Platinum ‘nano-raspberries’ may hold the key to methanol fuel cells
Could our future cars be powered by methanol fuel cells, rather than gas, hydrogen or electric batteries? The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) has made the oil alternative slightly more viable by developing a fast, simple way of producing platinum “nano-raspberries,” which contain tiny clusters of nanoparticles. Each tiny piece of matter, measuring between 1 and 100 nanometers, can act as a catalyst inside fuel cells to help convert liquid methanol into electricity. The clusters are called nano-raspberries because of their fruit-like shape, and they’re particularly effective due to their high surface area.
NIST’s process uses water as a solvent to make the nano-raspberries in roughly 40 minutes. The team tried a number of alternatives, including methanol, ethanol and isopropanol, to see how they affected the production of “nano-grapes,” which are formed from large clumps of nano-raspberries. These bunches, if they grow too large, can reduce their catalytic properties, and it’s this part of the research which NIST says is most important. In short, it’s not just the nanoparticle material that scientists should be worried about — it’s also the solvent they’re combined with. The hope is that their test methods will be used to discover better combinations of solvent and nanoparticle materials.
[Image Credit: Curtin/NIST]
Filed under: Transportation, Science
Source: NIST
NASA releases climate change projections to help developing nations
NASA has just released detailed climate change projections through the year 2100, and it’s one of the key aspects of a project intended to help developing nations combat the impacts of global warming. That project is the newly launched Climate Services for Resilient Development initiative, a partnership between the US government, the UK and various organizations, including the American Red Cross and Google. As you can see in the illustrations of NASA’s data, the Earth’s bound to get hotter and hotter until the average daily temp exceeds 113 degrees Fahrenheit in most countries by the year 2099. The effects of climate change such as storm surge (see above), droughts and ocean level changes can be felt everywhere. However, they can be especially destructive in developing nations that don’t have the means to prepare for them and to deal with the aftermath.
According to the White House, the Climate Services project “will provide actionable science, data, information, tools and training” to developing countries, most likely with help from NASA when needed. What those are exactly differ by region: for instance, the project could help seaside locations conjure up sea level projections and find places where houses and buildings won’t end up submerged in water. It could help other locations build infrastructure (water supply lines and deep wells are likely candidates for places prone to drought) and create population maps, among other things — anything that can help a country boost its resilience to the impacts of global warming. The initiative, which has launched with $34 million in funding, will develop services to offer Colombia, Ethiopia and Bangladesh for now. Eventually, it’ll expand its reach to the rest of the Andean region and Caribbean, East Africa and the Sahel, and South and Southeast Asia.
NASA’s dataset, by the way, shows how rainfall patterns and temperature will change throughout the years “in response to different scenarios of increasing carbon dioxide simulated by 21 climate models.” It was created using a big data research platform called NASA Earth Exchange within the agency’s supercomputing facility at the Ames Research Center. The full dataset is open to the public, so you can download it if the PowerPoint slides aren’t enough for you. Just make sure you have enough space on your computer, because its total size is a whopping 12 terabytes.
[Image credit: Claudio Accheri/Flickr]
Filed under: Science
Hoopla app review
The days of browsing books at your local library are slowly fading into extinction. While there are many people that prefer the look and texture of a physical book, the millennial generation has moved more and more towards their digital counterparts. Many of the libraries in the US do not maintain digital archives of their media. This is where services like Hoopla come into play.
Hoopla works in conjunction with your local library to offer digital titles. With your library card, you can borrow a certain number of titles from their collection per month. That amount is determined by your library. Hoopla offers ebooks, comics, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and music, but the available content will depend largely on your library. My library, for example, does not provide comics or ebooks but does offer everything else.
The design of the application is fairly easy, but they could have done so much more. Personally I would like to see some settings for parental controls and video quality. Another feature would be to have options in the sidebar to select the type of media that you want to browse, but that’s not a deal killer for me. The home page lists available media and groups them into categories. There is a link to the right that will allow you to view all the media in the selected categories.
