets you 1,000 minutes to call more than 200 countries.
Upleaks, a relatively new entrant into the mobile-image-leaking niche, has posted photos of what is apparently the upcoming Nexus 9. The rear of the device is featured in the image and includes both an HTC logo and the familiar Nexus branding. Its size appears to accommodate the expected 9-inch screen.
Rumors have been swirling for weeks that HTC and Google are collaborating on the new Nexus line of tablets. Last month, a report suggested that the device would debut on October 16 alongside the formal release of Google's next operating system release, Android
Google has a long tradition of working with different vendors to
build Nexus devices. The Nexus line is considered the base standard for Android-based
devices, though they don't necessarily compete with flagship
alternatives from Samsung, LG and HTC, among others. The first Nexus 7, a 7-inch tablet, was built by Asus. The 10-inch Nexus 10 was developed by Samsung. Nexus smartphones have been manufactured by Samsung, LG and HTC.Neither Google nor HTC immediately responded to a request for comment on the leak. The companies have also stopped short of even acknowledging the photo, so it should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt until an official announcement.
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