The Air Force Research Laboratory has created the fastest supercomputer of all time by putting together 1,760 Playstation Three’s. The Department of Defense is calling it The Condor Cluster. This device is so powerful and so fast that it has the ability to process 500 trillion floating point operations per second. WOW. It also has 168 GPU’s and 84 servers. Compared to a supercomputer built like this one from scratch, The Condor Cluster only costs about 5%-10% of the cost at 2 million dollars. Interestingly, The Condor Cluster only consumes about 10% of the power of a computer of such magnitude made from scratch.
With The Condor Clusterthe military will be able to look at high resolution satellite imagery, radar and very possibly extra-terrestrial life. It’s amazing where our technology is going. Now we are creating super computers using Playstation Gaming Consoles.
Scientists over at Sandia National Laboratories are now trying to create fuel with the help of solar energy. There are multiple conversion that will need to take place for this to happen, however. The scientists are using a cerium-oxide-based system to turn CO2 into carbon monoxide, and they are also working to turn water into useable hydrogen. Combining these two, they will make a synthetic fuel. In a two chambered machine, mirrors will cause the solar energy to heat up to over 1,500 degrees F, which will in turn pull the oxygen out of the cerium oxide. The deoxygenated substance is then pumped into another chamber where it reacts with CO2 to again produce cerium oxide and carbon monoxide.
In the same way, water is heated up and a stream of hydrogen is produced. This prospective new fuel called Syngas is created into a final product using solar energy once again. Mirrors concentrate solar energy to 400 degrees Celsius, which catalyzes a reaction between CO2 and Calcium Oxide. The final product is calcium carbonate. Using similar solar heating processes, finally zinc, steam, and CO2 come together to produce Syngas.
Using this very inexpensive process, we will be able to produce low cost, effective fuel that is readily available and carbon-neutral. Carbon dioxide emissions are becoming a huge problem across the globe as we burn more fossil fuels to run our vehicles and go about our everyday lives. A carbon-neutral, low cost power source could mean great things for the future of our ecosystem. Imagine if cars could run off Syngas and emit no carbon dioxide whatsoever? People are looking for all sorts of ways to reduce their carbon footprint. If this idea can be commercialized, it will be a great opportunity to reduce that footprint even further.
Say goodbye to fog lights because scientists are working on something much better; Computer Vision Systems. It is believed that in the near future, computer vision systems are said to be able to increase your ability to see through the fog or the snow in your vehicle. Can you imagine the full extent of what this type of technology would mean for society? Airplanes wouldn’t fly blindly, underwater exploration would be taken to an entirely new level, public transportation would be more efficient and safer, and lastly our own private transportation will be greatly enhanced. Researchers say that this technology will first be in the oceans, then in airplanes, and in a few years we will probably see it in public transportation. They also explain that it’s a long ways away before car companies get their hands on this emerging technology.
This technology is the key focus for many over at Carnegie Mellon University. SrinivasaNarasimhan, professor of computer vision and graphic systems explains that this technology will not “take away the fog.” He says that the key to making this technology work is illumination. Lighting up the fog with something like a floodlight is actually the a terrible thing to do because the light refacts and reflects off of the fog and the viewer loses all contrast. Instead you have to scan light and then a camera will make the image clearer.
A big problem, according to SrinivasaNarasimhan is that drivers often speed up in the fog because they perceive that they are actually driving slower. For this type of technology, it is said that specialized led lights or laser will suffice as the light source.
Researchers believe that one of the emerging technologies that will change this world will be LucidTouch. Microsoft has been looking into the idea for several years now once they realized that there was a huge amount of wasted space on our handheld devices (on the back). Patrick Baudisch of Microsoft first began to formulate this idea when he realized he couldn’t see past his fingers on his touch screen phone, which made things more difficult for him. Most recently Baudisch has been focusing his efforts on maximizing the screen size on things like cellular phone technology. The biggest problem is that we always want our technology to be smaller, however this means that there is also smaller screens and therefore less surface area to work with.
Baudisch also realizes that we need to be able to see our fingers on the back of the device, so he’s created a “see-through pseudo-transparency” system that allows you to see what you are doing as you use the back side of your technology. A great part about this is any size hand, and any size finger can use this technology without blocking the screen. A colored dot on the screen will point out exactly where the finger will be in contact with the screen, which will prevent any confusions. Prototypes are still using a camera-boom attachment that points at the fingers and then renders the actions on a screen. According to research, a simple optical sensor will do the trick as long as they can provide enough data to indicate the location of the fingertips.
Baudisch is just starting with his dream of the LucidTouch. He believes that this technology could be used in gaming devices and even helps the disabled! It’s quite obvious that this technology could mean some big things for the future. It’s just a matter of when the researchers at Microsoft can create a prototype that will be effective enough to go to market. Could you imagine something like this? It would be leaps and bounds in the technology world.