E-books and comics:
E-books and comics are available for 21 days at a time. They have a large selection of books and comics. You’re sure to find something interesting to read. Just don’t expect to find the latest and greatest novels or comics.
Audiobooks:
Audiobook titles, like the e-books and comics, are available for 21 days at a time. I personally was not able to stream the book directly through the mobile app. This was remedied by downloading the book directly and then playing in through the application. The audio quality was good, but there was an occasional blip here and there. My biggest complaint is that there are no chapter points programmed into the book. They do have a system of user generated bookmarks and the player will pick up where you left off, but it would be nice to be able to jump to a specific chapter in the book.
Movies and TV:
The video quality is good, but they do not offer HD content at this time. I have been assured that they are working on implementing this in the near future. Most titles are available for 72 hours after you check them out, but a few titles are only available for 48 hours. It streams fairly well and I experienced no buffering. The catalog is fairly large but is by no means an exhaustive catalog. The good news is that there are several modern titles to choose from. The bad news is that there is no support at this point for Chromecast or Amazon’s Fire TV.
Music:
Albums are available for 7 days. The quality is good, but like the audiobook player, the music player app experiences the occasional blip. Just like with the audio books. I had to download the album first to listen to the music. The catalog has several newer titles, but just like your local library, you may not find everything you’re looking for.
Overall this is a great app that is still in its infancy. They have new features like HD video streaming and Chromecast support that are in the works. They are also continually looking for new content providers to keep things fresh. The service is cross-platform and can be easily picked up from one device to another.
Is this a replacement for services like Amazon Prime, Audible, Google Play, Hulu Plus, or Netflix? At this point, the answer is no. However; to those whose library does offer Hoopla, this is a great alternative or supplement to these services. The best part is that it is 100% free to use and there are no ads that come with it.
The post Hoopla app review appeared first on AndroidGuys.
4G and 5G wireless: How they are alike and how they differ
Mobile network technology is moving at a relentless pace, and it’s being built around not one, but two industry juggernauts: Fourth-generation wireless or 4G and fifth-generation wireless or 5G. The assimilation of the Internet of Things (IoT) world into both 4G and 5G technologies makes this wireless labyrinth even harder to get around.
Android Authority takes a closer look at both 4G and 5G wireless realms as they exist today and show where the two worlds intersect and where they have clear distinctions. It’s is also important to define 4G and 5G, because the wireless tribe is an industry in a hurry when it comes to the generation game.
Ericsson research executive, Magnus Frodigh, has already shown his keenness to talk about the 6G cellular technology at the recent Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015 in Barcelona. The generation game not only keeps the innovation spirit alive, it also earns the wireless industry precious marketing mileage that would otherwise take billions of dollars.
So let’s begin with a clear and succinct understanding of 4G.
The anatomy of 4G
4G is synonymous with Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, which is an evolution of the existing 3G wireless standard. In fact, LTE is an advanced form of 3G that marks an audacious shift from hybrid data and voice networks to a data-only IP network.
There are two key technologies that enable LTE to achieve higher data throughput than predecessor 3G networks: MIMO and OFDM. Orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) is a transmission technique that uses a large number of closely-spaced carriers that are modulated with low data rates. It’s a spectral efficiency scheme that enables high data rates and permits multiple users to share a common channel.
The wireless industry is broadly targeting 2020 for the widespread deployment of 5G networks.
Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique further improves data throughput and spectral efficiency by using multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver. It uses complex digital signal processing to set up multiple data streams on the same channel. The early LTE networks support 2×2 MIMO in both the downlink and uplink.
The LTE standard uses both forms of duplex operations: Frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD). However, governments across the world have rushed to auction the frequency spectrum for LTE, and make money, without any planning and consultation. The outcome is the proliferation of LTE operation to a messy number of 44 bands.
Finally, a quick note about the LTE categories. There are different categories of LTE networks, and from a consumer perspective, they mainly differ in terms of theoretical speed. It’s worth noting that these speeds are theoretical numbers that are used to compare the maximum potential of the LTE network under ideal conditions.
LTE-Advanced: The bridge between 4G and 5G
LTE Advanced or LTE-A is the evolution of the original LTE technology toward even higher bandwidths. LTE-A promises nearly three times greater speed than the basic LTE network and comprises of the following five building blocks:
- Carrier Aggregation
- Increased MIMO
- Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP)
- Relay Station
- Heterogeneous Network or HetNet
Carrier aggregation or channel aggregation is a transmission scheme that allows up to 20 channels from different spectrums to be combined into a single data stream. Next, LTE-A raises the MIMO bar to 8×8 antenna configurations to increase the number of radio streams using the beamsteering technique.
Third, CoMP or cooperative MIMO, allows mobile devices to send and receive radio signals from multiple cells to reduce interference from other cells and ensure optimum performance at the cell edges. SK Telecom, which claims to have launched the world’s first LTE-A network in summer 2012, actually deployed an early form of CoMP.
LTE-A standard creates a bridge between 4G and 5G worlds.
Fourth, a relay in an LTE-A setting is a base station that uses multi-hop communications at the cell edges; it receives a weak signal and retransmits it with an enhanced quality. Fifth and the most crucial one is HetNet, a multilayered system of overlapping big and small cells to pump out cheap bandwidth.
HetNet, a gradual evolution of the cellular architecture, is a vastly more complex network as small cells add hundreds or even thousands of entry points into the cellular system. The self-organizing network (SON) concept is one of the key enabling technologies being considered for LTE-A applications.
Here, it’s worth noting that while LTE-A standard creates a bridge between 4G and 5G worlds, in many ways, the notion of HetNet is serving as glue between LTE-A and 5G worlds. That’s why many wireless industry observers call 5G wireless an enhanced form of LTE-A.
That makes sense because the main concept behind 5G systems is to expand the idea of small cell network to a whole new level and create a super dense network that will put tiny cells in every room.
Enter 5G
The Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance defines 5G as below:
“5G is an end-to-end ecosystem to enable a fully mobile and connected society. It empowers value creation toward customers and partners, through existing and emerging use cases delivered with consistent experience and enabled by sustainable business models.”
Essentially, LTE-A is the foundation of the 5G radio access network (RAN) below 6 GHz while the frequencies from 6 GHz to 100 GHz will explore new technologies in parallel. Take MIMO, for instance, where 5G raises the bar to Massive MIMO technology, a large array of radiating elements that extends the antenna matrix to a new level—16×16 to 256×256 MIMO—and takes a leap of faith in wireless network speed and coverage.
The early blueprint of 5G pilot networks mostly comprises of beamforming technology and small cell base stations. The companies like Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung have launched pilot projects using these two technology building blocks and so far results have been encouraging.
The goals of 5G technology can be summarized in the following value points:
- 1,000x increase in capacity
- Support for 100+ billion connections
- Up to 10Gbit/s speeds
- Below 1ms latency
How 4G and 5G differ…
1. First and foremost, while the LTE-based 4G networks are going through a rapid deployment, 5G networks mostly comprise of research papers and pilot projects. The wireless industry is broadly targeting 2020 for the widespread deployment of 5G networks.
2. Wireless networks till 4G mostly focused on the availability of raw bandwidth, while 5G is aiming on providing pervasive connectivity to lay grounds for fast and resilient access to the Internet users, whether they are on a top of a skyscraper or down under a subway station. Although LTE standard is incorporating a variant called machine type communications (MTC) for the IoT traffic, 5G technologies are being designed from grounds up to support MTC-like devices.