Meniere’s disease is one that affects only 1% of the population. It is an imbalance disease that is quite debilitating. People with this disease can have vertigo occur at any time. Sometimes when there is an attack of vertigo, people will have to lay still for hours until the feeling subsides. Can you imagine how this type of disease might affect everyday life? It must prevent people from taking part in all sorts of activities and really hamper everyday life. Because one cannot predict an event like this happening, people affected by this disease are in a constant state of fear. While there are lifestyle changes and medications that can be ingested to help with the disease, none of them actually cure it. There is also the option to undergo surgery, however the results are not definite and this can also greatly affect hearing.
Luckily, some scientists and students over that the University of Washington Medical Center are investigating a possible solution. They say that a cochlear implant will be placed in a small well that will be put into the skull behind the temporal bone. Electrodes will then go into the ear canal and the inner ear. Neuronal signal testing will be used to identify the spot to create the well behind the ear. The device will be accompanied by a processor which well be pressed when a user feels an impending attack. The electrodes will then be activated in the inner-ear which will correct the problems.
After 4 years of testing and design modifications, the final design was approved by the FDA. I’m hopeful for all of the people with Meniere’s disease that they will be able to reap the benefits of such a medical breakthrough. This type of invention will surely give people their lives back.
So over in the Netherlands scientists were thinking about doing something that’s pretty cool. First, consider all of the carbon emissions that come out of the tailpipes of cars every day along with other chemicals. One of the major chemicals that come out of a tailpipe is nitrogen oxides. The problem with nitrogen oxides is that they cause acid rain. People that live in densely populated areas have to deal with a lot of smog in the air and it can definitely cause respiratory problems.
Interestingly enough, at the Eindhoven University of Technology, scientists are coming up with new ways to solve this problem. In the laboratories, they came up with a concrete that can actually reduce nitric oxide. Former concrete contains titanium dioxide and this is a photocatalytic material that has the ability to remove nitrogen oxides from the air. Using sunlight, this nitric oxide can be converted to nitrate.
On a busy road in the Netherlands, known as Castorweg, the scientists resurfaced it using the air purifying concrete paving stones. Over the course of the fall and the winter, the areas which contained the air purifying stones, in comparison to the regular concrete, showed improved NOx levels ranging from 25% to 45%. Actually although this type of concrete will cost 50% more than regular concrete, but with installation it will end up being only 10% more in costs. Pretty cool huh?
I can't count the number of times a week I have to worry about my laptop running out of battery. I feel like they shouldn't even be considered portable devices anymore because mine is plugged in so often. Everyone claims that they're Mac has great battery life, which is probably true in comparison to my Lenovo Thinkpad, however I still know plenty of people that are looking for outlets to plug their Mac's into while studying. The truth is, we could always use more battery life. At full charge, my Lenovo only holds a little over 1:30, which just isn't cutting it.
There's too many times when I'm basing my seat in the library on its proximity to an outlet. Either that, or I'm getting in other people's way while trying to plug my computer into an outlet. So, what's the next step...better battery technology? A definite possibility. Bigger batteries? I mean, we could do that but who really wants their laptop to be even heavier?
Our generation has been receiving a lot of bad publicity because we keep technology for just a few years and then dispose of it for something better and nicer. Ultimately, with the plastics we are throwing out precious metals and plenty of re-usable stuff. Creating better battery technology will just cause us to throw out the batteries we have now much faster, which is just adding to the technology junkyard.
Luckily, over at MIT we have professors working on alternative solutions to problems such as low battery life. Professor Peter Hagelstein is co-author an interesting manuscript which is now published in the Journal of Applied Physics. In his studies, he claims that the heat that a laptop generates has the power to DOUBLE battery life! Basically, when operating a computer only a portion of the energy that goes into it is actually successfully utilized. Some of this energy is lost in the form of heat or friction. Many forms of technology such as engines, microprocessors, and power plants need to give off excess heat in order for the machine to perform at an optimal level.
Hagelstein seems to think that the current heat to energy technologies not performing to their full potential, so he is working to create a better heat energy converter. According to theory, heat to energy transfer cannot go over a certain value called the Carnot Limit. Hagelstein claims that we are only maximizing about 1-10th of that limit. According to their statistics, using their new technology they can possibly reach about 90% of that limit.
Hagelstein is using a new system in which power is being generated by a single quantum dot device. It is a type of semiconductor that restricts electrons in all three dimensions. Although there is a current technology that can convert heat to high energy returns, he explains that with the current technology you can only get high throughput (converting heat from a less efficient system and getting more energy), but in this way you are sacrificing efficiency, price, and size. Hagelstein claims that in his new system there is no catch.
After performing a significant amount of research, Hagelstein learned that by lessening the distance between a hot surface and the conversion device you can create significantly larger amounts of power. MTPV Corp. (for Micron-gap Thermal Photo-Voltaics) and founder Robert Dimatteo plans to take Hagelsteins concept into the commercial market, claiming that this could be a huge jump in the battle to harness more power from the devices we use today.
According to DiMatteo, in the cars and technologies for generating electricity, about 60% of the possible power is lost to heat. Can you imagine if we changed this!!??