3. The 5G networks are not going to be a monolithic network entity and will be built around a combination of technologies: 2G, 3G, LTE, LTE-A, Wi-Fi, M2M, etc. In other words, 5G will be designed to support a variety of applications such as the IoT, connected wearables, augmented reality and immersive gaming.
Unlike its 4G counterpart, 5G network will offer the ability to handle a plethora of connected devices and a myriad of traffic types. For example, 5G will provide ultra-high-speed links for HD video streaming as well as low-data-rate speeds for sensor networks.
4. The 5G networks will pioneer new architectures like cloud RAN and virtual RAN to facilitate a more centralized network establishment and make the best use of server farms through localized data centers at the network edges.
5. Finally, 5G will spearhead the use of cognitive radio techniques to allow the infrastructure to automatically decide about the type of channel to be offered, differentiate between mobile and fixed objects, and adapt to conditions at a given time. In other words, 5G networks will be able to serve the industrial Internet and Facebook apps at the same time.
Japanese carrier warns customers about Snapdragon 810’s overheating issues
The Snapdragon 810 overheats. No, the Snapdragon 810 doesn’t overheat. Yes, it does. No, it doesn’t. This back and forth dance has been going on for a long time now. There’s still a lot of controversy over the Snapdragon 810, but it seems that most of the overheating issues have been resolved at this stage — even if processor throttling is likely involved in order to keep the chip cool.
NTT DoCoMo’s warning isn’t proof of overheating, but more likely proof of how a bad reputation is hard to shake.
Just when you thought that the Snapdragon 810 drama was over, however, Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has decided to push the issue with a new warning poster. The poster was discovered at a NTT DoCoMo shop in Japan and warns about potential overheating issues for three Snapdragon 810-touting devices: the Sony Xperia Z4, the Sharp Aquos Zeta, and the Fujitsu Arrows NX.
The poster advises customers to do the following to prevent overheating and prolong the phone’s life:
- Periodically shut down the phone.
- Keep the phone off completely while charging.
- Regularly back up data on the phone.
- Reduce reliance on the phone by using a tablet or a PC when possible.
Not exactly a major vote of confidence in the Snapdragon 810 chipset. Honestly, NTT DoCoMo’s warning isn’t proof of overheating, but more likely proof of how a bad reputation is hard to shake. Whether the Snapdragon 810 is as bad as some have claimed doesn’t even matter anymore, the damage is done. Thankfully the Snapdragon 808 doesn’t seem to have the same negative heat-related reports, and here’s to hoping Qualcomm’s next generation of chips don’t run into the same issues (perceived or real).
Not exactly a major vote of confidence in the Snapdragon 810 chipset.
As for NTT DoCoMo’s warning? In actuality, the carrier is probably just protecting itself in the event something does go wrong, but such warnings certainly won’t help the carrier’s sales for these three phones. If NTT DoCoMo really thought that had a massive issue on their hands, odds are they’d recall the devices.
What do you think about the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 drama that has unfolded this year? How do you feel about Qualcomm after the fiasco? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Huawei delays launch of its SmartWatch to September-October in China
Huawei’s Watch was first unveiled at MWC back in March, and it is still one of the better-looking Android Wear devices around. There is no set shipping date for the Huawei Watch just yet, although it is available to pre-order in most countries. Not in China though, availability of the Huawei Watch has been delayed until at least September, although October hasn’t been ruled out if things don’t go to plan.
It all stems down to Google having left the Chinese market due to disagreements with the Chinese government. This means that Google’s Services won’t work in China, which has left Huawei with the task of adapting Android Wear to use its own services. Obviously this isn’t going to be a quick fix. As yet, Google hasn’t given any indication as to if and when it will re-enter the Chinese market.
Source: WantChinaTimes
Come comment on this article: Huawei delays launch of its SmartWatch to September-October in China
Google’s voice search helps you ask about nearby places
One of the biggest problems with voice search is that, for consistent results, you have to use specific words and phrasing. The process often feels unnatural, and you spend most of your time trying to second-guess the sort of sentence Google will interpret properly. Well, Google is making it a little easier now with location aware queries. It means that your Android or iOS device will take your current position into consideration and pair your questions to nearby points of interest. So If you ask “how big is this lake” or “what’s the name of this park,” Google should know what you’re referring to and provide the relevant information. The feature was shown off at the Search Marketing Expo in Paris and appears to be live right now for some iOS and Android users. If nothing else, it should keep you amused until Google releases Android M and its ambitious Now on Tap service.
Location Aware Search is live unannounced feature in Google Search App. Ask about things nearby without naming them pic.twitter.com/ML7APC6Msc
– Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 9, 2015
Filed under: Cellphones, Google
Via: Search Engine Land
Source: Danny Sullivan
The next game from ‘Thomas Was Alone’ developer due August 18th
The follow-up to indie darling Thomas Was Alone finally has a firm release date. Developer Mike Bithell’s incredibly stylish stealth-puzzler that hinges on you being heard, Volume, hits PlayStation 4, PlayStation TV, PS Vita and Steam August 18th. Performance capture and voice-over extraordinaire Andy Serkis stars in the game as well, but it doesn’t sound like he was ready to make an appearance for the spankin’ new trailer below. Given what Bithell achieved with a handful of a handful of colored squares in his last effort, we’re pretty excited to see what he can do with something a little more human this time out.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Mike Bithell (YouTube)
Spotify builds a war chest to compete with Apple Music
Now that Apple is launching a streaming music service, Spotify is going door-to-door to drum up backing for its forthcoming war. Of course, it doesn’t need moral support as much as cash, and investors must think it’s a safe bet, since they’ve stumped-up $526 million to the company’s fighting fund. As the Wall Street Journal reports, that means that finance-orientated types believe that Spotify is worth more than $8.5 billion — a pretty penny for a business that’s never made a profit.
Spotify doesn’t just have the looming threat of Apple on its mind, since the company recently opened-up its service to podcasts and video. Rather than simply being a place where you can get a big chunk (but not all) of the tunes you want for a monthly fee, the firm has an eye on a more radical transformation. It’s entirely plausible that the Spotify of the future is a one-stop shop for all of your video and audio needs like a mutant cross of YouTube and iTunes.
The company also wants to win the hearts and minds of its users by going on something of a positive PR campaign. The first official missive from the outfit is to reveal that it has more than 75 million users and 20 million subscribers, not to mention that it has paid out more than $3 billion in royalties for their music.
We won’t bore you with the list of which equity funds and bored rich people have kicked in the moolah, since we haven’t heard of any of them either. Oh, except for TeliaSonera, which is the biggest phone company in both Sweden and Finland. Given that Spotify was founded in Stockholm, that’s not exactly the biggest surprise — after all, you’ve gotta cheer on your hometown hero.
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Internet, Apple
Source: WSJ
Facebook Messenger has its first game
Facebook recently revealed that it would open up its Messenger platform to third-party apps, and we’re now seeing how you’ll be gaming on it. Facebook told TechCrunch that Doodle Draw is the first “true game,” for Messenger — until now, it’s only permitted GIFs, audio and the like. I gave it a whirl, and it’s basically a social version of “Pictionary.” It suggests a word, then you draw it on the screen and share it on Facebook or privately to friends on Messenger. From there, they try to fill in the blanks and guess what it is. In short, it’s a droll simple game, exactly suited for a chat tool like Messenger.
As TechCrunch pointed out, however, there is one worrying aspect to it. You can earn points by getting friends to participate, which might convince some folks to spam their contacts. So far, Messenger — which now has some 600 million users — has been relatively free of ads. In contrast, most of us have been bugged on Facebook by someone trying feed their Candy Crush addiction. Facebook has put a lid on that as of late, so hopefully they’ll keep a close eye on Messenger spam as well.
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Facebook
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Google Play
AIVAnet 